“I’m Amanda Flynn,” she said and offered her hand.
John reached to shake it, but just before he made contact, there was a loud snap, and both of them were thrown to the floor. Oliver’s hand was badly burned, and the sleeve of his cassock melted halfway up to his elbow. His first thought was that this was just another hallucination. Then the pain set in, which, for a time, blotted out any other thoughts. He managed a glance at his hand and forearm, which were red and blistered but not charred, and after a moment, the pain began to recede. He looked up and found Amanda working her hand as well. It too was red, but not blistered, and by the look on her face, she was more shocked than hurt.
“What the hell was that?” Oliver said breathlessly.
“I have no idea, but I dreamed something very similar earlier this morning. This is real, though. Look at your sleeve,” she said, motioning with her head. “It’s still smoldering.”
“I know. So much for one hundred percent polyester.” He worked his hand more vigorously. “The pain is going away. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Mine, too. So is the redness.” Amanda got to her feet, and Oliver followed. “Maybe we should just keep our distance.”
“Fair enough. You sit there.” He motioned to one of the chairs that faced his desk. “And I’ll sit way over there.” He indicated his desk chair. He rounded his desk and sat down, all the while opening and closing his hand. He still had some blisters, and his sleeve was ruined, but otherwise, he was back to normal.
“So we’ve learned something already,” Amanda said in an upbeat tone. She stared at him, and he stared back.
“Small talk, anyone?” Oliver said to break the tension.
“I suppose I should begin.” She waited for him to nod his assent. “As far as I can tell, there are only three of us. I know next to nothing about Reisch and very little about you, so I’ll start off by telling you my story.”
“Fair enough,” Oliver said, suddenly feeling uneasy. Her presence confirmed a reality well beyond his understanding, and despite the fact that most of his adult life had been devoted to God and an existence beyond this one, a part of him wasn’t yet ready to give up his simple, uncomplicated world.
“Seven years ago, I went to Honduras with the Red Cross to assist the local population after a hurricane. We were sent to a small town to set up a relief center, but the people we were supposed to help had already died. Most of them either killed themselves or were killed by someone else, but several had died from some form of hemorrhagic fever. We came in unprotected, and everyone I was with ultimately became infected and eventually died. I was the lone survivor. The U.S. military eventually flew me home, at least back to the States. They held me for several weeks while researchers from the CDC tried to find out why I didn’t die like everyone else. That’s when the Change started.” She nervously twirled her short blond hair.
“At first, I thought that they were drugging me,” she continued, “so I stopped eating and drinking, but the voices in my head only became stronger. So I thought that maybe they were putting something in the air. After the first week, they moved me out of isolation and into a regular room with unfiltered air, but I only got worse. Finally, after a couple of weeks, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t them, it was me. I was losing my mind. They didn’t seem to notice, and I doubt many of them would have cared. I was an oddity, a mystery that had to be solved before they could move on to other mysteries. Only, I wasn’t giving them what they needed. I could feel their frustrations even through the locked doors, and in time, it grew into resentment, and then finally, anger.
“I remember a morning sitting on my bed listening to a disembodied voice run through my head as some nameless technician drew my blood. It was so clear and so disturbing. He was struggling with the vein, and each time he missed, the voice became louder and more irate. After several attempts, I finally told him to stop. He ignored me, so I grabbed his arm. I could see the anger in his face, and the voice in my mind became furious. It screamed that all it wanted was to go back home, but I was keeping it here. The technician pushed my face into a pillow and brutally stabbed me with the needle. It was then, when I was trying to breathe through a pillow, that I realized that I had changed. I was thinking his thoughts, not mine. When he finished, and finally let me up, I told him I knew why his wife had left him the year before. He managed to hit me several times before the nurses pulled him off me.”
“Amanda, I’m so sorry,” Oliver said, stifling an urge to pat her hand.
“I survived,” she said simply. “Towards the end, they needed to figure out what to do with me. No one wanted to release a potentially infectious person back into society, but they had run out of tests to do, at least humane tests. Some of them wanted to push me, to find out how I survived, no matter what the cost. A few wanted to do even more. I listened as their thoughts turned into possibilities, and then into plans. I was mostly alone in the world, and it wouldn’t take much to make me disappear, just another casualty of an unnamed illness that had claimed the lives of an entire Red Cross relief team. They began to see me as less of a mystery and more of an opportunity.”
“That’s incredible,” Oliver said, but he knew it wasn’t impossible. Three and a half decades as a priest had driven home the point that man was inherently flawed and easily corrupted. In the hearts and minds of most people, the river of needs and desires ran much deeper than the river of morals and ethics.
“At the time it seemed incredible, but now, seven years later, it seems predictable. I was finally released. I think the CDC plans were leaked to someone in the military, because one day the doctors and nurses were removed by a squad of soldiers and replaced by the Army Medical Corps.
“I came back to Colorado Springs and the Flynns, and tried to pick up the pieces of my old life, but I couldn’t. I was different, and the more I tried to ignore that fact, the more obvious it became. Greg and Lisa sensed it, and they finally confronted me. I told them everything, from the experiments to the voices in my head. They are both very devout, and they seemed to find great significance in the fact that I had both survived and had been graced with this gift. At that point in my life, I had pretty much turned away from God. It’s ironic, but even after all I had just been through, I still had more faith in humanity than I had in God.” Amanda paused to let Oliver comment, but he let her continue. “Greg and Lisa can be quite formidable when they have their minds set, and they had their minds set on me rediscovering my faith in God. I told them that it never was a question of belief; it was a question of trust. I could never count on Him being there when I needed Him.” She paused again.
“I’m not going to deny that if God had interceded on your behalf, some of the terrible things that have happened to you wouldn’t have happened,” Oliver said, and then paused. “I believe that God is capable of anything, and on occasion, does suspend the natural laws for our benefit. Why He didn’t intervene when your husband and son died is a mystery, a troubling mystery, yes, but in the end, I trust in His mercy and righteousness.”
“You haven’t always,” she said pointedly.
Oliver smiled. “Stay out of my mind, young lady.”
She smiled back.
Oliver continued, “I didn’t say it was easy, and yes, I have on occasion lost my way, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, I have always managed to find my way home.”
“I’m happy for you, but for me, I’ve never really had a home.”