The story begins with a young couple who are traveling through Death Valley in a light brown, 1976 Chevy Nova. The wife is pregnant, but they are far from civilization. She goes into labor, so the husband pulls over at the side of the road near wavy dunes. The woman climbs in back to lie down, while the husband kneels outside preparing to receive their child. The mother-to-be breathes short and shallow, exhaling through pursed lips. "Push", the panicked husband yells. "Push!" After much agony, a rapid succession of "pop pop pop"s are heard as a dozen or so inch and a half diameter muffins are expelled from beneath the woman's maternity dress. The man swings violently out of the way, tracking the muffins as they scurry off the side of the road. The lightly fatigued woman sits up just in time to see the muffins wriggle themselves into the sand of the dunes.

Horrified and utterly confused, the unwitting parents of the muffins drive away with alacrity. Meanwhile, the muffins have already begun to grow beneath the surface of the dunes. Once at full size, the meter-diameter muffins cease to grow horizontally and begin to grow vertically. Slowly like a surreal crop of corpses, humanoid adult heads break the surface of the sand from beneath. A day passes and torsos become visible. Another day and legless bodies dot the landscape. A week passes and eyes begin to open on fully grown copies of the man and woman from the 1976 Chevy Nova. Shortly thereafter, the Muffin Spawns take their first steps into the world they have come to conquer...