Amanda's Story

by Brian O'Grady

  “We are clear. I don’t want anyone hurt, Amanda. Is there anything else I can do to ensure that?”

  His calming demeanor irritated her. “Just keep them away and all this will be over.” She pulled into the station and slammed the transmission into “Park,” straddling both gas pumps. A few seconds later, a woman in a Subaru hatchback pulled behind Amanda and beeped. Amanda closed her eyes and counted to ten. Mittens screamed louder, and a loud explosion eased some of her anxiety. There, bitch. Now you need tires more than gas. She looked over at Lister. “Make the call. We really do not have much time,” she said through clenched teeth.

  It took ten minutes of arguing, pleading, and threatening for the HRT team to be recalled. Amanda was pulling back into traffic before eight. The closer she came to her apartment, the closer the walls of the world pressed in on her. She felt the presence of the team sent to arrest her, and Mittens very nearly escaped from her leash. For a moment she seized several of their minds, and only just let go before Amanda broke her promise to the Flynns. Her emotions were blinding her as she raced up the narrow streets. Lister was saying something, but she shut him out. She was running on thoughts of death, murder, torture, pain, blood, screams—images flashed through her mind in a psychedelic, psychotic fury.

  Amanda flew into her parking spot, barely conscious that Lister was still with her. “Stay here.” He balked and she forced him back into the seat. “If you want to live, stay here!”

  It took her only a few seconds to climb the three flights to her apartment. The air around her had thinned; a bow wave of compressed air pushed everything out of her way. She reached her door and found that it had been breached by the HRT. One of the hinges was sprung, and the door hung at an awkward angle. She touched the wood and found the minds of the two men who had violated her private space. They were close and tantalizingly vulnerable.

  Kill them all! Mittens screamed. Amanda seized their minds and resisted the imperative to squeeze the life from them. She relented and felt their unconscious forms fall to the ground. Mittens was roaring so loud that Amanda had a hard time seeing. The lights of her apartment suddenly burst on and she looked around. Power pulsed through her, and at some level she knew it would need to be vented.

  “Bastards!” she screamed as an introduction to a tirade of profanity. Her bedroom had been searched; everything she owned had been touched and examined by total strangers. Strangers who were forcing her to flee the only refuge she had known. Thoughts were racing through her head, and the three windows in her bedroom exploded outward, venting some of the rage. She quickly gathered her things into a suitcase and an overnight bag. She left her bedroom and went to the fireplace mantle to collect a small, sealed brown box. She touched the polished wood and felt a modicum of relief to find that no one had disturbed it. Inside were a watch, a wedding band, fragments of a wallet, and a pair of dog tags. It was the only thing she really needed from her apartment. Everything else could easily be replaced.

  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.

  CHAPTER 39

  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 beas
t 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?”

  About the Author

  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.

  A note from the author

  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.