The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror

by J. M. Porup

He lifted his fat shoulders, let them fall with a jiggle. “I expect she’s haf-way to Canafooda by now. Zat eez wair she sed she wuz go-eeng, anyway.” He nodded to a pair of guards. “Now get heem out uv heer.”

  They dragged me down a hallway and chucked me out the back door into a dark alley. Dumpsters overflowed with garbage. Rats swarmed around my ankles.

  I picked myself up off the ground. Fatso stood in the doorway. He held a cell phone to his ear.

  “Eez zees zee I-SEE-FAT hotline? Yes, I want to report a food terriste.” He gave our address in Georgetown.

  He was calling me in. Me. A food terrist. They would hunt me down and put me in Fat Camp. I could starve to death.

  “It’s a lie!” I shouted. “Don’t listen to him!”

  But Fatso had already hung up. “Eet wuz…a playzh-air, Agent Froleek.” He bowed at the waist. “I am shoor Fat Camp weel kyoor yoo of yor…addeection to food.” He winked. “Enjoy eating air. Bon appetít.”

  He slammed the door shut in my face. “You can’t do this to me!” I shouted. I pounded the door with my fists. “I’m a loyal and decorated officer of the ATFF!”

  But the door stayed shut. It started to rain. Now what was I going to do? Fatso’s torture had been worse than I imagined. He had turned me into a food terrist.

  No. That wasn’t it. I should be grateful to the man. He had helped me see the truth. I had been betrayed. Lied to. Swindled. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Because of the Prophet I had lost everything. “Food is a drug? All you need is air?” How could I have been so stupid?

  I made a solemn vow then. The guilty would pay. For the first and only time in my life, I would kill. The Prophet must die.

  I was going to kill him myself.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A light from above blinded me. A helicopter chop-chopped overhead.

  “This is the SS,” a megaphone boomed. “Come out with your hands on your belly. You will be treated fairly.”

  I couldn’t let them catch me. They were hypocrites, all of them. I saw that now. And the Prophet was a dangerous lunatic. I had to stop him.

  A Laxafier dart shattered at my feet. I sprinted out of the alley, weighed down by my engorged stomach. A jeep full of cannibals peeled around the corner. Be treated fairly, my ass. I pressed myself flat against the wall, but the helicopter came around and picked me out with its spotlight.

  The cannibals gave a cheer. “Soo-shee!” they shouted. “Soo-soo-soo-shee!”

  Blowtorches sizzled in their hands. I couldn’t outrun the Sushi Gang, much less the helicopter. Maybe I could lose them on a side street, or duck through an abandoned building. I faked right and ran left, down a wide boulevard. Dead trees lined the street on both sides.

  Tires squealed behind me. “Tastes better when they’re sweaty,” a cannibal shouted. “Like salty popcorn!” The spotlight circled around me. The chopper followed overhead.

  “We can save you from addiction!” the SS megaphone thundered. “Get the monkey off your back!”

  “Fuck your monkey!” I shouted. I gave them the finger, and dodged a Laxafier dart in return.

  I passed a crumbling wreck of a supermarket. Most of its roof was still intact. I leaped through a broken window and huddled behind a checkout counter. The spotlight disappeared. The cannibals piled out of the jeep. I turned and jogged down an aisle toward the back. If I could find the rear exit, maybe I could escape.

  Concrete slabs from the ceiling blocked the way. The cannibals were coming. I could hear them. Behind me. Hide. Quick. I lay myself flat on an empty bottom shelf. In the darkness they might not see me.

  They got closer. “Who won the toss for his eyes?” one shouted.

  Farther away, a voice shouted back, “Dude, I got dibs on his ribs!”

  They must be searching every aisle, I realized. They reconvened just feet from where I hid.

  “He isn’t here, boss,” one whined.

  “Oh, he’s here,” said a voice. “I can smell him.” A loud snuffling sound. “We don’t find him, we’ll set the place on fire.”

  “Bar-be-cue!” the cannibals roared.

  They spread out again and resumed their search. I climbed out of my hiding place. I had no plans to be anyone’s chargrilled dinner. I followed the cannibal ahead of me. He crept along the aisle toward the front. Maybe I could distract him somehow, get past him into the street. He disappeared around the corner. Almost there. A few more feet, then run for it.

  A knife pressed against my throat. Hot breath tickled my ear. I went still.

  “It’s sushi time…,” whispered a voice. It was the sushi boss himself.

  Time to bluff. “Let me go,” I commanded. “I’m a special agent for the ATFF.”

  “Not anymore,” the man cackled. “You’re public enemy number one and a half. There’s even a price on your head.” He shaved the stubble from my neck with his knife. “Thankfully they don’t care what happens to the body.”

  So this was it. Game over. I swallowed hard. “You going to eat me now?”

  “Not all at once. Piece by little piece.” He cackled again. “Any last words before I cut out your tongue for an appetizer?”

  Rage boiled inside me like a spicy Kundilini curry. I had been lied to all my life, and now I would never get revenge. “Yeah,” I said. “My only regret is I’ll never get a chance to kill the Prophet, and expose that hypocritical piece of shit to the world.”

  A gagging noise made me turn. The sushi boss’s throat gaped open in a bloody grin. He fell to the ground with a thump.

  “Frolick,” said a familiar voice. “Get out of here. Go!”

  I peered into the blackness. It was Hot ‘N’ Juicy, the coroner. He towed an oxygen tank and IV stand behind him.

  “Doc!” I said. “What are you doing here? Are you examining a murder? ’Cause I think you just caused one.”

  “Hey boss,” called out a cannibal from a couple of aisles over. “Nothing here. What about you over there?”

  Juicy snuffled loudly around the plastic tubes in his nose. He pitched his voice low. “Not a piece o’ skin to munch these parts. Wincha go look in aisle seven?”

  I gasped. “Are you with the gang?”

  “No time to explain,” he hissed. “I heard what you said. About killing the Prophet.” He pressed a gun into my hands. “Take this. Use it. Go!”

  The way to the window was clear, but I struggled to make sense of what was happening. “I don’t understand.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “I am being punished for my sins, Frolick. It’s no more than I deserve.”

  “What sins?”

  “They caught me with a special ham. Left me out for the cannibals. I convinced them not to eat me, ’cause I’m a doctor.”

  The chop-chop of the helicopter moved sideways. Light flooded through a gap in the ceiling. Three cannibals stood nearby. They whooped when they saw us.

  “Yeah, baby! Dinner is served!”

  Two of the cannibals came at us from behind. Only one blocked the way to the street. Juicy’s scalpel flicked across the man’s throat, and the way was clear.

  He gave my shoulder a final squeeze. “You deserve better than this. Now go! I’ll hold them off!”

  I leaped through the window and turned back. The other two cannibals circled him warily.

  “See the change you wish to be in the world!” he shouted.

  Those were his last words. The two cannibals tackled my friend and cut off his head with a machete.

  I fled into the night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  If I succeeded in killing the Prophet, the SS would no doubt return the favor. I decided to visit Green in the hospital. He was my friend. I wanted to say goodbye.

  I snuck in through the janitor’s entrance just before dawn. Green was encased in a full body cast, all four limbs in traction. I could just make out his eyes and lips under the plaster. I arranged a bunch of dead twigs in a vase at his bedside—I hadn’t dared buy flowers, what with the price on my head an
d all—and drew back the curtains.

  He blinked in the morning sunlight. “I must be dead. Is that Frolick?”

  “Not dead,” I said. “And look at what I brought you.” I held up a kilo bag of rice.

  His eyes widened. “Frolick? With food? Now I know I’m dead.”

  I laughed. “The most amazing thing happened to me, Harry. An epiphany! Do you realize you need to eat—food, I mean—to stay alive? I know! Crazy, isn’t it? Who would have thunk?”

  A chuckle came from inside the cast. “You been to the naturopath, then? He get you the rice?”

  My brow darkened. “Don’t get me started on that lowlife.”

  “Lowlife or not, he’s good for a fix.” The body cast wiggled. “Did you pick up the food for my family like I asked?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Went by just now to drop it off.” I had left it at Stummick’s house for safekeeping. He had since disappeared, leaving the food behind. “Only they weren’t at home. I found a note.”

  “A note? What’d it say?”

  “Gone to Canafooda, looks like. With Chantal and Nathan. Economy class tickets on the Underground Food Road. Left on the 5:23 express this morning.”

  He sank back against his pillow. “Oh thank goodness,” he said. He blinked twice. “You going too?”

  My face took on a solemn aspect. “No, Harry,” I said gravely. “I’m going to kill the Prophet.”

  We were silent a moment. “I see,” he said. “What makes you think you can pull it off?”

  I struck a bodybuilding pose. “I can out-fight, out-run and out-think anyone in the Skinny Service. After what I ate last night?” I hacked the air with my hands. “They don’t stand a chance against my calorie-fueled karate moves.”

  “But the whole country is looking for you,” he said. “I saw it on television. You have any idea what the reward is for your capture?”

  “A hamburger, fries and a coke,” I said. “I know. They’re desperate, huh? Pity I can’t turn myself in.”

  From the hallway came the sounds of boots limping along the hall. Green tensed.

  “It’s a trap,” he hissed. “They’re coming for you!”

  “Sure it’s not your doctor?”

  “I heard the guards talking. There are Thin Berets everywhere.”

  The bootsteps got louder. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Super Frolick is here to save the day.” I put my fists on my hips. “When I’m finished, we’ll get you some food. How does that sound?”

  “It’s too late,” he said. “Promise me something, Frolick.”

  The bootsteps halted outside the door.

  “Anything, Harry.”

  “Forget about the Prophet. Go to Canafooda. Be with your family. It isn’t worth it.”

  I thought of Chantal whoring herself for a sandwich. How could I ever look her in the eyes again? I set my jaw in grim defiance. “I’m sorry, Harry. I can’t promise you that. That lying sack of poo destroyed my life. Destroyed this country. He deserves to die.”

  The door inched slowly open. A platoon of heavily armed Thin Berets stood in the hallway.

  I grinned. “Excuse me for a moment, will you?” This was going to be fun.

  For the next three and a half minutes, I was a superhero. I moved so fast they couldn’t keep me in their sights. The poor commandos were so thin, so weak from lack of food, I simply took their weapons from them one by one and knocked them to the floor, where they lay on their backs like helpless cockroaches, burdened by fifty pounds of gear.

  I winked at Harry. “More coming, I’m sure. Better get moving.” But Harry said nothing. “Harry? You alright?” Still nothing. I stepped over a dozen flailing limbs and made my way to his bedside. His eyes were open, but unmoving. I put my hand over his mouth. No breath.

  Special Agent Harry Green of the ATFF, my partner, was dead.

  More bootsteps limped down the hall. There was no time to mourn. Wiping away tears, I strode down the hallway to the service elevator, brushing Thin Berets aside with a flick of my wrists. I pushed the down button and waited.

  Come on. What was taking so long?

  The doors finally opened. Twenty fat men wearing camouflage and floppy berets the size of Mexican sombreros slouched out of the elevator. I tried my karate moves, but my lethal attacks just bounced off their substantial padding. They laughed. Not a man among them weighed less than five hundred pounds.

  “Who are you people?” I asked, in growing horror.

  “We’re a new Top Secret unit,” their leader said. He doffed his cap and bowed, or tried to. “We’re super-special forces. They call us the Fat Berets.”

  “But—but how?” I spluttered. “You didn’t get that big just from eating air.”

  “Who says we didn’t?” said another. And they all laughed. “Now come along quietly or we’ll be forced to sit on you.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  My trial lasted fifteen minutes. If you can call it a trial. Judge Meyer-Weiner presided. Pretended not to know me, the bastard. Agent Erpent testified against me. Explained how I had “sabotaged” his investigation. Cap put in a thirty-second appearance. Was I, in his professional, expert opinion, a dangerous food terrist? Yes, I was.

  “Guilty! Indefinite detention, Fat Camp.”

  “What do you mean, indefinite?” I protested. “That’s against the Amendment!”

  “For as long as the Prophet and the National Thinness Council deem you a threat to our national security. Next case!”

  Meyer-Weiner didn’t even look at me. He must have talked to save his fat hide. Hell, for all I knew he was on Fatso’s payroll. Him and Erpent both. Not that it mattered. He had won and I had lost.

  They put me in chains and covered my head with a hood. I stood in line with other prisoners. We boarded a bus. Hours passed. The warmth of the weak sun faded. Then we were there.

  “Welcome to the final stage of human evolution,” our guard said with a laugh, and whipped off our hoods.

  It was the same Fat Camp I attended three years ago. But it looked different now. They had replaced the crude wooden sign over the gate with a marble archway. Same words, though: “Enter Slaves. Depart Free Men.”

  The camp was surrounded by countryside, dead and brown as far as the eye could see. No one lived out here anymore. It was the perfect location for a Fat Camp, I had to admit. Even if I managed to escape, which seemed unlikely, where would I go? The only passing traffic were military patrols.

  The bus crunched up the gravel drive. On either side of the road, backhoes dug great pits in the earth. Bulldozers pushed piles of firewood into the freshly excavated holes.

  Firewood? I squinted through the dirty pane. Firewood doesn’t have feet. Thousands of them, naked wet toes in the freezing drizzle. And heads and arms and torsos. The bodies fell into the pit. The bulldozer retreated to bury a second stack.

  What was going on? This wasn’t the Fat Camp I remembered, of campfire singalongs, hushed eager enthusiasm for the Prophet’s latest broadcast, and Mexican night on Thursdays. Things had changed.

  We came to a razor-wire checkpoint—also new. A machine gun guarded the gate, facing inward toward the camp. What an idiot the camp commandant was, I thought. How on earth could they protect us from marauding cannibals if the machine gun was pointed in the wrong direction?

  Another surprise waited for me inside the gates. Hundreds of walking skeletons stared up at us as we drove into camp. Shreds of clothing hung from their limbs, exposing wrinkled flabs of skin, hallmark of the formerly obese. Men. Women. Children. All old before their time, giant heads atop their twiglike bodies. The children sat in the mud, listlessly eating dirt.

  Then I saw them. Both of them. There, in the middle of the crowd. Chantal! Nathan! But what were they doing here? I thought they’d gone to Canafooda. This was terrible. They looked so skinny. What was I going to do? It was my fault they were here. I lunged at the window, pulling at my restraints, and called out their names. She looked up. She spat and turned her back
on me.

  Probably had a bad taste in her mouth. Or maybe she mistook me for someone else. With the glare on the dirty glass, it must be difficult for them to see me inside the bus.

  Soldiers armed with rifles—the kind that use real bullets, and fixed with bayonets—herded us off the bus and into the barracks, the very same I’d slept in three years ago. Only now there were more bunk beds, stacked seven high and so crowded together I could barely slip between them.

  The other prisoners avoided me. Strange. Then I realized: I knew everyone in that room. A former high school PE teacher, an old girlfriend, the guy who works at the gas station I always use. Even my old elementary school best friend. What was his name again?

  There was no time to solve this puzzle. Three women in brightly colored leotards and leg warmers cartwheeled into the room.

  “U-S-A! U-S-A!” they shouted. “We’re number one! Whoo!”

  “Who are you?” asked the old man in the bunk above mine. He used to cut my hair when I was twelve.

  “We’re your slimming consultants!” said a girl in fuchsia tights and an orange Lycra top. She high-kicked.

  “Let’s shed those ugly unwanted pounds!” said a second girl, and did a back flip.

  “Remember, we’re here to help!” the third one said, and they formed an impromptu human pyramid.

  “Now come on, gang!” the first one said, leaping from the backs of her sisters. “Let’s get over to the gym and get you started! We’ve got some exciting activities for you here at Fat Camp 34792! Let’s show some pride in that number! 34792! Whoo!”

  Three tumbling blurs of spandex led us from the barracks across the yard to a great glass dome. That was new too. Soldiers scanned our social security bar codes and we passed inside.

  The dome was full of treadmills and stairmasters and weight machines. Thousands of them. And every one occupied by a struggling skeleton. Around the outside edge of the dome lay exercise areas covered with mats. People I knew danced and bobbed and waved their arms in the air to aerobics music.

  Our slimming consultants led us to an unoccupied exercise area. The three ladies clapped and did the splits in unison. A bored-looking soldier with a bayoneted rifle lounged against the wall, munching on a candy bar.