Furious by Jeffrey Higgins (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📕

Did it even have teeth? Optimism filled me.

I searched further and found an animal website which claimed all bats had canines. My hope deflated. That cave nectar bat had fangs and could have bitten Brad. Carnivorous bats seldom bit humans and usually feasted on bugs or other tiny prey. Small fangs did not always cause pain, which meant Brad could have felt the bat strike him, but not its bite.

But if nectar bats were herbivores, why had it bitten him? I read more.

Sometimes bats attacked humans, because they carried rabies—a neurological disease, which drove the bats into madness. Less than one percent of all bats carried the rabies virus, according to a website about animals, but another website claimed six percent of bats had it. How could those numbers be accurate? There had been thousands of bats in that cave on Bali, and if one percent had rabies and started biting the others, the percentage of carriers would surge.

I researched the symptoms of rabies and most sites urged prevention through rabies vaccinations. According to the Center for Disease Control, over fifty-nine thousand people died each year from rabies, mostly in Africa and Asia. The disease had almost been eradicated in the United States, with only one or two people succumbing to it annually. Rabies vaccines proved effective, and even if a bat bit an unvaccinated patient, a doctor could administer post-exposure prophylaxis. The incubation period for the virus was anywhere from five days to ten years, with an average of about three weeks.

Unfortunately, once a patient displayed symptoms, it was too late to get treatment. It seldom happened in the United States, unless patients awakened in room with a bat but did not know it had bitten them. Because of that possibility, the medical protocol required administering treatment if a patient had been asleep in proximity to a bat.

We should have gone to a doctor.

I read further and gasped. The mortality rate for patients exhibiting symptoms was almost one hundred percent. There had only been seven recorded cases of patients surviving after symptoms became visible. I slammed my laptop shut.

Brad does not have rabies.

But if he did and these were the first symptoms, he would die. I could not handle his death. Not now. Not after Emma. He did not have rabies, and that was that.

I climbed on deck and stared at the water. I checked the instruments. I inspected at the sails. I paced the length of the yacht. I rubbed my neck and ran my fingers through my hair.

“Damn it.”

I was a doctor. Burying my head in the sand may be easier than facing the possibility Brad had contracted rabies, but it was not a rational response. Understandable, but not rational. I needed to consider the worst-case scenario and allow myself time to plan. Brad probably had the flu, but if it was something more serious—if it was rabies—I would have to use my mind to solve the problem. Reason had always been my refuge, and I would think my way through this.

I opened my laptop and scrolled through the symptoms again. After the incubation period, infected patients displayed flu-like symptoms for two to ten days. Patients presented headaches, weakness, nausea, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Rabies attacked the neurological system and caused confusion and cerebral dysfunction. Brad had displayed all of those symptoms, but the flu could also explain it.

Except his bloody head.

In the acute phase, the trademark behavior of patients infected with rabies included excessive salivation—drooling like a dog—difficulty swallowing, and hydrophobia. Patients had exhibited extreme fear of water for as long as there had been records of rabies infections.

People contracted the disease from wild animals. Dog bites caused a rabies epidemic in Bali in 2008, but the disease was under control now. Most people in the United States contracted the virus from bats, but any animal could carry it. After furious rabies burned itself through the brain, patients experienced paralysis, coma, and death. It was a savage virus and a horrible way to die.

I clicked on a video of an African man strapped to a hospital bed, with an oxygen mask covering his mouth. He jerked in bed, growling and barking while a doctor documented his symptoms—two weeks post dog bite. The patient’s eye flared like a wild beast.

Can this be real?

My eyes darted to the companionway.

I opened another black and white video showing Persian villagers taken to the Pasteur Institute after being bitten by a wolf. One man had legions on his face. According to the narrator, a patient developed hydrophobia on his third symptomatic day. An agitated man tossed and turned in bed. In another clip, he spit water after trying to drink, coughing and gasping. By day five they had tied him to a bed, where he lay soaked in sweat and frothing at the mouth. His eyes rolled in his head. He became paralyzed, sank into a coma, and died.

I glanced at the companionway again. Had I heard something?

I closed the video and opened another, from Bhopal, India. A group of people stood in the street watching a man on his hands and knees, eating food off a plate like an animal. A woman tried to give him a sip from a jug and the man lunged at her, snapping his teeth like a rabid dog.

Tears filled my eyes. “Oh my God.”

If Brad had rabies, there was nothing I could do. He could be dead in as few as eight days. I seethed with anger. Brad’s ego had prevented me from examining his head on Bali. If I had seen blood on his scalp, I would have known the bat had bitten him and he could have visited a doctor before departing. Now, it was too late. All we had was a medical kit. And me.

What will I do if he dies?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Brad had been asleep for hours, and I paced around the deck to