Men’s Rally And Riot
Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand, adapted into 17 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
The Persians marshalled all the nations under the Sun and Stars yet they were defeated by a single idea: Sacrifice, and their inability to appreciate it.
After tonight, we would become a democracy because I could trust the group to see beyond gender and into the ideas and ideals of the speaker. True democracy was not about the tyranny of numbers, but consensus. Consensus was the result of the belief that everyone in the group, even the opposition, had worth, they counted.
How in the Hell, after all the wrong turns my life had taken, could I still believe I was an idealist? It was simple. I had not let them win. In a very crude, sexual way it was that I had the confidence in one girl, my first date, to ask her to hold off on true intercourse and she respected my wishes. In the kaleidoscope of my fractured mind, that memory burned through.
Listening to the women in my living room talking while I dressed in the bedroom, a tiny shiver of one memory collided and melded with another. No women I had ever known had not betrayed me in one way or another. That was the terror of distrust for me, but, no woman, or man, was perfect. They would all betray me, sooner or later.
I now understood this wasn't bad. It was human nature. We all let people down around us, even the ones we cared about. Pain had led me to hunt for perfection. That was a pointless quest and a pursuit that led to madness. What I should have been looking for was restitution. Did that person know they had wronged me and were they trying to make it up to me?
The same held true for me. Was I a true friend, looking after those I had wronged and balancing accounts with them as well? Honesty, Truth and Love, the harshest bitches on the block. I meditated for twenty minutes before heading back to my assembled friends.
"You look nice," Kuiko beamed. "Really nice."
"Thank you," I blushed slightly. More Bethany clothes.
"That wasn't a compliment, you jerk," Capri glared. "Last chance. This is stupid."
"Noted and acknowledged, Ms. O'Hara," I nodded. "I need a taxi." I pulled out my phone and began looking up taxi services. My phone rang.
“FBI across the street” it read. I shuddered. I wasn't upset. I was peeved.
“Do you like my new underwear you Pervs?” I hung up. I didn't care if they liked my underwear.
"Them?" Capri asked softly.
"Yeah."
"Damn it, you just took a shower, shaved and got dressed. Can't they leave you alone for an hour?" she griped.
"Who?" Roni got out first.
"Santa's Little Helpers," Capri grumbled. "I really ought to do something about them."
"Let us not revisit the whole 'you dismembered in the morgue' thing, shall we," I requested. "Besides, I gave them a piece of my mind this time."
"Not the sexy part!" Kuiko blurted out.
"What did you do?" Capri studied me.
"I called them pervs," I declared. "No, I did not, Kuiko. The sexy is all for you." She smiled.
"Oh yeah, that will do it," Capri pressed her wrist to her forehead and announced dramatically.
"What do I want to do more," Venus mumbled, "fight over the sexy or find out what the hell is going on?"
"Perverted Santa's Little Helpers who leave dismembered bodies in the morgue and have an apparent issue with Israel naked or semi-naked," Roni mused. "Capri, after he leaves, you are going to do some explaining."
"I think this is my cue to leave," I told the room then headed for the door.
"Aren't you going to call a taxi?" Aniqua reminded me.
"The FBI is going to drive me there," I grinned.
"What makes you say that?" Samantha gulped.
"When the alternative is letting me flag down a cabby that may, or may not, be homicidal, my bet is they'll drop me off at the arena," I explained.
"Makes sense to me," Kuiko nodded. "If I had a car, I'd give him a ride."
"Kuiko, for once I agree with you," Venus muttered.
"I'm not as dumb as I look," Kuiko turned that 1000 watt smile on Venus.
"Of course you are not," Roni chortled. "Otherwise you couldn't walk and talk at the same time."
I went around and kissed each one of them, on the lips. Normally that should have made them happy, but they kept looking at me like they'd never see me again. Clever girls. I left the complex and scanned the streets. There was the car, at the edge of a car park down the street. It wasn't as if there were many car owners in this part of town.
I hurried across the street and I was whistling. Special Agent Sosa lowered the window as I approached. Across from her was S A Saris, also with Dimple's team.
"Yes?" Sosa sighed. "When staking out a place it sort of blows our cover if you walk right up to us, by the way."
"That's cool," I grinned. "We aren't staying here anyway. I need a ride to the Arena."
"Do we look like a taxi service?" Sosa smirked.
"I'm going, you are following. We might as well make it easy on us, save a few volts," I reasoned.
"Get in," Saris grumbled. I gladly did so and off we went.
"Planning to get arrested?" Saris asked.
"Planning? No. Expecting it to be a possibility, yes," I admitted. "Any news?"
"Dr. Fremont is still missing, but her company hired a GlobeMaster to haul a whole lot of something to Bolivia," Sosa answered.
Seeing my confusion, Saris added.
"A GlobeMaster is a really big aircraft, used for hauling freight, not passengers."
My impulse was to say 'can you shoot it down,' but the illegality of the action was stunning.
"Anything on your front?" Sosa inquired.
"Let me see, my Capri's Mom wants her to be a cum-dumpster, seven girls stopped by my place today to drag me out of my home and make me their bitch. My tribe made them back down, this time. Now my ladies are camped out at my place, murdering my AC unit and praying I make it back home in some sort of working order," I outlined.
"Why did they let you go? Are they some kind of pansies?" Sosa mocked.
"I'd hit you upside your head for that comment, but you are driving, armed and most likely a much better fighter than me," I replied. "They are not pansies. They risked harm for me today."
"What happened at the firefight today, anyway?" Saris asked.
"Not really sure," I lied. "Bullets were flying and I was running for my life."
"You didn't see anything?" she persisted. Damn her interrogation abilities.
"Wait, with guns going off I thought you would be happy I was running away," I evaded.
"Why didn't you wait for Agents Vabishi and Fraklos to get there?"
"Capri and I got across the street so we ran for it," I shrugged.
"Next time, lay flat and we'll come get you," Saris told me.
"Thanks, G I Jane," was my snarky comeback. "Maybe if you let me have some sort of combat training I'd know what to do next time." I was making light of things, but in the back of my mind, like a cornered badger in the dark, I knew I was in a vehicle with two women I didn't know.
It wasn't like I could tell myself they were law enforcement agents and feel better. Kwan, Riga, Seger and Somerset had all be cruel to me in some way. Dimples' crew had tackled me on the ground, intimidated me, deceived me, torn away my rights and played upon my feeble psyche. Trust hadn't placed me in this car, expediency had.
The FBI was the best chance I had to get to the Arena intact. I doubted they would have appreciated me defining their actions as our evolving tribalism. I was their investment, so it behooved them to take me safely to my destination. I didn't believe they yet understood that they had stopped working for the Director of the FBI, or the Attorney General and had become self-employed.
They may have had this delusion that this would end up with criminal indictments against the people behind the Big Lie and Carabolix-37, but that was an unsustainable fantasy. Once the system betrayed them, as it had betrayed me so often, Dimples' crew would know that escape was the only option left. It was obvious to me the moment I saw Dimples.
She would never let them win. She was the only one allowed to win. I didn't count the freebie she threw my way. That was a draw at best. The ride to the Arena turned out to be nothing much. I was dropped off. Men, and cops, were all around. I dutifully showed my I D to Arena Security, they triple checked it and then brought a coordinator to check it one more time.
They realized I was in the front third of the arena floor seating. I had a nice folding chair on the outer aisle. The coordinator decided that was a bad idea so she had me exchange seats with a guy in the middle of my row. I knew why this was, though I only had theoretical knowledge how a rally would work.
When the authorities left, having neutralized me, I politely went to the man I had exchanged seats with and asked him to switch back. He seemed dubious, but when I explained that all the blame would be foisted on me, he relented. See, here is how it worked. First your Talking Heads would get up and make their speeches.
Then would come the long question and answer portion of this farce. Women would walk up and down the aisles, men would raise their hands, wave and asked if they could present a question. In a totally democratic process, these women on the aisles would provide a sound system for the men to ask the speaker their question.
The speaker answers, on to the next man. As you might guess, men sitting on the aisle seats had the best chances of being heard. Men stuck in the middle were out of luck, men like me and my 'new' assigned seat. Men like me in my original seat, were potentially dangerous. Still, things went along very smoothly until the tenth question.
Up to that point, the speakers had done their thing with the basic theme being 'all you men are appreciated, doing your part, and we love you.’ Not that they were going to do a damn thing to help us beyond patting us on the head, but they loved us. They loved us because we were doing what we were told. The men in the audience ate it up. It was what they wanted to hear.
I imagined that handing us all 'little lamb' outfits to wear would have been counter-productive to their agenda, though it certainly would have been more appropriate to how these women viewed the situation. It was clear to me that all the questions the men in the audience were asking were scripted. Some had to actually look down at their phones when reading off their instructions.
Most adults don't like being treated like six-year olds, so they ignored this mounting stupidity until Man 10 stood up, was recognized and read off his question. He was around fifty and clearly in a prosperous profession, positive he was a member of the winning (female) team.
"Is it true that at this very moment Congress is voting on increasing the cycle from 28 days to 14, and abolishing marriage?" he asked.
There was a hush. By the dumbstruck expression of the woman on stage, this was not the prepared question. The problem wasn't moving the cycle to 14 days. Men were prepared to knuckle under and do their part for the Human species. But marriage? Men loved marriage. They didn't love the idea of finding love, getting married and living happily ever after.
That was idiotic. No, men loved marriage as our last refuge from a women's world. Gaining 'attachments' was a warning flag we could wave at other women, telling them 'hey, we are doing our part, so please, leave us alone.' Marriage was your shield and armor. It was 'Don't touch. I'm with somebody!'
The hope was that if someone did do something to you, your wife would scream bloody murder and things would get done. She was a woman after all. Marriage had been preserved in the Gender Inequality Act because most of the signers were either married or had been recently married and lost a loved one to the Plague.
I imagine they thought it was a quaint institution that would gradually fall to the wayside as society progressed. At the start, it looked that way. The number of marriages did slowly decline for thirty years, but about ten years ago, the trend began reversing. When a man is in his late teens, early and mid-twenties, going out with lots of girls sounds nice.
Women pay for everything, they take you to nice places and if you end up in the three- or four-way occasionally, well, you've got the stamina for it. When you hit your late twenties and early thirties, men start slowing down. Pulling a train on a Saturday night, all night, becomes a burden you could do without.
About that time, marriage starts looking good. You've probably been in a few attachments. You pick the one you can live the best with and who has the best financial status and you keep dropping hints until she realizes what you really want and she pops the question. Congratulations, you only have to screw one women for the rest of your life.
Okay, maybe her sisters, your mother-in-law and her boss, but still, that's not too bad. Ten years ago, that generation of men who grew up after the plague were hitting their thirties and they were taking a renewed interest in the dying institution of marriage. Men got interested, women got real interested. For women, it meant no more desperate hunting every weekend.
You wanted cock? Call your husband, tell him to be home by six and wear something sexy and it got done. Best of all, you could make that call, look around your office and see all your female co-workers dripping with jealousy. If you truly wanted to turn the screws, during that call, you told your hubby to take some enhancement drugs because you wanted it deep and hard all night long.
By this time in our social evolution, men didn't mind being treated like that too much. We had safety. As married men started to bask in their safe status, their unmarried brethren began wondering if marriage would be a good idea for them, too. More took the plunge and most of them were marrying up social and financially.
As I keep repeating, women aren't stupid. When rich, successful bankers began marrying sales clerks and custodians, the social stigma of marrying beneath your station evaporated in the burning reality that they had their genetic future waiting at home, willing to do his duty. The floodgates were open.
More married men meant fewer men in the fishing pool. That meant greater pressure on the remaining men, who were now opting into marriage to relieve that pressure. That meant even greater pressure on the fewer and fewer remaining men. Last year the marriage rate began its climb toward 30%. From the gender quota point of view, this was a disaster.
To put that in perspective, that's thirty percent of all men. Then you have to drop out every male below the age of 16. Then you have to consider that once men are over 59, they need a yearly physical. If something is wrong, you get a limited deferment. That means you don't have to have sex as often.
You never get to 'not have sex' unless you are on life support, or a rape victim. There are waiting lists for kidneys, livers and hearts, if you are a woman. If you are a man, they'll slap an artificial heart in you if they have to. Men must perform for the general female population, unless they are married.
Back to the question at the Arena. Men had been quietly bleating, nodding our heads, and smiling without real passion until that point. Sudden, like scenting a wolf for the first time, they were very attentive. If you were a twenty-something guy, this wasn't 'good.’ If you were a forty-two year old husband, with a wife, three kids and twelve years of marital bliss, this was disastrous.
The government was about to shove you back into the deep end were packs of starving women were going to devour you because your avoidance skills were rusty. You were about to be waking up wondering if the pain coming from your groin was worse than the headache you had from whatever the hell those women drugged you with.
Oh, and by the way, you were about to lose your parental rights to your offspring and most of your shared property. Effectively you were being forced to divorce. The magnitude of this was amplified by the speaker. If she had a pat lie handy, she could have defused things because men wanted comforting words more than unforgiving reality.
But she stammered. She could have said yes, and that might have been better. By stammering, she told the men that 'Yes, you are boned, but we are going to lie to you about it.’ In my opinion, she did the worst possible thing.
"Next question?"
That was the equivalent of 'Yes, but you don't deserve to be told about your fates.’ There was no riot over that. No, it was something far, far worse. Before that moment, the 20,000 men in the arena thought they were part of this society. They were deluded into thinking they were equals. They thought I was a lunatic. Now?
As a group they came to a consensus and it wasn't a pleasant one. 'They think we are sheep, Mother-fuckers!' This wasn't the crowd that carried dowels this morning but they were starting to wish they had some now. The shift was subtle. Men had been sitting back in their seats. Now they were leaning forward.
There had been polite whispered banter. Now there were grim faces and quiet. I jumped up and waved my hands around. The communications girl came my way, was offering me her microphone when she suddenly realized who I was, I wasn't the man they had reassigned to that seat. She back-pedaled and another questioner was immediately tapped to speak.
"Let him speak," the man pointed my way. There was a hush. His comm girl backed up as well. Another man was found. He started asking his state-sanctioned question but then the hissing and boos began. The speaker's response was barely audible over the racket. I jumped up again. The next man repeated the plea, though it was more insistent now.
"Let him speak!"
I wasn't sure what they expected me to say. I wanted some sort of redress to our legal plight, something to defend us against the G E D and the most egregious insults to our dignity. An arena security guard, neat and prim in her freshly pressed uniform, moved from the wall nearby and was clearly coming for me.
The world cracked a little more.
Five men jumped up around me and they looked angry.
"Don't," one of them menaced the guard. Cops would have kept coming. It is what they do, but this was a security guard. She wasn't armed and she certainly didn't like the mood presented to her.
She suddenly realized she was down on the floor of the arena, back to a wall with a sea of angry faces looking her way. She stepped back then ran, calling for back-up. It was the most horrible thing she could have done. Two cops were already advancing my way from the front of the arena. The ripple of the men's successful defiance moved through the crowd.
The majority of men kept their seats. They had not come to get in a fight. They were not rowdy. In fact, they were becoming afraid as most sane people do when violence approaches. Two patrolwomen came my way. Men rose as they passed by, but they held firm. Courage was the important thing. The belief was if they held firm, the men would back down because they always backed down.
I saw Officer Passey and her partner as they closed. They didn't have weapons drawn because they didn't want to spook us. There must have been sixty men standing around me. I was still standing at my aisle seat and no men had left their seats to pour into the aisle so the cops had unimpeded access to me.
"Come with us," Passey beckoned.
"I haven't done anything wrong," I begged. She grabbed my arm, and then two men hit her. Passey went down, I heard her partner yelling for everyone to get back as the males on all sides charged in. A taser went off then the men were punching and kicking the crap out of the two women.
The source of this rage was two-fold. These men had come here completely wrapped up in the belief that they were equals. These were successful men with good homes, jobs and lives. They weren't Kenny and Luanga who worked in a factory. They were professionals and semi-professionals. They had just been told they were considered nothing but sheep and now they were being treated like sheep.
The other factor was the fact they were not the men with dowels this morning. They'd watched those morons getting plastered, stomped on and arrested. They didn't admire or even empathize with those men, they held them in contempt because why on earth would any man be rebelling? It wasn't that they didn't suffer from the same indignities.
They did, but they accepted it as normal and went about their days. Smacking a woman in the head with a stick was stupid. It would accomplish nothing. This was the mental quandary these men were in. The morons of this morning had been right in their futile protest and they had been the fools.
Like most people, when someone makes a fool of you, you don't say 'Gosh, I'm foolish.’ No, you get angry with the person who made a fool of you. They were sheep, they had little lamb bells in the shape of a bracelet and they'd been fleeced. Those two cops had simply been too vulnerable to resist.
I pushed forward, then threw myself on Passey's body, hoping to buy time. I didn't see her partner. From later footage, I was to learn that five more policewomen came storming up from the front, tasers out and firing. Men were dropping, but not fast enough. At that crucial moment when it seemed those five women might stem the tide, the men discovered something really bad.
The floor of the arena was covered with folding chairs which make nice weapons. Up went the chairs and down went the cops. The majority of the men in the arena were angry, but weren't as angry as the mob around me. Cops were pouring in from every exit so the men did what came naturally, they tried to get out.
No catastrophe is one mistake. Men were panicking and trying to get out. A stampede could prove fatal to the crowd of men. The police had to restore order. They also wanted to capture and punish the men responsible. The commander on the scene ordered the police to hold the exits until the riot was dealt with. The policewomen were polite but firm.
The men responded like good little frightened sheep and obeyed, though they were clearly nervous. Around me, the men saw a wall of ten riot police coming from the front, backed up by a small group of normal policewomen. Riot cops had knee-to-shoulder length transparent shields and stun batons. This was the kind of thing they had trained for. They were not afraid.
The men also discovered they had seven pistols, things got worse. A few got some shots off before they were stunned into unconsciousness. Others couldn't even figure out how to work the safety. The police wall pushed forward, they were recovering the bodies of their fallen co-workers then they finally got to me.
The policewoman saw me on all fours over a semi-coherent Passey and swung her stun baton. I raised my arm to defend myself and a sharp shock burnt through my arm, but didn't knock me out. At that moment, the riot squad became a victim of its own success. Having pushed so far forward, they presented an avenue of egress for the panicking men on their side of the arena.
The human wave shattered the police cohesion. It became a desperate fight, everyone for themselves. The riot cops went down under the surge of bodies. For a second, the area around me cleared up. I saw Passey's partner. She looked to be in a bad way, but I didn't know her. I knew Passey. I was still ordering my jumbled thoughts when the bomb went off.
It had been suspended over the arena floor, disguised as sound equipment. The blast wave was focused down into the audience. The concussion knocked people down, but that was the only direct effect. The designers of the bomb weren't looking to create casualties on the floor, oh no. They were looking to spread chaos, confusion and fear.
They did that admirably. That thin blue line holding those 20,000 men at bay? They were still trying to figure out what the explosion was when the men surged forward once more. They yelled at the men to stop. Their hands went to their tasers. Most likely, the men facing the cops tried to stop, but with hundreds of men behind them urgently trying to get away from the explosion, it was a hopeless gesture.
Police escalation was simple: command, taser, physical takedown, and pistol. Most of the policewomen never got to the takedown phase. A few went straight for the pistol phase. Shots began ringing out. Police communications were overwhelmed with calls for orders, or help. At the main exit's long series of doors it got even worse.
A police lieutenant was trying to bring order out of the chaos. She could make out what was being said by a subordinate in another part of the arena.
"Shots fired? I repeat, shots fired?" she requested over her link. That's not what a man a few meters away heard.
"Oh my God! They are going to shoot us just like China!" he screamed. He wasn't rational, but a bomb had gone off, another one might go off and the cops weren't letting him leave. The rational thought should have been 'I'm too valuable to be slaughtered,' but he was gripped by fear. "They are going to kill us all!" he continued.
The closest police officer tased him. That was normal procedure; the man was starting a panic. Unfortunately, there was already a panic, the man was claiming the cops were trying to kill him, and the cops had just proved him right. He wasn't dead, or even unconscious, but the men didn't know that. They attacked.
Men tend to be taller, heavier and have superior reach. The policewomen had training, weapons, body armor and morale, they were policewomen facing men after all. The deciding factor was weight of numbers, quite literally. The men rolled forward like a wave. The front men were tasered, but couldn't fall down in the press of bodies.
There was no way the women could hold back five, six, or even seven men pushing against each one of them. Realizing the women at the first exits were being pummeled to death, the supporting police went straight for their guns. Had the men had some sort of organization, the hail of bullets might have stopped them. The men were a stampede.
Men fell and were trampled into mush. The women? They were savagely beaten to death for the most part. Some were literally torn to pieces. The men slammed into the glass doors and walls. The material was tough. It bent and bowed before finally popping out of its fixtures. The men cascaded into the city's last line of defense.
It was a police auxiliary riot unit. These women had 'day jobs' but served in uniform on special occasions, like this. What was coming at them wasn't something they were mentally prepared for. Still, they were in full riot gear, with each flank secured by a water cannon. The unit's sergeant had a horrid dilemma.
Over her comm, she could hear wounded officers crying out for assistance. A SWAT unit on the second level was in dire need and running out of ammunition. For once, men had the numbers in this cruel twist of fate, plus, they had and were using guns. An equine unit had snapped under the pressure on the north side of the arena and been overrun.
The water cannons began working over the men. That stopped them, momentarily. It was deceptive because the pressure behind the men was building up, but the police couldn't see it. Seeing the mob recoil, the sergeant acted. She ordered her command forward at a steady pace. They were going to rescue their fellow officers.
Things began to fall apart from the start. As the cannons both swung to the center of the riot squads' entry point, a man slipped around the edge of the water stream. His name was Robert White, African-American and worked at a modeling agency as a manager. He had two attachments and four healthy daughters. He was thirty-two and he was dying.
In the playback, it was clear that he was gut-shot. Had he made it to an emergency room in the next thirty minutes he might have lived. His dress jacket was gone. His dress white shirt was water-soaked and blood stained from his wound. He also had a shotgun and a preference for action movies so he had a clue how one worked.
Robert sprinted around the periphery of the riot line, jumped on the front of the first water cannon and fired the shotgun through the vision port the driver left open. Three shots later, the crew inside was dead or wounded and the cannon shut down. While Robert was becoming a martyr for all man-kind, the riot squad was falling apart.
As the sergeant urged her troops forward, the individual women were coming to the realization that their cork was too small for the hole they were expected to fill. The dimensions of the mass of men coming their way made the power of the stun batons in their hands feel irrelevant. You could see the reasonable fear in their eyes turn to terror. They knew they were about to die.
Even then, not one woman didn't go forward. The problem was some went more forward than others. The Plexiglas shield wall fractured. The sergeant tried to reorganize her people, the water cannon on her right shut off and she committed a totally rational sin. She looked over her shoulder to see what had happened. She wasn't the only woman in her command to do that.
The man charged forward with a hellish howl. The auxiliary policewomen cringed and hunched up, but none of them ran. They held their ground as best they could. Their doom was in their sergeant's decision to advance. The riot squad's flanks were open and the men come pouring around at both ends.
The second water cannon thrashed the area around it, trying to buy time for the women on the outside. Within their armored vehicle, the patrolwomen thought they were safe. Of course, the women inside the first water cannon had thought the same thing. Re-enter the doomed Robert White. He had run around the far side of the first water cannon and to the back of the second.
Something whizzed pasted his thigh and ricocheted off the pavement. Sure enough, the crew had left a back viewport open. They weren't following protocol, but they weren't stupid either. With the ports open, the vehicle was much cooler in this early summer heat. Besides, men didn't have guns, so what was the problem.
Robert White stuck the barrel into the port and fired. As he got a second shot off, something tore off a section of his calf and he fell. Unrelenting, he stood back up, felt something burn across his thigh, but still managed to get off a third shot. He was pumping the next shell in when the sniper finally stopped following fire protocol for men and put a round into Robert White's heart.
It was already too late for the auxiliary policewomen before the second water cannon went still. The initial rush of men pushed in their flanks and a secondary surge shattered their middle. A smaller, right-most faction, tried to form a circle, but fell and were overwhelmed. The left most, with their sergeant, formed a defensive ring only to be taken down by the stun batons of their fallen comrades.
This was the moment when that first sniper and two more who had rushed to join her decided that 'fuck it, they must pay' and opened fire on the mob. That was the last hurrah. The men broke up and scattered, which was pretty much what they had wanted to do all along. The blood lust was dissipating.
As one final, sad footnote, the sniper watched a lone, battered man walking among the bodies. A member of the riot squad, clearly in a bad way, made a weak attempt to touch him. He stopped and knelt by her. They exchanged words. For a second, the sniper felt remorse for opening fire on all those men then the kneeling man pulled out a pistol, pressed it to the policewoman's forehead and blew her brains out.
As the man stood up, the sniper returned the favor. As unaccustomed to true violence as men were, some snapped. Maybe he was a gentle soul who saw too much, too fast. Maybe he dreamed of striking back for years and was overcome with the prospects of achieving his fantasy. Maybe he was a bastard. Whatever he was, he was erased from the human equation like nearly a thousand of his brethren that night.
Back inside, I was in a battle for survival of a different kind. I pulled myself off Passey after the explosion. Men were scattering in all directions. A few cops pulled themselves from a floor littered with bodies, male and female. I went over to Passey's partner. I knew jack-all about first aid, but she was clearly not doing well.
I looked up to see a cop pointing a gun at my head.
"She needs help," I told the barrel of the gun. "I don't think we should move her." The gun moved up and away. She spent a few seconds trying to contact various people unsuccessfully. "I'm going to move my friend, Officer Passey, to the EMTs and I can send back help when I do," I offered.
The cop studied me.
"Where do you know Passey from?" she asked.
"We met at City Hall. She told me about her son," I replied.
"Take her that way," the cop pointed. "Stick around. People will want to talk with you, Mr. Jensen."
"I can't promise you that," I responded. She glared then nodded. She began moving off in a hurry. War was being waged against my gender. I scooped up Passey and headed off in the direction the policewoman had indicated. I began to hear gunfire. I hurried along. I was around the stage and running down a tunnel when I saw three parked ambulances, half a dozen cops and an even more EMTs.
The cops regarded me with a great deal of suspicion.
"Officers down, several around row 23," I explained. Then the echoes of automatic weapons fire reached us. I wouldn't normally be privileged to hear police chatter but the EMTs had turned their radios to it to keep pace with events.
Whole units were going down. A SWAT unit had been jumped in mid-deployment and opened fire after taking fire from men using captured police weapons. A riot squad had used tear gas to break up a knot of men only to have the fire suppression system cut on, reducing visibility to less than a meter.
What I didn't know about the group dynamic around me was that the V I Ps had already raced down here and fled the scene in the limos and S U Vs. The V I Ps they could do without, but the twenty members of the Executive Protection Detail that they'd taken with them were urgently needed here, at the arena. The cops were pissed, but not with me, with their own gender.
The five cops looked at their Section Leader. She bit her lip.
"Shotguns and gas masks," she barked her orders. "We are going in." The cops raced to obey while the SL called her superior to inform her of their team's intentions. I wasn't sure if she got permission. I handed off Passey gingerly to the first team of EMTs to come at me.
"You might want to assign an officer to the EMTs," I suggested obsequiously to the SL. She looked like she wanted to rip my limbs off. "A good number of men were worked over with stun batons and things could go badly if the EMTs don't have a minder. The girl across from my condo is an EMT," I offered up as an explanation.
"Polanski, stick with the paramedics. There may be some pissed of males on the ground," the Section Leader called out. "Don't go anywhere," she told me.
"Yes ma'am," I replied. She led her troops off toward the arena floor. The second she was out of sight, I jogged the other way.
I broke out into the fresh air, the wail of sirens, the clap of gunfire and the screams of men. Some men were trying to get to their cars and drive away, those privileged few. The cops were already closing of the arena parking exits, so I wasn't sure what they were thinking, if they were thinking at all.
My path cut across the greenway and toward the metro. I wasn't taking the subway, I was walking along the tracks in an effort to make my getaway. I decided to get rid of my phone then realized I hadn't activated it yet. My phone didn't know it was working for me and neither did anyone else.
As a phone it was worthless but as a media device, it serviced me just fine. Once I made it to the subway tunnels, I took stock of my situation. Where was I going to go? Home? Most likely bad for me and bad for everyone I cared about. My arm still throbbed where the cop hit me with her stun baton but was functional.
My bracelet looked none the worse for wear despite taking the brunt of the impact and shock. I didn't want to sit uselessly by while the Vanishers or Dimples' people picked me up. I had to do something, but I didn't know what. The sane, rational decision was to hunker down somewhere and let someone I liked find me. Insanity sucks.
I went through some convolution to get a pre-paid phone card. Two college girls and not 'actual' sex. A half-dozen calls later, Capri knew I was still alive, she told me Angel was okay and worried about me, and I was headed into what may have been the worst decision of my life. I was drawn to it because I need to do more than live, I wanted to scream at the Void that I was alive.
Getting in was stunningly easy, there were bodies everywhere, cops and males. I was given a few quick looks, but the staff were busy and the cops were still stunned. A male nurse came into my perception.
"Hey, I'm looking for an Officer Passey," I grabbed his arm. "Can you tell me where she is?"
He looked up angrily. I was about to be told where I could shove it when the realization of who I was crossed his face.
"I brought her out of the arena and I need to tell her something," I added. He was weighing all kinds of factors before he decided in my favor.
"Bay 2-E," he told me then hurried off to the job that needed him. There were cops and guys stacked up all over the place. Doctors and nurses were doing triage. I could sense the low level hostility the police were showing the male nurses and doctor (just one so far). As I pulled the curtain aside at 2-E, Passey was putting her shirt back on.
"Excuse me?" a female nurse challenged me.
"Israel?" Passey muttered. Her head and ribs were bandaged and she looked a little off.
"Israel Jensen?" the nurse confirmed. "Listen up asshole, this is all,”
"Wait," Passey patted the nurse. "He saved my life tonight. He jumped on top of me so that the other men didn't kick me to death."
The nurse went back to studying me. That was most likely the last thing she expected a cop to say about me. She didn't understand that it was the culture and not the people I hated.
"What do you want, Israel?" Passey asked. "If they find you here, they are going to take you away." By that she meant her fellow cops.
"I have three questions I need to ask you," I began. Yes, it was a need, not a want. Passey nodded.
"Do you still breast feed?" I inquired. Passey nodded. The nurse looked angry.
"Do you want me to save your Son?" was my second question.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Are you willing to have sex with me?" was the final one.
"Yes," she whispered again.
"Is she healthy enough for sex?" I turned to the nurse.
"She has some bruised ribs and a concussion," the nurse said. "Are you serious about this? You are just going to come in and screw her, in her state?"
"I don't know how much time I'll be around," I answered. "Once I'm gone, nothing and no one will save her little boy."
Passey removed her shirt. I tossed my jacket on some medical device and quickly worked off mine. Passey was struggling with her shoes so I bent down and took them off for her.
"I must look a mess," she worried. I looked up at her.
"You are beautiful. You are a Mother and there are few things more wonderful," I said.
I stood and took off my shirt. The nurse softened slightly. She knew the pain I had to be in. The thing was, I was feeling better.
"Aren't we the pair, Raggedy Man?" Passey whispered. We both had heavily bruised torsos. I had no clue why she was calling me Raggedy Man.
Our pants and underwear piled up on the floor. The nurse had slipped out somewhere along the line.
"I wish I could give you more time," I sighed as I pulled Passey to me until our bodies were tightly pressed.
"You are giving us what precious time you can, Israel," she responded. I cupped her ass cheeks and placed her on the edge of the gurney. Slipping into her was like teardrops on my soul, honest and purifying. Passey gave a little gasp then tenderly wrapped me up in her arms. We gently rocked back and forth, her sitting on the gurney, I standing in front of her, her legs supported my arms at hip level.
It was painful sex for both of us. I was helped by the fact that the normally gorgeous Officer Passey was so battered. It was the whole beautiful = entitlement thing rearing its ugly head.
"What's your name?" I mused, not really thinking about our circumstance. Passey giggled then winced.
"Freya," she panted in my ear. "My name is Freya."
"That's beautiful," I murmured. "That was a Goddess, right?"
"Was? Is," she nuzzled me. "My family are Pantheists, pagans."
"Would that make me Frey?" I stumbled along verbally.
"No," she snickered then began kissing my neck. "Frey is Freya's brother. That would be a little weird. You are more like, Baldur, the Golden One." Our banter had a purpose. We were dispelling the desperation of the moment. We were foolishly shredding the tyranny of time. We could take as long as we wanted because we lied and said everything was going to work out.
For some indeterminate time, we simply rocked back and forth. I could feel her fire rising toward the point of combustion. What I had to do next went against my nature. It went against the dark, gnawing fear that lurked behind the reflection of every woman whose gaze I met and stalked the edges of my erotic nightmares.
"Tell me you love me," I breathed into her. "Tell me we are going to have many strong male babies together." I wanted to die. Freya Passey hesitated a moment as if she knew she was about to cause me great pain.
"I love you, Israel," she murmured. "We are going to have many strong male babies together."
My whole body shook violently. I felt my testes contract. I was terrified, but I had to live.
"Say it again," I sobbed.
"Israel?" Freya whimpered.
"Please," I gulped.
"I love you, Israel," she sniffled. "We are going to have many strong male babies together."
The fear tore my heart and reason apart. My cum fountained deep within Freya. Again and again, it shot forth. Freya tensed then climaxed, which was doubly painful for both of us.
'Take that, Aurora, you bitch,' my mind spasmed and whirled manically.
'I stole one life back. I made something good from the madness you gifted me with. You haven't won, not yet.' I'd been climbing out of that basement for nearly five years. I was almost free until Bethany kicked my back down into that pit again. Maybe this was why I had lived? Maybe I hadn't been stupid or weak for surviving when I should have died.
Maybe, please God, maybe, my life had purpose.
"After the death of my first child," Freya hiccupped. Her arms and legs were still wrapped around me. "I didn't know if I could stand to lose another." She didn't say 'son' and the fact that she didn't make that distinction confirmed in my soul I'd taken a worthwhile risk.
"I can't imagine what it has been like for you," I told Passey. "I was never informed of the birth of my children. I never knew the fear that they might not make it."
"Yet you saved me from that feeling of hopelessness," Freya breathed into my chest.
"I did it for me," I replied softly. "I don't know the world, so I can let it go, but I knew you and I don't want to be the kind of human who sees a fellow human in need and does nothing."
"You were that man before you came here," she said.
"I have been rendered worthless, Freya," I struggled for my own understanding. "Because of that I will probably never be comfortable believing I'm worthwhile. I'll have to prove it to myself again and again. I doubt I'll ever accept that I'm the man I should be, or can be. Consider it a flaw in my lenses of perfection."
"You have a way with words," she smiled. "You need to go." We dressed quickly. I wiped up some escaping semen with a piece of gauze which I then pocketed.
"Don't share that if you can get away with it," I requested.
"Which reminds me," Passey pulled out her phone and scanned me, and scanned me again. "Your bracelet isn't acknowledging my scan."
"Maybe you're special," I hoped.
"I think it is broken," she clarified.
"Perfect," I sighed. "Just perfect." That explained why the Vanishers and the FBI weren't all over my ass right now. I had no phone and my bracelet wasn't betraying my location.
The foul little stooge that had haunted my life since I was sixteen was dead. Had it actually broken and fallen off, I would have danced on its grave. To be fair, its diehard little capacitors must have soaked up the brunt of the stun baton's power before the beast croaked. We finished getting dressed, I kissed Passey good-bye and pulled open the screen.
There was a wall of cops staring at us. On the periphery were those jokers in white coats over scrubs with all kinds of collection gear. Oh hell no. I wasn't going to pee in a cup. I certainly wasn't going to jack off into one. I stifled the urge to scream. I followed that minor victory by not shutting the curtain, crawling into a corner and hoping the world would go away.
"Mr. Jensen, you are coming with us," the lead officer, a lieutenant named Metzer said.
"Lieutenant, I'm begging you, give me two minutes of your time. If you still want to drag me in, I'll go quietly and without complaint," I pleaded. "Please, I'm begging you."
"He came here of his own free will," Freya spoke up, "knowing what might happen to him."
There was no reason tell them what I had done here. Neither Freya nor I were terribly quiet. The officer blinked. She was clearly stressed and unhappy.
"Speak."
"The cure I have in my system will not help anyone here, besides Passey," I started off quickly.
"That isn't how it works. Only my body produces the antivirals. None of my twenty three children, boys and girls, produce it. It is only me and as you might guess, there simply isn't enough of me to go around. You can imprison me unjustly and milk me like a cow and you'll get a few thousand doses a year."
"Sadly, each dose will be less effective than the last. Stress breaks down the antivirals. Even then, at best the antiviral will only last two years before you need another dose. If they take me, where do the rest of you stack up with the 100 million women in the Federation? When do you think you will be getting your dose?"
"What I have will not save you," I repeated. "Given any free will, I will not help any of you."
"You helped Officer Passey here," Metzer pointed out.
"Which is the best hope you have. Despite being raped and imprisoned by a cop, gang-raped then having law enforcement laugh me out of the office, being driving to Isobel Diaz's party by a cop so I could be raped yet again,”
"Are you getting the picture? I have no reason to help any woman whatsoever. You have been the bane of my existence since I was sixteen," I huffed. The look the cops were giving me wasn't one of sympathy. It was wonderment that I'd been allowed to babble for so long. "Why should you let me go?"
"Because I love Detective Angel Kristi. I'm truly enamored with Kuiko Sano and Capri O'Hara. I like Aniqua, Venus, Samantha and Roni. I think Francesca Silverhorn walks on freaking water. I'm erotically drawn to a warrior named Zara and a psycho I call Flame. I have every fucking reason to hate every woman who has ever lived, but I don't."
"I've pulled love out of hate. I have forgiven a few of you for your indifference to my suffering. In time, I may forgive others and do what I can. I will never have that chance if you take me away now. The Human Race will never have that chance. Lieutenant, I'm not asking you to save everyone. I'm asking you to save one person, me," I finished.
"What are you going to do if you I let you leave?" Metzer asked.
"I haven't a clue. I didn't come here with a plan or a schedule. I couldn't let her child die while I could do something. It is that simple. If you let me leave, I'm most likely going to walk around a bit and think. I didn't ask for this and it isn't my birthright. I was a lab rat and I should have died."
"I didn't, so I have to go on," I told her. Worst 'let me go' speech ever. My lecturers at Bowden would have tossed me out on my head.
"Clear a way out," Metzer commanded.
"Ma'am?" a senior officer questioned.
"He's not charged with anything," Lt. Metzer stated. "Until the possession of Magic Sperm becomes a crime, detaining him would be illegal."
Thankfully, Passey kept her mouth shut about my bracelet. They could hold me for that.
"Lieutenant, Mr. Jensen," one of the doctors stepped up. "If we could have a blood sample to verify Doctor Vasco's findings."
"I need to walk and clear my head," I evaded. "Let me think about it."
I was out of that emergency room as fast as decorum would allow. Not only was my mind teetering, my body was coming down from the rush of adrenaline followed by the exhaustion of a twenty minute sex session. In the parking lot, a black racing bike pulled up. The owner had on black leather from neck to toe with a black helmet hiding her features.
As I went to climb on, she handed me a helmet. Her size was an indicator but as the bike rocketed away, the sensation I received when I hugged her tightly gave her away. She sped off into parts of the city I was unfamiliar with before ending up at the unfinished expanses of an elevated highway, one of the Mayor's pet projects.
I dismounted, handed off my helmet then walked over to the unfinished edge. I sat down, letting my feet dangle off into the darkness. I guesstimated we were 20 meters up. I'm not an engineer, architect or surveyor so what did I know. Flame took off her helmet and followed behind me. She pulled out her pistol and chambered a round.
"How did you find me?" I wondered.
"Cops talk on their radios too much," she enlightened me. I turned my body so I could look at her. She aimed that huge fucking hand cannon my way. Looking down the barrel was definitely worse than trying to hold the damn thing. She slowly started smiling.
"This is where you start begging," she smirked.
"I want to live, but, I can't think of a convincing argument not to shoot," I confessed. Flame spun around, dancing with her arms outstretched.
"Come on, give me something," she laughed.
"Well, I'm glad you survived the shootout," I mused. "I wasn't sure at the time if I cared one way or the other. After thinking about it a bit, I think I'd be, less if you died."
"Less'?" she stopped spinning to regard me intensely. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"I really can't claim what I said was a rational statement," I answered.
"That makes even less sense," exulted happily, fucking psycho. "Are you trying to be crazier than me?"
"What? I am crazier than you," I declared. Flame looked skeptical. "Would you go out on an uncompleted bridge with yourself while unarmed? Bitch, I got you beat hands down."
"You're right," she concluded. "I hate people who are right about me." She aimed again. I stared. She looked trapped between bottled rage and something she couldn't identify. "What have you done to me?" she asked as she lowered the gun. "I think you are fucking with my mind, mesmerizing me somehow."
"People don't mesmerize other people," I told her. "Look at it this way; leaders don't take control, followers surrender it. They surrender it because the sane thing to do is live and the leader convinces you that the best life you can hope for is with them. The sane person can always chose to die instead, it is just very hard to do. I'm not doing anything to you, Flame," I explained, "beyond liking you for reasons I don't feel like grappling with right now. I'm certainly not offering you a better life in any way, shape, or form."
"But I like killing," Flame declared. "I'd like to kill you."
"Killing isn't so much. Death is inevitable for us all. Since we all die, why not try to make our deaths worthwhile?" I mused.
"Worthwhile," Flame scoffed. "Like saving people? Sparing your life?"
"Bitch," I chuckled, "you know me better than that."
"Killing is hastening the inevitable. Saving a life is holding death back for another few seconds, a 'fuck you' to the Universe. It changes things," I said.
"Killing people changes things too," Flame laughed. "I'd rather serve Death."
"There is no serving Death because Death doesn't need you. Death is going to win no matter what," I pointed out.
"Even if killing someone buys you a few more seconds, minutes, hours or days, Death will always come back for you because it is friendless and remorseless. It always wins in the end," I related. Flame stared at me. She raised the gun, staring down the barrel at me. She let it drop, raised it again then finally lowered it.
"That's why you fight," she whispered. "You are defying Death, trying to make a difference. You've seen people die, most likely horribly, so you know what death looks like. When you look into my eyes, you don't see Death, you see me."
"I think I do," I nodded.
"I like you. I never had a boyfriend before," Flame enlightened me.
"We are not boyfriend or girlfriend. I'm not a cheater," I responded.
"Pish," Flame chuckled. "Not like that, dipshit. I mean me 'liking' somebody. I can't remember liking anyone before. Sure, I tolerate Little M and, Davia, but this is different."
"My whole life I've always wanted to kill people. To me it is like breathing. It's what I want to do. I don't give a shit if someone deserves it. I want them to die. I've always felt that way, until now. I don't feel the overwhelming desire to kill you. I can't say I understand it, it is so alien to me," Flame murmured.
After several minutes,
"You going to leave now?" she asked.
"Nah. I've got nowhere to go really," I shrugged. Flame came over, sat down next to me at the edge of the bridge and dangled her feet off into the dark.
"Going to beg me not to kill you?" she continued.
"Not really thinking about it actually," I grinned at her.
"Want me to go out and start saving lives?" she teased.
"I'm happy where you are right now," I bumped her shoulder with my own. "Unless you want to go and play Good Samaritan, then go knock yourself out."
"Are we friends, Israel?" Flame inquired as she rested her head on my shoulder.
"I guess so. Despite my traumatized background and your violent nature, I'm willing to accept we can get along," I reasoned.
"Are you going to beg for your life now?" she snickered.
"Bitch, were you not breastfed as a child?" I retorted.
"Not much; I choked out my mom when she tried to burp me," Flame laughed hysterically. We'd been down this road while she was punching and kicking the crap out of me at Isobel's party.
"What do we do now?" Flame wondered out loud to the night sky above.
"You could always give me a parachute then shove me off the bridge," I suggested.
"There is no way,” she began giggling as she got the joke, "it would open in time."
"It's the false hope that often keeps us going," I pointed out.
"Do you want me to get you a gun?" Flame asked me as we rocked side to side at the edge of a long fall to a messy death.
"Well, I wouldn't mind some lessons and a pistol that doesn't threaten to blast me back to the 20th century," I stated. "A few guns for my lady posse wouldn't suck either."
"I'll see what I can do," Flame sighed happily. "You know, if I let you get away, you die and I didn't kill you myself, I'll never get over it," Flame mused. "I want to spend time with you too. It doesn't make sense. It's a,”
"Conundrum?" I offered up the word.
"Yeah, conundrum. Good word, Beatrix Potter," she snickered. "See, when you do shit like that, I don't get angry. You aren't trying to get one up on me, make me look stupid just because I didn't get much schooling."
"I'm not. Survival is a much under-appreciated art these days but that's about to change, Flame," I confided. "You are a survivor."
Flame tilted to the side, turned her torso and looked into my eyes.
"That's it. You are nice to me and not in a way that says you want to screw me, or 'begging me to let you live' sort of way. You are just fucking nice to me and I don't get it," Flame seemed truly confused.
"I'll give it a go. No one understands us. When we walk into a room, no one knows what's going on behind our eyes. You and I are totally different in what we are going through, but in that total separation from our peers, we are alone. I guess that is what I meant when I called you pure. You are pure in your thoughts. There is no confusion," I pieced things together.
"But you confuse me," Flame pointed out.
"And you don't think you confuse me? Ha, I should be running the fuck away from you every chance I get. For a guy who claims to not be a masochist, I certainly have a lot of violent women in my life," I chortled.
"Hmm” she then paused. "Want to have sex?" This may have been the first time Flame had actually asked a man that. I imagined she normally took it.
"Sorry, I never have sex with a woman whose clit is bigger than my cock," I teased.
"Bitch!" she wacked me with her gun while she giggled and swinging her legs back and forth.
"Woman, don't make me come over there and make you beat me up with that flyswatter of yours," I teased. Nothing was said for a while. She snuggled back to me. Outside our little world, sirens blared while the city lights turned the night sky into a dirty, charcoal-colored haze. In that tiny segment of time, we were both comfortable in our skins.
Eventually Flame found the silence unbearable. "What is it like to be tortured?" Flame inquired.
"Different tortures do different things," I tried to explain.
"Some things are so painful that the pain is all you recall. The phantom of that agony carries on long after the act is done. Other tortures are humiliating. They erode your understanding of the world. You lose your perception of the peripherals, collapsing into your core values even as those crumble apart."
"Finally, there are those thing that seem good, but are actually bad, sexual torture. They wreck you emotionally and leave your body's responses cross-wired. All of those break down your mental picture of yourself, chip you away until you are some creature you don't recognize, but that's the person you now have to live with," I sighed.
"I'd rather die," she punched me very lightly.
"It is never that easy," I explained. "Keeping you alive is part of the torture. Making you want to die then stealing even that hope from you."
"If I was about to be captured, would you kill me?" Flame prodded.
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Bitch, why?"
"I couldn't deal with looking in your eyes and not seeing that madness there, a purely selfish reason," I confided. There was a long silence.
"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, and meant it," Flame breathed deeply.
"I wouldn't want to do it. I don't consider myself a killer," I sighed, "but I'm the only friend you've got."
"That's the damn truth," she snickered.
"I'm sure Davia would shoot me, but I think it is because she wants to be sure I'm dead," Flame giggled.
"Davia? Do you mean your partner? I call her Silent and I really didn't want to know her real name," I groaned.
"Why's that?" Flame asked.
"Take it easy, Lady and Gentleman," a soft female voice called out behind us. "No sudden moves." I looked to Flame. She was giving me a toothy smile and pumping her eyebrows. I raised my hands, slowly.
To be continued
By FinalStand for Literotica