Mercy Street(40)

He stocked six months’ worth of provisions at all times. Six months was the bare minimum, according to Doug Straight, though this advice was possibly outdated. Conditions had shifted since 1999—the year Victor began paying attention, the year the threat became clear. That was the year he acquired his first computer, a Macintosh Plus he’d picked up at a yard sale. With his dial-up modem he’d ventured onto the information superhighway, not understanding that his life was about to change.

In the Usenet groups he was no longer Victor Prine, a backwoods trucker hauling loads across the continent. He became Excelsior11, a renegade soldier for good.

Usenet, in those days, was alive with chatter. Excelsior11 had joined the conversation at a panicky time. The programming of computers had been shortsighted, the dates encoded in two-digit format: 97, 98, 99. As the century wound down, it seemed that the world was heading toward a precipice, beyond which no future could exist.

Doug Straight laid it out clearly: At the turn of the millennium, the world would stop working. Banks would fail, telecommunications, the electrical grid. Citizens would be forced to shelter in place. The End Times were coming, but there would be no conflagration, no sea of fire. Mankind would be undone by simple mechanical failure, the machines he’d trusted to make the world work.

In the spirit of new beginnings, certain preparations were made.

In the final days of 1999, Victor withdrew the entire balance of his savings account. He tested and retested his emergency generator, bought extra batteries for his night-vision goggles. He stocked up on ammo and cleaned his guns.

When possible, he observed the Rule of Three. To every imaginable problem, he planned three possible solutions. Water jugs, filtration tabs, charcoal filters. Rifle, pistol, semiautomatic.

At ten minutes to midnight, on the final night of the millennium, he filled the bathtubs. When the lights went out, Victor Prine would be ready. He wore a halogen headlamp, an updated version of the light his father had worn underground. His night-vision goggles waited next to the door.

But at the stroke of midnight, the lights stayed on. The TV didn’t even flicker. Victor stepped outside and saw, in the distance, his stepbrother’s porch light. The night sky was clear and cold.

The initial disappointment was crushing. Later he saw the experience for what it was, the world’s most elaborate dress rehearsal. The real collapse was coming. It was only a matter of time until Shit Hit The Fan (SHTF).

America had been built on self-sufficiency, but modern man had forgotten those lessons. To the average flabby, pampered American, water came from plastic bottles. Food came from the drive-thru window. Take away his cell phone and internet and he’d be helpless as a child. After three days he’d strangle his own mother to get a piece of bread.

Mankind had been given fair warning. For those who chose not to hear it, Victor had no sympathy. There were people in town who’d made serious money on their mineral rights, and blew it on foolishness. A local jagoff named Wally Fetterson had quit his mail-carrying job, bought a new truck and a motorboat. In his backyard he’d dug a goddamn swimming pool. When SHTF, he’d run crying to the government begging for a handout. And this was a White man! The country was so far gone that even the White people had that freeloader mentality, like the government owed them something.

When SHTF, Wally Fetterson would be banging on Victor’s door.

The collapse was coming. Forget Y2K and natural disasters and nuclear Armageddon. In the end it would come down to numbers: the White race at the mercy of all others, the immense and cresting brown wave.

Organized society was nine meals away from anarchy.

When SHTF, Victor would be just fine.

He lingered a moment, looking around him with satisfaction. It always soothed him to visit his preps. He shut off the light and climbed the stairs.

IT ALL CAME DOWN TO NUMBERS.

This was the organizing principle of democracy, a truth baked into the system: The majority owned the minority. In a well-functioning democracy, the minority was the majority’s bitch.

The Blacks understood this better than anyone, having spent hundreds of years on the wrong side of the equation. And Black people were no fools. For centuries, now, they’d been growing their numbers, industriously fucking and birthing, and their efforts had paid off. Already they dominated professional sports; they’d taken over colleges and universities, and infiltrated the military. They had elected their very own president.

You had to hand it to them.

Blaming the Blacks was too easy. The fault—Victor knew this—lay with his own race, which had squandered its advantage. The White heroes who’d tamed the vast wilderness of North America, who’d built the greatest civilization in human history, were an endangered species—slated for extinction, their numbers dwindling. The White race had surrendered its majority with no thought to the consequences, no appreciation of what would be lost.

If you looked at historical birth rates, as Victor had done, the roots of the problem were clear.

A Black female born in 1950—the same year as Victor Prine—produced, on average, four viable offspring. A White female born that year produced only two. Since then, the situation had only worsened. Today’s underachieving White female produced only one precious Caucasian child.

The numbers were abysmal.

The numbers came directly from Doug Straight, his only trusted source.

A change was coming. White people, if they knew this, bore the knowledge lightly. They stumbled through life like oversized children, spending and consuming and giggling at sitcoms, a tribe of obese dimwits in NFL-licensed sportswear. As far as Victor could tell, White people didn’t have a clue.