Amanda's Story (35 page)

She reached for the box and felt something brush by her shoulder, and then again by her opposite ear. The two bullets deflected into the wood of the fireplace. Mittens's tirade had caused her to lose all situational awareness, and now men were shooting at her. She found the first sniper, the one who had fired the two shots, on a roof nearly a quarter mile away. Before she threw him off the three-story structure, she congratulated him on his marksmanship. She cushioned his fall just enough not to break the oath she had sworn, but not enough to save the bones in his left leg and arm. The second sniper didn't have a clean shot and remained poised on the roof opposite her apartment's wing. She chastised herself for allowing them to get so close, and forced Mittens to calm down so she could focus. She sighted down the barrel of the rifle and began to melt the metal and plastic. The sniper dropped his weapon as it began to burn in earnest.

She scanned the area and found only Lister and the two snipers. Even her neighbors had been evacuated, something that she should have detected. She had made the same mistake with Adegbite and Diaz and had very nearly been killed by it. The psychotic rage only blinded her; the energy had to be directed with cold, dispassionate deliberation. She broadened her scan and found the HRT and their captain, Albert Reese. He was the one responsible for giving the order to end her life. Did her promise cover that contingency? Was she allowed to defend herself?

She sat down on her sofa and wondered if she should call Lisa and Greg and ask for a ruling. Of course they would say that he was simply doing his job; he was no different from Greg when he was called upon to use deadly force. Mittens was considerably more old school: an eye for an eye. Reese was on the phone with someone and Amanda idly shorted out the receiver. While she was at it she shorted out the electrical circuits of their transport van, and then their klieg lights, and then everything else. She felt the team scurrying around in the dark, under attack by an enemy that was unseen.

“Yum …” Their confusion and sudden fear floated to her through the cool mountain air. She breathed deeply and felt a slight intoxicating rush. She stood, gathered her suitcase and overnight bag, and mentally said goodbye to her apartment. She passed the broken door and doubted that she would ever get her damage deposit back.

Lister was locked in the Jeep, only Amanda didn't remember doing it. He was yelling into his cellphone and then stopped when he saw Amanda approaching. She unlocked the doors with her remote and he jumped from the car. He stood next to the open door with an uncertain look on his face. She opened the trunk and dropped the suitcase in.

“What happened up there?” he asked tentatively.

“Your team didn't follow orders,” she said, walking to his open door and closing it inches from him.

“They won't let you leave, Amanda. They've already set up road blocks, and helicopters are on their way. This is way out of my control.”

“Not my control,” she said as she walked to the driver's side door. “Go; you're free. I have no interest in you.”

“What are you going to do?” He positioned himself at the front of the vehicle, which was odd as she had parked nose first.

“If you're trying to block me again, you'll have to go back there.” She started the Jeep and backed up.

“Please Amanda …” He was waving his cellphone.

“Tell Greg that our agreement does not apply when people are trying to kill me.” She drove past the FBI agent and into the dark street.

She didn't get very far. The street lights had been turned off, and if her focus had been as fuzzy as when she first drove up the street, she would have missed the tire spikes that had been laid across the road. The thought that they had planned on damaging her brand new car pushed her even closer to the edge.

As soon as she climbed out of her car, two pairs of headlights clicked on, followed shortly by an amplified voice. “Stay where you are …” Amanda shorted out the speaker and sealed the four state troopers in their now-disabled vehicles, then rolled up the chained spikes. “Attention FBI, state police, Hostage Rescue People, and anyone else,” she screamed into the darkness. “This was very irresponsible. Somebody could have been seriously hurt.” She threw the spikes in the general direction of the immobilized cruisers and climbed back in her Jeep. She slowly drove by the dumbfounded troopers and then stopped. She found her cellphone and quickly took a series of pictures of the irate men. The look on their faces was priceless and she began to laugh hysterically.

Before she put the phone away, it began to chirp. “Hi Lisa, can I call you back? I'm busy taunting the state police.”

“Amanda what are you doing. Special Agent Lister just called us …”

“I know, Lisa. They shot at me, twice. I'm fine, but they aren't. I didn't kill anyone, just immobilized them.” Amanda's roller coaster ride of emotions suddenly dipped into a dark psychotic abyss. “I warned them, but they didn't listen.” Mittens the beast was back, and Amanda quickly turned the Jeep around a corner before her vision of two burning state police cruisers became a reality.

“Just go, honey. Disappear. You don't have to fight this battle,” Lisa pleaded, and the roaring in Amanda's head eased.

“Unfortunately, they're not giving me a choice, and honestly I don't know how much longer I can restrain myself.” She let the Jeep coast to a stop. Two blocks up the road, shrouded in darkness, was the makeshift command center for the HRT and the newly arrived state police. There were at least thirty minds bent on stopping her, and for the first time she began to question the limits of her ability. At best she could control half of them, but the other half … “Lisa, I have to go now. I love you both.” She hung up.

Kill them all!
Mittens the Demon hissed. Killing them would be easy. Fire, explosions, compressed air blasts—it was all child's play to her, and when they were all dead she would drive through the carnage and maybe snap a few more pictures.

How many lives is your life worth?
her conscience asked in Michael's voice. It was a tiny whisper against Mittens's roars, but it echoed through her mind.

I really don't need to hear you now
, Amanda answered.
Prove to me that you are my husband, and not some residual memory of him, or a trace of the morality that has brought me only heartache.
She was tired of following rules, of making promises and keeping them, tired of restraining Mittens and all her wonderfully indulgent base instincts. Tired, tired, tired.

She turned off her car lights and got out of the Jeep. They could still see her, and would probably be using their microphones and bullhorns at this point if she hadn't shorted out all their electrical circuits. Two pairs of heavily armed and armored men began to steal along the lawns that faced the residential street. They used bulky night vision goggles to skirt anything that made noise, and Amanda was surprised that she had missed those devices. For a few seconds she watched them creep towards her, weapons up, safeties off. The street light above them suddenly blazed as bright as the sun, blinding everyone except Amanda; the sodium vapor bulb exploded from the sudden charge and once again they were plunged into darkness. The four men were down now, their goggles overloaded by the brilliant light, and Amanda fed off their pain. She walked slowly to the pair on the south side of the street and pinned them to the ground. The line between herself and Mittens had begun to blur.

“You were going to shoot me,” she said to their prostrate forms, and then bent to pick up one of their weapons. “It's so light …” She stood and felt more than two dozen minds react to the fact that she was now armed. “Don't test me,” she said loudly to the darkness.

“Let the men go, Amanda, and drop the weapon,” a voice ordered from the dark.

“Captain Reese,” Amanda answered, and then squatted next to the restrained pair of snipers. “You sent them to kill me; why can't I kill them, or you? I would just be responding in kind.” She took off their goggles and stared into the faces of the men who would have shot her. “It would be so easy,” she said to the terrified men. “Do you know how many times I've been in this situation? How many times I've had to decide whether to let someone go or whether to crush them?” She asked the nearer of the two as the stock of the weapon disintegrated in her grip. “Of course you don't,” she smiled. “Do you want to see what it's like?” She reached for the second man and slid him across the grass as if he were no more than a ragdoll. “Do you want to feel the life slowly drain out of another human being? I warn you, it's addicting.” He stared back at her in stark terror.

“There is no possibility of escape, Amanda. Lay the weapon on the ground and put your hands on your head,” Reese ordered.

“Or what? You'll fire on me again?” Amanda quickly stood and redirected her thoughts to the captain. She tossed the weapon back down the street. “How did that turn out the last time?” She walked past the prone snipers towards the dark command center. Out of the gloom she could start to discern figures; dozens of men in black helmets, fatigues, and body armor were aiming a variety of weapons at her.

“Stay where you are and put your hands on your head. This is your last warning.” Captain Reese's voice was becoming more forceful. He boldly stood in the middle of the street with a broken bullhorn in one hand and a handgun in the other.

“I am unarmed.” Amanda raised her hands and continued walking towards him. The air began to lighten as a static pressure wave began to build around her. She felt the air molecules compress and watched as they began to emit a faint glow. When she released it, the wave would annihilate everything and everyone within a block's radius. She took another step and her foot barely made contact with the road. She stood virtually weightless, her decision balanced on the point of a pin when the most unlikely of things happened. A dog barked, and then barked again.

Amanda looked to her right and found a familiar, medium-sized Blue Heeler staring at her intently, her head cocked to one side, excitement written all over her face. “Sydney, what are you doing here?” Amanda said angrily. The dejected dog dropped her ears and sat in the grass.

‘Can we play? Run? Frisbee?' Her thoughts were cautious but they easily pierced the blast wave that enveloped Amanda. Sydney and her little sister Tasman were Amanda's occasional running mates. They had obviously been left behind when their masters were evacuated from the apartment complex, and had been running free ever since, a situation that was all too common.

“Where's your little sister?” Amanda asked Sydney, who immediately jumped to her feet, tail wagging her whole back end. She looked to a dark hedge of manicured bushes and then took off, disappearing into the darkness. She barked several times and Tasman's higher-pitched bark answered. In less than a minute Sydney reappeared with the salt and pepper Tasman in tow. The younger dog spotted Amanda, dropped the tree branch she was carrying, and sprinted to her human friend. She jumped the curb and flew into Amanda's arms.

“Play. Play. Run. Frisbee.” Taz was incessant. Sydney, not to be outdone, circled Amanda, whining an excited tune. Tasman squirmed out of Amanda's arms and jumped onto the back of her sister and the two dogs began to wrestle. For a moment Amanda simply watched the two dogs roll over each other and breathed in the purest form of joy which poured from her two friends.

Amanda finally looked up and found that Captain Reese had been distracted by the spectacle as well. They made eye contact and the air around Amanda began to reform. “Good night, Captain,” she said after studying him for several seconds. “Go home to your family.” She turned back to her car. Sydney and Tasman led the way, and when they saw the open door, they sprinted for the car and took up their usual spots in the back of the Jeep. Lister was standing by the passenger door.

“Friends of yours?” he asked.

“Best friends,” she said tersely, and then climbed into the driver's seat.

Lister opened the passenger door. “I need to go with you. I can get you out of here safely. You can drop me and your friends off once we're clear.”

Amanda stared at him, her blood still near the boiling point. “Why?” She asked pointedly.

“Firstly, I don't want to see anyone hurt, and that includes you.” He cautiously sat in the leather seat. “Secondly …” He was interrupted as Tasman nuzzled his neck and demanded to be petted. “I saw what happened to you, and I saw what you did. Not just in Washington.” He rubbed the dog. “They will never let you go. Ever. There will be no due process, you will simply disappear, and a lot of people will die as they try to hold you. And then you will die.” Sydney forced her way under Tasman and displaced her little sister. “I don't know how to feel about what you've done. Maybe if I found myself in your shoes I might have done the same thing. Hell, I probably would have done a lot more.” He paused for a moment. “I don't want to see you die because of it. But you need to get your head straight before you can be around people again.”

Amanda stared at him, debating how to respond. The fires within her were burning out, and his last line echoed in her mind. “All right, Special Agent, you can come along. But I'm keeping these guys—they should never have been kept in an apartment anyway. So how do we get out of here?”

Amanda's Story
is Brian O'Grady's second novel after his best-selling debut with
Hybrid
. He is a practicing neurologic surgeon and, when he is not writing or performing brain surgery, he struggles with Ironman triathlons. He lives with his wife in Washington state.

Amanda's Story
is the prequel to
Hybrid
. Set seven years after Amanda disappears into the night
Hybrid
finds her living a quiet, anonymous life. Greg has recently retired but struggles with idleness as a strange flu and an even stranger outbreak of violent crime sweep through Colorado Springs. Amanda begins to sense the presence of another survivor of the Hybrid virus, as both Greg and Lisa notice a tall, dark man has been following them.

Something compels Klaus Reisch to find Amanda Flynn. She is Eve to his Adam, the only two survivors of the Hybrid virus, and nothing, not even his mission to spread a mutated version of the virus through the population of Colorado, will distract him. Only she has disappeared.

Phillip Rucker, the socially awkward coroner who spends more time in his own mind than he does in the real world, knows that something is wrong. He's convinced that the unexplained violence and flu are somehow related, and he has it very nearly worked out when he becomes infected.

Hybrid
weaves its way through the corridors of the CDC to the streets of New York and LA as Reisch and his masters attempt to fulfill the Hybrid virus's full potential as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Read a sample of
Hybrid
:

From: [email protected]
Sent: March 5, 2015,2117 MST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Viral outbreak

Nathan A. Martin, M.D., Director of Special Pathogens, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia:
Dr. Martin, we met seven years ago at the Tellis Medical facility. I'm sure you remember, although I can't discount the possibility that in your tenure at the CDC you may have detained so many people that my name is only a distant memory. Let me refresh it; you and your medical team held me for three months under the pretext that I was a public health risk after I had been exposed to a virus in the jungles of Honduras. Ultimately the United States army intervened and I was released over your objections.
You visited me on three separate occasions. During our first two conversations you openly lied to me about several things, the most important of which was your true intent. Our final meeting was cut short when you nearly asphyxiated yourself. Perhaps now you remember that it was me who saved your life.
I am contacting you not because I trust you, but only because I have no other options, and I hope that the health and welfare of the American people mean more to you than your pursuit of me. A situation has arisen that requires your immediate attention and intervention. The virus that you named EDH1 has resurfaced in the city of Colorado Springs.
I realize that taken at face value this is a fantastic statement and that your first inclination may be to ignore it, but as the only survivor of this virus, I am in a unique position to make it.
While I was being held in Tellis, one of my many frustrations was the fact that none of your staff would actually listen to what I had to say. Your investigations were misdirected from the start; the answers you sought could not be found in any of the preprogrammed forms and questionnaires that I was forced to endure. To fully understand what happened in that Honduran jungle, you needed to be there, or failing that, listen to someone who was there.
So, for the health and welfare of the American people, for your understanding, and for my own piece of mind, I am going to set the record straight.
I was a part of a Red Cross disaster response team sent to Tela, Honduras, after hurricane Michael. Tela is a coastal city, but due to the heavy storm damage it could only be reached by helicopter. With a platoon of seventeen Honduran soldiers, our team of fourteen was ferried in by helicopter. Shortly after we arrived, a local woman, covered in blisters and suffering from a gunshot wound, brought EDH1 to our camp. Later, we found a second group of soldiers, all infected, staggering down the highway, and they told us that everyone from Tela was either dead or dying from a highly communicable form of hemorrhagic fever. Within twelve hours, we started losing people. By ten days, thirty of our original thirty-one were dead. I believe that this part of the story is well known, and unfortunately it became the sole focus of everyone's attention and concern.
What was lost in the chaos was the truth of how most of our people died. The virus itself only killed seven of our thirty; the rest died violently. I'm guessing that shortly after exposure the infection spreads to the brain, causing hallucinations, paranoia, and in many, uncontrolled rage. After I became infected, I experienced each of these symptoms, and I can't overstate their intensity. It is quite possible that, given the appropriate treatment, some of our people might have been saved, which brings us back to the situation in Colorado Springs.
As of last Thursday, there have been no cases of hemorrhagic fever reported in Colorado, and the only reasonable explanation is that no one is looking for it. The Colorado Health Department is reporting an unusually high number of deaths from a particularly virulent form of the flu, and I believe that many of those cases are, in fact, related to the Honduran Virus.
There has also been an unprecedented spike in the rate of violent crime in Colorado Springs. In the past six weeks, there have been forty-two murders and suicides—that's twenty-five times their average. This is not a simple statistical anomaly.
If you check, you will find that the Colorado Health Department and Colorado Bureau of Investigation have already started investigations, and not surprisingly, neither one has found anything. You need to help them make the connection; you need to tell them what happened seven years ago!
I can imagine how an unsolicited e-mail asking for an investigation into an obscure virus will be received, but as I see it, you are in my debt. I also want you to consider the source; no one else knows what really happened in Honduras. I'm not asking a lot. Do your job, and let the Colorado Health Department do theirs. I'm certain that the results will confirm what I'm telling you.
I've reviewed your biography on the Internet, and despite what you've done to me, I believe you can be motivated into doing the right thing. Otherwise, I'll be forced to deal with this in my own way.
Amanda Flynn
***
Response: [email protected]
Sent: March 7, 2015, 0654 EST
To: [email protected]
Ms. Flynn, I'm not sure how you got my personal e-mail address, but it has long been suspected that you were more than what you appeared. As far as remembering you, rest assured there are many who remember you well, myself included.
I'm not in any way apologizing for what we did for you, and please note, I didn't say “to” you. When you were flown out of the jungle, you were in severe shock from blood loss and exposure. Neither the U.S. government nor I had anything to do with your quarantine. When we learned of your plight, we evacuated you to the best facility in the world for such problems.
As far as what you think you witnessed before you were rescued, you must realize that your impressions were heavily influenced by the infection that very nearly killed you. There was no evidence that anyone died from anything other than the EDH1 virus.
As far as being indebted is concerned, I think I've shown that it is you who are indebted to us. So, I will rely upon your honor and ask that you allow us to re-examine you so that we can find out how you survived this universally fatal infection. I am sure you know that a number of people have been trying to find you for seven years.
Finally, I have contacted the Colorado Department of Health, and they have noted an unexplained rise in acts of violence. However, there is no evidence to suggest that an infectious agent is the cause. They assured me that they have specifically looked for one and have carefully reviewed all the autopsy results. I trust what they told me, and I don't do that lightly. If it makes you feel any better, I will admit to having a deep institutional bias and a basic distrust of everyone outside of my little world, but in this situation, the CDH did their job. I'm sure there is an explanation for this worrisome cluster of violence, but it's not EDH1.
I have hesitated to contact the FBI. By all rights I should, since they want to see you very badly. From my perspective, at best, you are key to answering some critical medical questions, and at worst, you could pose an overwhelming public health risk. Seven years ago we were unable to find any evidence of the EDH1 virus in your blood, yet you had all the clinical features. This makes you quite unique. We have made many technical advances in the last seven years, and there's a very real probability that we can determine why you alone survived. I think you owe it to the thirty-one people who didn't.
N. Martin
***
Response: [email protected]
Sent: March 7, 2015, 0503 MST
To: [email protected]
I appreciate that you contacted the local health authorities, but it's frankly not enough. They are not equipped to evaluate this threat. You are. Trust your institutional bias.
You were wrong about what happened down in Honduras. I was not sick when the Marines arrived. They made that assumption—an honest mistake, but one that was propagated down the line until it became viewed as fact. My memories were not affected in any way. If your records show that all the deaths occurred due to EDH1, then they are either incorrect or have been altered, for whatever reason. I am not some conspiracy nut. Things were incredibly chaotic, and for now I choose to believe that the soldiers saw what they were told to expect. Certainly, they recovered the remains of my team, didn't they?
Amanda Flynn
***
Response: [email protected]
Sent: March 7, 2015, 0712 EST
To: [email protected]
Apparently I've caught you awake. I'm not in the habit of exchanging e-mails back and forth like some adolescent, but for you I'll make an exception.
Without something concrete, I've done all I can. I do not have the authority or inclination to demand that the Colorado Department of Health do any more. You have given me nothing but unsupported recollections and statistical anomalies. I can't commit resources based on that.
Just so you know—the bodies of your Red Cross team were destroyed on site. We did not have the ability to bring them home. For that I am sorry.
I've read your file many times, and know that you've experienced more than your share of tragedy, but as you have pointed out, I have a responsibility to the health and welfare of the citizens of this country. If you are right, and EDH1 has found its way into the population, we need to see you now more than ever, not only to identify your unique resistance, but because YOU are the only natural reservoir for this virus. If there's an outbreak, it is because you have chosen to remain at large. I regret that I have to take such a hard line, but if I can't persuade you to come in voluntarily, I will contact the FBI before the end of today.
N. Martin
***
Response: [email protected]
Sent: March 7, 2015, 0519 MST
To: [email protected]
Call them.
Amanda Flynn