Among the Living (Tyler G Book 1) (28 page)

She left, giving him a hug first,
which was what she always did. It was part of her way of letting him know that
he was loved. Unlike most of the people around him at the bookstore, she didn't
have any alternative motives in doing it. The Alede all wanted him for his
sexual energy, and the Greater Demons wanted to know his mind completely.

Well, Hiram and Ben were fine
that way. They also didn't try to feel him up constantly. Calley did, but what
she wanted
was
the contact, which made it feel a bit more allowable for
some reason. Not that blaming anyone for what they were was going to help
anything. That was a fact that he needed to focus on a lot harder in life, he
realized.

That point got put on the back
burner, since in the half hour that he'd been gone from work, even if he'd been
physically there, things had sped up a lot. At least that's what it seemed like
at first. There were people in the store, all standing around, looking shifty.
It wasn't just him noticing it either, since all of the Alede were suddenly
there, at the front desk. Behind it, as if that would act as a shield. Almost
the entire crowd of fifty people or so had a look about them that was similar.
The women all looked hard, in an angry sort of way. Their faces held no makeup,
which was fine, but they frowned and the whites of their eyes showed all the
way around on more than half of them. The ages varied, but there was a theme to
how they were dressed. The fashions held hints of being more or less manly.

The few men with them, a group
made up of seven men, seemed to be kind of the opposite. Most were kind of
pudgy, which wasn't a crime at all. Most people were like that anymore. The two
that weren't were
very
thin and still soft looking however. There were
subtle things about how they dressed that indicated they were a bit more
feminine than most guys. Their hair was parted on the wrong side, for instance.
It wasn't a major thing, but it made them seem a little off.

They also held back a bit, as the
tension grew.

Why that was, he didn't know,
though he found himself responding, becoming ready for the attack that would
come. Prepared to fight on a level that
nearly
had him attack the woman
who looked at her watch first, and started screeching. It was a bleating chant
that he couldn't understand to begin with, until the others picked it up. Most
of
them
sounded like normal enough people, thankfully, since the first
one had a horrible and shrill voice. It could have been nerves, of course. A
lot of people weren't wild about public speaking and public
chanting
had
to count for that.

"No sex, no sex..." The
call went on for a bit, as Ty tried to shift mental gears.

"This is an anti-
sex
protest? Why hold it here?" He looked around the room, and fixed his gaze
on Kaitlyn, who looked very embarrassed suddenly. "For that matter, who
protests
sex
? I mean, half the Human race wants it as a biological
imperative, and the other half uses that to control them and get what they
want. It's like these women don't understand that." Even though it was
probably how they'd gotten the weak looking men to go along with them.

Like they weren't in it to try
and get laid?

Kaitlyn looked right at him and
rolled her eyes, speaking, unheard over the raucous noise. He could see her
lips though, so understood what she was saying.

"That's
why
. These
are all women that feel they
don't
have any power that way. A lot of
them probably don't really. Not compared to an Alede. So they want to take out
their lack of desirability on us. To punish us into... I don't know. They
probably don't either. We're biologically incapable of
not
having sex, really.
We have to harvest that energy to survive. Just making a scene won't help
anything. Which means that they probably know that, and have something else in
mind. An attack? Feminist groups are among the more violent ones, when it comes
to going after people. Bomb threats and killing dogs, mainly. Minor assault is
almost a given for them. You might not want to get too close."

Tyler hadn't really known that,
but then he'd also never been around that kind of person a lot. Lucy didn't go
in for politics, so hadn't raised him like that. If she was anti-man
he'd
never been affected by it, either. The woman clearly wasn't against sex though,
for all that anything she'd done that way in life had been well hidden from
him.

The thing there was that he
didn't really know what to do at the moment with these people. They were
annoying, with the loud, and silly, chant, but that didn't actually
harm
anything. He tried to make himself seem pleasant, letting a small, if tight,
smile come to his lips. It wasn't really his problem, after all. These were
just people trying to exercise their right to free speech.

Annoyingly, but that was probably
all right, in the long run.

After what seemed to be exactly
two minutes of this, a woman who looked to be about thirty, with curly dark
brown hair, heavy black rimmed glasses, and a loose button up shirt in white
and light blue, moved in front of the counter.

"We won't let you run a
whore house in a public establishment! Leave here, now!"

She tried to start another chant,
to prevent anyone from speaking, but Kaitlyn flashed in anger, her eyes looking
a bit tight. Holding up her right hand, still standing behind the wooden front
counter, she spoke in an even tone.

"We
don't
. We don't
take money or goods for the services we offer, and almost never turn anyone
away. It's our nature, and not a thing we can simply choose not to do. Why are you
being so bigoted?"

That got an outraged look from
several of the women, but no coherent response. The clear answer was what Kait
had already said. They were threatened by the pretty women and the fact that
they did offer sex to anyone that wanted it. That took away their own perceived
power, most likely. The fact was that almost all of those weak and spineless
seeming men that were there to chant against sex would have probably left their
horrible wives and girlfriends instantly, if they'd known that they could have
endless, no strings attached, love making with the Alede instead.

That
was
kind of a big
deal, most likely.

In fact, he was about to
recommend that to them when several of the women, working together, managed to
push one of the free standing book shelves over. It made a very large crashing
sound. It was very annoying too, since Tyler understood instantly that he, and
possibly Ben, would be the ones having to fix it all.

"Stop that!" The cry
went unheeded, as several groups formed, all of them making an effort to damage
the place, since reading was clearly a horrible crime that
had
to be
stopped.

Still, short of engaging the mob
in a physical altercation, there wasn't a lot he could do about it. Well,
except get pictures of them all, and call the police in. Honestly, that should
have been the first thing he'd done, but he hadn't figured they were going to
actually riot.

Silly him.

He called to the front, making
eye contact with Alexis this time. She looked frightened, but hadn't run away
yet.

"Call nine-one-one! I'll get
pictures."

He had a cell phone, though it
took him a bit to work out how to hold the thing horizontally in order to get
good video. Tyler didn't try to close with people, just moving from face to
face. After about two minutes, another chant having gone up, one of the women
seemed to suddenly realize what he was doing, and closed with him.

"You can't take my picture!
That's rape!" Then she tried to slap the thing from his fingers.

His mind reeled for a second.

"Um... First, I'm recording
a crime, in a public place, which is legal, but how in the world is that
rape
?"

"I didn't give my consent.
Stop, now! Rape! Rape!"

He kept going, since the only way
he had to prove that he wasn't assaulting anyone were the pictures on the
phone. It was a public space, so he had a legal right to get the video. He knew
that one, since Zack came out when the police finally arrived, and told him to
keep going.

The mess in the store was pretty
big, but what happened next baffled the fuck out of him. It was, he supposed, a
good enough tactic to try and control men with threats of making false rape
claims like that woman had. A lot of guys would have backed off, intimidated by
her, fearing being arrested just based on the words alone. That could happen,
and this crowd, or at least that one lady, seemed to know it.

The thing was, when the police
started trying to get them to leave, asking with gruff and authoritative tones
that really
were
kind of a-holish, the same woman approached one of the
men, and tried a different version of the same thing. It was a bit more polite,
but not much.

"You can't touch me. I'm a
woman! Violence against women is always wrong!" This was repeated a few
times. To her credit, it seemed to be working at first. The officer didn't grab
her or anything, simply asking her to step out of the store, even though she'd
just
vandalized the place.

Finally he did reach out, to take
the slightly chubby arm, to get her to move along. That got her to pull away
sharply. "Don't
touch
me! Rape! Touch rape!"

She started to slap at the police
officer, only to be tackled instead, by Kaitlyn. It was a very clean double-leg
takedown, that slammed the heavier seeming woman to the ground with a smack.

She stood up immediately as the
formerly insane sounding screeching woman started to cry and hold the side of
her face.

"I'm going to sue you!
Arrest her." This was said to the cop that Kait had clearly just saved her
from assaulting. The man snorted, as the whole place went silent.

Tyler spoke out loud, still
capturing the whole thing on his camera.

"Is... This some kind of
performance art? None of it makes sense. Or... I don't know, mind control? I
can't work out how any of this makes sense. No one acts like that. I don't care
if they're feminists or not, this isn't normal.
Touch
rape? That's
insane, isn't it?"

The woman on the ground glared up
at him, still holding her face, which to be fair, Kait
had
helped smash
decently well. There were a lot of high school wrestlers that couldn't have
done it as quickly or gracefully. The woman didn't seem to appreciate that
though, and tried to kick at the Alede woman, aiming roughly for her upper
thighs.

"Male pig! You and your kind
have been keeping women down for millennia! Down with the Patriarchy!
Pigs!"

Then she started to cry, scream
and fight as the police flipped her over, and put her in handcuffs. That meant
several other women tried to get involved, even as their men made an effort to
pull them away. They at least, seemed to get that being a girl wasn't going to
excuse assaulting the police.

Ty was freaking baffled though,
and looked around, hoping someone would be able to explain it to him. Finally,
Zack took pity on him, and did just that.

"This isn't mind control.
Not directly. The issue here is that we have two entitled groups colliding.
These women believe that they can't be hit, harmed or touched by men, since to
their minds they have a shield of protection that way. Which they
do
, by
and large. The police however get a cultural exemption from that, so they can
do their job, since it comes up. Most women aren't like this. This is kind of a
perfect storm type of thing." He looked at the place, his face bland as he
examined the wreckage.

Tyler still couldn't make his
brain understand it all.

"So, this is feminism?"

The Greater Demon went on then,
shaking his cute head a few times first, and seeming charming about it. Which
was, no doubt, for the camera.

"Nope. Feminism is really
two different movements. One of them is basically female centered egalitarianism,
with a
slight
focus on gaining special privileges for their group. They
can't understand that special treatment isn't the same as equality,
or
that having the same right to work hard is all that's needed for that in the
long run. They see that there are more men leading, or that are captains of industry,
and understand it as a sign of inequality, when it's actually just a difference
in how hard people have worked to get into place. They aren't
bad
. Just
too self-centered to get what they are doing all of the time. Not that you can
tell them about it. Those kinds of feminists have a broken idea of reality, but
they don't hate all men.
They
aren't a hate movement at all."

There was loud crying from
several points, as a few ladies started to realize they
might
just be in
trouble for what they'd done. A few of them called out that they were being
hurt by the process of being arrested, too. Even though he knew they were
guilty, it still left him feeling bad, hearing that. He
wanted
to help
them. It was clear from the expressions on people's faces that he wasn't alone
in that feeling.