Vanishing Manhood: Part 16

Vanishing Manhood: Part 16

VANISHING MANHOOD: PART 16 THE END OF THE CRUEL PEACE & THE START OF THE DESPERATE WAR. Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand [https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1395985&page=submissions]. Listen to the ► Podcast [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/VanishingManhoodPart16.mp3] at Explicit Novels [https://feeds.feedburner.com/explicitnovels]. https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/16Zara16.jpg [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/16Zara16.jpg] A frightened Mother Mouse will devour her young; similarly, a frightened culture will devour its future. Roni was still working away while the rest of us were in the man-cave once more. Flame seemed happy taking long pulls on the Wild Cherry and smacking her lips. I wasn't surprised she wasn't worrying about Silent. Her wounded comrade was a reliable pair of guns guarding her back and nothing more. Emotional bonds were contrary to her psychopathic nature. Jethro had been sitting on his 'throne' for fifteen minutes, deep in thought. "I guess it is about time we got those guns," he announced as he stood up. His words captured everyone's attention yet he didn't appear to care. He started walking from the room and the rest of us followed along. The need for guns had brought us here in the first place. His path led us into his walk-in pantry. One wall of shelves rolled out and to the sides on seamless wheels. Beneath that spot was a steel door, a tad over one meter wide and three meters long. It must have been spring-loaded because once Jethro yanked on the hole that only one finger could fit into, the portal swung open and back. Stairs led down into darkness. Jethro turned around and followed them out of sight for several seconds. Then a light came on. The drop looked to be around four meters. Angel went next. A strange level of respect allowed me to go third. Flame was at my back then Kuiko, Venus and Lavender. The floor was grey-painted concrete. The room stretched out five meters in each direction. 80% of the room was covered with stacked crates with a variety of markings on them, a few even in English. Angel was incredibly tense. I didn't know why, but I had a feel for her moods. The other 20% of the room was an immaculate workbench. Considering Jethro's aversion to cleanliness, this was definitely something noteworthy. "What is all this stuff?" Venus asked. "Weapons," Angel preempted the old guy. "This is an awful lot of weapons," Lavender muttered. No one wanted to say it, so I did. "Jethro, you were in the MRA, weren't you?" I tossed out there. I'd told the nation that the MRA was dead and here I was looking at a small armory of illegal weaponry. Jethro had been walking over to the work area. He turned and looked us over. "I'm going to do something I don't normally do," Jethro met each of our gazes. "I'm going to explain myself. Let's pull some assault rifles out of those crates, make sure they in top shape then go upstairs 'cause I am only going to do this once," he stated. "These people don't know how to use firearms," Angel cautioned angrily. "They'll never learn if they don't have one and we are approaching the point where we'll need everyone to be a shooter," he countered. "Let's get to it." And that's what we did. These weapons had been top rate stuff at the start of the 21st century. Now, they weren't quite antiques, only old. The basics of using some sort of explosive substance to propel an object at your target remained the same. In the case of firearms, it was remarkably the same, or so Angel said. Kuiko went straight for the Russian-made Surface-to-Air missile, because she thought that the Cyrillic writing looked pretty. It was one of the few exotic devices. Most were clearly Federation military, or Police issue, undoubtedly stolen from some armory at some point early in Jethro's terrorist career. I was irate that Kuiko looked so cute with a bandolier of ammo packs and an automatic shotgun. Angel insisted that only she and Jethro took loaded firearms upstairs. We could carry the gun and the ammo as long as the ammo wasn't in the gun. Venus argued that this defeated the purpose of having the weapon. Angel countered that if she couldn't load it quickly, she probably shouldn't have it in the first place. I caught Flame bagging up a few boxes of ammunition, but Jethro didn't seem to care so I let it slide. It fell to Flame and me to lug extra rifles and cartridge belts up to the rest of the group, being the strongest, Angel was keeping an eye on Jethro and he was keeping an eye on her. Fifteen minutes later, we had gathered back in the spacious dwelling space of our host. Jethro, on his throne, finished off a glass of Wild Cherry and began his tale: "I was seventeen and in high school when the Gender Plague first broke out. I was quarantined for a month before the Supreme Court decided it was illegal and set us men free. I took the opportunity to enlist in the Navy, the U S Navy, because of the man shortage when I was released. Went through Basic, the Specialist School, I was a Damage Control Technician which meant I was a fireman, then a second outbreak happened. I was quarantined for three months this time. I got out and was assigned to the destroyer Michael A. Mansoor. During the Relief of Athens, we all damn near died. Of the eighteen men and women in Damage Control, only me and one other rating enlistee survived. My officer, an ensign, stayed behind to make sure the forward ammunition storage was secure. Our Chief Petty Officer had us seal the ensign in. We saved the ship long enough for the crew to be pulled off. The Mansoor exploded. We were never able to locate her body. She was some R O T C kid who was only with us four months. I never knew her first name until the ceremony after it was all over. She may have been the bravest human being I've ever known. After that, I served aboard the Little Rock working anti-piracy in the Philippines and Indonesia. Since I took part in some land action during that tour, the Navy, I hate using the term Federation, reassigned me to Shore Patrol duty. I took police training and everything. I did another tour aboard the Little Rock the following year then they dragged me off when Congress decided that men couldn't be given combat assignments. Seven months later, they discharged me and thousands of other men as part of a down-sizing program. Unfortunately, the same act of Congress that exited me from the Navy also forbid me joining the fire, or police departments. A buddy of mine was able to find me work in a machine shop where I learned the craft of welding. After that, I was a good boy. I dated, joined a motorcycle club and built up a nice life. When the Gender Inequality Act was passed I was more annoyed than angry. All that changed when I was twenty-nine. See, I had some male friends who joined up with a group called Male Awakening. They were a group devoted to the repeal of the G I A through political means. Things including publically supporting male-friendly candidates and working against G I A-supporters through boycotts and the like. I was rolled up in an FBI sting and those ladies informed me that they'd make those charges go away if I agreed to go inside and spy on Male Awakening. They knew I was friends with those guys. I told them to fuck off, fought the charges and beat their trumped up bullshit. By the time I cleared up my legal troubles, they took the M A down anyway. It seems their Treasurer took off with their funds after leaving some financial irregularities. That was a total load of crap because they never caught that guy, but they did manage to put away most of the group's leadership. A few months later, I ran across one of my buddies who had asked me to join Male Awakening. He'd heard about my troubles and over a few beers, he hinted that the fight wasn't over. This time I bought in. This incarnation didn't have a name. We weren't public. We dug up dirt on corrupt female officials by any means necessary. We destroyed the careers of the worst oppressors of men. Violence wasn't our aim yet we armed ourselves for what we knew would be a harsh crackdown. We operated in small cells, but I knew we had lawyers, judges and even a few Congresswomen on our side. Since we had bracelets by that time, we used women to communicate between cells. Our cell received word of the major Federation sweep, a day before it happened. We were able to move most of our material stashes to new locations before they fell on us. The Writs of Exclusion were abominations. No one ratted me out. For weeks I sweated bullets every time I saw a cop car, a mysterious unmarked car, or heard a siren. After a few months, I began searching for other survivors. We came together in secrecy, united in our fury. The Federation had broken every law and covenant so we agreed that waging a guerilla war was our only option. A week later I bagged my first cop. Put a bullet under her left eye at 80 meters. She was dead before she hit the ground and it felt good. They, the Federation, had murdered my country and now they were paying. Three days later, I waited for a Federation agent to walk out on her porch to see her little girl off to school. I walked up, told the little girl her mother was a whore and put nine slugs into that whore's body and I felt just fine about that too." "No," squeaked Kuiko. "That is the way it was," Jethro gave Kuiko a paternal look. "Those women came at me with every dirty trick they could come up with to take away my freedom and I put them in the grave for it." "You murdered people," Angel growled. "Fuck you, Cop. The Gender Inequality Act was passed by women to enslave men. No man ever voted on it," Jethro snarled. "Men tried to use the system so you cheated. Boohoo that your bosses didn't figure out our only option left was violent resistance." "I killed seventeen government officials and my only regret is I didn't kill more. Not one was a fair fight. Kuiko, I killed that bitch in front of her daughter because I wanted her buddies to come around and see the anguish on that little girl's face. I wanted them to worry about their own daughters. I wanted them to know they were at war." "You are a murdering scumbag," Roni snapped. "I disagree," Flame shook her head. "You are morons if you think he should have called out every freaking target and said 'hey, I know you have all the back-up in the world and I'm alone so I'm giving you ample warning that I'm going to try and kill you.’" "You are a psycho," Aniqua pointed out. "It figures you would agree with him." "He didn't have a choice," Samantha intervened. Her speaking so decisively was almost as stunning as her words themselves. "Having a gun might not have saved Israel against the Aurora Slasher, but it might have discouraged those sorority students." "The politics of payback," Flame laughed. "Jethro might sound like some sadistic bastard to the rest of you; not to me. His tactics are sound and they work. Kill enough cops and women stop joining the force. The authorities either crack down harder, bringing more over to your cause, or they concede to some of your demands." "It is how a very small force fights a much larger adversary," Flame concluded. "That's still cold blooded murder," Angel reiterated. I didn't know what to think. Jethro butchered defenseless women. The President doomed millions. I admired what Zara did except it was some of the same things that Jethro did, yet she was a soldier and he was a terrorist. "There is no resolution to this argument," I spoke clearly and loud. "Short of violence to silence the opposition, there is nothing we can do to rectify the past now. Jethro, why did you stop being a member of the MRA?" "Spokane," Jethro answered. "I had no problem with killing cops and Feds, and intimidating their families. They were part of the problem." "Those high school girls though, that made no sense to me. We weren't at war with the female gender; we were at war with the government and their policy of enslavement. Killing random kids was wrong and I wouldn't be associated with it. I talked this over with my cell, they disagreed and I told them that if I saw any of them again, I'd kill them," Jethro clarified. "I had several caches only I knew about. I waited a few months then moved up to the city, slowly bringing everything up here as I had the time. A year and a half later, my old buddy was caught up in a traffic stop, shot it out with the cops and was killed. From stuff they found on his body, he rolled up the rest of the gang, but the other members didn't know my real name." "The G E D came out and talked with me. They kept an eye on me for a few years. I behaved and grew old so they eventually went sniffing elsewhere. We wouldn't be here now if I hadn't gone drinking with Kuiko and let slip about my gun stash," Jethro smiled at my little friend. "I knew she'd never betray me, and she hasn't." "Now I've got a front row seat to the End of the World so I get one last chance to make a difference," he said. Yeah, this old guy wanted to go down in a hail of gunfire, no doubt about it. "Good for you, you butcher," Roni glared. "I won't do this." "I signed on to make a difference," she continued, "not to hang out with cold-blooded killers. I'm out of here. Is anyone with me?" Aniqua stood up. Venus seriously hesitated before joining them. Venus was looking right at me. Angel's eyes were boring holes into me as well. "Israel?" Angel inquired. I could go with them. I could stay. I could beg them to stay. I could stay silent and let events drag me along. My mind was playing Jinga with the vortex of intellectual input and buzz saw emotions that were boiling forth. "Angel, Roni, Venus and Aniqua sit back down," I stood and stated. It took them a varying number of seconds to realize I was Not pleading. "Israel, you don't get to decide that for us," Roni replied evenly. "We let you go to the Arena last night. This time, we get to choose and we are leaving. If you are the man I hope you are, you will come with us." "At the same time you're pressuring me to give more to the group despite my misgivings, Roni, you are giving less?" I countered. She started to protest. I raised my hand for a reprieve. "Hear me out," I continued. "It isn't that simple. I am not questioning your moral quandary about working with people too comfortable with taking human life. It is very real and I feel it. The difference is that you would rather be right and dead than alive at any cost. You've never had to make that call before, but I have and I'm alive to tell you that you are wrong, Roni." "You are dead wrong because dead does nothing. The living can always come back and make something better. Hell, that's what my life has been about the past week and a half. The rest of you are neophytes going into this. I'm not. I know exactly what it takes morally to survive. Don't make me follow any of you out that door. I love each and every one of you." "I do love you, but am I obligated to jump off a cliff for you? I respect your choice to choose suicide. It would be wrong of me to rob you of that freedom. Please don't try to make this about affection, compassion, or loyalty though. It is a matter of life and death. Roni, you are trying to kill me, which I'm okay with. I resent you killing Angel, Aniqua and Venus," I stressed. "That's fucked up reasoning," Roni fought back. "Those two get off on killing other people. They enjoy it. Why can't you see that they are just as likely to get you killed as keep you alive?" "I will agree with you that Flame gets off on watching people suffer and die," I nodded. "It is the way she is. I don't know Jethro so I'm not ready to make a judgment call on him." "I do know that both of them have exquisite weapon skills and I'm pretty sure we are going to need them before we are truly free," I explained. "I would prefer an all-male super commando squad who had passed every psychological test ever made. That doesn't appear to be on the menu, so I'm willing to hold on to whatever resources are available." "So you are willing to risk all our lives for the sake of expediency," Angel glared. "Absolutely," I shot right back. "In case no one is paying attention, I am not in some government facility helping working on some kind of serum to fight the new plague. In case you missed it, everyone here agreed with my decision to flee instead." "Roni, Angel, you do realize that young lady who saved me this morning is going to die, right? I could have insisted she come with us. I could have given her the cure. I didn't. None of you asked me to even after I told the whole globe of an unstoppable wave of death coming for everyone. I'm not asking you to take responsibility for my decision because it was mine." "I'm begging you; understand that it isn't the end of morality to stay. When the madness ends, you need to decide if we will still be worthy of continuing on. You'll no longer be part of that equation if you go now," I declared. "Are we supposed to ignore that he was a terrorist and she is a homicidal maniac?" Aniqua said. "I'm not homicidal," Flame grinned. "I'm a psychotic sociopath. I don't randomly kill people. I do it with malice of forethought." Jethro didn't show a desire to defend himself. "Israel, Flame almost killed you last night," Venus pointed out. "Why would you stick around?" Why was I sticking around? "Israel, don't do this," Angel said. "You promised me you would stop running into danger." "Angel, why do you have to be right and I have to be wrong?" I sighed. "Because those two are dangerous criminals," Roni answered. Didn't Roni understand that I was a far more callous killer than either of those 'criminals' and I didn't have to lift a finger, or look at a single grave? BEFORE THE CURTAIN CALL Shortly after nine-thirty that night, the awaited and feared seismic event happened in China. A few minutes past sunrise over Hong Kong the rains broke and a fleet of helicopters and V T O Ls (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) were heard over the city. Helicopters were not unknown in this center of wealth and commerce. Well over a hundred all coming in at once was noteworthy. For many of the citizens of the city, it had been a restless night. After midnight, police sirens had been wailing all over the city. Some even heard gunfire. What they didn't know was that for the past four hours, private security forces working for the most prominent communities and some special police units had raided the middle class communities of the city and stolen their men. They forced the men into protective suits and hustled them back to the high-rises that sheltered the most 'important' people. This was an outrage that they could not get away with, had China still functioned normally. A new order based on brutal social cannibalism was taking place. The rich were taking their vassals and their new 'acquisitions' to their estates far from the population centers. This was supposed to be a gradual process except late yesterday afternoon the other Great Families learned that one of their own had their first reported case of this new 'flu.’ They could wait no longer. They would have preferred to flee under the cover of darkness, but rain and the danger of so many helicopters and V T O Ls moving around forced them to postpone until first light. You didn't have to be a connoisseur of conspiracy theories to figure out what was going on. Men had been stolen and now the rich were bugging out of town in one big hurry. Late Friday, the 'flu' began to appear in the population in a big way. The workers in the hospital were afraid, not fearful, afraid. The councilwoman from one of the poorest districts called the Head of the City Council, no answer. She called one of her colleagues from one of the richest districts, no answer. She was a savvy polit

Vanishing Manhood: Part 15

VANISHING MANHOOD: PART 15 ISRAEL JENKINS AND THE LAST REAL MAN ON EARTH. Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand [https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1395985&page=submissions]. Listen to the ► Podcast [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/VanishingManhoodPart15.mp3] at Explicit Novels [https://feeds.feedburner.com/explicitnovels]. https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/15paisley-Lavender15.jpg [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/15paisley-Lavender15.jpg] Your mind is your arsenal, fortress, and armory. Your words are potential weapons you give to your enemies to assault the citadel of your soul. In a final act of feminine superiority, Dimples had destroyed Western Civilization. She had to share credit with the T2 virus for the rest of the global catastrophe and I was sure she was okay with that. For me, it was the start of my flight to freedom. I could do no more damage there. That wasn't really important because at this stage of the disaster, Capri had been willing to use her stun gun on me and drag my ass to the elevators if I hadn't cooperated. "Ladies, I have to run. Take care and be good to one another. I wish you all the best of luck," I signed off. "The Final Word for today is 'Resilience.’" The presidential staff cut her connection. Maribel nodded good-bye and returned to her job. She was telling the audience that GNN would start running continuous updates on plague outbreaks and work toward a cure. What else could she say? No one chased Capri and me to the elevators. No one on this floor was jumping ship. In a sad reversal of fate, they were the ones realizing there was nowhere for them to run while I had finally found a way out. Special Agents Fraklos and Vabishi met us at the elevator. They must have made it up seconds ago. "Time to go, Israel," Fraklos gave me a weary half-smile. "We are going to try and bluff our way out the back. For some reason there are over a thousand young ladies gathered out front." "What?" I gasped. "Less impressive sex, Bitch," Capri muttered. Her phone rang. She saw the number and groaned. "Hi, Mom," Capri plastered on a happy face. "Honey, did you overnight that shipment?" Mom got straight to the point. "Oh, I tried Mom, but he fountained so much into me that I gagged. I ran to the bathroom, threw up and accidently hit the sensor, it all got flushed down the drain, all three loads," Capri sniffled. "You What!" her mother snapped. "I know Mom, I've let you down again. I know I'm a failure, but I promise to try harder. I can go down on Israel right now," she turned the phone my way for a second. "I'll suck him off before the elevator makes it to the ground floor and, I don't know, spit it into my purse and send that to you," Capri pleaded. "Ah, I'll call you back," Capri's Mom stammered and the connection went dead. "Whore," Capri griped. Her phone rang again. "Damn it," Capri growled. "This is new," her tone changed when a video of an ambulance appeared. It took Capri a second to figure out who the driver was. "We need to get here," Capri showed the screen to Fraklos and Vabishi. "That's straight through the mob," Vabishi looked at her dubiously. "We won't make it." I was paralyzed by the thought of me in a sea of female bodies tightly packed together. I had done this. Since Monday, I had done all this to myself. I was an emotional masochist. I hurled my fractured psyche at the very things that I knew would tear me up inside and chisel away at what little mental reserves I had left. Angel. Angel's eyes, her smell and the way her lips parted slightly before she spoke. How her eyebrows came close together before she unleashed her anger at me, often deserved. The way my heart felt when I cried while she held me, the absence of my shame and her lack of condemnation, or pity. She wouldn't always like me. She did love me. I couldn't give up my faith in that belief. Not now. "Angel is with Roni," I spoke up. "We are going to the ambulance." "Israel, I'm not sure we can get you there," Fraklos observed. "That's okay, you are not coming," I grinned at her. "Capri and I have a better chance on our own and quite frankly, if I don't go for Angel, she'll come for me. I might as well make it easy on her for once in our relationship." "Israel,” Vabishi started to try and talk some sense into me. "Give it up," Capri sighed. "He loves her. He's going. I'm following along because I have jack-all for job opportunities now." Capri really liked me, or maybe she was remembering her promise to kill me once we survived all this chaos. I preferred to think she liked me. "We'll run interference with the police and reservists while you two make a break for it," Fraklos shrugged. "It hasn't been a pleasure in the slightest and thank you for making my life long dreams and ambitions totally irrelevant, Israel Jensen." "Stick with Dimples. She'll see you through," was my only advice. The elevator doors opened and a half dozen female faces were looking our way. Barring strict protocol or routine, if someone acts like they know what they are doing, people tend to accept that they know what they are doing. That was the scenario Fraklos and Vabishi were playing out. The Metropolitan Police and the Army Reservists had orders concerning me. To the police, "this was a Federation matter.” To the Army, "the President had just been arrested for treason so they had to go back up their chain of command to figure out if they had valid orders or not.” They were FBI, they were elite FBI. Could they be mistaken? Could they be helping a male fugitive from responsibility make his escape through a mob of girls? That was crazy talk. Besides, I didn't look like a man about to make his bid for freedom. I looked almost catatonic. That was because I was nearly catatonic from fear. Less we forget, I was gang-raped by a bunch of girls close to the age and social make-up of the ladies outside, right down to them being interested in me because of the sexual favors I had willingly given to another. I had no internal hero to call upon. I never viewed myself as heroic. I was a victim and an exceptionally unfortunate one at that. There was no shard of my psyche that could do this. 'You are free to do whatever you want', bunny hop with a smile, 'you were that man before you came here', holding hands, 'thank you.’ I had not given up the will to live for 87 days. I had exited that sorority to graduate at the top of my class. I walked into a sea of policewomen to save the life of a boy I had never seen and would, most likely, never know. I was not a coward. I was a survivor and a good man, a good human being. I was a survivor. Survivors were rarely respected. I wasn't a hero, but I could pretend to be one for as long as it took to make it into Angel's arms. They only tore heroes apart after the fact. We walked out into the light downpour. Capri opened my umbrella. I didn't need it. I needed to be seen and I was. They called out my name and pushed forward against the line of patrolwomen. The reservists had an answer for that. Those hexagonal devices I had noticed coming in were sonic crowd suppression devices. They ruined your equilibrium and made you vomit. From both ends, the women at the controls began working over the mob of young women. Two ranks beyond the cops, women began going down in droves. The soldier closest to us operating the device was suddenly showered with shrapnel. She received a few painful lacerations to her upper arms, but was okay. She was still trying to figure out what had happened to cause the near-total destruction of her weapon when the device on the other end of the column shut down. The rotator assembly had exploded, fortunately sending slivers of composite away from the woman operating that weapon. That soldier was going 'what the fuck,' when the first one figured it out. "Sniper!" she shouted over her com-net and ducked down into her vehicle. The reservist sergeant in charge of this detail didn't panic. She starting figuring out what kind of casualties she was looking at, none, and where the fire was coming from. The first sonic technician was doing those physics herself. It took her a few seconds to work the trajectories and she didn't like what she came up with. She should be dead, as should her comrade controlling the other device. That sniper hadn't missed. She'd hit exactly what she was aiming at without killing any of the soldiers involved. "Sergeant, rounds coming from the south, down Marlowe Avenue. She must have at least five meters of elevation, if not more," she said. That was only a few acres of real estate. Right about then, the fifteen seconds those sonic devices effected someone after they had been subjected to the attack wore off. The policewomen had easily held back the closest two ranks of girls the devices had not affected. Now those girls behind those two ranks were getting back on their feet, covered in their own vomit. Those girls were very, very angry. They surged forward. The policewoman in charge gave the order to use tasers while calling all units to rush to the scene. Patrol cars had been coming this way since the growing number of girls was detected. They had been moving in cautiously so as to not incite an incident. It was a slow escalation of force. Now they turned on their sirens and came running. More cops would have come running if not for another calamity a few kilometers away. Keverich mobsters had attacked and killed the Mayor and most of her entourage. That was what the reports were saying anyway. Beyond that, the police were still rounding up and detaining thousands of men. They were stretched thin. The police went to tasers, a few girls went down, and then one girl countered with wasp spray. In many ways, it is worse than pepper spray. For starters, it has a longer range. This girl dowsed the cop who just tasered her friend. This woman closed her eyes and got an arm somewhat in the way, she was partially incapacitated. The girl then turned the stream on the cop to the left with the same results. The patrolwoman on the right had her eyes wide open when the spray hit her face and went down screaming. The police cordon collapsed. This was not the Arena. The ladies wanted their plight to be recognized, or their support of me to be known. There was anger, not bloodlust. The blinded policewoman was picked up by a group of girls, carried forward to one of the light transport vehicles and told to stay put. Cops were taken down fighting. A few tasers were stolen, no firearms. They wanted GNN to come out and record their voices and witness their defiance. The reservists were putting a second, smaller, line together when I shouldered past them from behind and ran into the press of girls. Even those who weren't here to support me recognized me. Capri and I were quickly engulfed. I could feel the last sands of my resolve falling through the hourglass. I had to hold on just a little more. I scanned the group of girls closest to me, seeking the lead lioness. "I have to get to that ambulance," I shouted my appeal. She seemed worried and confused. "My girlfriend is there," I explained. There was that tinge of jealousy. There was also that spark of romance, a modern day 'Tale of Two Cities.’ This lead lioness began shoving other girls, getting their attention and forming a protective knot around me. My words came back to haunt me. "We have to save one life, just one life, His!" she pointed at me. "Come on ladies, let's go." This group of total strangers forced a path against the tide, working toward the rear of the mob. I never let go of Capri's hand. I couldn't have made it this far without her and I wouldn't have been worthy of continuing on if I let her go. An eternity later, the pressure eased and we emerged on the far side of the mass of humanity to see Roni and Angel outside the ambulance, waiting for me. Angel took two steps toward me, I took a few steps toward her, I was losing the ability to count. "She seems awful old," the lead lioness remarked boldly. I doubted Angel cared. "Love is timeless," I turned and told my unknown saviors. "Thank you." "Come on, Ladies," that girl laughed. "Let's go get them," and she led that dozen young ladies back to their chance to be famous. "Come on, gang," Roni shouted over the noise. The reservists were using their middle vehicle's grenade launcher to bounce tear gas grenades off the surrounding buildings thus disrupting the crowd. "Capri, you and Israel get in the back," Roni helped me along. I saw Angel get in the driver's seat. We were hustled into the rear of the ambulance, Roni shut the doors and ran back to the front passenger side. The vehicle rolled away, only accelerating when we were clear of the chaos. For a second, I thought of Doyle Crane. I wondered if he was finally living the life he'd always wanted, upholding the long tradition of investigative journalism and unrelenting social commentary. "You did it, Israel. You made a difference," Capri comforted me. "I think a vacation is in order." Mouth agaip, I stared at her then I started laughing. It was my crippling hysteria; it was a deep vibrant echo of a former life. "What's so funny?" Capri studied me. "I haven't had a vacation since I was ten and my Mom and I spent a few days at a rustic little bed and breakfast in upper Minnesota," I enlightened her. "After that, it was all summer camps, therapy, college and finally here," I shook my head. "I've never had 'nothing' to do since 'that night'," referring to the night the Aurora Slasher took me. "Nothing?" Capri chuckled. "Can you take a sexual joke?" "I'll do my best," I sighed. "When you get tired of sitting around 'doing nothing'," she 'quoted' with her fingers, "I think there will be a few women around who can help you with that." I wanted to joke back with Capri. She was fun. Those mental reserves? Those last grains were slipping past. I couldn't muster the strength to do anything more than keep my eyes open and my mind receptive. Angel drove the ambulance to an abandoned, pre-Plague warehouse west of the city. We switched to a passenger van that Angel had liberated from Police Impound. As the women were transferring the medical equipment from the ambulance to our new ride, I overheard their quiet discussion. Someone had to retrieve Venus and Samantha. Roni had contacted Samantha and those two were going to the Farmer's Market and wait to be picked up. They were coming to the conclusion, with Capri's urging, that Capri take Angel's personal vehicle. Roni was a paramedic with a skill set our group desperately required. I needed Angel to be there when I mentally returned to the world. Capri joked that she was a lawyer; a profession that was about to be rendered useless. I wanted to say something except their logic was unassailable. Capri was right, Roni and Angel were correct in agreeing with her and I couldn't volunteer myself. I was in no shape to make the drive even if the other three would let me go. I knew they wouldn't. I wasn't going to make a false declaration when I knew the outcome and the sacrifices being made on my behalf. Venus had rubbed everyone the wrong way at least once. Samantha, Samantha was the Quiet One. She didn't stand out, sparkle, or shine. She was steady and unspectacular. They were also part of us and the tribe had decided to not leave anyone behind. Capri left in the car, going south. Angel, Roni and I headed west for a few more kilometers. We came across a home off the beaten path, decent acreage, mostly wood covered with the dwelling not clearly visible from the road. As we turned down the gravel driveway we saw a sign; 'Trespassers will be', with white tape over the bottom word(s) and the addendum 'use your imagination' finishing the warning. The house was a sprawling one-story affair that didn't look fabricated. It looked woman-made, except that woman had an incomplete knowledge of architecture and home construction. Angel pulled around to the side of the house. It appeared we had been told to park there. "Where are we?" I murmured. "Kuiko and Aniqua's co-worker's home," Angel informed me. "I understand he's disreputable, if not downright criminal." "We figure people won't know to look for you here," Roni added. We piled out of the van, gathered, then approached the door. There were two hand-made, woodcarvings on either side of the main, side door. One was 'Jethro McFarlane' and the other was 'If the cunt ain't fresh, I ain't interested.’ Kuiko's information came flooding back. Still, who said shit like that? Angel drew her sidearm, put it behind her back and knocked on the door. Aniqua answered fifteen seconds later. "Hey," she smiled with some relief, "you made it. Where is Capri?" My mind was rattling along as best it could. Aniqua didn't know about Capri because they were keeping their phone chatter to a minimum, that made sense. "Israel, Israel?" Aniqua repeated. "Huh?" I managed. "Why don't you come in and take a nap?" she offered. "Get a bite to eat maybe?" "Going down the home stretch," I muttered while trying to sound upbeat. That was it for me. My mind informed me I was out of gas by shutting down. My demons would always exact their toll and I was all out of the 'soul' currency they craved. THE END OF THE DAY I woke up in a strange bed with no recollection of how I got there. It stank. I was putting definitions to what smelled as I raised my head and looked around. Whoever lived in this place liked to kill animals, as witnessed by the stuffed animals and animal head wall ornaments, and had an all-consuming aversion to housework in any of its forms. There were clothes on the floor, every piece of furniture was stacked up with something. On the wall the bed was pushed up against were animal horns of various kinds of creatures and every prong had a pair of women's panties dangling from them. I could almost touch them. When I moved I realized the ceiling above the bed was covered with a huge circular mirror. This made sense because the bed was circular too. Where the fuck was I? I almost missed the eyes at the 'foot' of the bed. They were big brown eyes, slender eyebrows, a smallish nose bridge and bangs over the top quarter of the light brown or yellowish forehead with the rest of the hair pulled back. "Hey, Kuiko," I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. The entirety of her head popped up. "Hello Israel, are you feeling okay?" she asked compassionately. "So-so, I guess," I shrugged. I had pushed myself up on my elbows. "How long have you been there?" "About twenty minutes," she grinned. "I had to wait until everyone else was pre-occupied." "Did everyone get here okay?" I maneuvered up to waist level. "Yeah. Capri came in with Venus and Samantha a few hours ago. They brought most of your clothes," she related. "Jethro's bimbos made it too. They have some stupid names, Paisley and Lavender." I reached out and gingerly tapped the walls of my mental collage. "Is Mistress Sano displeased?" I teased her. Kuiko rose higher. I imagined she was on her knees. She was also really happy. I was playing a game with her which suggested I was recovering from this morning's psychic marathon. She shook her head. "I'd really like a hug if it isn't too much trouble, Kuiko Sano." Her teeth shined white-bright. Kuiko crawled up the bed. I thought she was trying to be non-threatening, so she slithered up the bed to be level with my lap. She placed the side of her head to my stomach and slowly, tenderly hugged me. "Can I ask a favor?" she whispered. "I'll do my best," I offered. "Please stop trying to hurt yourself so often. Make an effort to avoid danger instead of running straight at it," s

Vanishing Manhood: Part 14

VANISHING MANHOOD: PART 14 ISRAEL JENKINS AND THE LAST REAL MAN ON EARTH. Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/VanishingManhoodPart14.mp3] at Explicit Novels [https://feeds.feedburner.com/explicitnovels]. https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/14Debra14.jpg [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/14Debra14.jpg] Your mind is your arsenal, fortress, and armory. Your words are potential weapons you give to your enemies to assault the citadel of your soul. At the Sentinel Eloise gave me the plan for the day. Doyle was in the 'bull pen' with the other journalists. The President of the Federation was going to make a personal appeal for me to join the National Government in dealing with this crisis. In case I was feeling 'uppity', there was going to be a special taskforce of the FBI around to make me behave. "Do you know who is in charge of this Watch Dog group?" I inquired. "Some hot shot out of the Capital named Enola Treyvon," Eloise studied me. "I think you've met her." How did Eloise know all this shit? "Yeah, we've met. She opted not to keep me in custody at the time," I replied in the least informative way I could think of. "There has to be a story in there somewhere," Eloise pressed. "Which you are not going to get," Capri intervened. "Did you miss Israel nearly getting killed in the shootout yesterday with your favorite mobster and the cops?" "Since neither you, nor Mr. Jensen were questioned, I would discern you both made it out before things got too bad," Miss Granger smirked. "So, are you going to GNN this morning, Israel?" Eloise turned to me. "Sure, why not?" I shrugged. "What's your exit strategy this time? I don't think 'running down the stairs' will work out all that way with the FBI standing around waiting for you," she prodded. How in the hell was I going to get out? Dimples would give me a head start, but what then? I needed something, a big distraction, that didn't involve people dying. 'Never be ashamed, of my best, efforts?' The chaos that had haunted my life had me leaving multiple things undone, like laundry, and the Sexbook account Troy Berry had created for me. Flash mobs had expired during the Gender Plague. A generation later, women rediscovered the spontaneity or activism of their parent(s). I had never participated in one. I had been invited to a few, but anything associated with women and the word 'mob' was a nonstarter for me. This morning, I was relying on a piece of social media I'd never used to do something I had avoided like death itself. Here was hoping I still had fans. I had to borrow Capri's tablet and off I went. I had over 32,000 'friends.’ There were 1,754 unanswered requests. "Israel?" Capri asked gently. Both she and Eloise looked over my shoulder. "Wow, you are a rock star," Eloise mused. "I didn't know Sexbook had a Fan Fiction page," Capri noted. I was back to wanting to die of embarrassment. I didn't deserve this, as in I wasn't worthy of this level of attention. "What's the plan?" Eloise prodded. I began referencing locations and ages of my 'friends', created a list and launched this appeal. I am the real Israel Jensen. I'm not promising anyone any sexual favors whatsoever. The last 48 hours have been a mess and I've done things you must all view as questionable. I regret only that I cannot do more for more people. I have always been drawn to passion and I've been lucky to share that love with several women close to me. I am sick to my soul that I let my wounds keep me from the thing that turns out to have healed me the most. I owe Angel and Kuiko, whom you may know, and Freya and Venus whom you do not. Debra, I apologize I couldn't be more. M. In an hour, I am about to do what I've done every other morning this week, something colossally stupid and definitely something that is going to piss people off. This is going to be my last hurrah, for some time, if not forever. Odds are I'm going to end up in either Metropolitan or Federation custody. I'm going to make a run for it anyway. That's where all of you come in. I need your help. I have nothing to offer in return. If any of you are crazy enough to help, gather in front of the GNN building at 8:15 this morning. If you don't show up, never be afraid to say you had a chance to do something asinine and pointless then wised up in time. May whatever face of the Divine gives you comfort be with you. Israel Jensen I was hoping to hear something in ten minutes, or so. I had barely handed the tablet back when a message popped up. “What is your favorite color?” GoldenDoe34 sent. Huh? Kelly Green. My Mother had a recreation battle flag of the Irish Brigade in our living room at home I answered. “That's not what your page says” she pressed. That's because Troy Berry set up the page without consulting me I replied. “Where did you and Venus have sex?” PandorSweets sent. I'm not sure I should say. That was between us I countered. “She said in her review of you” PandorSweets stated. What the? My bracelet is broken. I didn't think women could post reviews I wondered. “Hold on” GoldenDoe34 posted. Then, Freya posted; Thank you, Israel, for saving my life and the life of my Son. Remember, you were the man who cares deeply before you ever came to be at my side. Venus added; I should hardly need to say that the sex was wonderful. It was. As any woman who has ever had intercourse with him has said, Israel gave his all as if I was the only woman in the world that mattered. What was special to me was what came after we made love in the shower. As we dried off, he reached out and held my hand. He took me to his bedroom then asked me to close my eyes as he dressed because at his core, he is a shy, gentle soul. This may not make sense to many of you, but at that moment I felt I was important to him. He let me inside his fractured world, told me I could stay by his side as long as I liked and I'm grateful. "Less impressive sex, you dummy," Capri whispered. She was smiling. "I would have never guessed Venus could be so eloquent." Thank you GoldenDoe34. I don't normally read my reviews. I don't engage in sex for the words that come after I am gone, but for the sight, sound, taste, touch and smell of that one woman at that one place and time. I don't like being graded, or rated. I would certainly never degrade a woman by boasting to the world our deeply personal experience. I know it is common, accepted practice for women, I wish it was not so. God! It is you! PandorSweets exclaimed. “I agree. No one could be so enchanting, yet irritating at the same time” Verbena Queen joined in. “I'll contact my clubs” “I'm texting my senior class” GoldenDoe34 added. "Oh hell," Eloise snickered, "what have you done?" I had no clue what I'd done. Seriously, why would anyone assume I knew jack-all about a dating site? Why would I think I would know what I was doing? I'd avoided, or been kept isolated from, sexual encounters for most of my adult life. I would not claim ignorance. I knew the basics of social media. I knew that I had an odd appeal and that Troy had preyed upon for his own sick desires. Now I was using the affections aimed my way for my own ends. The best I could say about my plan was that I'd told the truth about what I wanted and the total lack of reciprocity on my part. I was using their sexual fantasies to urge them toward rebellion. I was walking into a feminine nightmare of my own creation. A horde of women (I hoped) was going to engulf Capri and I, shield us from our pursuers and then be abandoned to their fates. I would do my best to warn them before I ran. I didn't know what else I could do. Yesterday had been a splash of water to the face. Today, the oceans were boiling. In New York City, a construction worker with a steel pipe went berserk. He killed two policewomen at a food truck, critically injuring two more and one bystander. Only after two other officers confronted and shot him fatally in the neck did they realize he'd added body armor and enough padding to negate the effect of tasers. Yesterday, fewer than five thousand men threw themselves at the barricades. Today it was fifty thousand and counting. We only detected the rumblings at this early hour about what was coming. In Atlanta, men all over that city walked off the job at ten a.m. Thirty percent of the men walked. In Hawaii, the governor ordered that all gatherings of more than two men were banned. The backlash was overwhelming. Eighty percent of all men on the islands boycotted, everything. Middle School and High School boys walked out of their classrooms. Local G E D departments 'detained' the organizers. That also backfired. Protestors swarmed G E D stations, staging sit-ins and getting arrested. Jails were flooded. Men and women signed a petition demanding the governor step down. In Managua, sixteen male college students gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice building with two bolt cutters. Publically, they cut off each other's wrist bands. They made no attempt to flee and were promptly arrested. In Phoenix, college and high school boys attacked the metro system with stink bombs. In Boston, men of all ages pelted Federation, State and local office buildings with Red, Green and Blue paint balloons; the colors of the Federation. In Calgary, they parked trucks in intersections, disabled the ignitions and abandoned their vehicles. Except for Hawaii, there was no rhyme, reason, or organization to it, beyond things at the very local level. The gem of it all was that, outside of that one incident in New York, my brothers were taking my lesson to heart. It wasn't 'get the women.’ It was 'we will no longer sit silently by and be ignored.’ Things were about to get much worse. Congress had passed the 2nd Amendment to the Gender Inequality Act, to take effect in 90 days. Marriage was gone. The women in Congress weren't morons, but they weren't men either. Even those who were wives didn't truly understand because they weren't husbands. The greatest burden to fall would be, again, on the men. On Sunday, the ex-husbands would have wept. On this Wednesday, they were fighting mad. Whether you call it a Cyclone, Typhoon, or Hurricane, there was a forgotten element to this storm. Forgotten by almost everyone, even me. They were the daughters. Specifically, daughters with fathers who were now seeing their papas being ripped away and they weren't happy about this at all. Only a small number of marriages had children of an 'effective' age, say, over the age of 12. The average family in this group had, on average, four daughters. If you also had a son, well, he was already working out his 'man' issues. These daughters, they understood. They had been marginalized and neglected. Their society had just pooped on them in a big way. Their parental structure had been severed in twain. The parent they saw the most of, and in most cases, were closer to, was being forced out the door. No one had consulted with them in any God-damned way, shape, or form. With the bang of a gavel, their primary caregiver was told to vacate in 90 days, or else. The law was very clear, men had to permanently abandon their shared dwelling and maintain their own domicile so they could be 'accessible.’ That's right, little girl. We are throwing Daddy into some sleazy bachelor pad where any skanky whore can use and abuse him. Oh, and lest we forget, Dad probably has a few 'nieces' as well, with Aunts Suzy and Karen coming by so often it should be of no surprise. These young women were traumatized by the destruction being levied on their lives. They weren't sure about what to do, until the boys stood up and marched off to fight their little, hopeless war. Then the girls knew exactly what to do. It started with a trickle of support but quickly became a torrent. There were still fewer daughters or nieces with Daddy or Uncles than the total number of men. The difference? Women felt entitled. They were not afraid of the cops, or repercussions. Yes, the Hammer of Justice was about to fall on their heads too. They just didn't see it coming so they swarmed into the streets in far greater numbers. Yes, this meant the police and military reserves were about to use tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades on 14 and 15 year old girls on streaming video. Do you want to make things worse? Remember, the majority of marriages are in the top tier of society. No, that's not Josephine the electrician's little girl. That's Augustine on the Board of Directors of your Bank who just saw her baby take a tear gas canister to the gut. Then you had Patty, the friend. She was watching Carmella heading downtown because they are turning Carmella's Dad, a nice guy, she's met him several times, into a man-whore (whom she couldn't possibly afford on her allowance). She probably had some teenage fantasies about him too, though she'd never tell Carmella. The more she thought about it, the more Patty decided that she was not going to let some wacky old bitches, who didn't understand today's modern woman (like Patty), tell her how the world should work. She imagined Carmella's dad would be grateful, maybe really grateful. The more she thought about it, the more Patty was sure he'd scoped her out a few times. Suddenly, joining Carmella and sticking it to some cops sounded like tons of fun with a 'real' possible pay-off at the end. Carmella's dad was going to see her as a grownup woman now. Yep. Patty gathered up two of her pals who were bored anyway and talked them into helping Carmella. She showed them a picture of Carmella's dad working out in his home gym to seal the deal. Carmella was happy to have three of her buddies joining her. 'Do they think her Daddy will be happy with their protest?' 'Yes', Carmella assures them, 'her Daddy will be very happy she has such good friends.’ The three girls smiled. In twenty minutes, one of those friends was thinking that calling a rubber bullet 'non-lethal' was patently deceptive. Dialing this all back to me, I had told all my fans where they could gather to do 'something.’ Somewhere along the line, they informed a pissed off daughter. Suddenly, all those pissed off girls whose sperm donor had hung around had a focal point for their frustrations. They knew I would be at GNN. It stood to reason the cops would come and get me, it was my thing. The girls no longer had to storm a police station, or government building to get their message across. There were going to be plenty of police sitting out in the middle of the street with no walls to hide behind. This was about to give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Daddy Time.’ With the coffin so full of nails, there was one more to go in. Even after forty yours of the Gender Inequality Act, men were still essentially men, especially teenage 'men.’ A hundred years ago women took to the streets in parts of the Federation, stood up for their equal rights, cultural liberty, took birth control pills and burnt their bras. Men marched with them. I was sure a few actually believed in the cause, equal rights. Most believed in something else. Women had for centuries clung to a mythical virginal status. During the sexual revolution, women were giving it away. No ring, payment, religious conversion, or promise required. Hell, sometimes you weren't even required to say anything at all. In high schools and colleges all across the country, hormone-racked boys were watching girls stand up and walk out of class. In many cases, the rich girls. These guys didn't care about marriage. If they only had sex once in a 14 day period, something was seriously wrong with them. They could get girls all the time, walk alone anywhere for fifteen minutes and they'll find you. So why would they join these privileged young woman? Passion. These young women were passionate about an issue that didn't involve bondage of some kind for the boys down the line. Men, men who are not like me, liked passion. They liked it a lot. Now, my high school and college brethren weren't stupid. They weren't marching alone. That's how you ended up naked, God-knows-where with fifteen different phone numbers and 'Call Me' scrawled over your body in lipstick. They did the socially conscious thing; my brothers called all of the brothers in their group and they traveled as a pack to join the girls. This became a twofold problem if you were a law enforcement official on the street outside of GNN. Last night you gunned down, or otherwise eased into a terminal state nearly a thousand 30, 40, and 50 year old males. Now you are staring down bands of teenage boys interspersed in a sea of hostile girls. Using non-lethal dispersal means would 'normally' break up these children except, what would happen when the girls saw young men dropping next to them? Fear would become fury. Shock would become rage. Why? If women had been part of the crowd at the  M A L Rally, something very different would have happened. Women would have died in droves because women defended men. They'd been doing it for forty years, in their cultural minds anyway. It was why they felt entitled. Male economic input to the world was negligible. It was a woman's world. The provided for us, kept us safe (mostly) and if they took advantage of us a tidbit, well, they were doing all the work, right? These small knots of teenage boys had joined this female protest. The boys had become 'their' boys. Sure, that meant many of them were going to be 'asked' later to perform, but that's pretty much why most of them were there in the first place. That also meant when a cop put one of 'their' boys down, the women got protective. It was what their culture had been beating into their skulls for forty years. This did not mean the young women respected the boys, it meant they wanted to get fucked just as much as the boys did. Twenty girls see one boy go down and they suddenly realize he's going to the jail, or the hospital (no one dares think 'morgue'). That means no cock for them. Back to that passion those guys came sniffing after like the horny dogs they were. Hormones don't play favorites. They erase reason and common sense in both genders equally, especially when you are young. That young lady knows that the boy those nasty evil bitch cops just knocked down was going to fuck her to the stars in a few hours. Sure, they'd never actually made eye contact, but she knew, she knew. Now, you Evil Cop, you are about to experience why this frustrated teenage girl burned out her last two vibrators with her unrequited lust. If you are the cop in question, you realize that this teenager had nineteen friends in the same basic mind frame and they are all coming for you. If you are a Metropolitan Policewomen, the past 12 hours have been tough for you and it's getting tougher by the second. Most likely you haven't gotten much sleep. Worse, you've seen the respect for your career start to plummet in the eyes of your fellow (female) citizens. 178 of your sister officers died, a few quite horribly. Nearly a thousand males died. There was no way to look at this in a positive light. Yesterday's male demonstration had been an annoyance; so comical that she probably joked about it with fellow officers. Today there had been too many to hold back. As she knew it would, chaos had ensued. Allowed to their own devices, men had inflicted their own brand of discipline on the ride to work. Foreheads were getting wacked all over the city. Women were learning some

Vanishing Manhood: Part 13

VANISHING MANHOOD: PART 13 THE FINAL HOURS OF NORMALCY. Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand [https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1395985&page=submissions]. Listen to the ► Podcast [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/VanishingManhoodPart13.mp3] at Explicit Novels [https://feeds.feedburner.com/explicitnovels]. https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/13Flame13.jpg [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/13Flame13.jpg] In Peace, daughters bury their mothers. In War, mothers bury their daughters. The death of sons is too painful to recount. "What does this mean?" I inquired gently. Brandi looked up at me and smiled. "It means we are not all going to die," she breathed deeply for the first time since this experiment began. "Israel is too nice and shell-shocked to ask you what the hell is going on, but why don't you enlighten me?" Capri stood on the sofa, on her knees, looking over the three Vanishers. "The Plague has broken out in China and made its way to the West Coast. We have operatives and men we'd like to rescue in threatened areas. We were hoping to inoculate our people so that they don't get infected. Infected people have to be left behind," Jen explained. "How many men are going to die?" Aniqua groaned. "Wait, you said 'our people'," Capri's eyes narrowed. "Why would you need to inoculate woman against the Plague?" "This is a new plague," Zara finally spoke. "It is killing everybody." How exactly does a person respond to that? I wanted to erase the last five seconds of my memory and trundle along like nothing was wrong. Well, more wrong than was normally wrong for me. "Israel, you have to vanish, now!" Capri insisted. "No more screwing around. Let them take you out of here to someplace safe." I did not want to deal with the logic or emotion behind that statement. Capri wanted me to go, knowing she was going to die in some unpleasant manner. "Why did you call me Frank?" I turned to Brandi. She was setting up another machine that had tubing and a really sharp needle. "Inside joke," Brandi's smile tried to be comforting. "See, I'm Brandi the Veterinarian, Jen works for Nasa and you're Frank the Duck." "I don't get it," I mused. "Are you really a vet, as opposed to an honest to God doctor, or paramedic?" Kuiko wondered. Aniqua groaned once more. "Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, courtesy of the University of Minnesota and Uncle Sam," she confirmed. "I thought I'd work with K-9 units, but after my initial evaluations, they informed me I had another valuable skill set that I'd been overlooking," she added. "What would that be?" Capri muttered. "I'm really good at blowing things up," Brandi chatted while setting me up for the blood withdrawal. "Oh God," Venus gulped. "Were you girls behind the Arena bombing?" "Yes," Jen replied. "You killed all those people," Aniqua stood up angrily. "Wake up," Jen growled. "What did you think was going to happen when society crumbled?" "Billions are going to die. We can't save them. We, the movement, have to bring the government down before we can move to stage 2 of the plan. If you ladies can't deal with that, you are hanging around with the wrong man," Jen continued. "Israel?" Samantha called out. "I figured it out, Samantha. I didn't know at the start, but I figured it out. Everyone you know, who is not Angel, or Roni that is not in this room will be dead in two months," I sighed. "Oh, you are trying to save as many as you can," Venus murmured. Had I a cohesive plan, or an iron will, maybe I would have understood that enough to save more. "Do you know why Frank is so willingly giving up his blood right now?" Jen asked the group. "He's got hot-sexy eyes for Zara?" Kuiko offered. Jen snorted. Zara's back was to me. "Well, that and, look around the room," Jen told them. "Do you know how many women are on the list of those to be taken to safety?" "None," Capri responded. "Precisely, and he's trying to change that. Of the nearly twenty-six hundred men we have 'vanished', less than twenty asked for another woman to be saved, every one of those asked for their mothers," Jen stated. "Israel asked you to save us?" Kuiko sounded surprised. "Asks the woman who was fuck-stunned for thirty minutes," Jen joked. "He hasn't asked. He didn't have to. That first Sunday, he was on the list. The following Saturday morning, he was off it because he had a female attachment. We kept an eye on him, just in case." "Saturday night he took a beating you cannot imagine because he wouldn't betray Angel Kristi," Jen explained. "Men don't do that. We never give them the chance, but Frank did. We didn't know what Carabolix, 37 was yet. All he had to do was tell another woman that he loved her and treat her the way he treated Angel. He wouldn't do it. He was back on the list." "Since then, somewhat inadvertently, Frank has been working his ass off to help us with our plans," Jen mused. "We didn't think he knew about our background until today, but he put all of the pieces together, seconds after freaking out and walking into a wall. If he hadn't been screwed-up in college, and wasn't a man, he would be on the fast track to academic recognition, political office, or the head of some conglomerate." "Instead, he's a mess, but he's a mess that gets to live as the world dies," Jen finished. My mind was still in the kitchen. Brandi's equipment wasn't powerful enough to see either the T1I1 or T2 viruses, but it was clear that my guys had cleaned house. It also meant, "You brought a sample of the T2 to the city," I whispered to Brandi. She nodded. "It was risky, but we had to know if we had to write off dozens of our people. Now," she sighed happily, "thanks to you, we don't. Some of those people I've known for years." "Until Frank," Jen continued, "we weren't planning to save anyone but the chosen men, despite their disadvantages. Now, your small crew might make it." "You'll save us because he loves Angel?" Kuiko inquired sadly. "Love conquers all," Capri murmured. "Basically yes," Jen nodded. "Because he loves all of you, you might just make it." "That means I get to have sex with him again!" Kuiko exulted. Yeah, the world was going down the crapper, billions dying, civilization as we'd come to know it was fading into darkness, but having sex with me again made it all okay with Kuiko. She was wonderful. "Me first," muttered Venus. Things calmed down after that. I was given a pillow for my head and two for my feet as I lay on the floor giving up two pints of my blood. Brandi was going to replenish me with two fresh pints of blood plasma to keep me going. Somewhere along the process, Brandi left for a spell and Zara came in. She took my free hand and held it tight. Our eyes met. She had some comforting glow about her. I was woozy and very tired, barely awake. "How did I get so lucky?" I whispered. Her eyes grew brighter and her glow warmer. "Get some sleep," she advised and off I went. (Wednesday) "Wake up," Capri was calling out quietly while shaking me by my shins. With no feminine face over me as I awoke, I didn't have to worry about freaking out. "Eloise called Kuiko and asked her to come back in and be re-interviewed." That was pretty sad code for me and Capri to come to the Sentinel offices. The cloak and dagger ratcheted up my worry. I sat up. The other girls were all awake now too. I came to a sad realization. I was a whore by necessity. I was trading my body for services. There was also no misunderstanding in the relationship either, except, maybe for Capri, and Kuiko, and Angel. Maybe I was simply a morose bastard filled with self-loathing and self-pity. I was being a jerk. "I'm going to take a shower now," I stood up and announced. "Venus, can I convince you to join me?" I wasn't going to have my sex life become a matter of 'turns', or a rotation. Monogamy wasn't going to happen. It was a selfish fantasy on my part and totally unfair to my friends, my female friends. Thank you, Kuiko. For a second, Venus froze. She was up and removing her shirt so fast it tore; she was trying to steal back that second. "Sure!" she declared. Venus rushed past me on the way to the bathroom. I could hear the shower coming on as I finished undressing, placing my clothes in my bedroom hamper. Damn, laundry day was overdue. That was a problem I'd have to save for later. At the moment, I had to make my way to the bathroom where a terribly frightening, and terrifically sexy, naked Venus was waiting for me with a burning hunger. I had faced the black depths of Flame's gun, a wall of angry cops and the threat of that unknown cop in the arena, so I could do this. "There are going to be some ground rules," Venus held up her hand. Uh-oh. "Whenever I do something that is starting to weird you out, you let me know, right away." "Uh, yea, wait, why do you get to set the ground rules?" It came out more as a plea than the strong voice I wanted to project. "I want to have sex with you again. I want you to want to have sex with me again. You don't have to treat me the same way you treat Kuiko, unless you want to," Venus grinned wickedly. "Now let's get in the shower before all the hot water runs out." "Trust me, that doesn't happen," I reminded her. Angel and I had a real, time in the shower. I followed Venus into the shower then began shifting around. I couldn't get her rhythm. It was like, "Are you a virgin?" I whispered. Venus gasped and her eyes widened. "What makes you think that?" she countered with bravado. "Let me rephrase, you are a virgin," I said softly. Another denial formed on her lips, but then she nodded. I quickly cupped her jaw and kissed her. I kissed her again then French kissed her. Her tongue was ready and willing. Venus had no idea what to do with it. I inched back. "Let your tongue follow mine. I won't bite," I soothed her. Her smile went from uncertain to aggressive. She wasn't Kuiko, Venus was unskilled but confident. She initiated the next kiss and took my advice. I had to break the embrace because I was not prepared for a tongue wrestling match. "Next: French kissing is not a contest finished with a three count," I joked. "You do know if you tell any of the girls about this I'll, I'll, I'll nipple twist Kuiko until she cries," Venus threatened. I was willing to bet the first idea in her mind was 'punch me.’ She was not Kuiko, not Kuiko, not Kuiko, I spanked Venus' ass. "No you don't," I challenged her. I was gaining solace in my mentorship and that let me wash myself clean of the corrosive toxicity that threatened my joy of life and take delight in Venus' body. "You hit me," she smiled. "I spanked you," I corrected, "and nipple punishment is my teaching technique. Find your own." Venus snickered, tried to stare me down then relented with a kiss. "Deal," she panted when the kiss broke once more. "I think I like being spanked." Oh, God. I dodged our next connection, going for her jawline instead. Her hands fumbled to redirect me, but I slipped past her efforts to her neck. I lightly kissed my way down to her left nipple, tickled it with my tongue then nipped it with my teeth. Venus' hiccupped, her teat flared and her body spasmed. Her hands insistently held my head in place. My hand drummed against her hip, giving her a gentle reminder of where the 'freaky' began for me. It took a few seconds, but Venus did relent, though she groaned as she did so. I switched to the right nipple, sucked the whole, half-dollar sized areola into my mouth then worried it briskly with my teeth while suckling like a starving infant. I could feel her muscles ripple around me. She pushed her breast forward, doing with her chest what she couldn't do with her hands. Her arms were flexing, her fists clenching and unclenching, her calves and feet pushing up so she could tilt farther forward. Venus was hissing her extreme arousal through her grinding teeth. My hand went straight to her nethers, my thumb hunted for a button while two fingers found a cave. "Ai, ai, ai, ai," Venus chirped. She was nice, juicy, warm and ready to go. I kept this up for over a minute. Her button came out to play and I began to tap on it like a telegraph signal. "Oh, fuck me Israel," she pleaded. "If I've been good, stick it in me, if I've been bad, forgive me, but please, please fuck me. I don't want my first orgasm with you to be from your damn fingers." "If that's what you want," I murmured to her with true affection. Venus was aggressive, but she didn't know what to do. Her hormones had to be racing. She couldn't order her thoughts through the storm clouds of her emotions. I was telling her that she was on the right course while she took control. I knew that would make Venus more comfortable and happy. I leaned against the back of the shower. Venus put one foot on the quarter meter lip between the tile floor or lip and the glass door and wall. She pushed up, balanced her hand on the far wall and poised crotch on my stomach. I wedged my left hand between our bodies. I straightened up and rubbed back and forth before Venus trapped it and slid down. It was easy for me to see women as leering, lustful villains wanting to take from me. That was not a far-fetched picture based on my experiences. I had let that caricature stop me from reaching out. It had stopped me from really seeing women for what they were, past their prejudice of my gender and their perceived place for me in their world view. They were confident yet fearful, emotional and confused, practical dreamers and romantic pragmatists. The fascist proletariat, good one Capri. We were blessed by our differences, not divided by them, we complemented one another. Nature never intended for us to be at each other's throats until one or the other was dead or subjugated. Crap, the Vanishers kept getting smarter and smarter in my estimations. If you reduced the equation down to raw survival all the extraneous shit went out the window, pure democracy. You couldn't emotional, or physically, wreck another member because the group needed everyone working at their best so that the group could survive. The gender ratio would still favor the women, but even that was purely practical. It would take time to train the men to be equal contributors to the group. Men would have to earn the right to be considered an equal. This wasn't a carrot at the end of a stick. It was a goal with set mileposts and a graduation date. We would seize equality by our own efforts, free of doubt and the fear it could be taken away. And some of us would end up being devoured by tigers, or chipmunks, or whatever other ravenous monsters roamed the Federation wilderness. Things weren't going to be easy. "Oh God," Venus moaned loud enough to be heard across the hall, "this is so much better." I imagine she meant 'better' than artificial aids. She placed her palms against the wall on either side of my head, grinning triumphantly, while trying to leverage her hip gyrations with her limited mobility. I rested my hands on her ample, muscular ass cheeks, Kuiko's were smaller, but firmer. Venus' and Angel's were very much alike. I took over Venus' revolutions, lifting her free of her footholds. I could tell she was mildly surprised at my strength. Since I buckled under so often, it was normal to see my social weakness mirrored in physical under-development. It was too easy for women to ignore the enforced workout regimen of men meant we were indeed tougher than we looked. "Oh, shit-damn, that feels great," Venus purred as she added her thigh compressions to my lifting to keep control of her sensual stimulations. Debra had been nice, but it had been 'work.’ I didn't want to think about Magdalena at that moment. Angel was love, Kuiko was fun and Venus was, easy. She was easy in that she knew what she wanted, and once I opened the portal and showed her the correct pathway, she gladly took the lead. True to her word, she was experimenting in the things she could do to bring me pleasure, but it was all her. I could have sat back and made all the proper noises and she'd have been happy. I didn't cheat Venus. Once she had established her mistress-ness of the situation, I tuned up my own game. I began chewing on her breasts and teats, spanked her ass and played with her anus, kissed her with enough tongue to excite her sense of domination and bit her lips. My fount of cream first caught me by surprise. Normally I was more in control. I attributed it to the blood transfusion earlier as well as a lack of sleep. "Oh my God," Venus growled victoriously, "you came inside of me, you came." She struggled on with that sense of accomplishment for thirty more seconds. "Ah, Shit!" she screamed. Her wet cave clamped down on my slowly deflated cock. Then the waterworks began, both top and bottom. Venus began sobbing tears of joy. She coated me with thick, creamy fluids. Her body shook through an intense orgasm for nearly half a minute before her forehead fell on my collarbone. Slowly her head turned so that her mouth was puffing her breaths on my neck. "When are we going to do this again?" she panted. There was a pause as I was putting my own mind back in order. "If you say next month, I'm going out there and paddling Aniqua's bottom. I've caught you sneaking peeks at it when you think no one is looking." I was starting to think that I didn't need an Alpha female, I needed a God-damned referee. There was also another way to approach this, I discovered. "When do you want to make love again, Venus?" I murmured playfully. I saw the pleasure in her eyes. That was more than she hoped for. We hadn't graduated from mentor and student. It was wonderful seeing the dawning realization in her eyes. I wasn't going to be the problem, her female cohorts were. She'd 'won' me. She now had to face the wrath of her peers over that deed. Sure, she could say 'let's do it at lunch', but then she'd have to face down the other six women. With that came the understanding that Angel and Kuiko had convinced me to be available too. Monogamy wasn't going to happen so she would have to work it out with the other women. This was a totally different outcome than she'd expected. Having the upper hand in our relationship was a bitch. She couldn't even be angry with me because this was what she wanted. Welcome to equality. I could refuse to choose. There was no longer a power structure that required me to do anything sexual so I could freely concede the initiative to the ladies without giving up a thing. "Are you smarter than Capri?" Venus studied me, face to face and eye to eye. "Please God, tell me you are the smartest person I know," she teased me. "Please tell me you are smarter than that red-haired witch, because if she can trick me as easily as you just did, I'm never going to live it down." "Venus, I am happy to be with you here, right now," I replied. "That's all that matters to me." Venus kissed me deeply, pulled back and gave me several slow pecks on the nose and lips. "That was very sweet of you to say," she purred. She gave me another passionate French kiss. "You aren't going to answer my question, are you?" she glared. "Not in this lifetime," I grinned. We cleaned up and exited the shower. Venus gathered up her torn shirt, shorts, bra and underwear. I reache

Vanishing Manhood: Part 12

VANISHING MANHOOD: PART 12 THE RACE TO APOCALYPSE. Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand [https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1395985&page=submissions]. Listen to the ► Podcast [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/VanishingManhoodPart12.mp3] at Explicit Novels [https://feeds.feedburner.com/explicitnovels]. https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/12Venus12.jpg [https://archive.org/download/vanishing-manhood/12Venus12.jpg] 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. FINAL CURTAIN CALL What no one in the Federation knew at that moment was that we were racing for the final curtain call. The W H O knew that something was very wrong, but they were still digging, and desperately hoping they were wrong with what they were looking at. The U N was only learning of the footsteps of doom. They too were praying. The moment Judas took his thirty pieces of silver he had a date with the end of a rope, he just didn't know it. This time it wasn't the fault of those doctors, jurists and politicians from forty years ago. They had never intended for the extreme efforts of the different societies they were creating to go on forever. They were buying time. The problem was men stopped publically dying. The next generation of women would never know the flush sexual possibilities of their mothers, but they became comfortable with the system they had inherited. The men who knew what gender equality felt like; were too old to cause many problems and could be safely ignored. They were still searching for a cure, but no one was hopping mad about it anymore. Infant boys were still dying at an abysmal rate, but in the collective memory of womankind, we always had. They became complacent. The male voice diminished then fell silent. Twenty years ago, when key world leaders learned that the male side of the species was dying out, they had a choice. If they told the people of the Earth the bad news, the women feared that anarchy would ensue. The world economy would collapse. The civilization their predecessors had fought so hard to keep afloat would go under. It would be the End. Or, they could make the men soldier on in futility while women waited for a miracle. They had made a deal with the Devil, but the Devil doesn't deal in Salvation. He gave them twenty years. Old Nick was smiling behind his polite façade. He'd also provided them with the means of killing themselves. I was born a year before the Big Lie was concocted. Another boy, half a world away, was born a year later. Like me, he had his innocence torn away at an early age. Born on Java in Indonesia, he was kidnapped and sold to the slave trade. He could have ended up anywhere, but fate landed him in the Chinese port of Shanghai. By the age of twenty, prodigious amounts of performance drugs and continuous sex had rendered his mind a shell, a few memories still bouncing around. Outside of a small family circle in his native land, no one cared about the boy and no one would have known about him if he hadn't died. In the end, they didn't even care about his body or his name. The W H O named him Patient T2 Zero because by the time they found out about him, the only person who might have remembered his name was dead also. It would be poetic to say he struck back at his tormentors from the grave. In fact, women had stolen away any ability to know what he had done. The fact was that on the Saturday before I moved into my condo, his long laboring T1 antibodies, his reward for surviving infancy, lost their struggle to produce more guardians than naturally degraded. In those seconds, sometime after the lunchtime clientele returned to work, the most mutated version of the T1 virus ever seen 'woke up.’ The cluster of antivirals that encased it crumbled away. It attacked the first cell it came across. In minutes, that cell became a factory. Inside an hour, the antiviral or viral battle became a rout. Under normal conditions, the T1 Gender Plague manifested in three days and the male was dead in four more, max. The boy from Indonesia wasn't normal. He was fighting off some influenza that a few patrons had coughed on him. The housekeeper gave him something for that. He was 'profitable' after all. He had been given an injection at the start of flu season, as well. The boy's blood was a soup of medicinal drugs, aphrodisiacs and performance enhancers. Both his red and white blood cell counts were a wreck from long exposure to these substances. He was fed regularly, they only chained one of his legs to the bed when he was 'working' or sleeping. His throat had hurt so much that he hadn't been eating enough. Besides, his will to continue on was already gone. He was a prostitute, a sex trade worker, a slab of meat. If you get told that enough times, treated like that enough, it becomes all you know. When was the last time you saw a slab of meat fight to stay in one piece? Around four in the afternoon, the housekeeper came by, allowed him to go to the bathroom and gave him some food to eat. She wasn't overly concerned about him barely eating. The boy had a good run. He'd much more than made up the cost the 'providers' extorted from her 'community.’ She mused it was a pity they didn't have more Asian boys. They fetched more money. They couldn't be Chinese, of course. The police put you against a wall and shot you for that, so mainly they were Indonesians, Malay, and Africans. When she shackled the boy back to his pallet for the evening rush, she noticed his pelvic region and cock were enflamed. She checked, the boy was still feverish. She gave him something for the fever and doused his crotch with powder so as not to disturb the clients. Had she been forty-five or older, she might have recognized the onset of the Plague, but she wasn't. Even then, she could hardly be blamed for not understanding. No adult had died from the Plague in forty years. It was a childhood disease. In a final irony, two kilometers away was a very fine hospital. They would have recognized the ailment and quarantined the boy. He would have died, but the Human Race would not have, yet. The housekeeper was indifferent to his suffering. She had other boys to take care of before the working class women began flocking in with their hard-earned Yuan. In a final sad reaction to the impending crisis, she dimmed the light in his room so as to not upset the clients with the condition of his genitals. On Tuesday, as I struggled through the last few hours of my normal life, the boy's was clearly failing. The housekeeper was seeing the local patrolwoman off, with a freebie and the monthly 'allowance' money for the precinct when a junior attendant came running. The Indonesian boy the policewoman had just visited wasn't performing and the client was being noisy. She was feeling irritable and ill, so she went straight for the 'electrical stimulation aid.’ She soothed the client, jolted the boy's anus until his cock finally responded then left the room. She told the assistant to help her move the boy to the storeroom after the latest patron left. The dying boy was no longer profitable. She wasn't going to waste the drugs to simply put him down. One day without food or water would do the trick. Besides, she was angry, she felt like crap and her cunt itched. Inside that boy on that Saturday, the T1 inside the boy had become what was known as the T2 and it had made that last, great leap. It was no longer gender specific. The housekeeper wasn't even Patient T2 One. That distinction fell to a worker at a large electronics factory close by. On Tuesday night, she and some co-workers went out for some drinks after their shift ended. A good friend was heading out into the countryside for a wedding. A man from a nearby village was marrying into her village and she wanted to attend, much to the ribald teasing of her comrades. On Wednesday morning, a stewardess with Air China stopped by to see her sister who was home sick with the flu. The woman teased her ill sister about going to 'those places.’ The stewardess wanted to make sure her sibling had enough food because the stewardess was going to be gone a while. She had a short hop to Nagasaki, Japan, and then a long one to San Francisco. There was much she wanted to do in the Federation city, not the least of was spending time with the boyfriend of one of her girlfriends. The first few patients wandered into the doctors' offices and emergency rooms Thursday afternoon and evening. They were treated for the flu outbreak that was currently running its course in the city and sent home. On Saturday morning, as I was being beaten by Flame at Isobel's party, the first terminal patient was rolled in by ambulance to that very fine hospital. It took them an hour to figure out what was wrong with her. They didn't panic. They called the W H O and Beijing. They went into full quarantine. As I was plotting out my little 'dowel rebellion', Chinese authorities were hot on the trail of the outbreak. The W H O had just flown a team out of Geneva. The 'community' that ran the brothel was figuring out that the trail led back to them. The housekeeper was dying in her room, alone. Patient T2 Zero had already died and been consumed by the flames per the criminals' protocols. His ashes went into the river. Along with them went the only known antivirals that had ever killed a T2. That evening, the local precinct raided the brothel and began rounding up the criminal 'communities' members. A third of the policewomen were so sick they wouldn't have come into work if it wasn't for the emergency. In Beijing, the Central government met to discuss the crisis. Containing the outbreak in Shanghai was a pipe dream. Multiple international ships sailed into and out of the port every hour. There was the river traffic every night and day. Train service linked the entire country with round the clock service. It had an international airport, two regional airports and one military airport. It had a naval base and over a division worth of troops in barracks around the city. Military personnel were always being transferred around. Their decision was totally logical. They would start shifting 'key personnel' to distant governmental bases slowly as to not attract attention. They would lean on the W H O not make its findings known until they were 'absolutely' certain of what was going on. Once the governmental, restructuring, was underway, they would notify other key communities so they could do like-wise. The word went out of the Security net where one woman saw it then decided to go see her brother. If you were a poor assembly line worker in Hangchow, you were boned. Not that it mattered too much. As I was making my spastic declaration on Monday morning, my time, they rolled in the first reported male case. He was definitely terminal. His community had done everything within their power, and budget, to keep him alive. Only in the final hour did they relent and bring him in for help. Such was the fear that the government would 'take' their man. The Chief of Staff at the hospital was 66. Across the dying man from her was the head of the W H O mission who was only 52. The Chinese physician started crying inside her protective suit. She'd been a medical student and later a doctor when the Gender Plague first struck. There was no doubt in her heart. The Reaper had come back for them all. The W H O doctor had lived through the Gender Plague, but only as a child. Her iron-willed Chinese counterpart was losing it and that vanished all her doubts. She raced as quickly as possible to exit the quarantine area. She had to call Geneva. She had to contact the U N. If drastic measures weren't taken right now, she ran into her Chinese 'Communications' officer. "The government needed a few hours to 'assess' her data before allowing a general announcement," she told the doctor. The W H O doctor was an expert in her field. So, the Communications officer repeated the same statement. This was a global pandemic. Same statement. Millions were going to die. Same statement. The W H O doctor tried to push by then saw the two soldiers calmly waiting for her. That 'few hours' turned out to be twenty-four. Tuesday, as valiant, delusional men were getting pummeled all over the Federation, the U N began to meet on the matter. Discreet inquiries were made to the Federation's U N Ambassador about Carabolix-37. An hour after those four men in San Francisco got their asses handed to them over a collection of sticks, six women and one man arrived at a hospital with flu-like symptoms. All but one knew a certain Chinese stewardess. The last one would later recall she had served the woman at a restaurant. Just over an hour later, the police and paramedics located her in her hotel room. She was too feverish to get out of bed. It wasn't until nightfall in the city that the Federation got the true picture. The Chinese government was bugging out, jumping ship, getting the hell out of Dodge before the Great Wall fell on their heads. Then the panic in the Capital set in. It wasn't just the Plague. China was a huge 'X' amount of the global economy and in a matter of days they were going belly-up. Fuck the Plague; dead people didn't eat, work, or vote. Millions of Americans were about to lose their jobs. Any kind of public assistance at this level was a lost cause. Soon there were going to be lots of lonely, hungry, pissed off women looking to lynch somebody. They wouldn't kill doctors and engineers. Doctors were their best hope for staying alive. Engineers kept the lights on. Lawyers and politicians they could do without, or so it was believed. Pulling a 'China' was no longer possible. Not only would people suspect it after the crowd in Beijing bolted, the Federation didn't have a 'Bunker' strategy anyway. The fact that no one had told the 'little' nations of the Doom on the horizon didn't seem to bother anyone there. Virtually as an afterthought, the Press Secretary turned to the Presidential Chief of Staff and said, "What about that lunatic on TV this morning?" It was a clear indicator in the room how bad things were that any of them would consider a man to be the answer to anything that didn't involve stress relief and impregnation. The President looked to the Attorney General who was thanking her lucky stars that this male idiot had stuck around after making an ass of himself to the Nation. "I have a team on him right now," she stated confidently. "Why isn't he in custody?" the Minister of Defense questioned. "We had him in custody, but let him go," she responded. She was leagues above the city's old Police Commissioner. "There was nothing to hold him on at the time and he's under round the clock surveillance. He's ours when we want him." She looked to the President for the order. That woman thought about it for a second. "Ask him," she ordered. "Ask him to come in and help his countrymen and women out in this time of crisis. Be nice." "If he refuses?" the AG wanted clarification. "Snatch him, of course," the President directed. "Have Congress declare him a National Treasure as a legal pretext if you must, but bring him in." "What if this is all a hoax of some kind?" Health and Human Services chimed in. "Then we claim he is a promising lead, wave him in front of the Europeans so they don't panic too," she smiled. "In two or three days we will have something in place for when the dam bursts, but right now we need calm." As they were filing out of the room, the AG put the plan in motion. No one liked what they heard. "Riot? What riot?" the AG blurted out. "What explosion?" "Oh my God! Is he among the dead?" "What do you mean you don't know? Check his bracelet!" The AG gave the President a worried look. "It gave its emergency signal then cut off, did it?" Everyone was looking at the President once more. She was the team's lead striker. "Well, find him, damn it!" the President snapped. "Find him before his body decomposes, or whatever it is that dead bodies do." "Madam President," the AG said solemnly. "The men are rioting in the city, hundreds dead including many police officers." "Hundreds of men? We killed hundreds of men? Oh, shit. Tell me it was a bomb that did it. Please tell me it was the MRA," the President groaned. "How did this happen anyway? How did so many get in one place?" "It was the  M A L rally, Madam President," the National Security Advisor delivered the crushing news. The  M A L was the President's baby. Congress was going to crucify her. Now she started hoping for the Plague to break out soon. That would distract her critics long enough to do, something. "Madam President, I can have two battalions of air mobile and one battalion of Rangers in the city in three hours," the Minister of Defense pledged. "We could use this as a pretext to round up the men in the city," the Minister of the Interior suggested. Several voices yelled 'No!.’ "There are 300,000 men in the city. Where do you plan to hold them?" the National Security Advisor reminded them. "We use Army troops to round them up with support from the police," the DM stated. "We train for this kind of mission all the time." "There are also 3.8 million women in the city," the National Security Advisor asked. "What do you plan to do about them?" "We will call out the reserves," the Defense Minister answered confidently. "Should we call out the reserves in all the  M A L cities, just in case?" the NSA persisted. "Do it," the President said. "This can be a good deception plan for preparing for the Plague outbreaks when they hit." The NSA took a quiet, deep breath. It had taken her twenty long years of crawling through the grime and slime of capital politics to get to this place and time, but with the help of her co-conspirators, she'd made it. The noose was closing on her. They couldn't put her in the room with that initial research group, but they could put her sister there. She had been a naïve congressional staffer when her sister sat her down and gave the bad news. It had taken her weeks to agree. Once she had, there was no looking back. It was treason without an exit plan. Putting the Reserves on the streets wasn't to maintain order. It was meant to put as many guns in as many hands as possible when the Big Lie came tumbling down. The NSA was guilty of treason, but the rest of the Cabinet was guilty of genocide. In a way, the genocide bothered her less than the callous disregard it was approached with by the guardians of the public welfare. Why had it taken weeks for her to decide to join? It wasn't the risk to her career, or the thought of the punishment upon getting caught. It was that they weren't planning to save everyone, or even the majority. No, from the outset, the plan was to save a tiny few. They weren't elitist or supremacist; they were brutally practical. At a critical point in a population, people stopped being doers and became 'consumers' and in the 'Vanisher' model, they couldn't afford anyone who couldn't pull their own weight. They predicted the world economy would collapse violently without hope of recovery. All their needs and requirement would be met by the group alone. There were no bulging bank accounts or massive stockpiles of goods and food. Cash would be useless and neither food nor goods in the amount to be useful could be hidden for long. They were avoiding as many traditional human and fugitive models as possible. That being said, they knew this was a long shot. A mythical gamble, but the only shot mankind had left. Twenty years ago, they had been called romantic idealists and their science ignored. Twenty years ago boys born of husband or wife duos had an infinitesimal greater chance of surviving than boys born of convict (drugged) fathers. It was a tiny enough fraction to ignore. In twenty years of study since then, that fraction had grown noticeably. Capri had called it a 'love conquers all' plan. It was and it wasn't. The conspirators had gone over all the data, even the W H O study in Kwaziristan. They had found nothing to explain it. Nothing at all. Yet men were living despite all the science that said they shouldn't. At that moment, it became an act of faith.