Domain by James Herbert

Author:James Herbert [Herbert, James]
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Horror, Fiction
ISBN: 9780330522083
Google: vqaJcgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0330376233
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2015-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

For Bryce, the reality was more horrendous than any nightmare he had ever known. He had come to after his sedation with the full knowledge that the disease had him. It was too soon for the full symptoms to be evident, but the dryness in his throat, the feeling of burning up inside, and the fierce headache, were the indications and the forerunners of the agony to follow. In a few days' time there would be agitation, confusion and hallucinations; then muscle spasms, stiffness of the neck and back, convulsions and perhaps even paralysis. He knew the symptoms—Civil Defence staff were made aware of them in their training—and he dreaded the inevitable pain he was promised. He would not be able to drink and the inability to swallow properly would cause him to foam at the mouth, to be mortally afraid of liquids, to be terrified of his own saliva. The fits, the madness, would eventually lead him into a coma, a pain-filled exhaustion and, mercifully, death would come soon after.

His hand was numb at the moment, but the memory of Dr Reynolds' quickly administered treatment sent fresh nausea sweeping through him.

After injecting him against the pain, she had squeezed the stumps of his fingers, encouraging them to bleed a little more. Then, using a syringe, she had forced benzalkonium, an antiseptic detergent, into the open wounds, after which, and despite his moaning protests, she had carefully applied a small amount of nitric acid. He was weeping by the time she injected the antiserum around the wounds, and ready to collapse when a further dose was injected into a muscle in his wrist.

And he was pleading by the time she had administered the vaccination, puncturing the side of his abdomen below the ribs fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—he lost count after seventeen—times, quietly explaining to him that the treatment was absolutely vital if he were to survive, ignoring his protests which grew more desperate yet more feeble each time the needle pierced his skin, telling him that each 2ml. subcutaneous injection was an attenuated virus prepared from the brains of rabid animals—as if he really cared. When Dr Reynolds was through, Bryce really couldn't care less about anything, anyone, or himself even; he had swooned back onto the bunkbed and sunk into sweet oblivion.

To wake later, sensing the first pangs of the disease upon him (knowing it wasn't only the after-effects of drugs, or the side-effects of the antiserum, that the treatment hadn't worked, that the disease was in him, feeling it spreading, flowing with his own blood) and slowly becoming aware that something more was wrong, lying there in the subdued lighting of the sick bay with other ailing survivors, listening to the screams and shouts beyond the closed door, the strange rushing sound, the lapping of water around the cot beds inside the medical room itself. Sharp sounds that sounded like ... sounded like gunfire.

Bryce sat upright and others around him, those whose sedation allowed, did the same, all of them confused and more than just frightened.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.