The race to apocalypse.

Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand, adapted into 17 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.

The

Persians marshaled 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.

They

weren't abandoning science. Science was telling them the men were

making it. The scientists just couldn't see why. The hope became that if

they followed through with this project the 'why' would present itself

finally, after years of failure to find a cure. They didn't know what

they had, but they knew it worked.

It

was simply too late to save global society. There were too few men

left. The whole marriage thing was about to be moot anyway; rendered

obsolete by act of Congress. The National Security Advisor had obtained a

lethal dose of muscle relaxants. She had to figure what the last moment

of her utility would be.

She

had an idea what her captors would do to her before they believed she

had nothing worthwhile to tell them and she had already decided to forgo

that experience.

Across

the globe, GNN was already showing the footage of several Metropolitan

policewomen in the Blazer Arena finding a suspicious piece of equipment

in the catwalks.

They

then put it back after a member of the arena's technical staff told

them what it was. It wasn't lost on the commentator that this device was

off camera for a minute or that the device was the origin of the

explosion as witnessed on multiple live feeds. It also proved that the

explosive device didn't actually kill anybody.

Oh,

it had started the stampede alright which ended up delivering a

thousand casualties, but the bomb itself killed no one. That was left to

the men trampling each other and the policewomen turning to deadly

force after the struggle for containment became a fight for survival.

There were twenty  M A L rallies across the nation. Only one was a

disaster but it was the only one that mattered as the sun rose the next

day.

(Behind the Scenes)

By

act of Science I had ceased to be a rarity of one. All seven of my sons

were capable of producing the T1I1, the Israel 1, antivirus. Their

underdeveloped testes could do it, but weren't. The watch word was

puberty. The current scientific consensus was that removing a portion of

their sex organs was also unlikely to produce positive results.

Still

unknown to the Federation researchers, the Chinese had the answer to

the production dilemma and it was coming their way, one infection at a

time. If they had, they probably would have started praying. After all,

could the T1I1 kill the T2? All the mothers were getting lawyers, and

private security. Before long, the Ministry of Justice would start

issuing warrants.

In

Shanghai, where the first mass burnings of corpses was beginning, a

tired hospital worker was touched by a patient in the Dying Ward. It was

across the street from the hospital and had been a mall before

commandeered by the city. The worker was, in reality, a part-time supply

clerk. After being laid off from her textile job, this was the only job

she could find.

She'd

been given extensive first aid training when she started work a few

months ago, so now she was in charge of a whole section of the Dying

Ward. People reaching out wasn't all that new to the worker anymore.

People were being eaten alive and their fevers were extreme. This one

though, her eyes were clear and she asked for water in a weak but steady

voice.

The

woman was dying, that was certain. She'd been given minimal support for

the last, 4 days? The clerk's heart began racing. This was a 'day 2'

center. The Plague ran its course in a total of 4 days, so this woman

should have died two days ago. The clerk rushed over, took one of the

two thermometers for the entire ward and took her charge's temperature.

39 celsius, or 102 fever.

The

clerk raced over to the one doctor (a male medical student actually)

and dragged him over to the patient. The dying woman had risen to the

rank of patient in that attendant's eyes. The doctor examined the

patient's body, ignoring her shame, and nearly fell over. The clerk had

been quiet so as to not cause an alarm. The doctor yelled for two of the

volunteers to grab a stretcher and come running.

These

volunteers were women who had decided to help out at the hospital in

this crisis because, it seemed the right thing to do. Now they removed

the dead women from the Dying Ward and took them to trucks for

cremation. It was doing something. They arrived with the stretcher, but

the woman still appeared alive. 'We are going to the hospital' he

informed them.

That

was new. They crossed the street, passed the soldiers and the group

walked straight to the Hospital's Chief of Staff's office. Her assistant

informed the medical student that the doctor was asleep. 'We have a

patient in Day 9' he responded. The assistant nearly tripped over

herself running in and rousing her boss.

Ten

minutes later, he was happy to be allowed to simply observe the

specialists at work. The woman was nearly dead alright. She'd been

fighting off the T2 Plague for nine days now. For half that time she'd

only had an IV drip to sustain her. Three things made her different.

She'd been gifted with a small dose of T2J1 (Java) antivirals.

That

could only mean she had sex with that poor, dead boy. Unlike the other

patrons, she'd been given enough of his seed to last this long. The

second difference was almost a fatal one. She'd been cannibalizing her

own body to save her unborn child, who was really nothing more than a

lump of tissue at that time. It was good old Mother Nature trying to see

the next generation through the womb and into the light of the world.

The

final difference, somewhere, the doctors guessed a day and a half

earlier, the antivirals hovering around and protecting that little lump

of unborn boy realized that the tissue had grown to a sustainable size

and they attacked it. It wasn't out of cruelty. It was out of necessity.

They were fighting that battle to keep the mother alive, but without

the ability to replace their losses, they were succumbing.

Quite

frankly, there weren't enough of them and they were dying by the minute

while the T2 kept getting stronger. The T2J's needed a factory and the

lump of boy was it. A few select cells died and became antiviral

factories and the counter-attacked into the mother's body, and they were

starting to come out on top.

The

swelling was going down, the fever was breaking, plus her heart rate

and breathing were steady, if weak. For the team of doctors at their

breaking point, this was a breath of fresh air. One was going to live.

They also realized that this little boy wasn't going to be saving anyone

else for quite some time. Extracting him would most certainly be fatal

and provide a onetime dose for only a handful of people.

Instead

of keeping thousands of patients alive, they now had to keep one boy

alive. They conferred, agreed that they all were of one mind, then

separated. The head of the W H O mission had been supplied with her own

satellite hook-up this time. She called Geneva then the U N, giving them

all the data they had. What she got back was surprising.

They

already had a virtual carbon-copy of the T2J antiviral, but they were

calling it the T1I1. Apparently there was an adult male in the

Federation running around with it. There was also a nasty rumor starting

to surface that he'd been killed in a police action in Chicago. The W H

O doctor wept silently at her desk. It felt like her gender was trying

to commit genocide on themselves.

The

Chief of Staff sat down with the battalion commander of the unit

assigned to protect the hospital. By disease and fortune, it was a young

captain. The Chief of Staff laid out the whole story. The boy wouldn't

be saving anyone but himself and his mother for months. Most likely,

everyone in the hospital and her unit would be dead by then.

If

they harvested the boy, there would go the last, best chance for any of

China to survive. She had to tell Beijing before their spies told them.

Beijing would demand the mother and boy, she would delay as long as she

could. Eventually they would see through her deceptions and then they

would come to take him by force. The Chief of Staff wanted to know what

the captain was going to do when that happened.

(Back at Home)

"What do you want?" I requested.

"We are here for you, Israel Jensen," the voice answered. I looked to Flame once more.

"What if I don't want to go with you?" I tried to sound brave as I responded. There was a pause.

"We are with Zara," the voice countered.

"There are two of them," Flame whispered. "I can do this."

"Bitch, we are dangling off the edge of a bridge. Have you lo,” I mumbled. "Yeah, you have. Knock yourself out."

"Why isn't she here then?" I inquired.

"She is here," the voice said. I put a hand on Flame's thigh.

"Don't move," I whispered. "They have a sniper."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, pretty much," I nodded.

"I'm tossing you a phone," the voice informed me.

"Toss

it to the woman," I pointed. "Her hand-eye coordination is much

better." The phone didn't fly high. It actually skidded to a stop less

than a half meter away. I looked at Flame who looked at the phone then

back at me.

"Bitch, it's right there. Pick it up yourself," she groused.

I

picked it up, flipped open the opaque cover and was gifted with the

sight of Flame's back with a little red dot centered between her

shoulder blades. Flame was looking out over the city. I thought she was

bored. After nudging her, she looked over the picture and smiled. She

leaned into me. The dot followed. She leaned away and the dot followed.

"Good sniper," she smirked to me. "Okay ladies, you can have him," Flame called out to our visitors.

I typed Hugs Zara.

A few seconds later, I added; ‘Come In.’

Not Ready Yet, came back the response.

‘Please’, I pressed.

I added; ‘You probably can't understand how much that means to me.’

No? I added, in anticipation.

Not yet, came the final word.

The

closer woman began backing away. A few meters and on the other side of

the roadway, a second woman did the same. I had to wonder about their

interest. What rejection would be one too many? Did other men get this

much leeway? No, they didn't. They bailed out the first chance they got,

yet I was sticking around.

I stood up and followed them for a few meters before stopping. I still had no plan.

"Hum," Flame walked up to my side. "You don't see that every day."

"You are not supposed to see them at all," I confided.

"Do you know what's weird?" Flame tapped me with her gun.

"You still don't want to kill me?" I guessed.

"Yeah, it's freaky-weird," Flame nodded. "Do you think that sniper-chick is still watching us?"

"You are asking my advice about women and guns?" I gasped. "God, we are a fucked-up pair."

"Tons of fun," Flame laughed. "Let me take you home."

"Your home, or my home?" I worried.

"Your home," she snickered. "My clit intimidates you." Now she was giggling.

"Thanks," I smiled. We remounted her bike, put on our helmets and headed into the city.

"I

have never said this before, but I'd like to take you someplace, tie

you down and make long passionate love to you," I confessed through our

helmet links.

"You make passionate love to a lot of women," she countered.

"No, the 'tie you down' part," I clarified. "I don't normally do that."

"What makes me so special, not that I'm not special, but why this?" Flame snorted in amusement.

"There

is no way in hell I'm giving you an orgasm when you have ready access

to a weapon, or any other means of hurting me," I squeezed her tightly.

She was quiet for several minutes.

"Cool," she murmured.

"Yeah, it would be," I agreed.

"Then do I get to kill you?" she perked up.

"No,

damn it," I bumped helmets with her. "First I get dressed, then I open

the window and then I untie you, hopefully jumping out the window before

you get your gun."

"Bitch!" she laughed. "You are going to make me work for it."

"That's what friends are for," I teased.

"Thanks

for clearing that up for me, Bitch," she shook with amusement. I

couldn't do this with anyone else. Death and killing weren't things I

embraced.

I

didn't like violence, but I was causing tons of it. I didn't joke about

casual violence, except now I was doing it with Flame. I wasn't sure

why I liked her. I couldn't pinpoint that factor, or moment that put us

in this current setting. She'd beaten me up, beaten me again, then I

spasmodically came on to her, came on to her again, and she'd responded.

It

wasn't a one-sided relationship. Flame wanted something from me that

was equally indescribable. I don't think she'd felt alone before she met

me. She hated everyone, so didn't really miss their company. Just like

some office functionary, she was going through the motions of life, even

if that life was that of a Mob enforcer, thug, and killer.

She

wasn't an adrenaline junkie. Her fearlessness had robbed her of that

thrill. In the firefight she had not flinched or panicked. I believed

she had become completely emotionally detached. Oh, God, I made her

laugh. Not in an artificial professional comedian kind of way, but a

'looking at someone and discovering they make you happy' way.

Unintentionally,

I had made Flame feel something, anything, and it was tearing her up

inside. It wasn't happiness. Flame felt happy when she killed people, or

made them cry. Perhaps that was it; I gave her happiness that didn't

involve her taking something, be it a life, or sense of security, from

another person. That had her confused.

We

pulled up to my place in relative silence. What I didn't know was most

people, even in their places of work on second shift, or just working

late, were glued to their video feeds. Even at the hospital, I had not

grasped the magnitude of the carnage. I put the helmet up.

"Take care and no 'Death by Cop'," I patted Flame's shoulder. She opened her face plate.

"I can't die," she grinned. "I haven't killed you yet. Want me to kill you now?"

"I

want you to live," I replied softly. She laughed, dropped her visor and

sped away. I took the steps to my apartment two at a time. I was tired,

but I actually wanted to see some female faces for the first time in

forever.

I accessed my door and recalled that Venus had a gun, so I called out.

"It's

me." I opened the door and stepped in. All the women, from whatever

place they had staked out on my living room floor or furniture were

looking, or craning to look at me. Kuiko and Capri had their arms out so

that no one grappled me in the entryway.

"Where have you been?" Capri inquired with barely controlled fury.

"I, I had to,” I mumbled.

"Skip

you banging that cop in the god damned emergency room and your version

of the Gettysburg Address to a room full of ladies in blue who wanted to

shoot you, fuck nut Bastard," Capri growled.

Honesty is never the best option. In fact, honesty is the refuge of the unimaginative and thoughtless, or so I've been told.

"Well, you remember that girl with the hand cannon in the shootout this afternoon,” I managed to get out.

Capri put her face in her hands and groaned.

"I got on a bike with her, we rode out to the road construction on the new freeway,” I continued.

"Where on the new freeway?" Venus rumbled.

"That part of the unfinished overpass," I informed them.

"You mean the big, uncompleted bridge, that part of the new freeway?" Venus pressed.

"Yeah.

We sat at the end, dangled our feet off the edge and talked for a bit,"

I tried to make my insane decision sound reasonable.

"Gee, Israel, did she try to kill you, the mobster hitwoman?" Capri muttered.

"Ah,

she pointed her gun at me a few times, asked me if I wanted to die a

few more times, but she couldn't pull the trigger," I enlightened them.

"We talked."

"Israel!"

Kuiko squealed at a deafening pitch. "The cop nearly killed you

tonight! Wasn't one time enough? Do you want to scare us to death? Do

you want to leave us?"

Kuiko freaking out was expected. The look of fear on the rest of their faces was unfathomable to me.

"What am I missing?" I asked. Roni and Angel not being back was starting to worry me.

"Israel, what is the last thing you remember at the Arena?" Aniqua requested.

"Shooting,

a lot of it. The cops at the exit with the EMTs arming themselves and

heading in. I was listening to the chaos on the radio, but I was really

concentrating on escaping. Why?" I looked around the room. Samantha was

channel surfing until she found one of the local updates.

Confirmed Dead: 152 Women, 849 Men. Final figures still unavailable.

Oh

God, it was the second biggest disaster to overtake male-kind since the

last days of the Plague. It was highly unlikely that anything would

surpass the Holy City, but Carabas in Brazil had just been supplanted as

the second largest slaughter of my gender in 42 years. The most

demoralizing piece was the three SWAT snipers on the Arena with their

back up weapons going to fully automatic fire at the men below.

During

the Gender Plague the countries of the Developing World went three

ways. Some, like the Republic of South Africa, clung to their democracy

and rode out the storm. Others, like India, went to Emergency Rule and

they survived. The last group, like Brazil, tried to walk the middle

path and they collapsed. The public didn't know who to trust, so they

began looking out for themselves.

Brazil

made it into Year 6 when the police in Brasilia rioted. The government

called in the closest military units to restore order. The military

tried to seize control, the executive branch of government was

decapitated and the country went to shit. A few months later, the

legislative body set up shop in San Paulo and began reasserting control

over the coastal regions.

Their

navy had remained loyal through the crisis so not only did the

democratic government survive, but the Brazilian export economy didn't

wither and die. They grimly persevered for eighteen months until the U N

was finally able to cobble together some kind of relief force from the

member nations.

On

the Brazilian & U N side was that they were organized and

well-equipped. The rebels were balkanized and often as much threat to

each other as to the central government. Brazil took back their capital

and launched an offensive against the largest of the rebel groups. They

drove the rebels back to their base at Carabas.

On

the eve of the last government offensive the Revolutionary Council met

and decided on their final course of action. There were men on the

Council. It is said that one objected but the other two agreed. In the

last hour before dawn, the rebels rounded up every male still under

their control and executed them. The rebels considered it a last act of

defiance.

The

U N considered them all War Criminals and hunted most of them down. It

was the end of old Brazil though. The upper Amazon basin remained

lawless even until this day. The government was too afraid that other

female groups would do the same thing and the real estate wasn't worth

the risk.

The

Holy City was a different, and far more horrifying, legacy. Before the

Plague, there were places where men not only ruled, but women were

barred from any true power. As a result, when the men started dying off,

there were no, or not enough, professional women to take their place.

The electricity went out, hospitals were overrun and law and order broke

down.

The

U N was doing triage and if your country couldn't at least limp along,

it was abandoned to its fate, unless you had oil. In those bygone days,

it was a petroleum driven economy. There were some fucked-up

places around the globe that should have bit the dust, except the U N

had to keep propping them up, or everything would have broken down.

Human

Rights abuses? They would deal with that later. Few women want to talk

about exactly what the U N was thinking back then. They kept the engine

of civilization turning and they paid for it in blood. Whose blood? The

blood of women. See, around Year 8, there just weren't too many men left

in these Male Dominated cultures.

Life

was horrible, but the men simply wouldn't give up their power. They

filled their security forces with whatever men they could lay their

hands on. Things got so bad that these powerless women protested. The

questionably recruited and poorly trained security forces raped and

killed them for their audacity. Massive atrocities were committed.

The

U N did nothing, sort of. They covertly began supplying all kinds of

aid to the women while publically appealing for mediation. The men were

having none of that. It was their God-given country and women had better

know their place. Apparently God decided their places was behind a

machine gun, rocket launcher, or rifle.

The

men still had more plentiful equipment like tanks, artillery,

helicopters and planes. What they didn't have were numbers. They

couldn't cover everywhere at once. Soon enough the women grabbed and

held onto valuable parts of the landscape. The U N recognized their

movement and it was payback time.

Every

advantage now turned the women's way. If anyone in the U N thought this

was a bad idea, they were ignored. The U N was thinking a popular

insurgency overthrowing a corrupt, outdated regime. They weren't

thinking of thousands and thousands of brutalized rape victims,

traumatized and often mutilated suddenly seeing a light at the end of

the tunnel of their suffering.

They

didn't give a crap about the survival of the U N, Peace, Prosperity and

the Human Race. They wanted to silence the demons in their heads

forever. They wanted to make sure that they never heard a woman cry out

in unanswered, wretched agony ever again. They pushed the men back to

the Holy City, their last stand.

Most

of the female fighters were relatively sane. They knew what was going

on around the globe. They agreed with the U N that certain men, if

captured alive, would suffer international justice. Most of the men

would spend their lives in permanent detention so that their culture

could attempt to rebuild. It was the only rational thing to do.

The

fighting was incredibly brutal. Hardcore elements on both sides refused

to take, or be taken, prisoner. For seven days the women pressed

forward. In the core of the city, the last band of fanatics died to a

man. After that, the resistance collapsed. Most of the male army by this

time were the scrapings of the barrel.

Old

men in their seventies, young boys in their early teens, the ill, the

infirmed and the mangled; this was pretty much all that remained of a

male culture that had lasted thousands and thousands of years. The U N

representatives stepped in, helped sort out the men and prepared to

rebuild. Those women mentioned earlier? They weren't done. There were

men still alive.

The

male army had used a variety of chemical weapons on their female

enemies during the conflict and those dissolute women had been gathering

up the stockpiles as they were overrun. They rolled into the outdoor

prison camps with those weapons, pretending to be a food delivery. The

men gathered around and the women detonated themselves, in all the

camps.

Those

who didn't commit suicide began opening fire on the men who weren't

dead, or dying fast enough. Some women fired on those zealots. Other

women simply fell down and wept. They couldn't shoot the women who had

fought and bled so much for their cause. If the men died, they died as a

people. It was an internal conflict they couldn't handle.

Between

the battle and the mass murder afterwards nearly 25,000 men died. Fewer

than three hundred remained. Today, a Pakistani regiment guards the

city. It is still a place of pilgrimage, but it has never been

repopulated. It remains pretty much as it was abandoned, forty-one years

ago, a silent reminder of all that can go wrong with the human species.

Back to my plight.

"I didn't say or do anything at the Rally, honest," I pleaded to my female companions.

"We know you didn't," Capri grumbled. "That's why you are not on the list."

"List?"

"The

arrest list," Venus snapped. "They are using facial recognition to file

arrest warrants for all the men who broke the law at the rally. It's

over two thousand names long and posted so that all their female friends

and neighbors can turn them in."

In the midst of this disaster, what insight did my mind grab on to?

"At

least Kenny should be getting out of jail soon," I mumbled. Where in

the hell were they going to hold all these people? Hell, how were they

going to try all these guys?

"So, what's with the cop?" Venus stared at me intently. "The one you fucked."

"That would be Officer Freya Passey. She's a pagan," I evaded.

"I wonder what her review of you is going to be like," Samantha studied me with conflicting emotions.

"Oh, there's a problem with that," I looked heavenward.

"Problem?"

Capri choked. "Do you mean 'problem' as in you snuck off and murdered

the Mayor, or something that is remotely fixable?"

I was beginning to question why Capri kept hanging out with me.

"My bracelet is broken," I confessed.

"How did that happen?" Aniqua inquired.

"Have

you seen that whole bit with me, on top of Passey, the riot cop, the

stun baton hitting my wrist?" I outlined. "That apparently fried it."

The women looked around at each other.

"Oh, thank God," Capri exhaled. "I thought it was something important."

"Damn,

Israel, we don't give a crap about your bracelet," Venus groused. "Can I

have my sex now?" Capri, Aniqua and Kuiko all pelted her with

something.

Kuiko used the commotion to hop up and come my way.

"Hugs?"

she smiled hopefully. I opened my arms and she flowed into my embrace.

She began breathing deeply my scent and rubbing her cheek against my

shirt.

"Damn it," I groaned. Kuiko looked up, concerned.

I tried to turn her around and pull up her shirt.

"No!"

she insisted. "You were bad. You weren't thinking of us. You should

have come straight home." Kuiko wasn't angry about Passey. She was angry

because I had acted without concern for the group, our group.

"I

apologize, to all of you," I groaned. "I honestly can't tell you what I

was thinking. It, it all changed and they'll never fix it. Men rose up

in defiance and they are going to crush us for it, but their brutality

doesn't matter anymore."

In a cosmic twist of black humor, the situation had reversed.

For

forty years the female regime had been keeping men internally

disorganized and obedient. There were a multitude of all-female groups.

There were even a good number of non-gender groups, but there were no

male-only clubs (unless you included male musical groups). Unlike the

cross-cultural men that took public transit with their sticks today,

this male group had been uniform.

They

were some of the best men could put forward. Not the smartest, richest,

best looking, or most famous. No, they were the iconic representation

of what all men were supposed to want to be. They played by the rules,

got ahead and were living the good life, and they had been gunned down

at a meeting the women invited them to.

Robert

White had most likely not identified with the man in the chicken

processing plant, the microchip production line, the mechanic, or the

starving artist, but they had identified with him. In their hearts they

knew society wanted us to be like Robert White, pre-massacre. To

complete the picture, the doctor, lawyer and banker identified with him

too, as one of their own.

The

police had still gunned him and hundreds like him down. Males weren't

salivating with glee as Robert took out those two water cannons. Most

couldn't understand that kind of dire courage. What they felt was

horror, horror that he'd been shot in the first place, shot in the gut

with his life placed in jeopardy. It was the horror that their sense of

security had been shredded and the promises they'd been believing all

these years were lies.

Men

were uniting in fear, disbelief and outrage. They had been rendered

into one mind, 'They have betrayed us.’ On the other side of the aisle,

it was the opposite. Women were being torn asunder. What had the police

been thinking? Why hadn't they let them leave? Why hadn't the men been

punished?

What

were the men going to do next? What should they do to protect the men?

What should they do to control them? Is my man in danger? Sure, all

women knew policewomen carried a sidearm, but they would never use them,

right? Well, they had, mostly to defend their lives and those of their

partners.

But

women didn't care about that. Cops had shot men! It was like China only

a hundredfold worse. Women were confused. Society had told them as they

grew up that men 'liked' it, that they didn't mind the aggression and

most of all, men were safe to be around, docile, though no one would

have dared use the word.

"Israel,

you did your thing. It was your right," Aniqua stated, "but have some

mercy on us. It is damned hard to watch you walk out that door then

witness all that madness on TV. We were worried. You called, but you

wouldn't come home. No, you had to go into a building full of cops and

screw a woman, and then you disappeared again."

"Couldn't you keep in touch?" she persisted. "Did you even think about us?"

"Yes

I could have and no, I didn't think about any of you," I confessed. "I

was a lousy friend and, I'm going to continue being a lousy friend.

Frankly, all of this," I indicated the women in the room, "is a lot for

me to take in. Worse, it is necessary for me which makes me resent all

of you."

"Huh?" Venus muttered. "In the video you said you liked us."

"I

like all of you a whole bunch, but I don't want to," I pleaded. "The

last time I took a shower, I was terrified one of you would come in and

hurt me. It is not any of you, it is me. When Flame had her huge, fucking pistol barrel pointed into my face tonight I couldn't even muster enough fear to beg for my life."

"Damn," Capri whispered. Kuiko started quietly to shed tears onto my chest.

"Sometimes

the desire to live until the next day was all I had to keep me going," I

stated. "Even as you gave me your care and affection, you were breaking

me down inside. I spent three years learning to avoid and live without

women. In a week that had become a futile endeavor."

"I

can't live without you even as I know it is going to tear me apart. I

want to be free and I want to be alone. I can't have both so I've chosen

to be free because that lets me be with all of you," I finished. "I'm

going to be a terrible friend and you deserve better than a fucked up guy like me."

"No we don't," Kuiko sniffed. "I don't want anyone else but you."

"I'd

sell Kuiko's left tit to make you work right, or righter," Venus

sighed. "I'll still take the man I'm here with though over any other

I've ever met." Samantha seemed to calm down. Capri was relentless.

"We need to establish a punishment system for you, maybe a denial of sex," Capri grumbled.

"Eek!" Kuiko peeped then shook her head rapidly over my chest. She wasn't happy with that idea, not one bit.

"Capri, just so we are clear," Venus menaced. "Sammy and I are about to kick your ass for even suggesting such a thing."

"Fine,

fine," Capri held up her hands. "Let's compromise. Kuiko, punish

Israel." Kuiko turned her head sideways, regarding Capri while her ear

was listening to my heartbeat. "You know, teach him a lesson." Kuiko's

eyes grew wide. She hurriedly help me get her shirt and bra out of the

way then stripped of my jacket and shirt.

"Well?"

I asked softly. I was wanting to do this more than I initially thought I

would. I welcomed the frivolity of the act; the carefree sensuality.

"Put me against the wall and pick me up?" she meeped.

"Is that a question or a command, Mistress Sano?" I teased. It came so easily with her.

"Mistress

Sano,” her face blossomed into a smile that seemed to erase the

tear-tracks on her cheeks. "I like that. Lift me up, press me against

the wall and get to nipple licking!"

I picked her up, pressed her against the wall and began my nipplage.

"Damn it," four women muttered behind me.

"Support your weight with your legs around my hips and your arms on my shoulders," I instructed Kuiko.

She

was curious, but obeyed. I released my hold on her ass, brought my hand

up to the sides of her breasts the pressed them together. I tongue

flicked her now adjacent nipples.

"I warned you I'd get them both next time," I admonished her.

"Mistress Sano approves," Kuiko purred, "approves."

"No, Capri," Venus mocked my lawyer, "you couldn't say 'Venus', could you?"

"Nope," Capri smirked. "You getting pissed off is normal. Kuiko wailing is a noise I can live without."

Capri

was a clever girl and way ahead of the game. By foisting Kuiko on me

she was reinforcing our congealing dynamic. She would let Kuiko lead the

way. No one else had heard her declaration of love for me, so this

simply seemed like fun. I had little doubt that she knew this was

healing me. She was creating isolation in a crowded room; just Kuiko and

me.

I

would give the girls sexual fun. It would be a personal relationship

that would move me beyond what I did with Officer Passey, I still had to

explain that. They were my partners. I wouldn't belittle them with the

term 'attachment.’ We were one group, one entity, not some cosmetic

appendage or accessory.

In

retrospect, Kuiko had been the perfect choice. She was our 'Omega.’ She

wasn't the prettiest, the best built, the smartest, or even the most

athletic. She was wacky, just a smidge off kilter. The other women,

sadly, didn't see her as a threat. Angel was a threat. She was the

Alpha. Kuiko though, if Kuiko could get this level of attention, by

their thinking, any of them could.

Kuiko

was not my Omega. She was my liberator. Before anyone else, she had

connected with me. Angel stole my heart, but she still hurt me. Kuiko

gave me patience and time. She sensed my frontiers and there she

stopped, waiting for me to let her in. I prayed to the Divine that she

made it out of this mess with me intact.

I was so caught up in my threads of this Kuiko experience I missed her coming to fruition under my ministrations.

"Israel,

I'm, ah, ah, ah ah ah ah ha," she orgasmed. We clung to each other as

she slowly regained control of herself. "Thank you," she whispered.

"He made her come, didn't he?" Samantha murmured. "With his lips,"

"Fuck

all of you," Venus growled to the room. She stomped off to the shower.

The water was running in seconds, the glass door opened then shut. Capri

started giggling.

"Don't

worry, Israel," Capri snickered. "Forcing Venus to take a cold shower

can't be better than sex with you, but until then, it will do nicely."

"I need to change," Kuiko grinned sheepishly at me. Her crotch was soaked.

"Me

too," I sighed. My belt and the top of my pants were damp as well.

Kuiko and I changed clothes, the cold shower didn't' seem to have done

Venus much good and after some consensus building, I was convinced to

sleep on the sofa with the ladies around me.

It

was much later when I woke up. I hadn't heard Roni, or Angel come in

yet but Dimples' FBI was close by again, apparently I was lost and the

Attorney General was looking for me,

The

fact that my bracelet wasn't talking to the system never came up.

Dimples' people didn't get around to it and my sanity kept me from

mentioning the fact.

The

Federation Government had thought I was dead, but my stunt at the

hospital went viral, so they knew I was alive again. Officer Passey was

vocally and profusely refusing all attempts at a vaginal swab. Outside, a

city-wide curfew was in effect. The Armed Forces Reserves were being

called up and the rumor was that regular troops were on the way.

All

that left me truly curious about who was knocking at my door an hour

before dawn. I activated the TV and nothing happened. It was on but not

responding. I began to panic then I recalled the past two days of my

life. I got off the sofa and headed for the door.

"Who is it?" Capri and Aniqua asked at the same time.

Samantha

and Kuiko were slow wakers. I lightly knocked on my own door then

opened it. Sure enough, it was Zara and those two women from the bridge

earlier in the night. I silently stepped aside and ushered them in. The

middle woman, the one I had talked to on the bridge, had two carrying

crates worth of stuff and she went straight to the kitchen.

"Israel," Zara began. "We need some of your blood."

"Okay," I nodded. There was a short pause.

"Shit,"

the middle woman griped as if she had just lost a bet. The third woman

chuckled and removed her ball cap. They all had ball caps, jackets and

street attire.

The

third woman had short, shockingly white hair. Like Zara and the other

woman, she was fit, but with a different quality about her, more agile

than tough. The second woman was of the same mold as Zara, quietly

competent though she smiled more often, with her raven hair pulled back

in a ponytail reaching half way down her back.

I

migrated into the kitchen because, while tiny, it wasn't packed with as

many women as my living room. The second woman was kneeling beside her

two crates, pulling things out and stacking them around her while

wearing blue surgical gloves. One of them held my curiosity. It was a

30cm cube. It seemed to be solid plastic except one portal on top and a

small open sphere in the middle.

"By

the way, I'm Jen, the woman in the kitchen is Brandi and, in case the

word hasn't gotten around yet, the last woman is Zara," the white haired

woman introduced the new group.

"Who are you with?" I asked her.

"Nasa," she snorted. "That was cool, you figuring it out."

"Frank,

let me stick your finger," Brandi requested. I extended a finger her

way and it was dutifully pricked. Apparently I was 'Frank.’

"Who are the rest of you with?" Venus prodded. Zara hesitated.

"1st Special Forces Operational Detachment, D," she replied. "Both of us."

I

knew who that was because of my studies. By the look on Venus' face,

like she'd been hit in the face with a skillet, she knew too. Everyone

else seemed clueless.

"Oh," Kuiko popped up, "you shoot people? Just like real soldiers?"

"Yeah Kid," Jen chuckled, "just like real soldiers."

Brandi

extracted some of my blood in a miniscule hollow tube. She trimmed

that, opened the top of the globe and fitted the tube into a series of

rollers. She sealed the tube and then, in stages, the tube descended

into the heart of the cube. Brandi switched her attention to the small

screen device at her knees.

At

first, all it showed was some roughly circular objects, grey and fuzzy

around the edges. A few seconds later, red objects, about the same size

as the grey ones entered the scene. Brandi grew tense, so I began to

massage her shoulders while keeping my eyes on the screen. One of the

red, cells, they had to be my blood cells, turned grey and ruptured

along the sides.

The

grey objects were ruptured, infected blood cells. My blood cells were

getting clobbered. One by one they succumbed. Brandi was almost too

tense for words. I picked up on her chanting 'come on, come on' as if

some sort of encouragement would help in this lopsided fight. I caught

sight of the miracle first.

On

the edge, one of my blood cells began turning grey then stopped. It was

turning red once more. Brandi began muttering 'oh please, oh please, oh

please.’ A grey cell began to wither, blacken and die, then another. In

seconds a colossal trouncing was in progress. Brandi could barely

scroll the screen back fast enough to catch the death of the infected

cells. In two minutes, it was over.

To be continued

By FinalStand for Literotica