The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (27 page)

I rallied. “How do I know this isn’t a fake?”

“Why do yoo seenk eet eez zo hard to arrest oos?” Fatso asked. “And wen wee doo get arrested, why doo wee always, how yoo say, get off? Wee haf a
collection
uv videos like zees,
mon ami.”

He was right. It all made sense. It was too much. The world was upside down. The Prophet—a food terrist? Everything I believed in—wrong? The room began to spin. The flying Twinkies swirled about my head. They sang:

Left is right and up is down,

black is white, a smile’s a frown,

short is tall and happy’s sad,

inside outside, turned around,

fat is thin and thin is fat
—

you’re a fool, whaddaya think of that?

“No!” I screamed, and everything went black.

Twenty-Four

I went insane. I know that now.

It’s…it’s hard to talk about in front of so many people. All you ferrners out there watching.

For a brief span of time, I actually believed the Prophet was a food terrist. I am ashamed to say it, but I let doubt overwhelm me.

Let this be a warning unto you: just because all the evidence proves you’re wrong, doesn’t mean you are. This is why faith is so important.

I woke to the sounds of laughter. The banquet was in full swing. The waiter pushed a Twinkie into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed. That’s odd, I thought. No Twinkie song. No wings. Just little bits of yellow cake dough stuffed with cream.

It felt good to have food in my stomach. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid. Starving myself for all these years. I was lucky to be alive. Of
course
you have to eat food. How could I ever think otherwise?

The waiter pushed another Twinkie at my lips, but I turned my head away.

“Could I have some real food, please?” I ventured timidly.

“Wat, like sum vanilla air?” Fatso mocked.

I flushed. “No,” I said. I glanced at the others’ plates. “Maybe some turkey with cranberry sauce and stuffing and yams and salad and bread and butter and maybe even some pumpkin pie with ice cream for dessert if that would be alright with you?”

Gassy whooped. “You broke him, Fatso!”

The mafia leader looked at me from under hooded eyes. “Breeng een zee food.”

They did. Piles of it. Everything I asked for and more. I began to eat. Slowly at first, then faster and faster until my hands were a blur from plate to mouth and back again. I had three years of starvation to make up for. My body clamored for calories.

“To Agent Froleek!” Fatso cried, champagne flute held aloft. “Heez first good meel een yeerz!”

“To Frolick!” the guests shouted, and drained their glasses.

The feast continued until dawn. When I finished the turkey in front of me, they brought me another. And another. And another. Then they brought in an entire cow corpse, and I ate that too. My stomach stretched painfully, but still I kept eating. I was grateful for the bucket under my chair. My waiter changed it several times.

One by one the guests departed, groaning, hands on their bellies, until only Fatso and I were left. The Godfather of Food offered me a box of after dinner mints. I stuffed a handful of the wafers into my mouth.

“Zo,” Fatso said. “Now yoo air a slave to food. Yoo like?”

“If this is slavery, baby,” I said, “I’m lovin’ it.” And reached for more mints.

“
Excellent.”
He snapped his fingers. “Bring
monsieur
his clothes.”

The waiter untied me and handed me a trench coat. One of my own, from my own closet. How did they get a hold of that? I tried it on. It no longer fit.

“So when does the feast begin tomorrow?” I asked.

Fatso smiled. “It duzzn’t. Wee air going home, and zo air yoo.”

Home! The kid! Chantal! I had completely forgotten about them. I had to get some food for them before they both starved to death. To think she had to whore herself because I insisted she eat air. I had so much to make up for. I eyed the leftovers on the table.

“Could I get a doggie bag then?”

Fatso chuckled.
“Non, monsieur.
No doggee bag for yoo.”

“But…but…” I looked around in desperation. “What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get food for my family?”

The Godfather of Food stood up. Food stains flecked his tuxedo. He grinned. “Wat fameelee?”

“Why? What have you done with them?”

“Wen wee dropped by-ee to peeck up yor cloze, yor wife wanted to know wair yoo wair.”

Pigging out on Thanksgiving turkey. “You didn’t.”

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 and 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?”