ISBN: 978-1-936558-04-9 * eISBN: 978-1-936558-05-6 * Paperback $16.95 * E-book $9.95 *

Publication: April 5, 2011

Brian O’Grady’s website

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The notion that we’re befouling our planet didn’t begin with Al Gore. In fact, some of the first notes were sounded back in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich in his popular book The Population Bomb, which basically posited that humanity was growing so fast that we’d eventually run out of resources. The Ehrlich book is referenced by one of Brian O’Grady’s characters in Hybrid, but the remedy is Draconian, to say the least: a rather wrenching, sudden change in population, for not-so-altruistic reasons.

Hybrid has a double meaning: it represents a new kind of deadly virus, and a new kind of person. Amanda Flynn has developed a remarkable new set of powers after an exposure to a genetically modified virus. It certainly was not the original intent of the virus; instead of dying a painful death, Amanda’s mind has expanded. She learns to invade the mind’s of others, manipulate objects, even to kill. But such power comes with a price: seductive enjoyment. Here, she tells about how she dealt with an FBI agent whom she knew to be selling secrets to the Chinese.

“I was so comfortable with myself that I never really thought through what I was about to do. Ted was a trained FBI agent, and the other man was, for all I knew, a trained killer, but I just walked right up to them with every intention of subduing them as painfully as possible. Before I could do or say anything, Ted saw me, grabbed his briefcase, and began to run. The other guy shot him in the back, and then he shot me in the chest.” Amanda touched a spot just below her right shoulder. “For some reason, I didn’t feel any pain. He was about to shoot me again when something inside me reached into his consciousness and tore through it. I ripped his mind apart.” Her whole affect changed, and a subtle smiled crossed her face. “I enjoyed it more than anything I had ever done before. He died as slowly and as painfully as I could manage. It was horrible and beautiful at the same time, and I loved it.”

Oliver stared at Amanda with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

Her chief nemesis, known early on only as the Dark Man, battles his own demons:

He shivered under the thick blankets as much out of frustration as fever. It was always the same, first the blisters, then the fever, and finally the madness. He could live with the blisters and fever, but when the madness came, it enveloped him completely, obliterating any sense of purpose or urgency, and he could ill afford that now. Over the years, he had learned how to control it; delay it would be a more accurate description.

The problem was that every time he denied the madness, it only came back stronger. He tried to clear his head, but it resisted. Flashes of his parents assaulted his mind: his mother beating him after he had been expelled from school because he had hurt another student; his father unceremoniously dumping him on a train that would take him to the military school that would “straighten” him out. The images of his early years flowed through his mind and he smiled, wondering if that foolish man and his wife ever realized what type of creature they had brought into this world. Maybe on their deathbeds, they had been graced with the knowledge that they had played a part in creating the most powerful being that had ever inhabited this planet.

O’Grady’s characters are normal and recognizable people placed in extraordinary situations. A key character, Colorado Springs’s chief medical examiner, suffers from autism, expressed in obsessive-compulsive behavior. Here he tries to manage a simple trip to the diner:

It took him two minutes and thirty seconds to finish; a little fast, and he would probably pay for it later, but he was now free to leave. He carefully reached for his wallet, moving slowly so as not to disturb either of the men sitting next to him. The physical contact, while disagreeable, would be relatively harmless as he still wore his coat, but the obligatory conversation that followed would be another impediment to his return to Sonny’s Café. He extracted a new ten-dollar bill, placed it face up immediately in front of his now clean plate, and waited for Dana to retrieve it. Phil stared straight ahead, focusing on his distorted reflection in the stainless steel panel that lined the kitchen. He identified with the warped image of himself and in some strange way was comforted by it. Parts of him were stretched to absurd proportions, while others were pinched together, but it still managed to remain a discrete entity— at least for now.

A minute passed, and Dana hadn’t collected the money. The man to Phil’s right slid off his stool, tossed a number of crumpled bills onto his dirty plate, and left without a thought. Phil didn’t move. He sat frozen to his stool, looking neither left nor right, taking up a minimum amount of space, waiting for Dana to dismiss him just as she had done nearly every workday for the last four years. Only today, she had missed her cue. He could hear her down the counter fending off the clumsy advances of some construction worker. He listened for her approach, not daring to glance lest she misinterpret his need to leave for something else. A minute passed, and he felt it go. The clock in front of him began to accelerate. Phil glanced down at the bill and confirmed it was where it should be. Two more minutes passed, and now he couldn’t even hear her.

She must be mad, he reasoned. Three minutes passed, and the world began to collapse in on him. Heat began to build in his chest, and he started to count. He was at forty-eight when Dana blew by, snatched the bill despite an armload of dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen. Phil climbed off his stool and left as fast as the busy restaurant would allow. No change would be coming. He refused to have money in his wallet that had passed through countless hands.

Father Oliver, a priest wracked by the death of his sister to ovarian cancer, struggles with his own evolution:

The last time he had felt the all-too familiar squeeze of angina had been a morning three weeks ago when he had awakened to the vision of his sister burning in unquenchable flames. She writhed in agony at the foot of his bed, calling his name, cursing him for her torment. He had reached for her, and a tongue of flame shot from the pyre and scorched his hand, and then she was gone. The skin of his hand was burned off, and only charred muscle and bone remained. He tried to scream, but the shock had stolen his breath.

The pain was, in a word, beautiful. It was all encompassing filling every fiber of his being. Oliver had never experienced anything so absolute; not even the love of God was as complete. He pleaded for it to stop, and then it was gone. Oliver examined his hand and was amazed to find that it was back to normal, right down to the age spots that covered his wrist.

Intellectually, he knew it had all been just a hallucination, another manifestation of his ordeal, and that there was no reason to be surprised. He put his arm down and stared through the now-vanished apparition. Illusion, nothing more, he told himself. Mary, his hand, the pain, they were all a trick. Only this illusion had a purpose—an intent. It tore away his façade of intellect and belief and exposed him for what he really was: a hypocrite and a fraud. A real pain in his chest began to intrude upon his reflection, and he reached for his Nitrobid. It was the last time he would need it, despite five more equally horrific and revealing visits from his dead sister.

Part of the fun of Hybrid is the sense of authority O’Grady is able to draw among policemen, medical examiners and virologists, alongside the thrills. If you enjoy police procedurals or shows like “C.S.I.,” you’ll find much to like here:

He reached for the first slide in the rack as Melissa left to restain the second set of slides. Phil quickly scanned the twenty-eight slides from the two patients, and again found exactly what he had found in Peter Bilsky’s brain: large cells lining both victims’ ventricles. Stem cells, he thought. Somehow, the virus had reactivated the long-dormant process of cellular differentiation. The implications were incredible. If the lethal aspects of the virus could be eliminated, this virus would be a medical miracle. Strokes, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, leukemia, almost every degenerative process could be reversed.

As Hybrid accelerates towards its exciting climax, law enforcement officers become more desperate, government authorities are pulled in at the very highest levels, and Amanda needs all her power to prevent capture:

Amanda heard and felt someone give the command to take her. Three agents sprung from their hiding positions and started sprinting towards her. Two more gunned their cars to block her Jeep. She hesitated only a moment and then hit them all with a concentrated blast of mental energy. It was only a tiny fraction of what she was capable of, but it was more than enough to knock them unconscious. She left the video feed running. She had an agent to her left, one to her right, and in one behind her; all three had landed where she hit them. Both of the drivers had managed to slam their sedans into parked cars, and aside from being unconscious, were otherwise okay.

Amanda turned to gather her things and then said good-bye to her loyal and reliable Jeep. She slowly and deliberately climbed out into the snow. She turned towards the camera so that they could plainly see her and then walked to each of the three agents and took their handguns and IDs. Unclipping the radio from the last man’s belt, she hit the transmit button.

“They’re not dead,” she said. “But they very well could have been.”

Part forensic thriller, part horror story, part science fiction novel, Hybrid is one of the most exhilarating reads you will enjoy this year.