Among the Living (Tyler G Book 1) (30 page)

So, did that make all those kinds
of groups basically the same?

Were
all
groups hate
groups, if you didn't agree with them?

He was busily thinking of that
when Zack came in, along with Darla, the hot blonde Greater Demon.

He waved to them both, his face
working hard to form a smile. It was just his existential confusion stopping
him, not discomfort. However that one worked. He was pretty sure no one had
managed to give him any real pain meds yet.

"Technician. Line Walker. I
get to have visitors already? Neat. Thanks for stopping by." That ran him
out of small talk, but Darla moved in and touched his arm in what looked like a
comforting gesture. He remembered what Zack had told him however, about
drinking in all the information he held within. It was almost certainly that
one. Luckily he hadn't had any sex fantasies about her. Yet.

"Don't worry about your
heart, it's fine. It's just a thing that some people have, that medical science
hasn't encountered a lot of. Thankfully they didn't bury you first. That's
pretty annoying, let me tell you."

Zack smiled and nodded.

"Yeah. You've been that way
since you were a kid, so this isn't something to worry over now. Anyway, I just
came to tell you that everyone else is all right. Well, the guy you kicked in
the head has a pretty bad concussion, but he'll live to stand trial. Oh, I have
your cell phone for you. I took the liberty of putting the footage you got up
on-line. It wasn't
too
bad. You need to work on how you frame your
shots, but at least you got all the faces. The sound picked up a lot of it."

Tyler didn't know how to feel
about that. On the one hand, it was good that people could see what was going
on, on the other, it probably wouldn't change anything.

Darla snorted a little at that.

"True. Ideologues won't
change due to this. The people that hate women will just have more fodder to do
so, and the ones that hate men will see this as oppression. I noticed that some
of the more radical groups are already applauding their sisters for nearly
killing you. It really isn't a good thing. They should at least keep their
mouths shut, since it hurts their movement. No one knows that you're the head
of the Coalition of Nations yet either. They
do
know that you were the
one to stop the shooter. The other man that stopped him, Will, made sure that
the press got that message. Now
there's
a man who suddenly seems to be
turning against the people he was with." She didn't seem pleased by that,
just matter of fact.

"Good? It's probably best
not to hang with fringe groups like that anyway. Hopefully he was at least
getting laid for his good-girl-centric works."

That got Zack to shake his head,
not even trying to be subtle about it.

"Nope. It was part of his
reason for being there, if only subconsciously, but he was just being used the
whole time. This kind of thing is ridiculous, but can be useful, in the right
hands. Honestly, you should see about taking over feminism, Darla. I know that
you aren't wild about Gregor's whole Christian thing. They're already pretty
much against the church, so it wouldn't be that hard to use them to unravel
it."

That got the blonde to nod, one
time, while looking at Ty.

"There's truth in that. In
fact, all I'd have to do is make two or three tiny alterations. It wouldn't be
that hard. Or I could have them all turned into men, to teach them a lesson?
What do you say, Tyler? I'll trade you for it. All those Rad-Fems that hurt you
and made a wasteland of the bookshop, waking up tomorrow with penises, testosterone
coursing through their systems, suddenly learning the hard way that being male
is very different than they thought it was?"

It was a tempting idea, but he
shook his head.

"Nah. I don't care enough
about any of them to want to help them out that much. I'm all for having people
walk a mile in the others shoes, but I can't think of a single thing I could
give you that would be worth that. Besides, like I said, I
don't
care
about them. I'm a bit pissed at them, actually. Not enough to hurt them back,
but I can't say I'll be making a donation to their cause this next
Christmas."

That got a low laugh from Zack,
and a wave at the female Greater Demon.

"We should head out soon.
I'll leave your cell phone here." That went on a movable table that seemed
like fake wood on top, but had a lot of metal too. The frame was made of it,
with hinges and things like that, so it could move around.

It was within reach, so at least
there was that.

"Thanks. I'll try to get
back to work soon. I know that it's going to be a lot of work to fix
everything." That caused a real flash of anger toward those women. They'd
made his life a lot harder, not caring about anyone else.

Worse, from what Darla had said,
it seemed like a lot of women didn't care about it at all. It was hard to believe,
but some people were online already announcing how happy they were that evil
old him had been shot? That, or the Greater Demon had lied to him, in order to
manipulate him. From where he was, it would be hard to tell.

His phone rang, the soft chirping
getting him to snag at it too fast. It hurt, but he managed to sound all right
when he spoke.

"Tyler Gartner, Coalition of
Nations, how may I help you?"

"Mr. Gartner? Richard
Swerlin here. I don't know if you've heard about the shooting at
Westfield?"

It was hard not to snort, but the
man wouldn't be calling him if he knew the whole thing. It took a bit of mental
searching to get who the man was. The Vampire House of Representatives member.
From Maine, or New York. Honestly he couldn't remember which. Famous. He was
the first of the Vampires to come out in a way that anyone had believed.

Given his new job, he needed to
learn that kind of thing. That, or gain access to a computer, so he could find
out what was needed. That would count too, he bet. They had them at work, in
the back room, so that might be doable, until he could get his own. Zack had
asked him to set the whole thing up, so he could help out that way. It seemed
fair.

"I've encountered that one,
actually. In a closer way than I like. Um, Human feminists upset that Alede
have an easier time getting laid than they do, if I have it right." It was
a bit mean to say it that way, probably, since the women had probably
considered it differently than that. To them it had probably even made some
kind of sense.

If it didn't, then they wouldn't
have taken action.

The man on the phone spoke
firmly, his tone relaxed, but confident. Like a politician, which fit pretty
well.

"That's what I've heard as
well. It seems that one of the ladies involved, a Carol Montague, is from
Maine. Her mother called me, to ask if there was something I could do to help
her get out of trouble. I don't know that I can, but I've heard about your
group, and wondered if that would be possible?" The man did sound hopeful.

"That's isn't exactly what
we do, as an organization. It's more about making certain the right authorities
in different groups know that things are going on. I don't actually have any
influence that way." He sighed though, because it wasn't like he really couldn't
make some calls. "That said, I
might
be able to see if anyone wants
to listen to me? I don't have anything to write with here. Um, I have your
number. That was Carol Montague? If she was behind the attack, or a shooter,
then she's
going
to be punished for it. You get that one, right?"

"Understood. I don't
actually have a horse in this race, but it never hurts to try and help a
constituent. Thank you. Do you need anything from me in return?"

He nearly just said no, but then
realized that having the man owe him a favor might not hurt.

"Just keep this in mind when
I call you and ask if you'll use
your
influence to help someone that
probably doesn't deserve it?"

There was a chuckle then, a warm
thing that seemed genuine. Friendly even.

"I think I can do that. Let
me know if anything might come of this? I might be able to leverage this into
some free publicity."

That was enough for him, so he
hung up, and tried to think of who he needed to get in touch with about the
whole thing.

That was, funnily enough, Chief
Sims. His old buddy. Seriously, he'd been calling her so much that he needed to
send her a Christmas card at the very least, when the season came around. Over
the course of two hours they worked out that Carol, while a
vandal
, and
guilty of real enough resisting arrest
and
assault on a police officer,
wasn't part of the actual assassination attempt. That knowledge had required
sending Zack in, to find out who was really part of the whole thing, but Althea
was willing to take his word for it and so was, for some reason, the
prosecutor. Even
if
they were moving very fast. In the end there were
only five people in on the murder plot, which had been directed at the Alede.

All of them. Any that were
available to kill at the time.

That part was scary, since it
meant that people were trying to hurt others, simply for being what they
had
to be.

By six he was able to get back in
touch with Swerlin though, his voice a bit rough.

"Richard? Ty Gartner here.
Okay, so I made some deals, and got your girl about halfway off the hook."

"Oh? That sounds good."

"Yeah. She has to help fix
the bookstore she and her friends trashed. Most of them didn't know anything
about it. The assassination plot, I mean. The Line Walker, Zack Hartley... Do
you know him?"

There was a soft gasp.

"I do. Gods, please tell me
they didn't do this at his node location? I've been praying that it was some
other bookstore they went after there."

"I
could
tell you
that, but it would be a lie. Anyway, he's
not
pressing charges for the
vandalism. They have to fix it though, and pay for any damage they can't repair,
as a group. Carol
also
attacked a cop, which she'll probably sit in jail
over for a while. Nothing I can do about that part of things. Or, well, I might
have been able to, but a favor from you later isn't worth as much to me as
burning one with the local Chief here. She's already backed me up with her own
people twice so far, without asking for anything in return. I can't let her
people be hurt or attacked,
or
ask her to give these people a pass for
it."

"Of course. I can see that.
Good to know, however. I
wasn't
aware that the Line Walker was part of
this. I swear that to you. I wouldn't have asked at all if I'd known about
that. They're lucky to be alive. Well, I think we can use this. I'll keep you
in the loop from my end on this. Talk to you soon, Mr. Gartner."

"You too, Mr. Swerlin."

That wasn't the last call, but he
didn't get a lot more work done that night. The nurse, who'd made a point of
checking on him regularly, even as he chatted on the phone, gave him a shot of
something that knocked him out pretty well.

Luckily he managed to get hold of
a charger that the lady had at the front desk said would work for his cell.
Keeley hadn't given him one, but the charge was almost gone already. That meant
it wasn't a special, magic phone, that would work forever. Not that he would
have ever considered that. It was good enough to have a free phone to use, as
far as he was concerned.

The next day he finally got to
meet a few of the doctors, who were a lot less concerned about his wounds than
they were about the state of his heart. The truth there was that he was fine
otherwise, as far as they could tell. They wanted to do a lot more tests, but
since he was going to be paying for it all, he said no. That didn't leave them
all feeling happy about him, but they did leave him alone after a while.

Several calls came in about
different issues around the U.S. It was all easy enough to deal with however,
and it was funny, but about half of them actually went back to the attempted
murder of Alede the day before.

At a little after one in the
afternoon, about twenty-four hours later exactly, after the shooting, the phone
rang again. This time at least the voice on the other side was a woman. She
sounded friendly, and like she wasn't too worried about anything. A bit sexy,
actually, but in a normal, healthy way. One that meant, three bullet wounds or
not, he probably wasn't all that hurt. Most of the damage had come from the
surgery to get the lead out, he bet.

"Hello? This is Ty Gartner,
Coalition of Nations."

"Oh? Good. Hi! I'm Judy
Swan. I'm... An Alede. You've heard about the events that took place at the
Westfield node complex yesterday, haven't you?"

It was the most common question
people had been asking him. Like he
wouldn't
have known about it, for
some reason. The idea was funny, since this was about the tenth time he'd
gotten that one.

"I have. Judy Swan... Wait,
the actress?"