Chapter 2 - ch.2-welcome to fat camp

From an outsider's perspective, the facility appeared to be a concentration camp. The walls were 10-foot high stone with coiled barbwire spiraling along the top, and an electric line was running through the spiny steel as well. CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE warning signs were plastered along the concrete in various locations, promising a toasty death to any bold inmate vying for escape.

"The walls aren't very high," my brother Indrid remarked. "Don't you think, Grey?"

The man sitting beside us smirked. "Why do you think that is? No one's going to be able to escape in a while, anyway."

Indrid and I glanced at each other.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

The man shook his head. "You'll see."

I couldn't suppress the thrill of terror that lanced down my spine where it tingled uncomfortably in my tailbone. I didn't want to see. I didn't want to know what lie in store for me within those walls, I didn't want myself or anyone else on this train to have to endure whatever suffering would surely take place in there.

The train slowed to a still in front of a wrought-iron gate that allowed us a glimpse into what would become our new world, and what I saw made my heart skip a beat. As opposed to the fields that were now behind us as we were ushered through the gate, the grass inside the facility, what little there was, was gray and dry. There were patches of crumbled asphalt that had been overwhelmed by gnarled weeds that bent towards us stiffly as they extended spindly fingers laden with thorns.

Guards manned their posts in watchtowers overlooking the desolate grounds, grounds that could only be inhabited by the ghosts of those who died in this place. Now my initial pang of pity for the Queen was drained away and replaced by a seething venom toward her.

How could she subject her own people to this miserable place? How could she be so uncaring and evil to banish any human being here? My chest tightened with sorrow for everyone around me. Perhaps we could all band together and overthrow the horrible monsters that were imprisoning us.

No doubt they would starve us all to death and beat us and make us do back-breaking labor under this relentlessly hot sun, I thought angrily.

Imagine my surprise when I stepped into the facility and learned that the very opposite of all my previous beliefs was true.

There was good reason for this place being referred to as "Fat Camp." Never in my life had I witnessed such a thing before. There was to be no starvation or labor occurring under this roof. Instead, what greeted me was a colorful, vibrant, air-conditioned building chocked full of overweight people!
There were television screens on everywhere, video games being played, and sedentary games several wheel-chaired individuals were occupied with. No one was lifting a finger except to eat, and eat they did. All. Day. Long.

"Good God," Indrid breathed, absorbing it all. "No wonder they don't need high walls; Everyone's too fat to climb them!"

And then I realized that that was exactly why. Wow. Fat Camp. So Her glorious Majesty hadn't sent us here to suffer and die, after all. She'd sent us here to have the time of our lives, and fatten up in the process. Then she'd release us back into society in our new, plush forms, our bodies ruined by the garbage we contaminated them with, and she would forever remain the thinnest and prettiest in the land.

The prisoners, if that was what you could call these content-looking human marshmallows, expressed no interest in our arrival. We were ordered past the game room, which was roughly the size of a warehouse, into another warehouse-sized room that was thick with the aroma of cooking food. The cafeteria. Here was where the most extensive damage would be done.

After we'd been situated, the guards in charge of all of us declared that it was lunch time.

"You are to select ten or more items from the buffet, and eat it all promptly as soon as you have been served. There will be no need to get up and crowd around, as the robots will be here to assist you."

With that said, all the tables in the cafeteria suddenly split in half and a long counter of buffet-style serving stations rose out of the ground to the table level, each one full of food. Indrid shook his head as a mechanical arm handed him a supersize plastic tray and asked him what he would like to eat.

The same happened to me and an artificial voice droned, "Please select at least ten items and tell me what you would like to be served."

I glanced at the agglomeration of calories before me. There were dozens upon dozens of foods to choose from, every one fattening enough to add on several inches if one indulged too much.

From cheese-slathered pasta to grease-soaked French fries and hamburgers, as well as an assortment of sweets, there was seemingly no end to the delicious madness before me.

My eyes boggled at the stuffed-crust pizza shimmering with grease and the fried chicken donning its lovely coat of golden-brown bread. There were mashed potatoes, fish and mozzarella sticks, sausages, barbecued ribs, and a million and a half other things to choose from. Once I made my selection, I was ordered to select a beverage.

There were no diet or zero-calorie sodas and drinks, of course. My options were all of the name-brand sodas, all pumped full of sugar, and, to no surprise, beer and hard alcohol. Few things could make you blow up as quickly as alcohol, I thought with disgust. There was also flavored milk, fruit juices, and sweet tea, and I settled on the sweet tea, likely to do the least damage.

Once I made all my choices, the mechanical arm serving me slid down the row of food to scoop up copious amounts of everything I requested, and, before I could hardly blink, set down a full tray in front of me. The arm disappeared back into the top of the buffet station and I was left sitting before the gargantuan lunch that loomed in front of me, taunting me and promising to contribute plenty of flab to my skinny body.

Indrid wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'm not eating this," he declared, pushing the tray away from him. Terrifyingly enough, the robot that had served him uttered in a frightening tone of human-like severity, "All food must be consumed in a timely fashion. Resistance will not be tolerated."

We both stared incredulously at where the voice had come from, then looked at each other.
Then Indrid grinned. "Well, how about this for you? I refuse to eat this."

A red indicator light blinked on the top of the serving station in front of Indrid, and his smile suddenly vanished.

"Oh shit..." He muttered, as a guard marched toward him.

"Deciding not to eat, are you?" Growled the uniformed man towering over him. I hadn't realized it before, but all the guards and kitchen help donned gas masks, almost as if...

Instead of waiting for a reply, the guard procured a cloth and an aerosol can. He sprayed the can's substance onto the cloth and rubbed it into Indrid's face. Indrid coughed and tried to throw the guard off, but it was too late. Whatever was on that rag was now in Indrid's system, and in a moment, I realized what it was.

Suddenly Indrid's eyes illuminated with an unusual lust I'd never seen in them before. He became remarkably voracious and began spooning large amounts of pudding into his mouth, ingesting it too quickly for it to be natural. It was as if someone had pressed a button in his brain that activated his hunger senses. He was out of control, and quite disgusting as he scarfed down bite after bite of burger and pasta, barely chewing as he consumed it all with thoughtless gusto.

In fact, everyone around me was eating like pigs. One girl, who was only slightly thicker than me, was plowing through her sourdough bread as if tomorrow would never come, and a sufficiently padded man was cramming a dripping slice of pizza down his throat like he was asking to choke and die.

Everyone was overcome with greed, and then there was me. Nothing. I knew there was something in the air that was extremely stimulating to the appetite, and Indrid had apparently been immune to it until he'd been given that rag to the face. Was I like him, immune to whatever was in the air, but susceptible to whatever was in that can? I soon found out, because the nosy robot quietly overseeing my eating blinked red as Indrid's had, and I watched with mounting trepidation as a guard stalked over to me.

He didn't bother to say anything, just whipped out his can of gluttony spray and shoved it in my face. He held it there against me for a long moment, wanting to make certain I inhaled the willpower-inhibiting substance so my own resistance would deteriorate, but when he pulled away smirking, I felt no different. No part of me wanted to dig in and stuff myself silly, no part of me became rabid with a desire for food. I simply felt nothing.

The smirk quickly melted off of the guard's face. He gazed at me in a new light, less contempt and more of a glint of reverence in his metallic gaze as he looked at me. He spoke into his handheld mic and told whoever was listening, "We've got one, finally. The first one in years."

The man grinned savagely at me and seized me by my bony wrist, practically dragging me across the cafeteria teeming with hundreds of people who were too weak to not succumb to the call of their vicious hunger.

"Indrid!" I managed to turn and scream to my brother, but my cry fell on deaf ears. He heard nothing, felt nothing but his potent desire to feed himself, and nothing else mattered to him. He couldn't save me, no one could.

No heads turned as I was led out of the room and taken up a flight of winding stairs that brought me to my next destination, and the person waiting for me in the room I was forced into made me gasp in disbelief.