chapter 1

The year is 2037, and a new, very dangerous threat to mankind has arrived on Earth, in the form of a meteorite crashing into a field in Iowa. Within weeks, the Midwest has been overrun, with the threat spreading to the East and West Coasts, swallowing all who fall victim to it. They have fallen prey not to aliens, zombies, or natural disaster, but something far more frightening... the Lipomass.

Nobody knows what, exactly, Lipomass is or where it came from. All they know is that it's some kind of extraterrestrial organism, and the effects it has. The terrifying, horrific effects.

The Lipomass takes the original form of small, almost invisible spores, which rapidly grow wherever they settle into a thick, meaty mass. The mass moves at an astonishing pace, capable of engulfing an entire house within two minutes. Any human who comes in contact with it finds themselves trapped, as surely as if they were flies caught in flypaper. And that's when the really frightening effects kick in.

The Lipomass agitates the production of fat cells in the body, causing them to multiply exponentially. If a 160-pound man is caught in the Lipomass, by the second day, he will weigh 400 pounds. By the third day, 700. By the fourth day, 900. By the fifth, 1200. By the sixth, 1600. And by the seventh day, he will no longer be human. The Lipomass will have made his head, limbs and other body parts sink into his own mass, leaving him as a huge, immobile, vegetative glob of lard. The only way to save a victim is to find a way to pull them free before they reach the blob stage. But speed is of the essence -- if left unchecked, the Lipomass could overrun Manhattan in less than a fortnight. And it's almost indestructible -- nothing short of napalm can kill it.

It's not known if the Lipomass was some kind of bioweapon developed by an alien species intent on conquering Earth, or if it's merely some kind of anomaly that we were unfortunate enough to fall victim to. All that's known is that it spells terror...

---

My name is David Anderson, and I hail from the town of Maryville, Missouri, close to the Iowa state line. When the Lipomass hit us here in the Midwest, it hit hard. It took less than a day for Maryville to be overrun. It was terrifying -- this creepy alien moss stuff flowed across the ground almost like water, moving about as fast as a man could run, literally tripping up and swallowing people who tried to escape. It was complete chaos -- screaming, running, shouting. There were people who found themselves trapped when they tried running down dead-end streets, and could only watch as the Lipomass swallowed them up and trapped them. A few of us, myself included, managed to save ourselves by hiding in our bomb shelters, like I did. A few houses around here still have shelters, left over from the days when folks had to worry about the Soviets sending some ICBMs their way. The Lipomass has a harder time getting through the thick concrete those shelters are made of, so you can buy yourself some more time if you get to one of them. There's usually food and water in there, too, since a lot of them doubled as tornado shelters after the Cold War ended. It's not foolproof, though -- even if the Lipomass can't get to you, it's only a matter of time before you run out of food, water or air down there. Such is the case for me today. I've been down here for almost a fortnight, and I'm running real low on food. Well, I don't particularly want to starve to death, so I'll have to see if I can find more. And that means going outside.

I get up and walk over to the shelter door, taking the hatch wheel in my hands and grunting as I turn it to the left. With a click and a groan, the door creaks open, and I blink as the shelter is flooded with sunlight. Daylight and cold air -- two luxuries after a fortnight underground.

I step out of the shelter, onto the grass that's damp with morning dew. I suck in a breath as I see my house, already covered with dark brown, meaty Lipomass, hanging down from the roof in trails like Spanish moss. You need to be very, very careful when you step outside. Step in that Lipomass and get stuck, and you're done for.

Stepping carefully around puddles of Lipomass, I make my way out to the street beyond. The scene before me brings to mind something out of a horror movie. Cars lay abandoned and stuck in the street, the Lipomass covering them up to the wheel arches. Next to the cars, almost dwarfing them in size, are their former occupants -- huge, shapeless, flesh-coloured blobs. It's hard to believe that those blobs were once human, now reduced to globs of pure fat. "Blobs", we call them. You can see them in houses, too, pushing against walls and oozing out through shattered windows.

Tentatively, I walk over to one of the blobs and reach out to touch it. It squishes and quivers under my touch, causing me to recoil in disgust. Unlike the Lipomass, the victims themselves aren't dangerous to touch. In fact, if you're quick enough, you can pull them free before they can be fattened up too much to be moved. But the chances of that happening are slim indeed -- very few people want to risk touching the Lipomass themselves in their rescue efforts.

Leaving the blobs behind, I turn my attention to the brick building across the street -- Maryville High School. The road leading up to it is relatively clear of Lipomass, save for a few small puddles and one or two blobs by the side of the road. I'm hoping that I can find some food to scrounge up in the cafeteria there. The fact that it will be the sort of crap they usually serve up in high schools doesn't bother me. You can't afford to be picky during the apocalypse.

As I move closer to the school, I can see the Lipomass covering the front doors, and the blobs pressing up against the windows. There were almost five hundred students at Maryville when the Lipomass came, and I think maybe thirty managed to escape before it engulfed the school. The American flag still hangs limply from the flagpole, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe to befall the country it symbolises.

Well, with the thick layer of Lipomass covering the front door, that obviously won't be an option. Perhaps there's a fire escape or something I can use? After some searching, I finally find one that's clear of Lipomass. I walk up to it, give it a tug, and two things happen at once. The first is that the door comes off its hinges. The second is that a huge blob bulges out and hits me, sending me staggering backwards until I fall down with a wet slap, into something... meaty. And sticky.

My veins turn to ice as I realise what has happened. I grunt and struggle, but to no avail. The Lipomass has captured me, and now I'll join the same fate as the students and teachers in that building... unless, by some miracle, help arrives before I balloon up too much to be moved.

But help didn't come, and I was forced to watch as my body bloated and swelled up into the thousands of pounds over the next few days. My belly is so huge that it obscures what little I can see, given that my head is half-sunken into my neck. My hands and feet have been swallowed up by my own arm and leg fat. Eventually, I sense my neck fat slowly rising up and covering my face, and I realise that this is it -- I'm becoming another blob. No matter. I've long since resigned myself to my fate. I close my eyes as my head is swallowed up, and I accept that this is the end for me.

---

Only... it's not the end. Not quite. It seems that blobs still retain some kind of sentience. I cannot move or see, but I can feel something wet against me. Maybe it's rain or snow? I can also remember who I was, and how I got here. How I became another victim of the Lipomass in a town overrun by it. It makes me wonder -- what other stories do its victims have to tell?