The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (29 page)

I fumbled for words. “I’m not the same man,” I said. “I see now the error of my ways.”

“Bit too late for that,” she snarled.

I was losing her. I took Nathan from her arms and cradled his corpse against my chest. “There must be somewhere we can go. A place to hide. If I can get us out of here, will you come with me? We could try again. Maybe even have another child.”

She spat in my face. “I would rather die than live another minute with you. Give him to me.” She yanked our son’s body from me and turned to face the front of the line. Nothing more I said had any effect. She had turned to stone.

I returned to the barracks. I felt so ashamed. My only child was dead and all I could think of was how hungry I was. One of the inmates was selling contraband. I took off my wedding ring. It didn’t look like I was going to need it again anytime soon.

“What can I get for this?” I asked.

“Dime bag of flour.” He slapped it on the table and took my ring. “Next!”

“Hang on,” I said. “Is that it? The ring is all I have. What am I going to do for food tomorrow?”

“Not my problem. Next!”

The inmates behind me pushed me aside. I huddled in a dark corner and poured the flour into my mouth. I choked. It had been cut eighty percent with chalk dust.

I lay down on my bunk and closed my eyes. The lights went out. Perhaps in sleep there would be some release from sorrow. I was drifting off when a voice growled in my ear, “Well if it isn’t Agent Frolick.”

I opened my eyes. Sergeant Thinn stared down at me. He looked distinctly underweight.

“What’s the matter, Thinny?” I asked. “No zero-calorie burgers when you need them?”

He grabbed me by the shirt and shook me. The other cops were there too. The ones from the park. “It’s your fault we’re in here,” Thinn spat. “You and that dead pizza dealer. You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough,” Thinn said. He unbuckled his belt. “Tie him down, boys.”

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Help! Somebody, please!”

The others turned to watch, but no one intervened. Thinn crouched over my face and went poo-poo in my mouth. I tried to spit it out but they forced my mouth shut and pinched my nostrils together. I swallowed.

“You puke that up,” Thinn said, “you’ll be licking it off the floor until it’s clean.”

The other cops followed Thinn’s lead. When they were finished, they invited everyone else in the barracks to do the same. One by one every man, woman and child I had ever known took their vengeance on me, crouching and grunting over my face until they had pumped the contents of their bowels into my stomach.

When I woke up, a group of slimming consultants in matching pastel leotards leaned over my bed. One clucked her tongue.

“Food terrist in our midst,” she said.

“Terrible,” said a second.

“Don’t worry,” said a third. “We’re going to fix you up so you never have cravings to eat shit again.”

“Cravings?” I said. I lifted my head. I was still bound to the bunk. “They tied me down and forced me to eat their poo!”

“So sad.”

“In denial.”

“Blames everyone but himself for his troubles.”

I struggled against my bonds. “You think I wanted them to do this to me?”

A medic appeared at my side, a syringe in one hand. It pricked my arm. I blacked out.

When I woke the second time, a surgeon in scrubs peered down at me. I blinked in the bright light. My belly was exposed to the open air.

“He’s awake,” the doctor said.

An anesthesia mask descended toward my face. I shook my head from side to side. My arms and legs were strapped to the operating table.

“What is this place?” I asked.

The doctor blinked. “You are about to undergo experimental surgery to remove your entire digestive tract, from esophagus to anus. You will never be able to threaten our national security again.”

I gasped. “But if you do that, I’ll die!”

“Not necessarily. A new school of thought says air-eating actually takes place in the lungs, not the stomach.” He chuckled and reached for a scalpel. “With enough faith, you could outlive me.”

“Faith in what?” I asked. “Eating air? Are you serious?”

The doctor patted my shoulder. “Pray to the Prophet for strength.” He forced the gas mask over my nose and mouth.

Without warning, his head slumped down over my chest. Brains oozed out of his nose. He slid to the ground. In his place stood the slimming consultant from yesterday, the one all in red. She held a Laxafier in her hand. She undid the straps that held me to the table.

“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

She pulled me to my feet. “No time to explain. Can you walk?”

I tried my legs. “Sure.”

“Then let’s move.”

She led me through a maze of dark corridors. She shot two orderlies along the way. We left them lying in puddles of their own feces and made our way out the back door. We stumbled into the open air just as the alarm sounded.

“Now we’ve got to run,” she said.

Across the barren mud we trotted, to a space between the guard towers. She picked up a pair of wire cutters and metal gloves and snipped away at the razor fence.

“Will you please tell me what is going on?” I asked.

“The Prophet ordered me to rescue you,” she said, and pushed aside a mass of fencing.

“The Prophet? But why?”

The way was clear. She motioned me through the gap. I did not move.

She sighed. “Agent Erpent of the SS is the one responsible for this outrage.” She waved a hand at the Fat Camp behind us. “He’s plotting to get rid of the Prophet.”

“Get rid of him? Why?”

“We have to go,” she said, pushing me forward. “I’ll explain later.”

“There they are!” shouted a voice. Bullets zinged overhead. I ducked through the gap and crawled to freedom. The consultant was right behind me. I stood up and turned to help her to her feet. A bullet struck her in the back and flung her to the ground.

“Go,” she gasped. “The Prophet needs you. He said you’re the only one who can save him.”

“But that makes no sense,” I protested. “I swore to kill him.”

But she was dead. Bullets filled the air like flies at a picnic. I turned and ran.

Twenty-Seven and Ninety-Eight One-Hundredths

I stood in the shadows of LaOmelette Park, a pizza on my shoulder, a Laxafier in my pocket, and waited for the Prophet to arrive. The smell of the pizza made my stomach growl, but I ignored it. Soon my hunger would not matter. Soon nothing would matter. The Prophet would die for his crimes, and I would find peace.

My week of waiting had finally paid off. When the dealer showed up at two in the morning, I knocked him out and took his pizza. I left him bound and gagged in a nearby alley. No one else needed to die because of me.

Getting the Laxafier had been trickier. They were watching my house, I was sure of it. Instead I used what little strength I had left to assault a lone ATFF agent in the middle of a Girl Scout cookie bust, and stole his weapon. The Girl Scouts did the rest.

A figure flitted across the park. Was that him? I squinted. There. It moved again. It
was
him. It had to be. He merged with the shadow of a nearby tree.

“Foood! Foood!” an owl hooted.

Odd. There were no more owls left. The Air Force’s herbicide spraying program had destroyed their habitat. The remaining birds had migrated south to Mexico.

“Foood! Foood!” the owl hooted again.

A signal. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I should have interrogated the dealer before knocking him out. I would have to improvise.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming,” I said.

I strode from the shadow with more confidence than I felt. I kept my hands where he could see them, one at my side, the other holding the pizza. I came to a halt in the same spot where Jacques Crusteau had died.

“Now where’s the money?”

The man edged forward into the light. He wore a trench coat and fedora with a scarf around his face, but his voice was impossible to disguise.

“What’s the code word?”

“Eat the code word,” I said. “I don’t see no briefcase. How you gonna pay me?”

A muffled chuckle came from behind the scarf. “Don’t worry. I’ll pay you.” A chrome pizza wheel glinted in his hand.

I threw the pizza on the ground and drew my Laxafier. “You’re going to pay, alright,” I said. “For lying to the Airitarian people. Or should I say, the
American
people.” I aimed at his head. I was going to blow his brains out, then turn the gun on myself.

The pizza wheel slipped from his hand. He took off the scarf and fedora. The gaunt face of the Prophet gazed back at me. His nose was still covered in bandages.

“Oh thank goodness it’s you,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re here to kill me, right? So do it!”

My grip on the trigger loosened. “Wait. You
want
me to kill you?”

“Why do you think I had them let you go?”

“You
what?”

He fell to his knees and wrung his hands. “What are you waiting for? Kill me! Now’s your chance!”

I faltered. “But why would you want me to kill you?”

“Because I’m an addict,” he sobbed. “I’m a food terrist. A murderer. I’m a fat disgusting worthless piece of shit!”

I had expected anything but this. “You’re not, actually,” I said. “Fat, I mean.”

He grabbed fistfuls of stomach fat through his trench coat. “What do you call this? And this? And this?”

“Um. Loose skin?”

“I am such a hypocrite,” he said. “Telling everyone to eat air. When I can’t even do it myself.”

I snapped my fingers in his face. “Hello? No one can eat air.”

“That’s not true. You remember that scientific study I ordered last year?”

“The Hunger and Appetite Commission. Sure.”

“Our country’s top scientists proved that human beings can subsist—flourish, even—on an air-only diet.”

The gun fell to my side. “A scientific study? With real live scientists?”

The hum of Twinkie wings descended from the heavens. Millions of them. The flying pastries settled like locusts on everything in view—dead trees, dead grass, even the Prophet’s head. And they were all singing the same song:

The world is fat and so are you.

Whose fault is that? I would be too!

Slim the others first
—

it’s their fault, see?

When their disgusting bellies burst,

then you’ll be free!

“Oh no,” I whispered in horror. “Not again. We’ve got to do something about this.”

“I know we do,” the Prophet sobbed.

I thought quickly. My persecutors had returned. They attacked because my faith was weak. But why was that? Why was my faith weak? The Twinkies said it themselves: because of those unbelieving fat ferrners, especially the French. Only one man had the power to help me. The Prophet himself. How could I make him understand?

“Real live scientists,” I said, marveling. “So we
can
eat air.”

“Don’t you see?” The Prophet pounded his palm with his fist. “I’m not worthy to lead this great nation of ours.”

I knelt down at his side and dried his tears. “It’s not your fault,” I said.

“Of course it is. Whose else could it be?” He reached for the pizza.

I slapped the box shut. “It’s like you always say. ‘See the change you wish to be.’”

“Wha-what do you mean?”

“How can you be free when you’re surrounded by fat people?”

“I know all that,” he said. “Why do you think we passed the Amendment? Look at what good it did.”

“Not us,” I said. “Them! It’s their fault! The ferrners’ fault!” I lashed the air with my arm in the general direction of France. “Don’t you see? They conspire against us, keeping us down, preventing us from reaching our true potential as atmospheric munchers!”

His face furrowed in concentration. “You may be right.”

“I know I’m right.”

“But it doesn’t matter anymore,” he sobbed. “The mafia and the SS are blackmailing me. All because of my weakness, humanity is doomed. Please! Just kill me now!”

“But you’ve got to lead us! Don’t you realize what this means? You’re the only one who can end our slavery to addictive caloric substances! Release us from the evil jackboot Tyranny of Food!”

“No, no,” he moaned. “I’m not worthy. I’m scum. I’m so fat I can’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror. Why won’t you put me out of my misery?”

The Twinkies whispered in my ear. They told me what to say next. I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What if I knew of a way to get you off the hook with the mafia and the SS?”

“Like what?” he said. “I tried to capture Fatso. You saw how that turned out.”

I crossed my arms. “They’ve got tapes. Right?”

“And they’ll expose me to the world if I don’t obey them.”

I crossed my arms. “And who has a kill switch to the Internet in his office?”

“I do. But—”

“Who controls the media? Who puts television newscasters in Fat Camp for distributing French propaganda? Who deports ferrn journalists for asking hardball questions?”

“I do. What are you getting at?”

I shrugged. “They’ve got their tapes. Let them keep them. Who will ever see them?”

“Well,” he said. “I suppose the ferrn TV stations might show the videos.”

“Duh!” I said. “To other ferrners! And who cares what they think?”

“The Coalition of the Fasting depends on the support of ferrn governments.”

“Who needs them?” I scoffed. “We’re the most powerful country on the planet. We don’t need their help.”

He nodded and wiped his tears. “Good point. But what about Erpent?”

I grinned. “You let me worry about him. I’ve got a plan.”

The Prophet got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said.

“No,” I replied. Tears welled in my eyes. “Thank
you,
Mine Prophet.”

“Come with me,” he said. “If you’re right, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

I stood up. “Where are we going?”

“The Thin House, where else?”