Domain of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

snapped taut against its anchor. Angel’s harness jolted against the tension, sending a shockwave juddering through her body. The rope took the force of Angel’s sudden stop and, pivoting against the lip of the roof, transferred what was left of her downward force into lateral movement. Stunted by the jolt, Angel could do nothing as her momentum carried her. She swung and bounced hard against the toughened glass of a manager’s office. As she hit something snapped. A deluge of pain coursed through her arm. Blackness and nausea pressed in around her consciousness. Light headed, dazed and hurting, she could feel herself slipping into oblivion.
    “Pizdets,” slipped from her pursed lips as she asserted her will over the pain.
    Angel hung suspended by her safety harness, stunned by pain and gently twisting while she cradled her left arm. From the corner of her eye something dark hurtled towards her. She looked up in time to see a hapless zombie plummeting straight down. Angel strained her stomach muscles to give her the tilt she needed to get in tight to the building.
    It was too late. Something hard and bony connected with Angel’s cheek and raked down her shoulder and back.
    A stifled scream of pain forced its way through Angel’s gritted teeth.
    Her cheek felt raw from the collision. The burning welt from the impact had overwhelmed much of her feeling and she had to know if she was bleeding. If the zombie had broken the skin she knew she would be infected. In absolute terror, she touched her fingertips to the skin on the side of her face.
    The skin was tender but dry.
    In spite of the pain, Angel felt relief.
    She looked up about to give praise to the heavens when she saw the next free falling corpse.
    Through its clouded eyes, the plummeting corpse, oblivious to its predicament, lashed out at its target. Having missed, it tumbled downwards, hurtling to the ground. In its retarded mind it had no thought of the impact just moments away. It simply stared up plaintively at the meal it was powerless to obtain.
    More zombies stumbled over the edge or were pushed by the eager mass behind them.
    Angel’s fingers grasped out and found a beam of steelwork to lever herself up with, muscles straining and pain throbbing from her elbow as she kicked down with her feet, righting herself. Twisting round, she pulled herself flat against the grime-coated glass, away from the macabre downpour.
    Panting, she hugged tight to the window frame. The stream of bodies was easing off and below her was a heap of rotten flesh. Most of the corpses had been immobilised from their fall but a few splintered carcasses writhed as they tried to move on smashed bones. Occasionally there could be seen a zombie’s jaw gnashing in frustration at its spine-shattered paralysis.
    Angel’s breathing sent plumes of condensation streaking out across the window. She forced herself to take deeper, slower breaths; to calm herself down and sit out the worst of the pain from her arm. From the corner of her eye she saw a dark shape, but this time it wasn’t falling from above.
    Thump.
    The whole window shuddered as a zombie bit down on Angel’s face. Angel tensed and in one primordial reaction she had pushed herself away from the building in sheer fright.
    The zombie’s slavering mouth continued to gnaw down at where Angel’s face had been, either unaware or unperturbed by the sheet of glass that separated them. Thick rivers of black saliva trickled down the inside of the glass. The woman’s white work blouse had long ago been stained yellow, her shoulder-length brown hair was feral and oily and the ragged and fractured nails that clawed at the glass still had patches of red varnish in places. But the one thing to steal Angel’s attention was the eyes. Clouded like a cataract sufferer, they were wide open as she sunk her teeth into the window.
    Even a shark rolls its eyes when it bites , Angel thought as she began her descent to the ground.
     
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    Cahz