Mercy Street(51)

He reviewed the photos in reverse order, trying to imagine these same women in sundresses, in bikinis, in virginal white underwear, and found it impossible to do.

He should have waited until summer.

For women anyway, the puffy jacket should be outlawed.

All things considered, the Boston photos were a disappointment. Half were completely useless. Despite clear instructions, Anthony had sent a motley collection of Blacks and Orientals and Spanish, females in every conceivable shade of yellow, beige, and brown.

Anthony was not the brightest bulb.

Anthony, poor bastard, had missed the point entirely. There was no reason whatsoever to shame these women. Privately, Victor had no problem at all with them having abortions, though he knew better than to say so. His lieutenants, all Christians, were delicate flowers—fragile creatures raised on fairy tales, the addictive fantasy of prayer.

Victor was not, himself, a Christian. His only god was nature, the blind force that ran the universe. Nature was reliably impartial, indifferent to outcomes. It had no special loyalty to Black or White, it did not take a rooting interest. With nature, prayer was useless. There was no appeals process. The White race would simply have to fend for itself.

The crisis was a concrete matter, a mathematical problem with a clear solution. Disaster could be averted, if immediate action were taken. If the White female rose to the challenge, and did her part.

To date, he’d seen no evidence of this happening. The blithe unconcern of White females was infuriating. Victor encountered them every day on the internet, chatting and LOL-ing and posting selfies, squandering their precious reproductive years on nonsense.

For decades, now, the White female had defied nature, fighting her destiny with every weapon possible: swallowing pills, injecting herself with hormones, shoving tiny pieces of copper up inside her to keep a baby from implanting. (Implanting! That was the word used. Victor had read about it on the internet.)

The depravity was breathtaking. The depravity, truly, was hard to fathom.

And there were other consequences. Just think of the urine! All over the world, untold millions of females were jacked up on estrogen. Each time one took a piss, a dose was released into the water supply. By now, every drop of water on earth had cycled through some female’s bladder, a thought that haunted Victor each time he turned on the tap. How much estrogen had he himself ingested in his lifetime? All over America, testicles were shriveling. Teenage boys were growing tits. Maleness itself was under attack.

The White female was drunk with power. She was holding an entire race hostage. In the interests of humanity, an intervention was necessary. It was a matter of survival. The female body was a natural resource, like coal or iron. It belonged to the entire world.

An instant message appeared on his screen.

LostObjects1977: how do you like the pix??

Victor tapped out a reply, two-fingered. He had never learned to type properly.

Excelsior11: Too many black girls

Anthony fired back immediately. His instant messages were entirely too instant. They came at lightning speed.

LostObjects1977: did you watch the vid?? that one was white

Oh, for Pete’s sake, Victor thought. Like the rest of his generation, Anthony was overly impressed by technology, so dazzled by the bells and whistles that the mission itself went out the window.

Excelsior11: Video?

LostObjects1977: sent it to you yesterday

Victor scrolled halfheartedly through his inbox.

Excelsior11: I don’t see it. Are you sure you sent it?

LostObjects1977: resending now

It occurred to Victor—not for the first time—that he had a personnel problem. He needed a better quality of lieutenant.

THE EXPO HALL OPENED AT TEN IN THE MORNING. VICTOR WAS first in line when they unlocked the doors. He’d been standing there for forty minutes, determined to beat the crowd.

The show got bigger every year: hundreds of tables, thousands of firearms. In recent years the organizers had branched out. There were night-vision goggles, antique swords, a vast selection of helmets and body armor. There were blowguns and stun guns, Gadsden flags and kukri knives, an enticing display of high-end surveillance cams. Victor took his time wandering the aisles. It was, in point of fact, the only type of shopping he enjoyed. Back in his driving days, he’d visited gun shows in thirty states. He was, by then, some years sober, and there wasn’t much for a solitary man to do along America’s interstate highways that didn’t involve a shot glass.

He made a slow tour of the perimeter, scoping out the merchandise. Certain vendors, he knew by sight: the Civil War reenactor with his muttonchop sideburns, the enormously fat man who sold nunchucks and ninja stars at suspiciously low prices, the young skinhead with his vast inventory of knives.

He stopped to look at some night-vision goggles and heard a noise behind him, a low electrical humming. He turned to see Luther Cross rolling up in his chair.

“Jesus God, Victor! What happened to your face?”

“I got a tooth that’s giving me trouble.”

Luther grinned broadly. “I can pull it for you, if you want. Wouldn’t take me a minute.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Victor said.

They had known each other since high school. Luther, a few years older, had gone to Vietnam ahead of Victor and left his legs there. Since then he’d rolled around town in a motorized wheelchair, his hair tied up in a ponytail, his lap covered with a blanket to hide what was missing.