The Power(57)

After all this, when they take off his blindfold, he’s in a storage locker. It’s dusty. There’s someone’s old boxes of VHS cassettes labelled ‘A-Team’ in the corner. And there’s UrbanDox, sitting in a chair, smiling.

He looks different to his profile pictures. He’s in his mid-fifties. He’s bleached his hair so that it’s very pale, almost white. His eyes are a pallid, watery blue. Tunde’s read some things about this man; there was, by all accounts, a terrible childhood, violence, racial hatred. There was a string of failed businesses, leaving dozens of people owed thousands of dollars each. There was, eventually, a night-school law degree and a reinvention as a blogger. He’s well-built for a man of his age, though his face is faintly grey. The great change in the tide of things has been good for UrbanDox. He’d been blogging his mean-spirited, semi-literate, bigoted, angry rhetoric for years but, recently, more and more people – men and, indeed, some women – have started to listen. He’s denied over and over again being tied to the violent splinter groups that have bombed shopping malls and public parks in half a dozen states now. But, if he’s not linked to them, they like to link themselves to him. One of the recent accurate bomb threats contained simply an address, a time and the web address of UrbanDox’s latest screed on the Coming Gender War.

He’s softly spoken. His voice is more high-pitched than Tunde was expecting. He says, ‘You know they’re going to try to kill us.’

Tunde has said to himself, Just listen. He says, ‘Who’s trying to kill us?’

UrbanDox says, ‘The women.’

Tunde says, ‘Aha. Tell me more about that.’

A sly smile spreads over the man’s face. ‘You’ve read my blog. You know what I think.’

‘I’d like to hear it in your own words. On tape. I think people would like to hear it. You think the women are trying to kill –’

‘Oh, I don’t think, son, I know. None of this is an accident. They talk about “Guardian Angel”, that stuff that got into the water supply, and how it built up in the water table? They say no one could have predicted it? Phooey. Bullcrap. This has been planned. This was decided on. After the end of the Second World War, when the peaceniks and do-gooders had the upper hand, they decided to put this stuff in the water. They thought men had had their turn and we’d messed it up – two world wars in two generations. Pussy-whipped betas and faggots, all of them.’

Tunde’s read this theory before. You can’t have a good conspiracy plot without any conspirators. He’s only surprised that UrbanDox hasn’t mentioned Jews.

‘The Zionists used the concentration camps as emotional blackmail to get the stuff shipped out in the water.’

There we go.

‘It was a declaration of war. Silent, stealthy. They armed their warriors before they sounded the first battle cry. They were among us before we even knew we’d been invaded. Our own government has the cure, you know, they’ve got it under lock and key, but they won’t use it except on the precious few. And the endgame … you know the endgame. They hate us all. They want us all dead.’

Tunde thinks of the women he’s known. Some of the journalists he was in Basra with, some of the women from the siege in Nepal. There have been women, these past years, who have put their bodies between him and harm so he could take his footage out to the world.

‘They don’t,’ he says. Shit. That was not what he meant to do.

UrbanDox laughs. ‘They’ve got you right where they want you, son. Under the thumb. Believing their crap. Bet a woman’s helped you once or twice, right? She’s taken care of you, she’s looked after you, she protected you when you were in trouble.’

Tunde nods, warily.

‘Well, shit, of course they do that. They want us docile and confused. Old army tactic; if you’re only ever an enemy, the people will know to fight you wherever they see you. If you hand out candy to the kids and medicine to the weak, you jumble their minds up, they don’t know how to hate you. See?’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘It’s starting already. Have you seen the numbers on domestic violence against men? On murders of men by women?’

He has seen those numbers. He carries them with him like a lozenge of ice lodged in his throat.

‘That’s how it starts,’ says UrbanDox. ‘That’s how they soften us up, make us weak and afraid. That’s how they have us where they want us. It’s all part of a plan. They’re doing it because they’ve been told to.’

Tunde thinks, No, that’s not the reason. The reason is because they can. ‘Are you being funded,’ he says, ‘by the exiled King Awadi-Atif of Saudi Arabia?’

UrbanDox smiles. ‘There are a lot of men out there who are worried about where this thing is heading, my friend. Some of them are weak, traitors to their gender and their people. Some of them think the women will be kind to them. But a lot of them know the truth. We haven’t had to go begging for money.’

‘And you said … the endgame.’

UrbanDox shrugs. ‘Like I say. They want to kill us all.’

‘But … the survival of the human race?’

‘Women are just animals,’ says UrbanDox. ‘Just like us, they want to mate, reproduce, have healthy offspring. One woman, though, she’s pregnant for nine months. She can care for maybe five or six kids well across her life.’