Brian O'Grady - Hybrid

“Certainly.” Reisch reached for his overcoat and retrieved his wallet and current identity. He was disappointed that Fessner hadn’t relaxed an iota in the face of his cooperative-Coloradoan act. “There you go, young man,” he continued in character.

“What’s your destination, Mr. Lyon?” Fessner’s voice was a little more confrontational.

“Denver,” Reisch answered. “I have a flight to catch.”

“Can you tell me where you are coming from?” Fessner studied the phony driver’s license as if it might have the correct answer written across Reisch’s picture.

“Manitou Springs. What’s all this about, soldier?” Courtesy wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he tried indignation.

“The State of Colorado is under martial law. There is a ban on traveling, and you are in violation of that ban.” He pocketed the driver’s license. “Please step out of the car, sir.” It was an order delivered by a man who was used to having his orders followed immediately.

Reisch hesitated. Thirty-one minds were focused on him. They clouded out anything beyond his immediate vicinity, and he wondered if it was enough cover to avoid alerting Amanda. He motioned to get out, and Fessner stepped back, his automatic weapon lowered for the moment. Reisch seized Fessner’s mind, and for a moment, he felt the usual but always strange intermixing of their thoughts. It was over in less than an instant. John Fessner dropped to his knees, grabbing his head with a howl of pain. Reisch could feel the man’s agony, but he could also feel his own resurgence. The power to kill had returned. He resisted the urge to tear Fessner’s mind apart; he needed a diversion, not a complication.

“Lieutenant, are you all right?” the sergeant screamed. Something had just happened, and he had missed it. All he saw was Fessner drop to the ground. He raised his weapon and pointed it at Reisch. The remaining twenty-nine guardsmen did the same. “Chavez, check out the LT. You!” he screamed at Reisch. “On the ground, face down, hands behind your back, now!”

“Hold up there, Sergeant. I didn’t even touch him,” Reisch said, stepping away from the Mercedes, his hands held high. He started to gather all their minds, and when he had them perfectly positioned, he felt the energy pulse leave his body. Just for a moment, he became almost weightless as the air around him suddenly compressed and then exploded outward towards the guardsmen. He watched as they flew through the air like little toy soldiers, all of them dead or dying — except for one. Reisch did a double take. Behind him stood a completely unharmed and shocked twenty-two-year-old corporal. For a long second, they stared at each other, both with the same thought: What happened?

Reisch was the first to recover. He grabbed the mind of the corporal and started to squeeze, but not before the guardsman squeezed the trigger of his fully automatic M16.

Catherine Lee quietly pulled the curtain back and found that her patient was still asleep, and still in the emergency room. Sixteen hours on a hospital gurney waiting for a bed , she thought. Unfortunately, the man’s plight was not unique. The twelve-bed ER of St. Luke’s was treating, or in this case, babysitting, more than thirty. Patients were stacked everywhere. She had seen and treated more patients in the last twelve hours than in the last twelve shifts. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, and blunt trauma were supposed to be in her past. Seventeen years as an Emergency Room Attending at Grady Memorial in Atlanta had earned her the respite in sleepy Colorado Springs, but now the violence had found its way back to her doorstep. Most of the surgical patients were ultimately “turfed” to other hospitals, but only after Dr. Lee and her ER staff had stabilized them. The medical patients had to stay, no one was accepting medical transfers; every other hospital within a fifty-mile radius was as full as St. Luke’s. It was this year’s flu bug, and it had hit Colorado hard and late in the season. She had seen her first case of it ten days earlier, and it had been a nonstop parade of sick people ever since. Then, just to make matters worse, the federal government had announced a ban on travel, a medical quarantine to contain a virulent strain of TB.

The head nurse reached around her waist and spun her around. “Hey sexy, how about you give me a complete physical?” Tom Lee asked.

“Not until I get a shower and eight hours of sleep,” she replied, giving her husband a quick peck on the cheek. “Any hope of clearing out some of these patients? This guy over here has been down here for nearly two days.”

His tone changed. “Same story as yesterday — no beds anywhere. Have you talked with Dr. Branson lately?”

“Not for a week or so.” She had been so busy that she had missed all of the hospital meetings. “Why, what have you heard?”

“First, that this quarantine has nothing to do with TB.”

“Oh, there’s a big surprise,” she said, and pulled out of his embrace to let a staff nurse squeeze by them. The weak excuse of a virulent form of TB was an insult to anyone who knew better, which was pretty much everybody.

“Well, Doctor Smarty-Pants, do you know why there’s a quarantine?” He pressed himself into the wall as a patient on a gurney was wheeled down the corridor.

“No, but I’m sure our omnipotent chief of staff, who knows all, revealed the deep dark secret while you were peeing on a wall somewhere.”

She started to walk back to the nurse’s station, and he followed close behind, his voice falling to a whisper.

“Seriously, Cat, he says that it’s because of this flu bug. Apparently, a lot of people who get it are dying.”

She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Dying? How many?” Spending all her time in the ER, she had little opportunity to keep tabs on the patients admitted through the emergency room; she would have to attend the staff meetings to get that kind of follow-up.

“About half, and it’s not just the old people.” They were back in public view, and he maintained a professional distance.

“Half! That can’t be right. We’d be up to our elbows in Health Department lookie-lous.”

“The morgue is full, and the military has been making regular trips to our loading docks, and I don’t think they’re delivering anything.”

“Damn, this is serious. I better give Dr. Branson a call. I’ll see you later.” Absently, she gave him another kiss. Ten minutes later, she was still waiting for Bob Branson to return her page. He probably won’t answer because he thinks I want him to shake some beds loose , she thought while leafing through the Health Department’s notification forms. Influenza was a reportable disease, and every case they saw generated a report.

“Seventy-nine,” Cary Tees said, and Cat looked up. “Seventy-nine cases in the last. . ” She checked her watch. “. . nineteen hours. Episcopal and General are both over a hundred. TB, my ass. This quarantine is about this flu, or whatever the hell it is.” Cary was from New York, and Cat occasionally enjoyed her in-your-face style, but this wasn’t one of those occasions.

“Do you have something for me, Cary?” Cat passed the stack of reports to the unit assistant.

“The patient in five, Dr. Rucker, is awake and wants to talk with you. Did you know he’s the coroner?”

“Thanks,” Cat said and weaved her way through the circus that her emergency room had become, hoping that maybe Dr. Rucker could clue her in on what was happening down here in the trenches. She pulled the curtain back with a flourish and found Phil sitting on the edge of the gurney, trying to keep his balance. “Dr. Rucker, you should not be trying to get up on your own.”