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                                I Am Legend
                        by
                              RICHARD MATHESON



                            PART I: January 1976

                                Chapter One



ON THOSE CLOUDY DAYS, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and
sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

If he had been more analytical, he might have calculated the approximate
time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetime habit of judging
nightfall by the sky, and on cloudy days that method didnÆt work. That was
why he chose to stay near the house on those days.

He walked around the house in the dull gray of afternoon, a cigarette
dangling from the corner of his mouth, trailing threadlike smoke over his
shoulder. He checked each window to see if any of the boards had been
loosened. After violent attacks, the planks were often split or partially
pried off, and he had to replace them completely; a job he hated. Today
only one plank was loose. IsnÆt that amazing? he thought.

In the back yard he checked the hothouse and the water tank. Sometimes the
structure around the tank might be weakened or its rain catchers bent or
broken off. Sometimes they would lob rocks over the high fence around the
hothouse, and occasionally they would tear through the overhead net and
heÆd have to replace panes.

Both the tank and the hothouse were undamaged today. He went to the house
for a hammer and nails. As he pushed open the front door, he looked at the
distorted reflection of himself in the cracked mirror heÆd fastened to the
door a month ago. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass
would start to fall off. Let æem fall, he thought. It was the last damned
mirror heÆd put there; it wasnÆt worth it. HeÆd put garlic there instead.
Garlic always worked.

He passed slowly through the dim silence of the living room, turned left
into the small hallway, and left again into his bedroom.

Once the room had been warmly decorated, but that was in another time. Now
it was a room entirely functional, and since NevilleÆs bed and bureau took
up so little space, he had converted one side of the room into a shop.

A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy
band saw; a wood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise. Above it, on the wall,
were haphazard racks of the tools that Robert NΦville used.

He took a hammerfrom the bench and picked out a few nails from one of the
disordered bins. Then he went back outside and nailed the plank fast to the
shutter. The unused nails he threw into the rubble next door.

For a while he stood on the front lawn looking up and down the silent
length of Cimarron Street. He was a tall man, thirty-six, born of
English-German stock, his features undistinguished except for the long,
determined mouth and the bright blue of his eyes, which moved now over the
charred ruins of the houses on each side of his. HeÆd burned them down to
prevent them from jumping on his roof from the adjacent ones.

After a few minutes he took a long, slow breath and went back into the
house. He tossed the hammer on the living-room couch, then lit another
cigarette and had his midmorning drink.

Later he forced himself into the kitchen to grind up the five-day
accumulation of garbage in the sink. He knew he should burn up the paper
plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash out the sinks and
the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets and pillowcase on his bed;
but he didnÆt feel like it.

For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to
him.



It was almost noon. Robert Neville was in his hothouse collecting a
basketful of garlic.

In the beginning it had made him sick to smell garlic in such quantity his
stomach had been in a state of constant turmoil. Now the smell was in his
house and in his clothes, and sometimes he thought it was even in his
flesh.

He hardly noticed it at all.

When he had enough bulbs, he went back to the house and dumped them on the
drainboard of the sink. As he flicked the wall switch, the light flickered,
then flared into normal brilliance. A disgusted hiss passed his clenched
teeth. The generator was at it again. HeÆd have to get out that damned
manual again and check the wiring. And, if it were too much trouble to
repair, heÆd have to install a new generator.

Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat
down with an exhausted grunt.

First, be separated the bulbs into the small, sickle-shaped cloves. Then he
cut each pink, leathery clove in half, exposing the fleshy center buds. The
air thickened with the musky, pungent odor. When it got too oppressive, he
snapped on the air-conditioning unit and suction drew away the worst of it.

Now he reached over and took an icepick from its wall rack. He punched
holes in each clove half, then strung them all together with wire until he
had about twenty-five necklaces.

In the beginning he had hung these necklaces over the windows. But from a
distance theyÆd thrown rocks until heÆd been forced to cover the broken
panes with plywood scraps. Finally one day heÆd torn off the plywood and
nailed up even rows of planks instead. It had made the house a gloomy
sepulcher, but it was better than having rocks come flying into his rooms
in a shower of splintered glass. And, once he had installed the three
air-conditioning units, it wasnÆt too bad. A man could get used to anything
if he had to.

When he was finished stringing the garlic cloves, he went outside and
nailed them over the window boarding, taking down the old strings, which
had lost most of their potent smell.

He had to go through this process twice a week. Until he found something
better, it was his first line of defense.

Defense? he often thought. For what?

All afternoon he made stakes.

He lathed them out of thick doweling, band-sawed into nine-inch lengths.
These be held against the whirling emery stone until they were as sharp as
daggers

It was. tiresome, monotonous work, and it filled the air with hot-smelling
wood dust that settled in his pores and got into his lungs and made him
cough.

Yet he never seemed to get ahead. No matter how many stakes he made, they
were gone in no time at all. Doweling was getting harder to find, too.
Eventually heÆd have to lathe down rectangular lengths of wood. WonÆt that
be fun? bethought irritably.

It was all very depressing and it made him resolve to find a better method
of disposal. But how could he find it when they never gave him a chance to
slow down and think?

As he lathed, he listened to records over the loudspeaker heÆd set up in:
the bedroomùBeethovenÆs Third, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies. He was glad
heÆd learned early in life, from his mother, to appreciate this kind of
music. It helped to fill the terrible void of hours.

From four oÆclock on, his gaze kept shifting to the clock on the wall. He
worked in silence, lips pressed into a hard line, a cigarette in the corner
of his mouth, his eyes Staring at the bit as it gnawed away the wood and
sent floury dust filtering down to the floor.

Four-fifteen. Four-thirty. It was a quarter to five.

In another hour theyÆd be at the house again, the filthy bastards. As soon
as the light was gone.



He stood before the giant freezer, selecting his supper.

His jaded eyes moved over the stacks of meats down to the frozen
vegetables, down to the breads and pastries, the fruits and ice cream.

He picked out two lamb chops, string beans, and a small box of orange
sherbet. He picked the boxes from the freezer and pushed shut the door with
his elbow,

Next he moved over to the uneven stacks of cans piled to the ceiling. He
took down a can of tomato juice, then left the room that had once belonged
to Kathy and now belonged to his stomach.

He moved slowly across the living room, looking at the mural that covered
the back wall. It showed a cliff edge, sheering off to green-blue ocean
that surged and broke over black rocks. Far up in the clear blue sky, white
sea gulls floated on the wind, and over on the right a gnarled tree hung
over the precipice, its dark branches etched against the sky.

Neville walked into the kitchen and dumped the groceries on the table, his
eyes moving to the clock. Twenty minutes to six. Soon now.

He poured a little water into a small pan and clanked it down on a stove
burner. Next he thawed out the chops and put them under the broiler. By
this time the water was boiling and he dropped in the frozen string beans
and covered them, thinking that it was probably the electric stove that was
milking the generator.

At the table he sliced himself two pieces of bread and poured himself a
glass of tomato juice. He sat down and looked at the red second hand as it
swept slowly around the clock face. The bastards ought to be here soon.

After heÆd finished his tomato juice, he walked to the front door and went
out onto the porch. He stepped off onto the lawn and walked down to the
sidewalk.

The sky was darkening and it was getting chilly. He looked up and down
Cimarron Street, the cool breeze ruffling his blond hair. ThatÆs what was
wrong with these cloudy days; you never knew when they were coming.

Oh, well, at least they were better than those damned dust storms. With a
shrug, he moved back across the lawn and into the house, locking and
bolting the door behind him, sliding the thick bar into place. Then he went
back into the kitchen, turned his chops, and switched off the heat under
the string beans.

He was putting the food on his plate when he stopped and his eyes moved
quickly to the clock. Six-twenty-five today. Ben Cortman was shouting.

ôCome out, Neville!ö

Robert Neville sat down with a sigh and began to eat.



He sat in the living room, trying to read. HeÆd made himself a whisky and
soda at his small bar and he held the cold glass as he read a physiology
text. From the speaker over the hallway door, the music of Schonberg was
playing loudly.

Not loudly enough, though. He still heard them outside, their murmuring and
their walkings about and their cries, their snarling and fighting among
themselves. Once in a while a rock or brick thudded off the house.
Sometimes a dog barked.

And they were all there for the same thing.

Robert Neville closed his eyes a moment and held his lips in a tight line.
Then he opened his eyes and lit another cigarette, letting the smoke go
deep into his lungs.

He wished heÆd had time to soundproof the house. It wouldnÆt be so bad if
it werenÆt that he had to listen to them. Even after five months, it got on
his nerves.

He never looked at them any more. In the beginning heÆd made a peephole in
the front window and watched them. But then the women bad seen him and had
started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house. He
didnÆt want to look at that.

He put down his book and stared bleakly at the rug, hearing VerklΣrte Nacht
play over the loud-speaker. He knew he could put plugs in his ears to shut
off the sound of them, but that would shut off the music too, and he didnÆt
want to feel that they were forcing him into a shell.

He closed his eyes again. It was the women who made it so difficult, be
thought, the women posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility
that heÆd see them and decide to come out.

A shudder. ran through him. Every night it was the same. HeÆd be reading
and listening to music. Then heÆd start to think about soundproofing the
house, then heÆd think about the women.

Deep in his body, the knotting heat began again, and be pressed his lips
together until they were white. He knew the feeling well and it enraged him
that he couldnÆt combat it. It grew and grew until he couldnÆt sit still
any more. Then heÆd get up and pace the floor, fists bloodless at his
sides. Maybe heÆd set up the movie projector or eat something or have too
much to drink or turn the music up so loud it hurt his ears. He had to do
something when it got really bad.

He felt the muscles of his abdomen closing in like frightening coils. He
picked up the book and tried to read, his lips forming each word slowly and
painfully.

But in a moment the book was on his lap again. He looked at. the bookcase
across from him. All the knowledge in those books couldnÆt put out the
fires in him; all the words of centuries couldnÆt end the wordless,
mindless craving of his flesh.

The realization made him sick. It was an insult to a man. All right, it was
a natural drive, but there was no outlet for it any more. TheyÆd forced
celibacy on him; heÆd have to live with it. You have a mind, donÆt you? he
asked himself. Well, use it? .

He reached over and turned the music still louder; then forced himself to
read a whole page without pause. He read about blood cells being forced
through membranes, about pale lymph carrying the wastes through tubes
blocked by lymph nodes, about lymphocytes and phago¡cytic cells.

ô...to empty, in the left shoulder region, near the thorax, into a large
vein of the blood circulating system.ö

æThe book shut with a thud.

Why didnÆt they leave him alone? Did they think they could all have him?
Were they so stupid they thought that? Why did they keep coming every
night? After five months, youÆd think theyÆd give up and try elsewhere.

He went over to the bar and made himself another drink. As he turned back
to his chair he heard stones rattling down across the roof and landing with
thuds in the shrubbery beside the house. Above the noises, he heard Ben
Cortman shout as he always shouted.

ôCome out, Neville!ö

Someday IÆll get that bastard, he thought as he took a big swallow of the
bitter drink. Someday IÆll knock a stake right through his goddamn chest.
IÆll make one a foot long for him, a special one with ribbons on it, the
bastard.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow heÆd soundproof the house. His fingers drew into
white-knuckled fists. He couldnÆt stand thinking about those women. If he
didnÆt hear them, maybe he wouldnÆt think about them. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

The music ended and he took a stack of records off the turntable and slid
them back into their cardboard envelopes. Now he could hear them even more
clearly outside. He reached for the first new record he could get and put
it on the turntable and twisted the volume up to its highest point.

ôThe Year of the Plague,ö by Roger Leie, filled his ears. Violins scraped
and whined, tympani thudded like the beats of a dying heart, flutes played
weird, atonal melodies.

With a stiffening of rage, he wrenched up the record and snapped it over
his right knee. HeÆd meant to break it long ago. He walked on rigid legs to
the kitchen and flung the pieces into the trash box. Then he stood in the
dark kitchen, eyes tightly shut, teeth clenched, hands damped over his
ears. Leave me alone,, leave me alone, leave me alone!

No use, you couldnÆt beat them at night. No use trying; it was their
special time. He was acting very stupidly, trying to beat them. Should he
watch a movie? No, be didnÆt feel like setting up the projector. HeÆd go to
bed and put the plugs in his ears. It was what he ended up doing every
night, anyway.

Quickly, trying not to think at all; he went to the bedroom and undressed.
He put on pajama bottoms and went into the bathroom. He never wore pajama
tops; it was a habit heÆd acquired in Panama during the war.

As he washed, he looked into the mirror at his broad chest, at the dark
hair swirling around the nipples and down the center line of his chest. He
looked at the ornate cross heÆd had tattooed on his chest one night in
Panama when heÆd been drunk. What a fool I was in those days! he thought.
Well, maybe that cross had saved his life.

He brushed his teeth carefully and used dental-floss. He tried to take good
care of his teeth because he was his own dentist now. Some things could go
to pot, but not his health, he thought. Then why donÆt you stop pouring
alcohol into yourself? he thought. Why donÆt you shut the hell up? he
thought.

Now be went through the house, turning out lights. For a few minutes he
looked at the mural and tried to believe it was really the ocean. But how
could he believe it with all the bumpings and the scrapings, the howlings
and snarlings and cries in the night?

He turned off the living-room lamp and went into the bedroom.

He made a sound of disgust when he saw that sawdust covered the bed. He
brushed it off with snapping hand strokes, thinking that heÆd better build
a partition between the shop and the sleeping portion of the room. Better
do this and better do that, he thought morosely. There were so many damned
things to do, heÆd never get to the real problem.

He jammed in his earplugs and a great silence engulfed him. He turned off
the light and crawled in between the sheets. He looked at the radium-faced
clock and saw that it was only a few minutes past ten. Just as well, he
thought. This way IÆll get an early start.

He lay there on the bed and took deep breaths of the darkness, hoping for
sleep. But the silence didnÆt really help. He could still see them out
there, the white-faced men prowling around his house, looking ceaselessly
for a way to get in at him. Some of them, probably, crouching on their
haunches like dogs, eyes glittering at the house, teeth slowly grating
together, back and forth, back and forth.

And the women ...

Did he have to start thinking about them again? He tossed over on his
stomach with a curse and pressed his face into the hot pillow. He lay
there, breathing heavily, body writhing slightly on the sheet. Let the
morning come. His mind spoke the words it spoke every night Dear God, let
the morning come.

He dreamed about Virginia and he cried out in his sleep and his fingers
gripped the sheets like frenzied talons.



                                Chapter Two



THE ALARM WENT OFF at five-thirty and Robert Neville reached out a numbed
arm in the morning gloom and pushed in the stop.

He reached for his cigarettes and lit one, then sat up. After a few moments
he got up and walked into the dark living room and opened the peephole
door.

Outside, on the lawn, the dark figures stood like silent soldiers on duty.
As he watched, some of them started moving away, and he heath them
muttering discontentedly among themselves. Another night was ended.

He went back to the bedroom, switched on the light, and dressed. As he was
pulling on his shirt, he heard Ben Cortman cry out, ôCome out, Neville!ö

And that was all. After that, they all went away weaker, he knew, than when
they had come. Unless they had attacked one of their own. They did that
often. There was no union among them. Their need was their only motivation.

After dressing, Neville sat down on his bed with a grunt and penciled his
list for the day:



Lathe at Sears

Water

Check generator

Doweling (?)

Usual



Breakfast was hasty: a glass of orange juice, a slice of toast, and two
cups of coffee. He finished it quickly, wishing he had the patience to eat
slowly.

After breakfast he threw the paper plate and cup into the trash box and
brushed his teeth. At least I have one good habit, he consoled himself.

The first thing he did when he went outside was look at the sky. It was
clear, virtually cloudless. He could go, out today. Good.

As he crossed the porch, his shoe kicked some pieces of the mirror. Well,
the damn thing broke just as I thought it would, he thought. HeÆd clean it
up later.

One of the bodies was sprawled on the sidewalk; the other one was half
concealed in the shrubbery. They were both women. They were almost always
women.

He unlocked the garage door and backed his Willys station wagon into the
early-morning crispness. Then he got out and pulled down the back gate. He
put on heavy gloves and walked over to the woman on the sidewalk.

There was certainly nothing attractive about them in the daylight, he
thought, as he dragged them across the lawn and threw them up on the canvas
tarpaulin. There wasnÆt a drop left in them; both women were the color of
fish out of water. He raised the gate and fastened it.

He went around the lawn then, picking up stones and bricks and putting them
into a cloth sack. He put the sack in the station wagon and then took off
his gloves. He went inside the house, washed his hands, and made lunch: two
sandwiches, a few cookies, and a thermos of hot coffee.

When that was done, he went into the bedroom and got his bag of stakes. He
slung this across his back and buckled on the holster that held his mallet.
Then he went out of the house, locking the front door behind him.

He wouldnÆt bother searching for Ben Cortman that morning; there were too
many other things to do. For a second, he thought about the soundproofing
job heÆd resolved to do on the house. Well, the hell with it, he thought.
IÆll do it tomorrow or some cloudy day.

He got into the station wagon and checked his list. ôLathe at Searsö; that
was first. After he dumped the bodies, of course.

He started the car and backed quickly into the street and headed for
Compton Boulevard. There he turned right and headed east. On both sides of
him the houses stood silent, and against the curbs cars were parked, empty
and dead.

Robert NevilleÆs eyes shifted down for a moment to the fuel gauge. There
was still a half tank, but he might as well stop on Western Avenue and fill
it. There was no point in using any of the gasoline stored in the garage
until be had to.

He pulled into the silent station and braked. He got a barrel of gasoline
and siphoned it into his tank until the pale amber fluid came gushing out
of the tank opening and ran down onto the cement.

He checked the oil, water, battery water, and tires. Everything was in good
condition. It usually was, because he took special care of the car. If it
ever broke down so that he couldnÆt get back to the house by sunset

Well, there was no point in even worrying about that. If it ever happened,
that was the end.

Now he continued up Compton Boulevard past the tall oil derricks, through
Compton, through all the silent streets. There was no one to be seen
anywhere.

But Robert Neville knew where they were.

The fire was always burning. As the car drew closer, he pulled on his
gloves and gas mask and watched through the eyepieces the sooty pall of
smoke hovering above the earth. The entire field had been excavated into
one gigantic pit, that wasÆ in June 1975.

Neville parked the car and jumped out, anxious to get the job over with
quickly. Throwing the catch and jerking. down the rear gate, he pulled out
one of the bodies and dragged it to the edge of the pit. There he stood it
on its feet and shoved.

The body bumped and rolled down the steep incline until it settled on the
great pile of smoldering ashes at the bottom.

Robert Neville drew in harsh breaths as he hurried back to the station
æwagon. He always felt as though he were strangling when he was here, even
though he had the gas mask on.

Now he dragged the second body to the brink of the pit and pushed it over.
Then, after tossing the sack, of rocks down, he hurried back to the car and
sped away.

After heÆd driven a half mile, he skinned off the mask and gloves and
tossed them into the back. His mouth opened and he drew in deep lungfuls of
fresh air. He took the flask from the glove compartment and took a long
drink of burning whisky. Then he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Sometimes he had to go to the burning pit every day for weeks at a time,
and it always made him sick.

Somewhere down there was Kathy.

On the way to Inglewood he stopped at a market to get some bottled water...

As he entered the silent store, the smell of rotted food filled his
nostrils. Quickly he. pushed a metal wagon up and down the silent,
dust-thick aisles, the heavy smell of decay setting his teeth on edge,
making him breathe through his mouth.

He found the water bottles in back, and also found a door opening on a
flight of stairs. After putting all the bottles into the wagon, he went up
the stairs, The owner of the market might bτ up there; he might as well get
started.

There were two of them. In the living room, lying on a couch, was a woman
about thirty years old, wearing a red housecoat. Her chest rose and fell
slowly as she lay there, eyes closed, her hands clasped over her stomach.

Robert NevilleÆs hands fumbled on the stake and mallet.. It was always
hard, when they were alive; especially with women. He could feel. that
senseless demand returning again, tightening his muscles. He forced it
down. It was insane, there was no rational argument for it.

She made no sound except for a sudden, hoarse Intake of breath. As he
walked into the bedroom, he could hear a sound like the sound of water
running. Well, what else can I do? he asked himself, for he still had to
convince himself he was doing the right thing.

He stood in the bedroom doorway, staring at the small bed by the window,
his throat moving, breath shuddering in his chest. Then, driven on, he
walked to the side of the bed and looked down at her.

Why doÆ they all look like Kathy to me? he thought, drawing out the second
stake with shaking hands.



Driving slowly to Sears, he tried to forget by wondering why it was that
only wooden stakes should work.

He frowned as he ædrove along the empty boulevard, the only sound the muted
growling of the motor in his car. It seemed fantastic that it had taken him
five months to start wondering about it.

Which brought another question to mind. How was it that he always managed
to bit the heart? It had to be theÆ heart; Dr. Busch had said so. Yet æhe,
Neville, had no anatomical knowledge.

His brow furrowed. It irritated him that he should have gone through this
hideous process so long without stopping once to question it.

He shook, his head. No, I should think it over carefully, he thought, I
should collect all the questions before I try to answer them. Things should
be done the right way, the scientific way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he thought, shades of old Fritz. That had been his
fatherÆs name. Neville had loathed his father and fought the acquisition of
his fatherÆs logic and mechanical facility every inch of the way. His
father had died denying the vampire violently to the last.

At Sears he got the lathe, loaded it into the station wagon, then searched
the store.

There were five of them in the basement, hiding in various shadowed places.
One of them Neville found inside a display freezer. When he saw the man
lying there in this enamel coffin, he had to laugh; it seemed such aÆ funny
place to hide.

Later, he thought of what a humorless world it was when he could find
amusement in such a thing.

About two oÆclock he parked and ate his lunch. Everything seemed to taste
of garlic.

And that set him wondering about the effect garlic had on them. It must
have been the smell that chased them off, but why?

They were strange, the facts about them: their staying inside by day, their
avoidance of garlic, their death by stake, their reputed fear of crosses,
their supposed dread of mirrors.

Take that last, now. According to legend, they were invisible in mirrors,
but he knew that was untrue. As untrue as the belief that they transformed
themselves into bats. That was a superstition that logic, plus observation
had easily disposed of. æIt was equally foolish to believe that they could
transform themselves into wolves. Without a doubt there were vampire dogs;
he had seen and heard them outside his house at night. But they were only
dogs.

Robert Neville compressed his lips suddenly. Forget it, he told himself;
youÆre not ready. yet. The time would come when heÆd take a crack at it,
detail for detail, but the time wasnÆt now. There were enough things to
worry about now.

After lunch, he went from house to house and used up all his stakes. He had
forty-seven stakes.





                               Chapter Three



ôTHE STRENGTH OF THE vampire is that no one will believe in him.ö

Thank you, Dr. Van Helsing, he thought, putting down his copy Of ôDracula.ö
He sat staring moodily at the bookcase, listening to BrahmsÆ second piano
concerto, a whisky sour in his right hand, a cigarette between his lips.

It was true. The book was a hodgepodge of superstitions and soap-opera
clichΘs, but that line was true; no one had believed in them, and how could
they fight something they didnÆt even believe in?

That was what the situation had been. Something black and of the night had
come crawling out of the Middle Ages. Something with no framework or
credulity, something that had been consigned, fact and figure, to the pages
of imaginative literature. Vampires were passΘ; SummersÆ idylls or StokerÆs
melodramatics or a brief inclusion in the Britannica or grist for the pulp
writerÆs mill or raw material for the B-film factories. A tenuous legend
passed from century to century.

Well, it was true.

He took a sip from his drink and closed his eyes as the cold liquid
trickled down his throat and warmed his stomach. True, he thought, but no
one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, but it
couldnÆt be thatùnot that. That was imagination, that was superstition,
there was no such thing as that.

And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed
science and everything.

He hadn't found any doweling that day. He hadnÆt checked the generator. He
hadnÆt cleaned up the pieces of

mirror. He hadnÆt eaten supper; heÆd lost his appetite. That wasnÆt hard.
He lost it most of the time. He couldnÆt do the things heÆd done all
afternoon and then come home to a hearty meal. Not even after five months.

He thought of the elevenùno, the twelve children that afternoon, and he
finished his drink in two swallows.

He blinked and the room wavered a little before him. YouÆre getting blotto,
Father, he told himself. So what? he returned. Has anyone more right?

He tossed the book across the room. Begone, Van Helsing and Mina and
Jonathan and blood-eyed Count and all! All figments, all driveling
extrapolations on a somber theme.

A coughing chuckle emptied itself from his throat. Outside, Ben Cortman
called for him to come out. Be right out, Benny, he thought. Soon as I get
my tuxedo on.

He shuddered. and gritted his teeth edges together. Be right out. Well; why
not? Why not go out? It was a sure way to be free of them.

Be one of them.

He chuckled at the simplicity of it, then shoved himself up and walked
crookedly to the bar. Why not? His mind plodded on. Why go through all this
complexity when a flung open door and a few steps would end it all?

For the life of him, he didnÆt know. There was, of course, the faint
possibility that others like him existed somewhere, trying to go on, hoping
that someday they would be among their own kind again. But how could he
ever find them if they werenÆt within a dayÆs drive of his house?

He shrugged and poured more whisky in the glass; heÆd given up the use of
jiggers months ago. Garlic on the windows, and nets over the hothouse and
burn the bodies and cart the rocks away and, fraction of an inch by
fraction of an inch, reduce their unholy numbers. Why kid himself? HeÆd
never find anyone else.

His body dropped down heavily on the chair. Here we are, kiddies, sitting
like a bug in a rug, snugly, surrounded by a battalion of blood-suckers who
wish no more than to sip freely of my bonded, 100-proof hemoglobin. Have a
drink, men, this oneÆs really on me.

His face twisted into an expression of raw, unqualified hatred. Bastards!
IÆll kill every, motherÆs son of you before IÆll give in! His right hand
closed like a clamp and the glass shattered in his grip.

He looked down, dull-eyed, at the fragments on the floor, at the jagged
piece of glass still in his hand, at the whisky-diluted blood dripping off
his palm.

WouldnÆt they like to get some of it, though? he. thought. He started up
with a furious lurch and almost opened the door so he could wave the hand
in their faces and hear them howl.

Then he closed his eyes and a shudder ran through his body. Wise up, buddy,
he thought. Go bandage your goddamn hand.

He stumbled into the bathroom and washed his hand carefully, gasping as he
daubed iodine into the sliced-open flesh. Then he bandaged it clumsily, his
broad chest rising and falling with jerky movements, sweat dripping from
his forehead. I need a cigarette, he thought.

In the living room again, he changed Brahms for Bernstein and lit a
cigarette. What will I do if I ever run out of coffin nails? he wondered,
looking at the cigaretteÆs blue trailing smoke. Well, there wasnÆt much
chance of that. He had about a thousand cartons in the closet of KathyÆsù
He clenched his teeth together. In the closet of the lar¡der, the larder,
the larder.

KathyÆs room.

He sat staring with dead eyes at the mural while "The Age of Anxietyö
pulsed in his ears. Age of anxiety, he mused. You thought you had anxiety,
Lenny boy. Lenny

and Benny; you two should meet. Composer, meet corpse. Mamma, when I grow
up I wanna be a wampir like Dada.

Why, bless you, boo, of course you shall.

The whisky gurgled into the æglass. He grimaced a little at the pain in his
hand and shifted the bottle to his left hand.

He sat down and sipped. Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled, he
thought. Let the crumby balance of clear vision be expunged, but post
haste. I hate æem.

Gradually the room shifted on its gyroscopic center and wove and undulated
about his chair. A pleasant haze, fuzzy at the edges, took over sight He
looked at the glass, at the record player. He let his head flop from side
toÆ side. Outside, they prowled and muttered and waited.

Pore vampires, he thought, pore little cusses, pussy¡footinÆ round my
house, so thirsty, so all forlorn.

A thought. He raised a forefinger that wavered before his eyes.

Friends, I come before you to discuss the vampire; a minority element if
there ever was one, and there was one.

But to concision: I will sketch out the basis for my thesis, which thesis
is this: Vampires are prejudiced against.

The keynote ofÆ minority prejudice is this: They are loathed because they
are feared. Thus

He made himself a drink. A long one.

At one time, the Dark and Middle Ages, to be succinct, the vampireÆs power
was great, the fear of him tremendous. He was anathema and still remains
anathema. Society hates him without ration.

But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of other animals and
men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained
the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and
levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a
neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than æthe manufacturer
who set up belated

foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal
nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain
juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of
a progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew
that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous
racks with lust and death wishes? Really, now, search your soul; lovieùis
the vampire so bad?

All he does is drink blood.

Why, then, this unkind prejudice, this thoughtless bias? Why cannot the
vampire live where be chooses? Why must he seek out hiding places where
none can find him out? Why do you wish him destroyed? Ah, see, you have
turned the poor guileless innocent into a haunted animal. He has no means
Of æsupport, no measures for proper education, he has not the, voting
franchise No wonder he is compelled to seek out a predatory nocturnal
existence;

Robert Neville grunted a surly grunt. Sure, sure, he thought, but would you
let your sister many one?

He shrugged. You got me there, buddy, you got me there.

The music ended. The needle scratched back and forth in the black grooves.
He sat there, feeling a chill creeping up his legs. ThatÆs what was wrong
with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no
solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed. Already the room was
straightening out, the sounds outside were starting to nibble at his
eardrums..

ôCome out, Neville!ö

His throat moved and a shaking breath passed his lips. Come out. The women
were out there, their dresses open or taken off, their flesh waiting for
his touch, their lips waiting forù My blood, my blood!

As if it were someone elseÆs hand, he watched his whitened fist rise up
slowly, shuddering, to drive down on his leg. The pain made him suck in a
breath of the houseÆs stale air. Garlic. Everywhere the smell of garlic. In
his clothes and in the furniture and in his food and even in his drink.
Have a garlic and soda; hisÆ mind rattled out the attempted joke.

He lurched up and started pacing. What am I going to do now? Go through the
routine again? IÆll save you the trouble,.
Reading-drinking-soundproof-the-house ùthe women. ,The women, the lustful,
bloodthirsty, naked women flaunting their hot bodies at him. No, not hot.

.A shuddering whine wrenched up through his chest and throat. Goddamn them,
what were they waiting for?. Did they think he was going to come out and
hand himself over?

Maybe I am, maybe I am. He actually found himself jerking off the crossbar
from the door. Coming, girls, IÆm coming. Wet your lips, now.

Outside, they heard the bar being lifted, and a howl of anticipation
sounded in the night.

Spinning, he drove his fists one after the, other into the wall until heÆd
cracked the plaster and broken his skin; Then he stood there trembling
helplessly, his teeth chattering.

After a while it passed. He put the bar back across the door and went into
the bedroom. He sank down, on the bed and fell back onÆ the pillow with a
groan. His left hand beat once, feebly, on the bedspread.

Oh, God, he thought, how long, how long?





                                Chapter Four



               THE ALARM NEVER WENT off because heÆd forgotten to set it.
He slept soundly and motionlessly, his body like cast iron. When he finally
opened his eyes, it was ten oÆclock.

With a disgusted muttering, he struggled up and dropped his legs over the
side of the bed. instantly his head began throbbing as if his brains were
trying to force their way through his skull. Fine, he thought, a hangover.

ThatÆs all I need.

He pushed himself up with a groan and stumbled into the bathroom, threw
water in his face and splashed some over his head. N& good, his mind
complained, no good. I still feel like hell. In the mirror his face was
gaunt, bearded, and very much like the face of a man in his forties. Love,
your magic spell is everywhere; inanely, the words flapped across his brain
like wet sheets m a wind.

He walked slowly into the living room and opened the front door. A curse
fell thickly from his lips at the sight of the woman crumpled across the
sidewalk. He started to tighten angrily, but it made his head throb too
much and he had to let it go. IÆm sick, he thought.

The sky was gray and dead. Great! he thought. Mother day stuck in this
boarded-up rat hole! He slammed the door viciously, then winced, groaning,
at the brain-stabbing noise. Outside, he heard the rest of the mirror fall
out and shatter on the porch cement. Oh, great! His lips contorted back
into a white twist of flesh.

Two cups of burning black coffee only made his stomach feel worse. He put
down the cup and went into the living room. To hell with it, he thought,
IÆll get drunk again.

But the liquor tasted like turpentine, and with a rasping snarl he flung
the glass against the wall and stood watching the liquor run down onto the
rug. Hell, IÆm runninÆ out of glasses. The thought irritated him while
breath struggled in through his nostrils and out again in faltering bursts.

He sank down on the couch and sat there, shaking his bead slowly. It was no
use; theyÆd beaten him, the black bastards had beaten him.

That restless feeling again; the feeling as if he were expanding and the
house were contracting and any second now heÆd go bursting through its
frame in an explosion of wood, plaster, and brick He got up and moved
quickly to the door, his hands shaking.

On the lawn, he stood sucking in great lungful of the wet morning air, his
face turned away from the house he hated. But he hated the other houses
around there too, and he hated the pavement and the sidewalks and the lawns
and everything that was on Cimarron Street.

It kept building up. And suddenly he knew he had to get out of there.
Cloudy, day or not, he had to get out of there.

He locked the front door, unlocked the garage, and dragged up the thick
door on its overhead hinges. He didnÆt bother putting down the door. IÆll
be back soon, he thought. IÆll just go away for a while.

He backed the station wagon quickly down the driveway, jerked it around,
and pressed down hard on the accelerator, heading for. Compton Boulevard.
He didnÆt know where he was going.

He went around the corner doing forty and jumped that to sixty-five before
heÆd gone another block. The car leaped forward under his foot and he kept
the accelerator on the floor, forced down by a rigid leg. His hands were
like carved iceon the wheel and his face was the face of a statue. At
eighty-nine miles an hour, he shot down the lifeless, empty boulevard, one
roaring sound in the great stillness.



Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely, he thought as he walked
slowly across the cemetery lawn.

The grass was so high that the weight of it had bent it over and it
crunched under his heavy shoes as he walked. There was no sound but that of
his shoes and the now senseless singing of birds. Once I thought they sang
because everything was right with the world, Robert Neville thought I know
now I was wrong. They sing because theyÆre feeble-minded.

He had raced six miles, the gas pedal pressed to the floor, before heÆd
realized where he was going. It was strange the way his mind and body had
kept it secret from his consciousness. Consciously, heÆd known only that he
was sick and depressed and had to get away from the house. He didnÆt know
he was going to visit Virginia.

But heÆd driven there directly and as fast as he could. HeÆd parked at the
curb and entered through the rusted gate, and now his shoes were pressing
and crackling through the thick grass.

How long had it been since heÆd come here? It must have been at least a
month He wished heÆd brought flowers, but then, he hadnÆt realized he was
coining here until he was almost at the gate.

His lips pressed together as an old sorrow held him again. Why couldnÆt he
have Kathy there too? Why had he followed so blindly, listening to those
fools who set up their stupid regulations during the plague? If only she
could be them, lying across from her mother.

DonÆt start that again, he ordered himself.

Drawing closer to the crypt, he stiffened as he noticed that the iron door
was slightly ajar Oh, no, he thought He broke into a run across the wet
grass. If theyÆve been at her, IÆll burn down the city, he vowed. I swear
to God, IÆll bum it to the ground if theyÆve touched her.

He flung open the door and it clanged against the marble wall with a
hollow, echoing sound. His eyes moved quickly to the marble base on which
the sealed casket rested.

The tension sank; he drew in breath again. It was still there, untouched.

Then, as he started in, he saw the man lying in one corner of the crypt,
body curled up on the cold floor.

With a grunt of rage, Robert Neville rushed at the body, and, grabbing the
manÆs coat in taut fingers, he dragged him across the floor and flung him
violently out onto the grass. The body rolled onto its back, the white face
pointing at the sky.

Robert Neville went back into the crypt, chest rising and falling with
harsh movements. Then he closed his eyes and stood with his palms resting
on the cover of the casket.

IÆm here, he thought. IÆm back. Remember me.

He threw out the flowers heÆd brought the time before and cleared away the
few leaves that had blown in because the door had been opened.

Then he sat down beside the casket and rested his forehead against its cold
metal side.

Silence held him in its cold and gentle hands.

If I could die now, be thought; peacefully, gently, without a tremor or a
crying out. if I could be with her. If I could believe I would be with her.

His fingers tightened slowly and his head sank forward on his chest.

Virginia. Take me where you are.

A tear, crystal, fell across his motionless hand...

He had no idea how long heÆd been there. After a while, though, even the
deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel
edge. The flagellantÆs curse, he thought, to grow inured even to the whip.

 He straightened up and stood. Still alive, he thought, heart beating
senselessly, veins running without point, bones and muscles and tissue all
alive and functioning with no purpose at all.

A moment longer he stood looking down at the casket, then he turned away
with a sigh and left, closing the door behind him quietly so as not to
disturb her sleep.

HeÆd forgotten about the man. He almost tripped over him now, stepping
aside with a muttered curse and starting past the body.

Then, abruptly, he turned back.

WhatÆs this? He looked down incredulously at the man. The man was dead;
really dead. But how could that be? The change had occurred so quickly, yet
already the man looked and smelled as though heÆd been dead for days.

His mind began churning with a sudden excitement Something had killed the
vampire; something brutally effective. The heart had not been touched, no
garlic had been present, and yet...

It came, seemingly, without effort. Of courseùthe daylight!

A bolt of self-accusation struck him. To know for five months that they
remained indoors by day and never once to make the connection! He closed
his eyes, appalled by his own stupidity.

The rays of the sun; the infrared and ultraviolet. It had to be them. But
why? Damn it, why didnÆt he know anything about the effects of sunlight on
the human system?

Mother thought: That man had been one of the true vampires; the living
dead. Would sunlight have the same effect on those who were still alive?

The first excitement heÆd felt in months made him break into a run for the
station wagon.

As the door slammed shut beside him, he wondered if he should have taken
away the dead man. Would the body attract others, would they invade the
crypt? No, they wouldnÆt go near the casket, anyway; It was sealed with
garlic. Besides, the manÆs blood was dead now, itù Again his thoughts broke
off as he leaped to another conclusion. The sunÆs rays must have done
something to their blood!

Was it possible, then, that all things bore relations to the blood? The
garlic, the cross, the mirror, the stake, daylight, the earth some of them
slept in? He didnÆt see how, and yet...

He had to do a lot of reading, a lot of research. It might be just the
thing he needed. HeÆd been planning for a long time, to do it, but lately
it seemed as if heÆd forgotten it altogether. Now this new idea started the
desire again.

He started, the car and raced up the street, turning off into a residential
section and pulling up before the first house he came to.

He ran up the pathway to the front door, but it was locked and he couldnÆt
force it in. With an impatient growl, he ran to the next house. The door
was open and he ran to the stairs through the darkened living room and
jumped up the carpeted steps two at a time.

He found the woman in the bedroom. Without hesitation, he jerked back the
covers and grabbed her by the wrists. She grunted as her body hit the
floor, and he heard her making tiny sounds in her throat as he dragged her
into the hail and started down the stairs.

As he pulled her across the living room, she started to move.

Her hands closed over his wrists and her body began to twist and flop on
the rug. Her eyes were still closed, but she gasped and muttered and her
body kept trying to writhe out of his grip. Her dark nails dug into his
flesh. He tore out of her grasp with a snarl and dragged her the rest of
the way by her hair. Usually he felt a twinge when he realized that, but
for some. affliction he didnÆt understand, these people were the same as
he. But now an experimental fervor had seized him and he could think of
nothing else.

Even so, he shuddered at the strangled sound of horror she made when he
threw her on the sidewalk outside.

She lay twisting helplessly on the sidewalk, hands opening and closing,
lips drawn back from red-spotted lips.

Robert Neville watched her tensely.

His throat moved. It wouldnÆt last, the feeling of callous brutality. He
bit his lips as he watched her. All right, sheÆs suffering, he argued with
himself, but sheÆs one of them and sheÆd kill me gladly if she got the
chance. YouÆve got

to look at it that way, itÆs the only way. Teeth clenched, he stood there
and watched her die.

In a few minutes she stopped moving, stopped muttering, and her hands
uncurled slowly like white blossoms on the cement. Robert Neville crouched
down and felt for her heartbeat. There was none. Already her flesh was
growing cold.

He straightened up with a thin smile. It was true, then. He didnÆt need the
stakes. After all this time, heÆd finally found a better method.

Then his breath caught. But how did he know the woman was really dead? How
could he know until sunset?

The thought filled him with a new, more restless anger.

Why did each question blight the answers before it?

He thought about it as he sat drinking a can of tomato juice taken from the
supermarket behind which he was parked.

How was he going to know? He couldnÆt very well stay with the woman until
sunset came.

Take her home with you, fool.

Again his eyes closed and he felt a shudder of irritation go through him.
He was missing all the obvious answers today. Now heÆd have to go all the
way back and find her, and he wasnÆt even sure where the house was.

He started the motor and pulled away from the parking lot, glancing down at
his watch. Three oÆclock. Plenty of time to get back before they came. He
eased the gas pedal. down and the station wagon pulled ahead faster.

It took him about a half hour to relocate the house. The woman was still in
the same position on the sidewalk. Put ting on his gloves, Neville lowered
the back gate of the station wagon and walked over to the woman. As be
walked, he noticed her figure. No, donÆt start that again, for GodÆs sake.

He dragged the woman back to the station wagon and tossed her in. Then he
closed the gate and took off his

gloves. He held up the watch and looked at it. Three oÆclock. Plenty of
time toù He jerked up the watch and held it against his ear, his

heart suddenly jumping.

The watch had stopped.





                                Chapter Five



HIS FINGERS SHOOK AS he turned the ignition key. His hands gripped the
wheel rigidly as he made a tight U turn and started back toward Gardena.

What a fool heÆd been! It must have taken at least an hour to reach the
cemetery. He must have been in the crypt for hours. Then going to get that
woman. Going to the market, drinking the tomato juice, going back to get
the woman again.

What time was it?

Fool! Cold fear poured through his veins at the thought of them all waiting
for him at his house. Oh, my God, and heÆd left the garage door open! The
gasoline, the equipmentùthe generator!

A groan cut itself off in his throat as he jammed the gas pedal to the
floor and the small station wagon leaped ahead, the speedometer needle
fluttering, then moving steadily past the sixty-five mark, the seventy, the
seventy-five. What if they were already waiting for him? How could he
possibly get in the house?

He forced himself to be calm. He mustnÆt go to pieces now; he had to keep
himself in check. HeÆd get in. DonÆt worry, youÆll get inside, he told
himself. But he didnÆt see how.

One hand ran nervously through his hair This is fine, fine, commented his
mind. You go to all that trouble to preserve your existence, and then one
day you just donÆt come back in time. Shut up! his mind snapped back at
itself. But be could have killed himself for forgetting to wind his watch
the night before. DonÆt bother killing yourself, his mind reflected,
theyÆll be glad to do it for you. Suddenly he realized he was almost weak
from hunger.

The small amount of canned meat heÆd eaten with the tomato juice had done
nothing to alleviate hunger.

The silent streets flew past and he kept looking from side to side to see
if any of them were appearing in the doorways. It seemed as if it were
already getting dark, but that could have been imagination. It couldnÆt be
that late, it couldnÆt be.

HeÆd just gone hurtling past the corner of Western and Compton when he saw
the man come running out of a building and shout at him. His heart was
contracted in an icy hand as the manÆs cry fluttered in the air behind the
car.

He couldn't get any more speed out of the station wagon. And now his mind
began torturing him with visions of one of the tires going, the station
wagon veering, leaping the curb and crashing into a house. His lips started
to shake and he jammed them together to stop them. His hands on the wheel
felt numb.

He had to slow down at the corner of Cimarron. Out of the corner of an eye
he saw a man come rushing out of a house and start chasing the car.

Then, as he turned the corner with a screech Of clinging tires, he couldnÆt
hold back the gasp.

They were all in front of his house, waiting.

A sound of helpless terror filled his throat. He didnÆt want to die. He
might have thought about it, even contemplated it. But he didnÆt want to
die. Not like this.

Now he saw them all turn their white faces at the sound of the motor. Some
more of them came running out of the open garage and his teeth ground
together in impotent fury. What a stupid, brainless way to die!

Now be saw them start running straight toward the station wagon, a line of
them across the street. And; suddenly, he knew he couldnÆt stop. He pressed
down on the accelerator, and in a moment the car went plowing through them,
knocking three of them aside like tenpins. He felt the car frame jolt as it
struck the bodies. Their screaming white faces went flashing by his window,
their cries chilling his blood.

Now they were behind and he saw in the rear-view mirror that they were all
pursuing him. A sudden plan caught hold in his mind, and impulsively he
slowed down, even braking, until the speed of the car fell to thirty, then
twenty miles an hour.

He looked back and saw them gaining, saw their grayish-white faces
approaching, their dark eyes fastened to his car, to him.

Suddenly he twitched with shock as a snarl sounded nearby and, jerking his
head around, he saw the crazed face of Ben Cortman beside the car.

Instinctively his foot jammed down on the gas pedal, but his other foot
slipped off the clutch, and with a neck-snapping jolt the station wagon
jumped forward and stalled.

Sweat broke out on his forehead as he lunged forward feverishly to press
the button. Ben Cortman clawed in at him.

With a snarl he shoved the cold white hand aside.

ôNeville, Neville!ö

Ben Cortman reached in again, his hands like claws cut from ice. Again
Neville pushed aside the hand and jabbed at the starter button, his body
shaking helplessly. Behind, he could hear them all screaming excitedly as
they came closer to the car.

The motor coughed into life again as he felt Ben CortmanÆs long nails rake
across his cheek.

ôNeville!ö

The pain made his hand jerk into a rigid fist, which he drove into
CortmanÆs face. Cortman went flailing back onto the pavement as the gears
caught and the station wagon jolted forward, picking up speed. One of the
others caught up and leaped at the rear of the car. For a minute he held
on, and Robert Neville could see his ashen face glaring insanely through
the back window. Then he jerked the car over toward the curb, swerved
sharply, and shook the man off. The man went running across a lawn, arms
ahead of him, and smashed violently into the side of a house.

Robert NevilleÆs heart was pounding so heavily now it seemed as if it would
drive through. his chest walls. Breath shuddered in him and his flesh felt
number and cold. He could feel the trickle of blood on his cheek, but no
pain. Hastily he wiped it off with one shaking band.

Now he spun the station wagon around the corner, turning right. He kept
looking at the rear-view mirror, then looking ahead. He went the short
block to Haas Street and turned right again. What if they cut through the
yards and blocked his way?

He slowed down a little until they came swarming around the corner like a
pack of wolves. Then he pressed down on the accelerator. HeÆd have to take
the chance that they were all following him. Would some of them guess what
he was trying?

He shoved down the gas pedal all the way and the station wagon jumped
forward, racing up the block. He wheeled it around the corner at fifty
miles an hour, gunned up the short block to Cimarron, and turned right
again.

His breath caught. There was no one in sight on his lawn. There was still a
chance, then. HeÆd have to let the station wagon go, though; there was no
time to put it in the garage.

He jerked the car to the curb and shoved the door open. As he raced around
the edge of the car he heard the billowing cry of their approach around the
corner.

HeÆd have to take a chance on locking the garage. lf he didnÆt, they might
destroy the generator; they couldnÆt have had time to do it already. His
footsteps pounded up the driveway to the garage.

ôNeville!ö

His body jerked back as Cortman came lunging out of the dark shadows of the
garage.

CortmanÆs body drove into his and almost knocked him down. He fell the
cold, powerful hands clamp on his throat and smelled the fetid breath
clouding over his face. The two of them went reeling back toward the
sidewalk and the white-fanged mouth went darting down at Robert NevilleÆs
throat

Abruptly he jerked up his right fist and felt it drive into CortmanÆs
throat. He heard the choking sound in CortmanÆs throat. Up the block the
first of them came rushing and screaming around the corner.

With a violent movement, Robert Neville grabbed Cortman by his long, greasy
hair and sent him hurtling down the driveway until he rammed head on into
the side

of the Station wagon.

Robert NevilleÆs eyes flashed up the street. No time for the garage! He
dashed around the corner of the house and up to the porch.

He skidded to a halt. Oh, God, the keys!

With a terrified intake of breath he spun and rushed back toward the car.
Cortman started up with a throaty snarl and he drove his knee into the
white face and knocked Cortman back on the sidewalk. Then he lunged into
the car and jerked the key chain away from the ignition slot.

As he scuttled back out of the car the first one of them came leaping at
him.

He shrank back onto the car seat and the man tripped over his legs and went
sprawling heavily onto the side walk. Robert Neville pushed himself out,
dashed across the lawn, and leaped onto the porch.

He had to stop to find the right key and another man came leaping up the
porch steps. Neville was slammed against the house by the impact of his
body. The hot blood thick breath was on him again, the bared mouth lunging
at his throat He drove his knee into the manÆs groin and then, leaning his
weight against the house, he raised his foot high and shoved the doubled
over man into the other one who was rushing across the lawn.

Neville dived for the door and unlocked it He pushed it open, slipped
inside, and turned. As he slammed it shut an arm shot through the opening.
He forced the door against it with all his strength until he heard hones
snap, then he opened the door a little, shoved the broken arm out, and
slammed the door. With trembling hands he dropped the bar into place.

Slowly he sank down onto the floor and fell on his back. He lay there in
the darkness, his chest rising and falling, his legs and arms like dead
limbs on the floor. Outside they howled and pummeled the door, shouting his
name in a paroxysm of demented fury. They grabbed up bricks and rocks and
hurled them against the house and they screamed and cursed at him. He lay
there listening to the thud of the rocks and bricks against the house,
listening to their howling.

After a while he struggled up to the bar. Half the whisky he poured
splashed onto the rug. He threw down the contents of the glass and stood
there shivering, holding onto the bar to support his wobbling legs, his
throat tight and convulsed; his lips shaking without control.

Slowly the heat of the liquor expanded in his stomach and reached his body.
His breath slowed down, his chest stopped shuddering.

He started as he heard the great crash outside.

He ran to the peephole and looked out. His teeth grated

together and a burst of rage filled him as be saw the station wagon lying
on its side and saw them smashing in the windshield with bricks and stones,
tearing open the hood and smashing at the engine with insane club strokes,
denting the frame with their frenzied blows. As he watched, fury poured
through him like a current of hot acid and half formed curses sounded in
his throat while his hands clamped into great white fists at his sides.

Turning suddenly, he moved to the lamp and tried to light it. It didnÆt
work. With a snarl he turned and ran into the kitchen. The refrigerator was
out. He ran from one dark morn to another. The freezer was off; all the
food would spoil. His house was a dead house.

 Fury exploded in him. Enough!

His rage palsied hands ripped out the clothes from the bureau drawer until
they closed on the loaded pistols.

Racing through the dark living room, he knocked up the bar across the door
and sent it clattering to the floor. Outside, they howled as they heard him
opening the door. IÆm coming out, you bastards! his mind screamed out.

He jerked open the door and shot the first one in the face. The man went
spinning back off the porch and two women came at him in muddy, torn
dresses, their white anus spread to enfold him. He watched their bodies
jerk as the bullets struck them, then he shoved them both aside and began
firing his guns into their midst, a wild yell ripping back his bloodless
lips.

He kept firing the pistols until they were both empty.

Then be stood on the porch clubbing them with insane blows, losing his mind
almost completely when the same ones heÆd shot came rushing at him again.
And when they tore the guns out of his hands he used his fists and elbows
and he butted with his head and kicked them with his big shoes.

It wasnÆt until the flaring pain of having his shoulder slashed open struck
him that he realized what he was doing and how hopeless his attempt was.
Knocking aside

two women, he backed toward the door. A manÆs arm locked around his neck..
He lurched forward, bending at the waist, and toppled the man over his head
into the others. He jumped back into the doorway, gripped both sides of the
frame and kicked out his legs like pistons, sending the men crashing back
into the shrubbery.

Then, before they could get at him again, he slammed the door in their
faces, locked it, bolted it, and dropped the heavy bar into its slots.

Robert Neville stood in the cold blackness of his house, listening to the
vampires scream.

He stood against the wall clubbing slowly and weekly at the plaster, tears
streaming down his bearded cheeks, his bleeding hand pulsing with pain.
Everything was gone, everything.

ôVirginia,ö he sobbed like a lost, frightened child. ôVirginia. Virginia.ö





                            PART II: March 1976



                                     Chapter Six.



THE HOUSE, AT LAST, was livable again.

Even more so than before, in fact, for he had finally taken three days and
soundproofed the walls. Now they could scream and howl all they wanted and
he didnÆt have to listen to them. He especially liked not having to listen
to Ben Cortman any more.

It had all taken time and work First of all was the matter of a new car to
replace the one theyÆd destroyed. This had been more difficult than heÆd
imagined.

He had to get over to Santa Monica to the only Willys store he knew about.
The Willys station wagons were the only ones he had had any experience
with, and this didnÆt seem quite the time to start experimenting. He
couldnÆt walk to Santa Monica, so he had to try using one of the many cars
parted around the neighborhood. But most of them were inoperative for one
reason or another: a dead battery, a clogged fuel pump, no gasoline, flat
tires.

Finally, in a garage about a mile from the house, he found a car he could
get started, and he drove quickly to Santa Monica to pick up another
station wagon. He put a new battery in it, filled its tank with gasoline,
put gasoline drums in the back, and drove home. He got back to the house
about an hour before sunset.

He made sure of that.

Luckily the generator had not been ruined. The vampires apparently had no
idea of its importance to him, for, except for a torn wire and a few cudgel
blows, they had left it alone. HeÆd managed to fix it quickly the morning
after the attack and keep his frozen foods from spoiling. He was grateful
for that, because he was sure there were no places left where he could get
more frozen foods now that electricity was gone from the city.

For the rest of it, ha had to straighten up the garage and clean out the
debris of broken bulbs, fuses, wiring, plugs, solder, spare motor parts,
and a box of seeds heÆd put there once; he didnÆt remember just when.

The washing machine they had ruined beyond repair, forcing him to replace
it. But that wasnÆt hard. The worst part was mopping up all the gasoline
theyÆd spilled from the drums. TheyÆd really outdone themselves spilling
gasoline, he thought irritably while he mopped it up.

Inside the house, he had repaired the cracked plaster, and as an added
fillip he had put up another wall mural to give a different appearance to
the room.

HeÆd almost enjoyed all the work once it was started. It gave him something
to lose himself in, something to pour all the energy of his still pulsing
fury into. It broke the monotony of his daily tasks: the carrying away of
bodies, the repairing of the houseÆs exterior, the hanging of garlic.

He drank sparingly during those days, managing to pass almost the entire
day without a drink, even allowing his evening drinks to assume the
function of relaxing night-caps rather than senseless escape. His appetite
increased and he gained four pounds and lost a little belly. He even slept
nights, a tired sleep without the dreams.

For a day or so he had played with the idea of moving to some lavish hotel
suite. But the thought of all the work heÆd have to do to make it habitable
changed his mind.

No, he was all set in the house.

Now he sat in the living room, listening to MozartÆs Jupiter Symphony and
wondering how he was to begin, where he was to begin his investigation.

He knew a few details, but these were only landmarks above the basic earth
of cause. The answer lay in something else. Probably in some fact he was
aware of but did not adequately appreciate, in some apparent knowledge he
had not yet connected with the over-all picture.

But what?

He sat motionless in the chair, a sweat-beaded glass in his right hand, his
eyes fastened on the mural.

It was a scene from Canada: deep northern woods, mysterious with green
shadows, standing aloof and motionless, heavy with the silence of manless
nature. He stared into its soundless green depths and wondered.

Maybe if he went back. Maybe the answer lay in the past, in some obscure
crevice of memory. Go back, then, he told his mind, go back.

It tore his heart out to go back.



There had been another dust storm during the night High, spinning winds had
scoured the house with grit, driven it through the cracks, sifted it
through plaster pores, and left a hair-thin layer of dust across all the
furniture surfaces. Over their bed the dust filtered like fine powder,
settling in their hair and on their eyelids and under their nails, clogging
their pores.

Half the night heÆd lain awake trying to single out the sound of VirginiaÆs
labored breathing. But he couldnÆt hear anything above the shrieking,
grating Sound of the storm. For a while, in the suspension between sleeping
and waking, he had suffered the illusion that the house was being
sandpapered by giant wheels that held its framework between monstrous
abrasive surfaces and made it shudder.

 HeÆd never got used to the dust storms. That hissing sound of whirlwind
granulation always set his teeth on edge. The storms had never come
regularly enough to allow him to adapt himself to Them. Whenever they came,
he spent a restless, tossing night, and went to the plant the next day with
jaded mind and body.

Now there was Virginia to worry about too.

About four oÆclock he awoke from a thin depression of sleep and realized
that the storm had ended. The contrast made silence a rushing noise in his
ears.

As he raised his body irritably to adjust his twisted pajamas, he noticed
that Virginia was awake. She was lying on her back and staring at the
ceiling.

ôWhatÆs the matter?ö he mumbled drowsily.

She didnÆt answer.

ôHoney?ö

Her eyes moved slowly to him.

ôNothing,ö she said. ôGo to sleep.ö

ôHow do you feel?ö

 ôThe same.ö

ôOh.ö

He lay there for a moment looking at her.

ôWell,ö he said then and, turning on his side, closed his eyes.

The alarm went off at six-thirty. Usually Virginia pushed in the stop, but
when she failed to do so, he reached over her inert body and did it
himself. She was still on her back, still staring.

ôWhat is it?ö he asked worriedly.

She looked at him and shook her head on the pillow.

ôI donÆt know,ö she said. ôI just canÆt sleep.ö

ôWhy?"

She made an indecisive sound.

ôStill feel weak?ö he asked.

She tried to sit up but she couldnÆt.

ôStay there, hon,ö he said. ôDonÆt move.ö He put his hand on her brow. ôYou
havenÆt got any fever,ö he told

her.

ôI donÆt feel sick,ö she said. ôJust . . tired.ö

ôYou look pale.ö

ôI know. I look like a ghost.ö

ôDonÆt get up,ö he said.

She was up.

ôIÆm not going to pamper myself,ö she said. ôGo ahead, get dressed. IÆll be
all right.ö

ôDonÆt get up if you donÆt feel good, honey.ö

She patted his arm and smiled.

ôIÆll be all right,ö she said. ôYou get ready.ö

While he shaved he heard the shuffling of her slippers past the bathroom
door. He opened the door and watched her crossing the living room very
slowly, her wrappered body weaving a little. He went back in the bathroom
shaking his head. She should have stayed in bed.

The whole top of the washbasin was grimy with dust. The damn stuff was
everywhere. HeÆd finally been compelled to erect a tent over KathyÆs bed to
keep the dust from her face. HeÆd nailed one edge of a shelter half to the
wall next to her bed and let it slope over the bed, the other edge held up
by two poles lashed to the side of the bed.

He didnÆt get a good shave because there was grit in the shaving soap and
he didnÆt have time for a second lathering. He washed off his face, got a
clean towel from the hail closet, and dried himself.

Before going to the bedroom to get dressed he checked KathyÆs room.

She was still asleep, her small blonde head motionless on the pillow, her
cheeks pink with heavy sleep. He ran a finger across the top of the shelter
half and drew it away gray with dust. With a disgusted shake of his head he
left the room.

ôI wish these damn storms would end,ö he said as he entered the kitchen ten
minutes later. ôIÆm sure . . .ô

He stopped talking; Usually she was at the stove turning eggs or French
toast or pancakes, making coffee. Today she was sitting at the table. On
the stove coffee was percolating, but nothing else was cooking.

ôSweetheart, if you donÆt feel well, go back to bed,ö he told her. ôI can
fix my own breakfast.ö

ôItÆs all right,ö she said. ôI was just resting. IÆm sorry. IÆll get up and
fry you some eggs.ö

ôStay there,ö he said. ôIÆm not helpless.ö

He went to the refrigerator and opened the door.

ôIÆd like to know what this is going around,ö she said. ôHalf the people on
the block have it, and you say that more than half the plant is absent.ö

ôMaybe itÆs some kind of virus,ö he said.

She shook her head. ôI donÆt know.ö

ôBetween the storms and the mosquitoes and everyone being sick, life is
rapidly becoming a pain,ö he said, pouring orange juice out of the bottle.
ôAnd speak of the devil.ö

He drew a black speck out of the orange juice in the glass.

ôHow the hell they get in the refrigerator IÆll never know,ö he said.

ôNone for me, Bob,ö she said.

ôNo orange juice?ö

ôNo.ö

ôGood for you.ö

ôNo, thank you, sweetheart,ö she said, trying to smile.

He put back the bottle and sat down across from her with his glass of
juice.

ôYou donÆt feel any pain?" he said. "No headache, nothing?ö

She shook her head slowly.

ôI wish I did know what was wrong,ö she said.

ôYou call up Dr. Busch today.ö

ôI will,ö she said, starting to get up. He put his hand over hers.

ôNo, no, sweetheart, stay there,ö he said.

ôBut thereÆs no reason why I should be like this.ö

She sounded angry. That was the way sheÆd been as long as heÆd known her.
If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She
seemed to regard it as a personal affront.

ôCome on,ö he said, starting to get up. ôIÆll help you back to bed.ö

ôNo, just let me sit here with you,ö she said. ôIÆll go back to bed after
Kathy goes to school.ö

ôAll right. DonÆt you want something, though?ö

 ôNo.ö

ôHow about coffee?ö

She shook her head.

ôYouÆre really going to get sick if you donÆt eat,ö he said.

ôIÆm just not hungry.ö

He finished his juice and got up to fry a couple of eggs. He cracked them
on the side of the iron skillet and dropped the contents into the melted
bacon fat He got the bread from the drawer and went over to the table with
it.

ôHere, IÆll put it in the toaster,ö Virginia said. ôYou watch your... Oh,
God.ö

ôWhat is it?ö

She waved one hand weakly in front of her face.

ôA mosquito,ö she said with a grimace.

He moved over and, after a moment, crushed it between his two palms.

ôMosquitoes,ö she said. ôFlies, sand fleas.ö

ôWe are entering the age of the insect,ö he said.

ôItÆs not good,ö she said. ôThey carry diseases. We ought to put a net
around KathyÆs bed too.ö

ôI know, I know,ö he said, returning to the stove and tipping the skillet
so the hot fat ran over the white egg surfaces. ôI keep meaning to.ö

ôI donÆt think that spray works, either,ö Virginia said.

ôIt doesnÆt?ö

 ôNo.ö

ôMy God, and itÆs supposed to be one of the best ones on the market.ö

He slid the eggs onto a dish.

ôSure you donÆt want some coffee?Æ he asked her.

ôNo, thank you.ö

He sat down and she handed him the buttered toast.

ôI hope to hell weÆre not breeding a race of superbugs,ö he said. ôYou
remember that strain of giant grasshoppers they found in Colorado?Æ

ôYes.ö

ôMaybe the insects are . . . WhatÆs the word? Mutating.ö

ôWhatÆs that?ö

ôOh, it means theyÆre ... changing. Suddenly. Jumping over dozens of small
evolutionary steps, maybe developing along lines they might not have
followed at all if it werenÆt for . . .ô

Silence.

ôThe bombings?ö she said.

ôMaybe,ö he said.

ôWell, theyÆre causing the dust storms. TheyÆre probably causing a lot of
things.ö

She sighed wearily and shook her head.

ôAnd they say we won the war,ö she said.

ôNobody won itö

ôThe mosquitoes won it.ö

He smiled a little.

ôI guess they did,ö he said.

They sat there for a few moments without talking and the only sound in the
kitchen was the clink of his fork on the plate and the cup on the saucer.

ôYou looked at Kathy last night?ö she asked.

ôI just looked at her now. She looks fine.ö

ôGood.ö

She looked at him studiedly.

ôIÆve been thinking, Bob,ö she said. ôMaybe we should send her East to your
motherÆs until I get better. It may be contagious.ö

ôWe could,ö he said dubiously, ôbut if itÆs contagious, my motherÆs place
wouldnÆt be any safer than here.ö

ôYou donÆt think so?ö she asked. She looked worried.

He shrugged. ôI donÆt know, hon. I think probably sheÆs just as safe here.
If it starts to get bad on the block, weÆll keep her out of school.ö

She started to say something, then stopped.

ôAll right,ö she said.

He looked at his watch.

ôIÆd better finish up,ö he said.

She nodded and he ate the rest of his breakfast quickly. While be was
draining the coffee cup she asked him if had bought a paper the night
before.

ôItÆs in the living room,ö he told her.

"Anything new in it?Æ

ôNo. Same old stuff. ItÆs all over the country, a little here, a little
there. They havenÆt been able to find the germ yet.ö

She bit her lower lip.

ôNobody knows what it is?ö

ôI doubt it. If anybody did theyÆd have surely said so by now.,,

ôBut they must have some idea.ö

ôEverybodyÆs got an idea. But they arenÆt worth anything.ö

æWhat do they say?ö

He shrugged. ôEverything from germ warfare on down.ö

ôDo you think it is?ö

ôGerm warfare?ö

ôYes,ö she said.

ôThe warÆs over,ö he said.

ôBob,ö she said suddenly, ôdo you think you should go to work?ö

He smiled helplessly.

ôWhat else can I do?ö he asked. ôWe have to eat.ö

ôI know, but . .

He reached across the table and felt how cold her hand was.

ôHoney, itÆll be all right,ö he said.

ôAnd you think I should send Kathy to school?ö

ôI think so,ö he said. ôUnless the health authorities say schools have to
shut down, I donÆt see why we should keep her home. SheÆs not sick.ö

ôBut all the kids at school.ö

ôI think weÆd better, though,ö he said.

She made a tiny sound in her throat. Then she said, ôAll right If you think
so.ö

ôIs there anything you want before I go?ö he asked.

She shook her head.

ôNow you stay in the house today,ö he told her, ôand in bed.ö

ôI will,ö she said. ôAs soon as I send Kathy off.ö He patted her hand.
Outside, the car horn sounded. He finished the coffee and went to the
bathroom to rinse out his mouth. Then he got his jacket from the hall
closet and pulled it on.

ôGood-by, honey,ö he said, kissing her on the cheek. ôTake it easy, now.ö

ôGood-by,ö she said. ôBe careful.ö

He moved across the lawn, gritting his teeth at the residue of dust in the
air. He could smell it as he walked, a dry tickling sensation in his nasal
passages.

ôMorning,ö he said, getting in the car and pulling the door shut behind
him.

ôGood morning,ö said Ben Cortman.





                               Chapter Seven



ôDISTILLED FROM ALLIUM SATIVUM, a genus of Liliaceae



comprising garlic, leek, onion, shallot, and chive. Is of pale color and
penetrating odor, containing several allyl sulphides. Composition: water,
64.6%; protein, 6.8%; fat, 0.1%; carbohydrates, 26.3%; fiber, 0.8%; ash,
l.4.%.ö

There it was. He jiggled one of the pink, leathery cloves in his right
palm. For seven months now heÆd strung them together into aromatic
necklaces and hung them outside his house without the remotest idea of why
they chased the vampires away. It was time he learned why.

He put the clove on the sink ledge. Leek, onion, shallot, and chive. Would
they all work as well as garlic? HeÆd really feel like a fool if they did,
after searching miles around for garlic when onions were everywhere.

He mashed the clove to a pulp and smelled the acrid fluid on the thick
cleaver blade.

All right, what now? The past revealed nothing to help him; only talk of
insect carriers and virus, and they werenÆt the causes. He was sure of it.

The past had brought something else, though; pain at remembering. Every
recalled word had been like, a knife blade twisting in him. Old wounds had
been reopened with every thought of her. HeÆd finally had to stop, eyes
closed,.

fists clenched, trying desperately to accept the present on its own terms
and not yearn with his very flesh for the past. But only enough drinks to
stultify all introspection had managed to drive away the enervating sorrow
that remembering brought

He focused his eyes. All right, damn it, he told himself, do something!

He looked at the text again, waterùwas it that? he asked himself. No, that
was ridiculous; all things had water in them. Protein? No. Fat? No.
Carbohydrates? No. Fiber? No. Ash? No. What then?

ôThe characteristic odor and flavor of garlic are due to an essential oil
amounting to about 0.2% of the weight, which consists mainly of allyl
sulphide and allyl isothicyanate.ö

Maybe the answer was there.

Again the book: ôAlly! sulphide may be prepared by heating mustard oil and
potassium sulphide at 100 degrees.ö

His body thudded down into the living-room chair and a disgusted breath
shuddered his long frame. And where the hell do I get mustard oil and
potassium sulphide? And the equipment to prepare them in?

ThatÆs great, he railed at himself. The first step, and already youÆve
fallen fiat on your face.

He pushed himself up disgustedly and headed for the bar. But halfway
through pouring a drink he Slammed down the bottle. No, by God, he had no
intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless,
fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the
answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.

He checked his watch. Ten-twenty A.M.; still time. He moved to the hallway
resolutely and checked through the telephone directories. There was a place
in Inglewood.

Four hours later he straightened up from the workbench with a crick in his
neck and the allyl sulphide inside a hypodermic syringe, and in himself the
first sense of real accomplishment since his forced isolation began.

A little excited, he ran to his car and drove out past the area heÆd
cleared out and marked with chalked rods. He knew it was more than possible
that some vampires might have wandered into the cleared area and were
hiding there again. But he had no time for searching.

Parking his car, he went into a house and walked to the bedroom. A young
woman lay there, a coating of blood on her mouth.

Flipping her over, Neville pulled up her skirt and injected the allyl
sulphide into her soft, fleshy buttock, then turned her over again and
stepped back. For a half hour he stood there watching her.

Nothing happened.

This doesnÆt make sense, his mind argued. I hang garlic around the house
and the vampires stay away. And the characteristic of garlic is the oil
IÆve injected in her. But nothingÆs happened.

Goddamn it, nothingÆs happened!

He flung down the syringe and, trembling with rage and frustration, went
home again. Before darkness, he built a small wooden structure on the front
lawn and hung strings of onions on it. He spent a listless night, only the
knowledge that there was still much left to do keeping him from the liquor.

In the morning he went out and looked at the matchwood on his lawn.



The cross. He held one in his hand, gold and shiny inÆ the morning sun.
This, too, drove the vampires away.

Why? Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping
on banana skins of mysticism?

There was only æone way to find out.

He took the woman from her bed, pretending not to notice the question posed
in his mind: Why do you always experiment on women? He didnÆt care to admit
that the inference had any validity. She just happened to be the first one
heÆd come across, that was all. What about the man in the living mom,
though? For GodÆs sake! he flared back. IÆm not going to rape the woman!

Crossing your fingers, Neville? Knocking on wood?

He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of bar boring an alien. Once
he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality,
after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic.

 Makes a good excuse, doesnÆt it, Neville? Oh, shut up.

But he wouldnÆt let himself pass the afternoon near her. After binding her
to a chair, he secluded himself in the garage and puttered around with the
car. She was wearing a torn black dress and too much was visible as she
breathed. Out of sight, out of mind.... It was a lie, he knew, but he
wouldnÆt admit it.

At last, mercifully, night came. He locked the garage door, went back to
the house, and locked the front door, putting the heavy bar across it Then
he made a drink and sat down on the couch across from the woman.

From the ceiling, right before her face, hung the cross. At six-thirty her
eyes opened. Suddenly, like the eyes of a sleeper who has a definite job to
do upon awakening; who does not move into consciousness with a vague entry,
but with a single, clear-cut motion, knowing just what is to be done.

Then she saw the cross and she Jerked her eyes from it with a sudden
raffling gasp and her body twisted in the chair.

ôWhy are you afraid of it?ö he asked, startled at the sound of his own
voice after so long.

Her eyes, suddenly on him, made him shudder. The way they glowed, the way
her tongue licked across her red lips as if it were a separate life in her
mouth. The way she flexed her body as if trying to move it closer to him. A
guttural rumbling filled her throat like the sound of a dog defending its
bone.

ôThe cross,ö he said nervously. ôWhy are you afraid of it?ö

She strained against her bonds, her hands raking across the sides of the
chair. No words from her, only a harsh, gasping succession of breaths. Her
body writhed on the chair, her eyes burned into him.

ôThe cross!ö he snapped angrily.

He was on his feet, the glass falling and splashing across the rug. He
grabbed the string with tense fingers and swung the cross before her eyes.
She flung her head away with a frightened snarl and recoiled into the
chair.

ôLook at it!ö he yelled at her.

A sound of terror stricken whining came from her. Her eyes moved wildly
around the room, great white eyes with pupils like specks of soot.

He grabbed at her shoulder, then jerked his hand heck. It was dribbling
blood from raw teeth wounds.

His stomach muscles jerked in. The hand lashed out again, this time
smashing her across the cheek and snapping her head to the side.

Ten minutes later he threw her body out the front door and slammed it again
in their faces.. Then he stood there against the door breathing heavily.
Faintly he heard through the soundproofing the sound of them fighting like
jackals for the spoils.

Later he went to the bathroom and poured alcohol into the teeth gouges,
enjoying fiercely the burning pain in his flesh.





                               Chapter Eight



NEVILLE BENT OVER AND picked up a little soil in his right hand. He ran it
between his fingers, crumbling the dark lumps into grit. How many of them,
he wondered, slept in the soil, as the story went?

He shook his head. Precious few.

Where did the legend fit in, then?

He closed his eyes and let the dirt filter down slowly from his hand. Was
there any answer? If only he could remember whether those who slept in soil
were the ones who had returned from death. He might have theorized then.

But he couldnÆt remember. Another unanswerable question, then. Add it to
the question that had occurred to him the night before.

What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?

The barking sound of his laugh in the silent morning air startled him. Good
God, he thought, itÆs been so long since IÆve laughed, IÆve forgotten how.
It sounded like the cough of a sick hound. Well, thatÆs what I am, after
all, isnÆt it? he decided. A very sick dog.

There had been a light dust storm about four that morning. Strange how it
brought back memories. Virginia, Kathy, all those horrible days ...

He caught himself. No, no, there was danger there. It was thinking of the
past that drove him to the bottle. He was just going to have to accept the
present.

He found himself wondering again why he chose to go on living. Probably, he
thought, thereÆs no real reason. IÆm just too dumb to end it all.

Wellùhe clapped his hands with false decisionùwhat now? He looked around as
if there were something to see along the stillness of Cimarron Street.

All right, he decided impulsively, letÆs see if the running water bit makes
sense.

He buried a hose under the ground and ran it into a small trough
constructed of wood. The water ran through the trough and out another hole
into more hosing, which conducted the water into the earth.

When heÆd finished, he went in and took a shower, shaved, and took the
bandage off his hand. The wound had healed cleanly. But then, he hadnÆt
been overly concerned about that. lime had more than proved to him that he
was immune to their infection.

At six-twenty he went into the living room and stood before the peephole.
He stretched a little, grunting at the ache in his muscles. Then, when
nothing happened, he made himself a drink.

When he got back to the peephole, be saw Ben Cortman come walking onto the
lawn.

ôCome out, Neville,ö Robert Neville muttered, and Cortman echoed the words
in a loud cry.

Neville stood there motionless, looking at Ben Cortman.

Ben hadnÆt changedÆ much. His hair was still black, his body inclined to
corpulence, his face still white. But there was a beard on his face now;
mostly under the nos≤, thin¡ner around his chin and cheeks and under his
throat. That was the only real difference, though. Ben had always been
immaculately shaved in the old days, smelling of cologne each morning when
he picked up Neville to drive to the plant.

It was strange to stand there looking out at Ben Cortman; a Ben completely
alien to him now. Once he had spoken to that man, ridden to work with him,
talked about cars and baseball and politics with him, later on about the
disease, about how Virginia and Kathy were getting along, about how Freda
Cortman was about

Neville shook his head. There was no point going into that. The past was as
dead as Cortman.

Again he shook his head. The worldÆs gone mad, he thought. The dead walk
about and I think nothing of it.

The return of corpses has become trivial in import How quickly one accepts
the incredible if only one sees it

enough! Neville stood there, sipping his whisky and wondering who it was
that Ben reminded him of. HeÆd felt for some time that Cortman reminded him
of somebody, but for the life. of him he couldnÆt think who.

He shrugged. What was the difference?

He put down the glass on the window sill and went into the kitchen. He
turned on the water there and went back in. When he reached the peephole,
he saw another man and a woman on the lawn. None of the three was speaking
to either of the others. They never did. They walked and walked about on
restless feet, circling each other like wolves, never looking at each other
once, having hungry eyes only for the house and their prey inside the
house.

Then Cortman saw the water running through the trough and went over to look
at it. After a moment he lifted his white face and Neville saw him
grinning.

Neville stiffened.

Cortman was jumping over the trough, then back again. Neville felt his
throat tightening. The bastard knew!

With rigid legs he pistoned himself into the bedroom and, with shaking
hands, pulled one of his pistols out of the bureau drawer.

Cortman was just about finishing stamping in the sides of the trough when
the bullet struck him in the left shoulder.

 He staggered back with a grunt and flopped onto the sidewalk with a
kicking of legs. Neville fired again and the bullet whined up off the
cement, inches from CortmanÆs twisting body.

Cortman started up with a snarl and the third bullet struck him full in the
chest.

Neville stood there watching, smelling the acrid fumes of the pistol smoke.
Then the woman blocked his view of Cortman and started jerking up her
dress.

Neville pulled back and slammed the tiny door over the peephole. He wasnÆt
going to let himself look at that. In the first second of it, he had felt
that terrible heat dredging up from his loins like something ravenous.

Later he looked out again and saw Ben Cortman pacing around, calling for
him to come out.

And, in the moonlight, he suddenly realized who Cortman reminded him of.
The idea made his chest shedder with repressed laughter and he turned away
as the shaking reached his shoulders.

My GodùOliver Hardy! Those old two-reelers heÆd looked at with his
projector. Cortman was almost a dead ringer for the roly-poly comedian. A
little less plump, that was all. Even the mustache was there now.

Oliver Hardy flopping on his back under the driving impact of bullets.
Oliver Hardy always coming back for more, no matter what happened. Ripped
by bullets, punctured by knives, flattened by cars, smashed under
collapsing chimneys and boats, submerged in water, flung through. pipes.
And always returning, patient and bruised:

That was who Ben Cortman wasùa hideously malignant Oliver Hardy buffeted
and long suffering.

My God, it was hilarious!

He couldnÆt stop laughing because it was more than laughter; it was
release. Tears flooded down his cheeks. The glass in his hand shook so
badly, the liquor spilled all over him and made him laugh harder. Then the
glass fell thumping on the rug as his body jerked with spasms of
uncontrollable amusement and the room was filled with his gasping,
nerve-shattered laughter.

Later, he cried.

He drove it into the stomach, into the shoulder. Into the neck with a
single mallet blow. Into the legs and the arms, and always the same result:
the blood pulsing out, slick and crimson, over the white flesh.

He thought heÆd found the answer. It was a matter of losing the blood they
lived by; it was hemorrhage.

But then he found the woman in the small green and white house, and when he
drove in the stake, the dissolution was so sudden it made him lurch away
and lose his breakfast.

When he had recovered enough to look again, he saw on the bedspread what
looked like a row of salt and pepper mixed; just about as long as the woman
had been. It was the first time heÆd ever seen such a thing.

Shaken by the sight, he went out of the house on trembling legs and sat in
the car for an hour, drinking the flask empty. But even liquor couldnÆt
drive away the vision.

It had been so quick. With the sound of the mallet blow still in his ears,
she had virtually dissolved before his eyes.

He recalled talking once to a Negro at the plant. The man had studied
mortuary science and had told Robert Neville about the mausoleums where
people were stored in vacuum drawers and never changed their appearance.

ôBut you just let some air in,ö the Negro had said, ôand whoom!ùtheyÆll
look like a row of salt and pepper. JusÆ

like that!ö And he snapped his fingers.

The woman had been long dead, then. Maybe, the thought occurred, she was
one of the vampires who had originally started the plague. God only knew
how many years sheÆd been cheating death.

He was too unnerved to do any more that day or for days to come. He stayed
home and drank to forget and let the bodies pile up on the lawn and let the
outside of the house fall into disrepair.

For days he sat in the chair with his liquor and thought about the woman.
And, no matter how hard he tried not to, no matter how much he drank, he
kept thinking about Virginia. He kept seeing himself entering the crypt,
lifting the coffin lid.

He thought he was coming down with something, so palsied and nerveless was
his shivering, so cold and ill did he feel.

Is that what she looked like?





                                Chapter Nine



MORNING. A SUN BRIGHT hush broken only by the chorus of birds in the trees.
No breeze to stir the vivid blossoms around the houses, the bushes, the
dark-leaved hedges. A cloud of silent heat was suspended over everything on
Cimarron Street.

Virginia NevilleÆs heart had stopped.

He sat beside her on the bed, looking down at her white face. He held her
fingers in his hand, his fingertips stroking and stroking. His body was
immobile, one rigid, insensible block of flesh and bone. His eyes did not
blink, his mouth was a static line, and the movement of his breathing was
so slight that it seemed to have stopped altogether.

Something had happened to his brain.

In the second he had felt no heartbeat beneath his trembling fingers, the
core of his brain seemed to have petrified, sending out jagged lines of
calcification until his head felt like stone. Slowly, on palsied legs, he
had sunk down On the bed. And now, vaguely, deep in the struggling tissues
of thought, he did not understand how he could sit there, did not
understand why despair did not crush him to the earth. But prostration
would not come. Time was caught on hooks and could not progress. Everything
stood fixed. With Virginia, life and the world had shuddered to a halt.

Thirty minutes passed; forty.

Then, slowly, as though he were discovering some objective phenomenon, he
found his body trembling. Not with a localized tremble, a nerve here, a
muscle there. This was complete. His body shuddered Without end, one mass

entire of nerves without control, bereft of will. And what operative mind
was left knew that this was his reaction.

For more than an hour he sat in this palsied state, his eyes fastened
dumbly to her face.

Then, abruptly, it ended, and with a choked muttering in his throat he
lurched up from the bed and left the room.

Half the whisky splashed on the sink top as he poured. The liquor that
managed to reach the glass he bolted down in a swallow. The thin current
flared its way down to his stomach, feeling twice as intense in the polar
numbness of his flesh. He stood sagged against the sink. Hands shaking, he
filled the glass again to its top and gulped the burning whisky down with
great convulsive swallows.

ItÆs a dream, he argued vainly. It was as if a voice spoke the words aloud
in his head.

ôVirginia...ö

He kept turning from one side to another, his eyes searching around the
room as if there were something to be found, as if he had mislaid the exit
from this house of horror. Tiny sounds of disbelief pulsed in his throat He
pressed his hands together, forcing the shaking palms against each other,
the twitching fingers intertwining confusedly.

His hands began to shake so he couldnÆt make out their forms. With a
gagging intake of breath he jerked them apart and pressed them against his
legs.

ôVirginia.ö

He took a step and cried aloud as the room flung itself off balance. Pain
exploded in his right knee, sending hot barbs up his leg. He whined as he
pushed himself up and stumbled to the living mom. He stood there like a
statue in an earthquake, his marble eyes frozen on the bedroom door.

In his mind he saw a scene enacted once again.

The great fire crackling, roaring yellow, sending its dense and
grease-thick clouds into the sky. KathyÆs tiny body in his arms. The man
coming up and snatching her away as if he were taking a bundle of rags. The
man lunging into the dark mist carrying his baby. Him standing there while
pile driver blows of horror drove him down with their impact.

Then suddenly he had darted forward with a berserk scream.

ôKathy!ö

The arms caught him, the men in canvas and masks drawing him back. His
shoes gouged frenziedly at the earth, digging two ragged trenches in the
earth as they dragged him away. His brain exploded, the terrified screams
flooding from him.

Then the sudden bolt of numbing pain in his jaw, the daylight swept over
with clouds of night. The hot trickle of liquor down his throat, the
coughing, a gasping, and then he had been sitting silent and rigid in Ben
CortmanÆs car, staring as they drove away at the gigantic pail of smoke
that rose above the earth like a black wraith of all earthÆs despair.

Remembering, he closed his eyes suddenly and his teeth pressed together
until they ached.

ôNo."

He wouldnÆt put Virginia there. Not if they killed him for it.

With a slow, stiff motion he walked to the front door and went out on the
porch. Stepping off onto the yellowing lawn, he started down the block for
Ben CortmanÆs house. The glare of the sun made his pupils shrink to points
of jet. His hands swung useless and numbed at his sides.

The chimes still played ôHow Dry I Am.ö The absurdity of it made him want
to break something in his hands. He remembered when Ben had put them in,
thinking how funny it would be.

He stood rigidly before the door, his mind still pulsing. I donÆt care if
itÆs the law, I donÆt care if refusal means death, I wonÆt put her there!

His fist thudded on the door.

ôBen!ö

Silence in the house of Ben Cortman. White curtains hung motionless in the
front windows. He could see the red couch, the floor lamp with the fringed
shade, the upright Knabe Freda used to toy with on Sunday afternoons.

He blinked. What day was it? He had forgotten, he had lost track of the
days.

He twisted his shoulders as impatient fury hosed acids through his veins.

ôBen!ö

Again the side of his hard fist pummeled the door, and the flesh along his
whitening jaw line twitched. Damn him, where was he? Neville jammed in the
button with a brittle finger and the chimes started the tipplerÆs song over
and over and over. ôHow dry I am, how dry I am, how dry I am, how dry I.

With a frenzied gasp he lurched against the door and it flew open against
the inside wall. It had been unlocked.

He walked into the silent living room.

ôBen,ö he said loudly. ôBen, I need your car.ö

They were in the bedroom, silent and still in their daytime comas, lying
apart on the twin beds, Ben in pajamas, Freda in silk nightgown; lying on
the sheets, their thick chests faltering with labored breaths

 He stood there for a moment looking down at them. There were some wounds
on FredaÆs white neck that had crusted over with dried blood. His eyes
moved to Ben. There was no wound on BenÆs throat And he heard a voice in
his mind that said: If only IÆd wake up.

He shook his head. No, there was no waking up from this.

He found the car keys on the bureau and picked them up. He turned away and
left the silent house behind. It was the last time he ever saw either of
them alive.

The motor coughed into life and he let it idle a few minutes, choke out,
While he sat staring out through the dusty windshield. A fly buzzed its
bloated form around his head in the hot, airless interior of the car. He
watched the dull green glitter of it and felt the car pulsing under him.

After a moment he pushed in the choke and drove the car up the street. He
parked it in the driveway before his garage and turned off the motor.

The house was cool and silent His shoes scuffed quietly over the rug, then
clicked on the floor boards in the hall.

He stood motionless in the doorway looking at her. She still lay on her
back, arms at her sides, the white fingers slightly curled in. She looked
as if she were sleeping.

He turned away and went back into the living room. What was be going to do?
Choices seemed pointless now. What did it matter what he did? Life would be
equally purposeless no matter what his decision was.

 He stood before the window looking out at the quiet, Sun-drenched street,
his eyes lifeless.

Why did I get the car, then? he wondered His throat moved as he swallowed..
I canÆt burn hat, he thought. I won't. But what else was there? Funeral
parlors were closed. What few morticians were healthy enough to practice
were prevented from doing so by law. Everyone without exception had to be
transported to the fires immediately upon death. It was the only way they
knew now to prevent communication. Only flames could destroy the bacteria
that caused the plague.

He knew that. He knew it was the law. But how many people followed it? He
wondered that too. How many husbands took the women who had shared their
life and love and dropped them into flames? How many parents incinerated
the children they adored, how many children tossed their beloved parents on
a bonfire a hundred yards square, a hundred feet deep?

No, if there was anything left in the world, it was his vow that she would
not be burned in the fire.

An hour passed before he finally reached a decision. Then he went and got
her needle and thread. He kept sewing until only her face showed. Then,
fingers trembling, a tight knot in his stomach, he sewed the blanket
together over her mouth. Over her nose. Her eyes.

Finished, he went in the kitchen and drank another glass of whisky. It
didn't seem to affect him at all.

At last he went back to the bedroom on faltering legs.. For a l⌠ng minute
he stood there breathing hoarsely; Then he bent over and worked his arms
under her inert form.

ôCome on, baby,ö he whispered.

The words seemed to loosen everything. He felt himself shaking, felt the
tears running slowly down his cheeks as he carried her through the living
room and outside.

He put her in the back seat and got in the car. He took a deep breath and
reached for the starter button.

He drew back. Getting out of the oar again, he went into the garage and got
the shovel.

He twitched as he came out, seeing the man across the street approaching
slowly. He put the shovel in the back and got in the car.

ôWait!ö

The manÆs shout was hoarse. The man tried to run, but he wasnÆt strong
enough.

Robert Neville sat there silently as the man came shuffling up.

ôCould you ... let me bring my ... my mother too?Æ the man said stiffly.

ôI...I...I...ö

NevilleÆs brain wouldnÆt function. He thought he was going to cry again,
but he caught himself and stiffened his back.

ôIÆm not going to the ... there,ö he said.

The man looked at him blankly.

ôBut your...ö

ôIÆm not going to the fire, I said!ö Neville blurted out, and jabbed in the
starter button.

ôBut your wife,ö said the man. ôYou have your...ö

Robert Neville jerked the gear shift into reverse.

ôPlease,ö begged the man.

ôIÆm not going there!ö Neville shouted without looking at the man.

ôBut itÆs the law!ö the man shouted back, suddenly furious.

The car raced back quickly into the street and Neville jerked it around to
face Compton Boulevard. As he sped away he saw the man standing at the curb
watching him leave. Fool! his mind grated. Do you think IÆm going to throw
my wife into a fire?

The streets were deserted. He turned left at Compton and started west. As
he drove he looked at the huge lot on the right side of the car. He
couldnÆt use any of the cemeteries. They were locked and watched. Men had
been shot trying to bury their loved ones.

He turned right at the next block. and drove up one block, turned night
again into a quiet street that ended in the lot. Halfway up the block he
cut the motor. He rolled the rest of the way so no one would hear the car.

No one saw him carry her from the car or carry her deep into the
high-weeded lot. No one saw him put her down on an open patch of ground and
then disappear from view as he knelt.

Slowly he dug, pushing the shovel into the soft earth, the bright sun
pouring heat into the little clearing like molten air into a dish. Sweat
ran in many lines down his cheeks and forehead as he dug, and the earth
swam dizzily before his eyes. Newly thrown dirt filled his nostrils with
its hot, pungent smell.

At last the hole was finished. He put down the shovel and sagged down on
his knees. His body shuddered and sweat trickled over his face. This was
the part he dreaded.

But he knew he couldnÆt wait. If he was seen they would come out and get
him. Being shot was nothing. But she would be burned then. His lips
tightened. No.

Gently, carefully as he could, he lowered her into the shallow grave,
making sure that her head did not bump.

He straightened up and looked down at her still body sewn up in the blanket
For the last time, he thought. No more talking, no more loving. Eleven
wonderful years ending in a filled-in trench. He began to tremble. No, he
ordered himself, thereÆs no time for that

It was no use. The world shimmered through endless distorting tears while
he pressed back the hot earth, patting it around her still body. with
nerveless fingers.

He lay fully clothed on his bed, staring at the black ceiling. He was half
drunk and the darkness spun with fireflies.

His right arm faltered out for the table. His hand brushed the bottle over
and he jerked out clawing fingers too late. Then he relaxed and lay there
in the still of night, listening to the whisky gurgle out of the bottle
mouth and spread across the floor.

His unkempt hair rustled on the pillow as he looked toward the clock. Two
in the morning. Two days since heÆd buried her. Two eyes looking at the
clock, two ears picking up the hum of its electric chronology, two lips
pressed together, two hands lying on the bed.

He tried to rid himself of the concept, but everything in the world seemed
suddenly to have dropped into a pit of duality, victim to a system of twos.
Two people dead, two beds in the mom, two windows, two bureaus, two rugs,
two hearts that

His chest filled with night air, held, then pushed it out and sank
abruptly. Two days, two hands, two eyes, two legs, two feet

He sat up and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed.

His feet landed in the puddle of whisky and, he felt it soaking through his
socks. A cold breeze was rattling the window blinds.

He stared at the blackness. WhatÆs left? he asked himself. WhatÆs left,
anyway?

Wearily he stood up and stumbled into the bathroom, leaving wet tracks
behind him. He threw water into his face and fumbled for a towel.

WhatÆs left? WhatÆs...

He stood suddenly rigid in the cold blackness.

Someone was turning the knob on the front door.

He felt a chill move up the back of his neck and his scalp began prickling.
ItÆs Ben, he heard his mind offering. HeÆs come for the car keys.

The towel slipped from his fingers and he. heard it swish down onto the
tiles. His body twitched.

A fist thudded against the door, strengthless, as if it had fallen against
the wood.

He moved into the living room slowly, his heartbeat thudding heavily.

The door rattled as another fist thudded against it weakly. He felt himself
twitch at the sound. WhatÆs the matter? he thought. The door is open. From
the open window a cold breeze blew across his face. The darkness drew him
to the door.

æWho .. .ô he murmured, unable to go on.

His hand recoiled from the doorknob as it turned under his fingers. With
one step, he backed into the wall and stood there breathing harshly, his
widened eyes staring.

Nothing happened. He stood there holding himself rigidly.

Then his breath was snuffed. Someone was mumbling on the porch, muttering
words he couldnÆt hear. He braced himself; then, with a lunge, he jerked
open the door and let the moonlight in.

He couldnÆt even scream. He just stood rooted to the spot, staring dumbly
at Virginia.

ôRob ... ert,ö she said.





                                Chapter Ten



THE SCIENCE ROOM WAS on the second floor. Robert NevilleÆs footsteps
thudded hollowly up the marble steps of the Los Angeles Public Library. It
was April 7, 1976.

It had come to him, after a half week of drinking, disgust, and desultory
investigation, that he was wasting his time. Isolated experiments were
yielding nothing, that was clear. If there was a rational answer to the
problem (and he had to believe that there was), he could only find it by
careful research.

Tentatively, for want of better knowledge, he had set up a possible basis,
and that was blood. It provided, at least, a starting point Step number
one, then, was reading about blood.

The silence of the library was complete save for the thudding of his shoes
as he walked along the second-floor hallway. Outside, there were birds
sometimes and, even lacking that, there seemed to be a sort of sound
outside.

Inexplicable, perhaps, but it never seemed as deathly still in the open as
it did inside. a building.

Especially here in this giant, gray-stoned building that housed the
literature of a worldÆs dead. Probably it was being surrounded by walls, he
thought, something purely psychological. But knowing that didnÆt make it
any easier. There were no psychiatrists left to murmur of groundless
neuroses and auditory hallucinations. The last man in the world was
irretrievably stuck with his delusions.

He entered the Science Room.

It was a high-ceilinged room with tall, large-paned windows. Across from
the doorway was the desk where books had been checked out in days when
books were still being checked out.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his
head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planetÆs
intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of
artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

His shoes clicked across the dark tiles as he walked to the beginning of
the shelves on his left. His eyes moved to the cards between the shelf
sections. ôAstronomy,ö he read; books about the heavens. He moved by them.
It was not the heavens he was concerned about. ManÆs lust for the stars had
died with the others. ôPhysics,ö ôChemistry,ö

ôEngineering.ö He passed them by and entered the main reading section of
the Science Room.

He stopped and looked up at the high ceiling. There were two banks of dead
lights overhead and the ceiling was divided into great sunken squares, each
square decorated with what looked like Indian mosaics. Morning sunlight
filtered through the dusty windows and he saw motes floating gently on the
current of its beams.

He looked down the row of long wooden tables with chairs lined up before
them. Someone had put them in place very neatly. The day the library was
shut down, he thought, some maiden librarian had moved down the room,
pushing each chair against its table. Carefully, with a plodding precision
that was the cachet of herself.

He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the
fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved oneÆs embrace. To sink into
that hideous coma, to sink them into death and, perhaps, return to sterile,
awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved.

That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.

He shook his head. All right, thatÆs enough, he told himself, you havenÆt
got the time for maudlin reveries.

He bypassed books until he came to ôMedicine.ö That was what he wanted. He
looked through the titles. Books on hygiene, on anatomy, on physiology
(general and specialized), on curative practices. Farther down, on
bacteriology.

He pulled out five books on general physiology and several works on blood.
These he stacked on one of the dust-surfaced tables. Should he get any of
the books on bacteriology? He stood a minute, looking indecisively at the
buckram backs.

Finally he shrugged. Well, whatÆs the difference? he thought. They canÆt do
any harm. He pulled out several of them at random and added them to the
pile. He now had nine books on the table. That was enough for a start. He
expected heÆd be coming back.

As he left the Science Room, he looked up at the clock over the door.

The red hands had stopped at four-twenty-seven. He wondered what day they
had stopped. As he descended the stairs with his armful of books, he
wondered at just what moment the clock had stopped. Had it been morning or
night? Was it raining or shining? Was anyone there when it stopped?

He twisted his shoulders irritably. For GodÆs sake, whatÆs the difference?
he asked himself. He was getting disgusted at this increasing nostalgic
preoccupation with the past. ItÆ was a weakness, he knew, a weakness he
could scarcely afford if he intended to go on. And yet he kept discovering
himself drifting into extensive meditation on aspects of the past. It was
almost more than he could control, and it was making him furious with
himself.

He couldnÆt get the huge front doors open from the inside, either; they
were too well locked. He had to go out through the broken window again,
first dropping the books to the sidewalk one at .a time, then himself. He
took the books to his car and got in.

As he started the car, he saw that he was parked along a red-painted curb,
facing in the wrong direction on a one-way street. He looked up and down
the street.

ôPoliceman!ö he found himself calling. ôOh, police-man!ö

He laughed for a mile without stopping, wondering just what was so funny
about it.



He put down the book. HeÆd been reading again about the lymphatic system.
He vaguely remembered reading about it months before, during the time he
now called his

ôfrenzied period.ö But what heÆd read had made no impression on him then
because heÆd had nothing to apply it to.

There seemed to be something there now.

The thin walls of the blood capillaries permitted blood plasma to escape
into the tissue spaces along with the red and colorless cells. These
escaped materials eventually returned to the blood system through the
lymphatic vessels, carried back by the thin fluid called lymph.

During this return flow, the lymph trickled through lymph nodes, which
interrupted the flow and filtered out the solid particles of body waste,
thus preventing them from entering the blood system.

Now.

There were two things that activated the lymphatic system: (1) breathing,
which caused the diaphragm to compress the abdominal contents, thus forcing
blood and lymph up against gravity; (2) physical movement, which caused
skeletal muscles to compress lymph vessels, thus moving the lymph. An
intricate valve system prevented any backing up of the flow.

But the vampires didnÆt breathe; not the dead ones, anyway. That meant,
roughly, that half of their lymph flow was cut off. This meant, further,
that a considerable amount of waste products would be left in the vampireÆs
system.

Robert Neville was thinking particularly of the fetid odor of the vampire.

He read on

"The bacteria passes into the blood stream, where...

ô... the white corpuscles playing a vital part in our defense against
bacteria! attack.

ôStrong sunlight kills many germs rapidly and

ôMany bacterial diseases of man can be disseminated by the mechanical
agency of flies, mosquitoes

ô... where, under the stimulus of bacterial attack, the phagocytic
factories rush extra cells into the blood stream.ö

He let the book drop forward into his lap and it slipped off, his legs and
thumped down on the rug.

It was getting harder and harder to fight, because no matter what he read,
there was always the relationship between bacteria and blood affliction..
Yet, all this time, heÆd been letting contempt fall freely on all those in
the past who had died proclaiming the truth of the germ theory and scoffing
at vampires.

He got up and made himself a drink. But it sat untouched as he stood before
the bar. Slowly, rhythmically, he thudded his right fist down on the top of
the bar while his eyes stared bleakly at the wall.

Germs.

He grimaced. Well, for GodÆs sake, he snapped jadedly at himself, the word
hasnÆt got thorns, you know.

He took a deep breath. All right, he ordered himself, is there any reason
why it couldnÆt be germs?

He turned away from the bar as if he could leave the question there. But
questions had no location; they could follow him around.

He sat in the kitchen staring into a steaming cup of coffee. Germs.
Bacteria. Viruses. Vampires. Why am I so against it? he thought. Was it
just reactionary stubbornness, or was it that the task would loom as too
tremendous for him if it were germs?

He didnÆt know. He started out on a new course, the course of compromise.
Why throw out either theory? One didnÆt necessarily negate the other. Dual
acceptance and correlation, he thought.

Bacteria could be the answer to the vampire.

Everything seemed to flood over him then.

It was as though heÆd been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the
dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in. There heÆd been, crouching and
content with his iron-bound theory. Now heÆd straightened up and taken his
finger out. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.

The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires
had spread it?. Could their nightly marauding have propelled it on so
quickly?

He felt himself jolted by the sudden answer. Only if you accepted bacteria
could you explain the fantastic rapidity of the plague, the geometrical
mounting of victims.

He shoved aside the coffee cup, his brain pulsing with a dozen different
ideas.

The flies and mosquitoes had been a part of it. Spreading the disease,
causing it to race through the world.

Yes, bacteria explained a lot of things; the staying in by day, the coma
enforced by the germ to protect itself from sun radiation.

A new idea: What if the bacteria were the strength of the true vampire?

He felt a shudder run down his back. Was it possible that the same germ
that killed the living provided the energy for the dead?

He had to know! He jumped up and almost ran out of the house. Then, at the
last moment, he jerked back from the door with a nervous laugh. God's sake,
he thought, am I going out of my mind? It was nighttime.

He grinned and walked restlessly around the living room.

Could it explain the other things? The stake? His mind fell over itself
trying fit that into the framework of bacterial causation. Come on! he
shouted impatiently in his mind. But all he could think of was hemorrhage,
and that didnÆt explain that woman. And it wasnÆt the heart....

He skipped it, afraid that his new-found theory would start to collapse
before heÆd established it.

The cross, then. No, bacteria couldnÆt explain that The soil; no, that was
no help. Running water, the mirror, garlic...

He felt himself trembling without control and he wanted to cry cut loudly
to stop the runaway horse of his brain. He had to find something! Goddamn
it! he raged in his mind. I wonÆt let it go!

He made himself sit down. Trembling and rigid, he sat there and blanked his
mind until calm took over. Good Lord, he thought finally, whatÆs the matter
with me? I get an idea, and when it doesnÆt explain everything in the first
minute, I panic. I must be going crazy.

He took that drink now; he needed it. He held up his it shaking. All right,
little boy, he tried kidding himself, calm down now. Santa Claus is coming
to town with all the nice answers. No longer will you be a weird Robinson
Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.

He snickered at that, and it relaxed him. Colorful, he thought, tasty. The
last man in the world is Edgar Guest.

All right, then, he ordered himself, youÆre going to bed. YouÆre not going
to go flying off in twenty different directions. æYou canÆt take that any
more; youÆre an emotional misfit.

The first step was to get a microscope. That is the first

step, he kept repeating forcefully to himself as he undressed for bed,
ignoring the tight ball of indecision in his stomach, the almost painful
craving to plunge directly into investigation without any priming.

He almost felt ill, lying there in the darkness and planning just one step
ahead. He knew it had to be that way, though. That is the, first step, that
is the first step. God¡damn your bones, that is the first step.

He grinned in the darkness, feeling good about the definite work ahead.

One thought on the problem he allowed himself before sleeping. The bitings,
the insects, the transmission from person to personùwere even these enough
to explain the horrible speed with which the plague spread?

He went to sleep with the question in his mind. And, about three n the
morning, he woke up to find the house buffeted by another dust storm. And
suddenly, in the flash of a second, he made the connection.







                               Chapter Eleven



THE FIRST ONE HE got was worthless.

The base was so poorly leveled that any vibration at all disturbed it. The
action of its moving parts was loose to the point of wobbling. The mirror
kept moving out of position because its pivots werenÆt tight enough.
Moreover, the instrument had no substage to hold condenser or polar¡izer.
It had only one nosepiece, so that he bad to remove the object lens when he
wanted any variation in magnification. The lenses were impossible.

But, of course, he knew nothing about microscopes, and heÆd taken the first
one heÆd found. Three days later he hurled it against the wall with a
strangled curse and stamped it into pieces with his heels.

Then, when heÆd calmed down, he went to the library and got a book on
microscopes.

The next time he went out, he didnÆt come back until heÆd found a decent
instrument; triple nose stage, substage for condenser and polarizer, good
base, smooth movement, iris diaphragm, good lenses. ItÆs just one more
example, he told himself, of the stupidity of starting off half-cocked.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he answered disgustedly.

He forced himself to spend a good amount of time familiarizing himself with
the instrument.

He fiddled with the mirror until he could direct a beam of light on the
object in a matter of seconds. He acquainted himself with the lenses,
varying from a three-inch power to a one-twelfth-inch power. In the case of
the latter, he learned to place a drop of cedar-wood oil on the slide, then
rack down until the lens touched the oil. He broke thirteen slides doing
it.

Within three days of steady attention, he could manipulate the milled
adjustment heads rapidly, could control the iris diaphragm and condenser to
get exactly the right amount of light on the slide, and was soon getting a
sharply defined clarity with the ready-made slides heÆd got.

He never knew a flea looked so godawful.

Next came mounting, a process much more difficult, he soon discovered.

No matter how he tried, he couldnÆt seem to keep dust particles out of the
mount. When he looked at them in the microscope, it looked as if he were
examining boulders.

It was especially difficult because of the dust storms, which still
occurred on an average of once every four days. He was ultimately obliged
to build a shelter over the bench.

He also learned to be systematic while experimenting with the mounts. He
found that continually searching for things allowed that much more time for
dust to accumulate

on his slides. Grudgingly, almost amused, he soon had a place for
everything. Glass slips, cover glasses, pipettes, cells, forceps, Petri
dishes, needles, chemicalsùall were placed in systematic locations.

He found, to his surprise, that he actually gleaned pleasure from
practicing orderliness. I guess I got old FritzÆs blood in me, after all,
he thought once in amusement.

Then he got a specimen of blood from a woman.

It took him days to get a few drops properly mounted in a cell, the cell
properly centered on the slide. For a while he thought heÆd never get it
right.

But then the morning came when, casually, as if it were only of minor
import, he put his thirty-seventh slide of blood under the lens, turned on
the spotlight, adjusted the draw tube and mirror, racked down and adjusted
the diaphragm and condenser. Every second that passed seemed to increase
the heaviness of his heartbeat, for somehow he knew this was the time.

The moment arrived; his breath caught.

It wasnÆt a virus, then. You couldnÆt see a virus. And there, fluttering
delicately on the slide, was a germ.

I dub thee vampiris. The words crept across his mind as he stood looking
down into the eyepiece.

By checking in one of the bacteriology texts, heÆd found that the
cylindrical bacterium he saw was a bacillus, a tiny rod of protoplasm that
moved itself through the blood by means of tiny threads that projected from
the cell envelope. These hairlike flagella lashed vigorously at the fluid
medium and propelled the bacillus.

For a long time he stood looking into the microscope, unable to think or
continue with the investigation.

All he could think was that here, on the slide, was the cause of the
vampire. All the centuries of fearful superstition had been felled in the
moment he had seen the germ.

The scientists had been right, then; there were bacteria involved. It had
taken him, Robert Neville, thirty-six, survivor, to complete the inquest
and announce the murdererùthe germ within the vampire.

Suddenly a massive weight of despair fell over him. To have the answer now
when it was too late was a crushing blow. He tried desperately to fight the
depression, but it held on. He didnÆt know where to start, he felt utterly
helpless before the problem. How could he ever hope to cure those still
living? He didnÆt know anything about bacteria.

Well, I will know! he raged inside. And he forced himself to study.



Certain kinds of bacilli, when conditions became unfavorable for life, were
capable of creating, from themselves, bodies called spores.

What they did was condense their cell contents into an oval body with a
thick wall. This body, when completed, detached itself from the bacillus
and became a free spore, highly resistant to physical and chemical change.

Later, when conditions were more favorable for survival, the spore
germinated again, bringing into existence all the qualities of the original
bacillus.

Robert Neville stood before the sink, eyes closed, hands clasped tightly at
the edge. Something there, he told himself forcefully, something there. But
what?

Suppose, he predicated, the vampire got no blood. Conditions then for the
vampiris bacillus would be unfavorable.

Protecting itself, the germ sporulates; the vampire sinks into a coma.
Finally, when conditions become favorable again, the vampire walks again,
its body still the same.

But how would the germ know if blood were available? He slammed a fist on
the sink in anger. He read again. There was still something there. He felt
it.

Bacteria, when not properly fed, metabolized abnormally and produced
bacteriophages (inanimate, self-reproducing proteins). These bacteriophages
destroyed the bacteria.

When no blood came in, the bacilli would metabolize abnormally, absorb
water, and swell up, ultimately to explode and destroy all cells.

Sporulation again; it had to fit in.

All right, suppose the vampire didnÆt go into a coma. Suppose its body
decomposed without blood. The germ still might sporulate andù Yes! The dust
storms!

The freed spores would be blown about by the storms. They could lodge in
minute skin abrasions caused by the scaling dust. Once in the skin, the
spore could germinate and multiply by fission. As this multiplication
progressed, the surrounding tissues would be destroyed, the channels
plugged with bacilli. Destruction of tissue cells and bacilli would
liberate poisonous, decomposed bodies into surrounding healthy tissues.
Eventually the poisons would reach the blood stream.

Process complete.

And all without blood-eyed vampires hovering over heroinesÆ beds. All
without bats fluttering against estate windows, all without the
supernatural.

The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.

Considering that, Neville recounted the historical plagues.

He thought about the fall of Athens. That had been very much like the
plague of 1975. Before anything could be done, the city had fallen.
Historians wrote of bubonic plague. Robert Neville was inclined to believe
that the vampire had caused it.

No, not the vampire. For now, it appeared, that prowling, vulpine ghost was
as much a tool of the germ as the living innocents who were originally
afflicted. It was the germ that was the villain. The germ that hid behind
obscuring veils of legend and superstition, spreading its scourge while
people cringed before their own fears.

And what of the Black Plague, that horrible blight that swept across
Europe, leaving in its wake a toll of three fourths of the population?

Vampires?



By ten that night, his head ached and his eyes felt like hot blobs of
gelatin. He discovered that he was ravenous. He got a steak from the
freezer, and while it was broiling he took a fast shower.

He jumped a little when a rock hit the side of the house. Then he grinned
wryly. HeÆd been so absorbed all day that heÆd forgotten about the pack of
them that prowled around his house.

While he was drying himself, he suddenly realized that he didnÆt know what
portion of the vampires who came nightly were physically alive and what
portion were activated entirely by the germ. Odd, he thought, that he
didnÆt know. There had to be both kinds, because some of them he shot
without success, while others had been destroyed. He assumed that the dead
ones could somehow withstand bullets.

Which brought up another point. Why did the living ones come to his house?
Why just those few and not everyone in that area?

He had a glass of wine with his steak and was amazed how flavorsome
everything was. Food usually tasted like wood to him. I must have worked up
an appetite today, he thought.

Furthermore, he hadnÆt had a single drink. Even more fantastic, he hadnÆt
wanted one. He shook his head. It was painfully obvious that liquor was an
emotional solace to him.

The steak he finished to the bone, and he even chewed on that. Then he took
the rest of the wine into the living

room, turned on the record player, and sat down in his chair with a tired
grunt.

He sat listening to RavelÆs Daphnis and Chloe Suites One and Two, all the
lights off except the spotlight on the woods. He managed to forget all
about vampires for a while.

Later, though, he couldnÆt resist taking another look in the microscope.

You bastard, he thought, almost affectionately, watching the minuscule
protoplasm fluttering on the slide. You dirty little bastard.





                               Chapter Twelve



THE NEXT DAY STANK.

The sun lamp killed the germs on the slide, but that didnÆt explain
anything to him.

He mixed allyl sulphide with the germ-ridden blood and nothing happened.
The allyl sulphide was absorbed, the germs still lived.

He paced nervously around the bedroom.

Garlic kept them away and blood was the fulcrum of their existence. Yet,
mix the essence of garlic with the blood and nothing happened. His hands
closed into angry fists.

Wait a minute; that blood was from one of .the living ones.

An hour later he had a sample of the other kind. He mixed it with allyl
sulphide and looked at it through the microscope. Nothing happened.

Lunch stuck in his throat.

What about the stake, then? All he could think of was hemorrhage, and he
knew it wasnÆt that. That damned woman

He tried half the afternoon to think of something concrete. Finally, with a
snarl, he knocked the microscope over and stalked into the living room. He
thudded down onto the chair and sat there, tapping impatient fingers on the
arm.

Brilliant, Neville, he thought. YouÆre uncanny. Go to the head of the
class. He sat there, biting a knuckle. LetÆs face it, he thought miserably,
I lost my mind a long time ago. I canÆt think two days in succession
without having seams come loose. IÆm useless, worthless, without value, a
dud.

All right, he replied with a shrug, that settles it. LetÆs get back to the
problem. So he did.

There are certain things established, he lectured himself. There is a germ,
itÆs transmitted, sunlight kills it, garlic is effective. Some vampires
sleep in soil, the stake destroys them. They donÆt turn into wolves or
bats, but certain animals acquire the germ and become vampires.

All right.

He made a list. One column he headed ôBacilli,ö the other he headed with a
question mark.

He began.

The cross. No, that couldnÆt have anything to do with the bacilli. If
anything, it was psychological.

The soil. Could there be something in the soil that affected the germ? No.
How would it get in the blood stream? Besides, very few of them slept in
the soil.

His throat moved as he added the second item to the column headed by a
question mark.

Running water. Could it be absorbed porously and

No, that was stupid. They came out in the rain, and they wouldnÆt if it
harmed them. Another notation in the right-hand column. His hand shook a
little as he entered it.

Sunlight. He tried vainly to glean satisfaction from putting down one item
in the desired column.

The stake. No. His throat moved. Watch it, he warned. The mirror. For GodÆs
sake, how could a mirror have anything to do with germs? His hasty scrawl
in the right-

hand column was hardly legible. His hand shook a little more.

Garlic. He sat there, teeth gritted. He had to add at least one more item
to the bacilli column; it was almost a point of honor. He struggled over
the last item. Garlic, garlic. It must affect the germ. But how?

He started to write in the right-hand column, but before he could finish,
fury came from far down like lava shooting up to the crest of a volcano.

Damn!

He crumpled the paper into a ball in his fist and hurled it away. He stood
up, rigid and frenzied, looking around. He wanted to break things,
anything. So you thought your frenzied period was over, did you! he yelled
at himself, lurching forward to fling over the bar.

Then he caught himself and held back. No, no, donÆt get started, he begged.
Two shaking hands ran through his lank blond hair. His throat moved
convulsively and he shuddered with the repressed craving for violence.

The sound of the whisky gurgling into the glass angered him. He turned the
bottle upside down and the whisky spurted out in great gushes, splashing up
the sides of the glass and over onto the mahogany top of the bar.

He swallowed the whole glassful at once, head thrown back, whisky running
out the edges of his mouth.

IÆm an animal! he exulted. IÆm a dumb, stupid animal and IÆm going to
drink!

He emptied the glass, then flung it across the room. It bounced off the
bookcase and rolled across the rug. Oh, so you wonÆt break, wonÆt you! he
rasped inside his head, leaping across the rug to grind the glass into
splinters under his heavy shoes.

Then he spun and stumbled to the bar again. He filled another glass and
poured the contents down his throat. I wish I had a pipe with whisky in it!
he thought. IÆd connect a goddamn hose to it and flush whisky down me until
it came out my ears! Until I floated in it!

He flung away the glass. Too slow, too slow, damn it! He. drank directly
from the uptilted bottle, gulping furiously, hating himself, punishing
himself with the whisky burning down his rapidly swallowing throat.

IÆll choke myself! he stormed. IÆll strangle myself, IÆll drown myself in
whisky! Like Clarence in his malmsey, IÆll die, die, die!

He hurled the empty bottle across the room and it shattered on the wall
mural. Whisky ran down the tree trunks and onto the ground. He lurched
across the room and picked up a piece of the broken bottle. He slashed at
the mural and the jagged edge sliced through the scene and peeled it away
from the wall. There! he thought, his breath like steam escaping. That for
you!

He flung the glass away, then looked down as he felt dull pain in his
fingers. HeÆd sliced open the flesh.

Good! he exulted viciously, and pressed on each side of the slices until
the blood ran out and fell in big drops on the rug. Bleed to death, you
stupid, worthless bastard!

An hour later he was totally drunk, lying flat on the floor with a vacuous
smile on his face.

WorldÆs gone to hell. No germs, no science. WorldÆs fallen to the
supernatural, itÆs a supernatural world. Harper's Bizarre and Saturday
Evening Ghost and Ghoul Housekeeping. ôYoung Dr. Jekyllö and ôDraculaÆs
Other Wifeö and ôDeath Can Be Beautiful.ö ôDonÆt be half-stakedö and Smith
BrothersÆ Coffin Drops.

He stayed drunk for two days and planned on staying drunk till the end of
time or the worldÆs whisky supply, whichever came first.

And he might have done it, too, if it hadnÆt been for a miracle.

It happened on the third morning, when he stumbled out onto the porch to
see if the world was still there.

There was a dog roving about on the lawn.

The second it heard him open the front door, it stopped snuffling over the
grass, its head jerked up in sudden fright, and it bounded off to the side
with a twitch of scrawny limbs.

For a moment Robert Neville was so shocked he couldnÆt move. He stood
petrified, staring at the dog, which was limping quickly across the street,
its ropelike tail pulled between its legs.

It was alive! In the daytime! He lurched forward with a dull cry and almost
pitched on his face on the lawn. His legs pistoned, his arms flailed for
balance. Then he caught himself and started running after the dog.

ôHey!ö he called, his hoarse voice breaking the silence of Cimarron Street.
ôCome back hem!ö

His shoes thudded across the sidewalk and off the curb, every step driving
a battering ram into his head. His heart pulsed heavily.

ôHey!ö he called again. ôCome æere, boy.ö

Across the street, the dog scrambled unsteadily along the sidewalk, its
right hind leg curled up, its dark claws clicking on the cement.

ôCome æere, boy, I wonÆt hurt you!ö Robert Neville called out.

Already he had a stitch in his side and his head throbbed with pain as he
ran. The dog stopped a moment and looked back. Then it darted in between
two houses, and for a moment Neville saw it from the side. It was brown and
white, breedless, its left ear hanging in shreds, its gaunt body wobbling
as it ran.

ôDonÆt run away!ö

He didnÆt hear the shrill quiver of hysteria in his voice as he screamed
out the words. His throat choked up as the dog disappeared between the
houses. With a grunt of fear he hobbled on faster, ignoring the pain of
hangover, everything lost in the need to catch that dog.

But when he got into the back yard the dog was gone.

He ran to the redwood fence and looked over. Nothing. He twisted back
suddenly to see if the dog were going back out the way it had entered.

There was no dog.

For an hour he wandered around the neighborhood on trembling legs,
searching vainly, calling out every few moments, ôCome æem, boy, come æem.ö

At last he stumbled home, his face a mask of hopeless dejection. To come
across a living being, after all this time to find a companion, and then to
lose it. Even if it was only a dog. Only a dog? To Robert Neville that dog
was the peak of a planetÆs evolution.

He couldnÆt eat or drink anything. He found himself so ill and trembling at
the shock and the loss that he had to lie down. But he couldn't sleep. He
lay there shaking feverishly, his head moving from side to side on the flat
pillow.

ôCome æere, boy,ö he kept muttering without realizing it. ôCome æere, boy,
I wonÆt hurt you.ö

In the afternoon he searched again. For two blocks in each direction from
his house he searched each yard, each street, each individual house. But he
found nothing.

When he got home, about five, he put Out a bowl of milk and a piece of
hamburger. He put a ring of garlic bulbs around it, hoping the vampires
wouldnÆt touch it.

But later it came to him that the dog must be afflicted too, and the garlic
would keep it away also. He couldnÆt understand that. If the dog had the
germ, how could it roam outdoors during the daylight hours? Unless it had
such a small dosing of bacilli in its veins that it wasnÆt really affected
yet. But, if that were true, how had it survived the nightly attacks?

Oh, my God, the thought came then, what if it comes back tonight for the
meat and they kill it? What if he went out the next morning and found the
dogÆs body on the lawn and knew that he was responsible for its death? I
couldnÆt take that, he thought miserably. IÆll blow out my brains if that
happens, I swear I will.

The thought dredged up again the endless enigma of why he went on. All
right, there were a few possibilities for experiment now, but life was
still a barren, cheerless trial. Despite everything he had or might have
(except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of
improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out
his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that?
Thirty, maybe forty if he didnÆt drink himself to death.

The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder.

And yet he hadnÆt killed himself. True, he hardly treated his body welfare
with reverence. He didnÆt eat properly, drink properly, sleep properly, or
do anything properly. His health wasnÆt going to last indefinitely; he was
already cheating the percentages, he suspected.

But using his body carelessly wasnÆt suicide. HeÆd never even approached
suicide. Why?

There seemed no answer. He wasnÆt resigned to anything, he hadnÆt accepted
or adjusted to the life heÆd been forced into. Yet here he was, eight
months after the plagueÆs last victim, nine since heÆd spoken to another
human being, ten since Virginia had died. Here he was with no future and a
virtually hopeless present. Still plodding on.

Instinct? Or was he just stupid? Too unimaginative to destroy himself? Why
hadnÆt he done it in the beginning, when he was in the very depths? What
had impelled him to enclose the house, install a freezer, a generator, an
electric stove, a water tank, build a hothouse, a workbench, bum down the
houses on each side of his, collect records and books and mountains of
canned supplies, evenùit was

fantastic when you thought about itùeven put a fancy mural on the wall?

Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling
potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own
encroachments?

He closed his eyes. Why think, why reason? There was no answer. His
continuance was an accident and an attendant bovinity. He was just too dumb
to end it all, and that was about the size of it.

Later he glued up the sliced mural and put it back into place. The slits
didnÆt show too badly unless he stood very close to the paper.

He tried briefly to get back to the problem of the bacilli, but he realized
that he couldnÆt concentrate on anything except the dog. To his complete
astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that
the dog would .be protected. It was a moment in which he felt a desperate
need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even
praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking
his own prayer at any second.

Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on
praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.





                              Chapter Thirteen



IN THE MORNING WHEN he went outside he found that the milk and hamburger
were gone.

His eyes rushed over the lawn. There were two women crumpled on the grass
but the dog wasnÆt there. A breath of relief passed his lips. Thank God for
that, he thought. Then he grinned to himself. If I were religious now, he
thought, IÆd find in this a vindication of my prayer.

Immediately afterward he began berating himself for not

being awake when the dog had come. It must have been after dawn, when the
streets were safe. The dog must have evolved a system to have lived so
long. But he should have been awake to watch.

He consoled himself with the hope that he was winning the dog over, if only
with food. He was briefly worried by the idea that the vampires had taken
the food, and not the dog. But a quick check ended that fear. The hamburger
had not been lifted over the garlic ring, but dragged through it along the
cement of the porch. And all around the bowl were tiny milk splashes, still
moist, that could have been made only by a dogÆs lapping tongue.

Before he had breakfast he put out more milk and more hamburger, placing
them in the shade so the milk wouldnÆt get too warm. After a momentÆs
deliberation he also put out a bowl of cold water.

Then, after eating, he took the two women to the fire and, returning,
stopped at a market and picked up two dozen cans of the best dog food as
well as boxes of dog biscuit, dog candy, dog soap, flea powder, and a wire
brush.

Lord, youÆd think I was having a baby or something, he thought as he
struggled back to the car with his arms full. A grin faltered on his lips.
Why pretend? he thought. IÆm more excited than IÆve been in a year. The
eagerness heÆd felt upon seeing the germ in his microscope was nothing
compared with what he felt about the dog.

He drove home at eighty miles an hour, and he couldnÆt help a groan of
disappointment when he saw that the meat and drink were untouched. Well,
what the hell do you expect? he asked himself sarcastically. The dog canÆt
eat every hour on the hour.

Putting down the dog food and equipment on the kitchen table, he looked at
his watch. Ten-fifteen. The dog would be back when it got hungry again.
Patience, he told himself. Get yourself at least one virtue, anyway.

He put away the cans and boxes. Then he checked the outside of the house
and the hothouse. There was a loose board to fasten and a pane to repair on
the hothouse roof.

While he collected garlic bulbs, he wondered once again why the vampires
had never set fire to his house. It seemed such an obvious tactic. Was it
possible they were afraid of matches? Or was it that they were just too
stupid? After all, their brains could not be so fully operative as they had
been before. The change from life to mobile death must have involved some
tissue deterioration.

No, that theory wasnÆt any good, because there were living ones around his
house at night too. Nothing was wrong with their brains, was there?

He skipped it. He was in no mood for problems. He spent the rest of the
morning preparing and hanging garlic strands. Once he wondered about the
fact that garlic bulbs worked. In legend it was always the blossoms of the
garlic plant He shrugged. What was the difference? The proof of the garlic
was in its chasing ability. He imagined that the blossoms would work too.

After lunch he sat at the peephole looking out at the bowls and the plate.
There was no sound anywhere except for the almost inaudible humming of the
air-conditioning units in the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen.

The dog came at four. Neville had almost fallen into a doze as he sat there
before the peephole. Then his eyes blinked and focused as the dog came
hobbling slowly across the street, looking at the house with white-rimmed,
cautious eyes. He wondered what was wrong with the dogÆs paw. He wanted
very much to fix it and get the dogÆs affection. Shades of Androcles, he
thought in the gloom of his house.

He forced himself to sit still and watch. It was incredible, the feeling of
warmth and normality it gave him to see the dog slurping up the milk and
eating the hamburger, its jaws snapping and popping with relish. He sat
there

with a gentle smile on his face, a smile he wasnÆt conscious of. It was
such a nice dog.

His throat swallowed convulsively as the dog finished eating and started
away from the porch. Jumping up from the stool, he moved quickly for the
front door.

Then he held himself back. No, that wasnÆt the way, he decided reluctantly.
YouÆll just scare him if you go out. Let him go now, let him go.

He went back to the peephole and watched the dog wobbling across the street
and moving in between those two houses again. He felt a tightness in his
throat as he watched it leave. ItÆs all right, he soothed himself, heÆll be
back.

He turned away from the peephole and made himself a mild drink. Sitting in
the chair and sipping slowly, he wondered where the dog went at night. At
first heÆd been worried about not having it in the house with him. But then
heÆd realized that the dog must be a master at hiding itself to have lasted
so long.

It was probably, he thought, one of those freak accidents that followed no
percentage law. Somehow, by luck, by coincidence, maybe by a little skill,
that one dog had survived the plague and the grisly victims of the plague.

That started him thinking. If a dog, with its limited intelligence, could
manage to subsist through it all, wouldnÆt a person with a reasoning brain
have that much more chance for survival?

He made himself think about something else. It was dangerous to hope. That
was a truism he had long accepted.

The next morning the dog came again. This time Robert Neville opened the
front door and went out. The dog immediately bolted away from the dish and
bowls, right ear flattened back, legs scrambling frantically across the
street.

Neville twitched with the repressed instinct to pursue.

As casually as he could manage, he sat down on the edge of the porch.

Across the street the dog ran between the houses again and disappeared.
After fifteen minutes of sitting, Neville went in again.

After a small breakfast he put out more food.

The dog came at four and Neville went out again, this time making sure that
the dog was finished eating.

Once more the dog fled. But this time, seeing that it was not pursued, it
stopped across the street and looked back for a moment.

ôItÆs all right, boy,ö Neville called but, but at the sound of his voice
the dog ran away again.

Neville sat on the porch stiffly, teeth gritted with impatience. Goddamn
it, whatÆs the matter with him? he thought. The damn mutt!

He forced himself to think of what the dog must have gone through. The
endless nights of groveling in the blackness, hidden God knew where, its
gaunt chest laboring in the night while all around its shivering form the
vampires walked. The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in
a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on
himself.

Poor little fella, he thought, IÆll be good to you when you come and live
with me.

Maybe, the thought came then, a dog had more chance of survival than a
human. Dogs were smaller, they could hide in places the vampires couldnÆt
go. They could probably sense the alien nature of those about them,
probably smell it.

That didnÆt make him any happier. For always, in spite of reason, he had
clung to the hope that someday he would find someone like himselfùa man, a
woman, a child, it didnÆt matter. Sex was fast losing its meaning without
the endless prodding of mass hypnosis. Loneliness he still felt.

Sometimes he had indulged in daydreams about finding someone. More often,
though, he had tried to adjust to what he sincerely believed was the
inevitableùthat he was actually the only one left in the world. At least in
as much of the world as he could ever hope to know.

Thinking about it, he almost forgot that nightfall was approaching.

With a start he looked up and saw Ben Cortman running at him from across
the street.

ôNeville!ö

He jumped up from the porch and ran into the house, locking and bolting the
door behind him with shaking hands.



For a certain period he went out on the porch just as the dog had finished
eating. Every time he went out the dog ran away, but as the days passed it
ran with decreasing speed, and soon it was stopping halfway across the
street to look back and bark at him. Neville never followed, but sat down
on the porch and watched. It was a game they played.

Then one day Neville sat on the porch before the dog came. And, when it
appeared across the street, he remained seated.

For about fifteen minutes the dog hovered near the curb suspiciously,
unwilling to approach the food. Neville edged as far away from the food as
he could n order to encourage the dog. Unthinking, he crossed his legs, and
the dog shrank away at the unexpected motion. Neville held himself quietly
then and the dog kept moving around restlessly in the street, its eyes
moving from Neville to the food and back again.

ôCome on, boy,ö Neville said to it. ôEat your food, thatÆs a good dog.ö

Another ten minutes passed. The dog was now on the lawn, moving in
concentric arcs that became shorter and shorter.

The dog stopped. Then slowly, very slowly, one paw at a time, it began
moving up on the dish and bowls, its eyes never leaving Neville for a
second.

ôThatÆs the boy,ö Neville said quietly.

This time the dog didnÆt flinch or back away at the sound of his voice.
Still Neville made sure he sat motionless so that no abrupt movement would
startle the dog.

The dog moved yet closer, stalking the plate, its body tense and waiting
for the least motion from Neville.

ôThatÆs right,ö Neville told the dog.

Suddenly the dog darted in and grabbed the meat. NevilleÆs pleased laughter
followed its frantically erratic wobble across the street.

ôYou little son of a gun,ö he said appreciatively.

Then he sat and watched the dog as it ate. It crouched down on a yellow
lawn across the street, its eyes on Neville while it wolfed down the
hamburger. Enjoy it, he thought, watching the dog. From now on you get dog
food. I canÆt afford to let you have any more fresh meat.

When the dog had finished it straightened up and came across the street
again, a little less hesitantly. Neville still sat there, feeling his heart
thud nervously. The dog was beginning to trust him, and somehow it made him
tremble. He sat there, his eyes fastened on the dog.

ôThatÆs tight, boy,ö he heard himself saying aloud. ôGet your water now,
thatÆs a good dog.ö

A sudden smile of delight raised his lips as he saw the dogÆs good ear
stand up. HeÆs listening! he thought excitedly. He hears what I say, the
little son of a gun!

ôCome on, boy.ö He went on talking eagerly. ôGet your water and your milk
now, thatÆs a good boy. I wonÆt hurt you. Atta boy.ö

The dog went to the water and drank gingerly, its head lifting with sudden
jerks to watch him, then dipping down again.

ôIÆm not doing anything,ö Neville told the dog.

He couldnÆt get over how odd his voice sounded. When a man didnÆt hear the
sound of his own voice for almost a year, it sounded very strange to him. A
year was a long

time to live in silence. When you come live with me, he thought, IÆll talk
your ear off. The dog finished the water.

ôCome æere, boy.ö Neville said invitingly, patting his leg. ôCome on.ö

The dog looked at him curiously, its good ear twitching again. Those eyes,
Neville thought. What a world of feeling in those eyes! Distrust, fear,
hope, lonelinessùall etched in those big brown eyes. Poor little guy.

ôCome on, boy, I wonÆt hurt you,ö he said gently.

Then he stood up and the dog ran away. Neville stood there looking at the
fleeing dog shaking his head slowly.

More days passed. Each day Neville sat on the porch while the dog ate, and
before long the dog approached the dish and bowls without hesitation,
almost boldly, with the assurance of the dog that knows its human conquest.

And all the time Neville would talk to it.

ôThatÆs a good boy. Eat up the food. ThatÆs good food, isnÆt it? Sure it
is. IÆm your friend. I gave you that food. Eat it up, boy, thatÆs right.
ThatÆs a good dog,ö endlessly cajoling, praising, pouring soft words into
the dogÆs frightened mind as it ate.

And every day he sat a little bit closer to it, until the day came when he
could have reached out and touched the dog if heÆd stretched a little. He
didnÆt, though. IÆm not taking any chances, he told himself. I donÆt want
to scare him.

But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them
twitching empathically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the
dogÆs head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and
the dog was such a beautifully ugly dog.

He kept talking to the dog until it became quite used to the sound of his
voice. It hardly looked up now when he

spoke. It came and went without trepidation, eating and barking its curt
acknowledgment from across the street. Soon now, Neville told himself, IÆll
be able to pat his head. The days passed into pleasant weeks, each hour
bringing him closer to a companion.

Then one day the dog didnÆt come.

Neville was frantic. HeÆd got so used to the dogÆs coming and going that it
had become the fulcrum of his daily schedule, everything fitting around the
dogÆs mealtimes, investigation forgotten, everything pushed aside but his
desire to have the dog in his house.

He spent a nerve-racked afternoon searching the neighborhood, calling out
in a loud voice for the dog. But no amount of searching helped, and he went
home to a tasteless dinner. The dog didnÆt come for dinner that night or
for breakfast the next morning. Again Neville searched, but with less hope.
TheyÆve got him, he kept hearing the words in his mind, the dirty bastards
have got him. But he couldnÆt really believe it. He wouldnÆt let himself
believe it.

On the afternoon of the third day he was in the garage when he heard the
sound of the metal bowl clinking outside. With a gasp he ran out into the
daylight.

ôYouÆre back!ö he cried.

The dog jerked away from the plate nervously, water dripping from its jaws.

NevilleÆs heart leaped. The dogÆs eyes were glazed and it was panting for
breath, its dark tongue hanging out.

ôNo,ö he said, his voice breaking. ôOh, no.ö

The dog still backed across the lawn on trembling stalks of legs. Quickly
Neville sat down on the porch steps and stayed there trembling. Oh, no, he
thought in anguish, oh, God, no.

He sat there watching it tremble fitfully as it lapped up the water. No.
No. ItÆs not true.

ôNot true,ö he murmured without realizing it.

Then, instinctively, he reached out his hand. The dog drew back a little,
teeth bared in a throaty snarl.

ôItÆs all right, boy,ö Neville said quietly. ôI wonÆt hurt you.ö He didnÆt
even know what he was saying.

He couldnÆt stop the dog from leaving. He tried to follow it, but it was
gone before he could discover where it hid. HeÆd decided it must be under a
house somewhere, but that didnÆt do him any good.

He couldnÆt sleep that night. He paced restlessly, drinking pots of coffee
and cursing the sluggishness of time. He had to get hold of the dog, he had
to. And soon. He had to cure it.

But how? His throat moved. There had to be a way. Even with the little he
knew there must be a way.

The next morning he sat tight beside the bowl and he felt his lips shaking
as the dog came limping slowly across the street. It didnÆt eat anything.
Its eyes were more dull and listless than theyÆd been the day before.
Neville wanted to jump at it and try to grab hold of it, take it in the
house, nurse it.

But he knew that if he jumped and missed he might undo everything. The dog
might never return.

All through the meal his hand kept twitching out to pat the dogÆs head. But
every time it did, the dog cringed away with a snarl. He tried being
forceful. ôStop that!ö he said in a firm, angry tone, but that only
frightened the dog more and it drew away farther from him. Neville had to
talk to it for fifteen minutes, his voice a hoarse, trembling sound, before
the dog would return to the water.

This time he managed to follow the slow-moving dog and saw which house it
squirmed under. There was a little metal screen he could have put up over
the opening, but he didnÆt. He didnÆt want to frighten the dog. And
besides, there would be no way of getting the dog then except through the
floor, and that would take too long. He had to get the dog fast.

When the dog didnÆt return that afternoon, he took a dish of milk and put
it under the house where the dog was. The next morning the bowl was empty.
He was going to put more milk in it when he realized that the dog might
never leave his lair then. He put the bowl back in front of his house and
prayed that the dog was strong enough to reach it. He was too warned even
to criticize his inept prayer.

When the dog didnÆt come that afternoon he went back and looked in. He
paced back and forth outside the opening and almost put milk there anyway.
No, the dog would never leave then.

He went home and spent a sleepless night. The dog didnÆt come in the
morning. Again he went to the house. He listened at the opening but
couldnÆt hear any sound of breathing. Either it was too far back for him to
hear or

He went back to the house and sat on the porch. He didnÆt have breakfast or
lunch. He just sat there.

That afternoon, late, the dog came limping out between the houses, moving
slowly on its bony legs. Neville forced himself to sit there without moving
until the dog had reached the food. Then, quickly, he reached down and
picked up the dog.

Immediately it tried to snap at him, but he caught its jaws in his tight
hand and held them together. its lean, almost hairless body squirmed feebly
in his grasp and pitifully terrified whines pulsed in its throat.

ôItÆs all tight,ö he kept saying. ôitÆs all right, boy.ö

Quickly he took it into his room and put it down on the little bed of
blankets heÆd arranged for the dog. As soon as he took his hand off its
jaws the dog snapped at him and he jerked his hand back. The dog lunged
over the linoleum with a violent scrabbling of paws, heading for the door.
Neville jumped up and blocked its way. The dogÆs legs slipped on the smooth
surface, then it got a little traction and disappeared under the bed.

Neville got on his knees and looked under the bed. In the gloom there he
saw the two glowing coals of eyes and heard the fitful panting.

ôCome on, boy,ö he pleaded unhappily. ôI wonÆt hurt you. YouÆre sick. You
need help.ö

The dog wouldnÆt budge. With a groan Neville got up finally and went out,
closing the door behind him. He went and got the bowls and filled them with
milk and water. He put them in the bedroom near the dogÆs bed.

He stood by his own bed a moment, listening to the panting dog, his face
lined with pain.

ôOh,ö he muttered plaintively, ôwhy donÆt you trust me?ö



He was eating dinner when he heard the horrible crying and whining.

Heart pounding, he jumped up from the table and raced across the living
room. He threw open the bedroom door and flicked on the light.

Over in the corner by the bench the dog was trying to dig a hole in the
floor.

Terrified whines shook its body as its front paws clawed frenziedly at the
linoleum, slipping futilely on the smoothness of it.

ôBoy, itÆs all right!ö Neville said quickly.

The dog jerked around and backed into the corner, hackles rising, jaws
drawn back all the way from its yellowish-white teeth, a half-mad sound
quivering in its throat.

Suddenly Neville knew what was wrong. It was nighttime and the terrified
dog was trying to dig itself a hole to bury itself in.

He stood there helplessly, his brain refusing to work properly as the dog
edged away from the corner, then scuttled underneath the workbench.

An idea finally came. Neville moved to his bed quickly

and pulled off the top blanket. Returning to the bench, he crouched down
and looked under it.

The dog was almost flattened against the wall, its body shaking violently,
guttural snarls bubbling in its throat.

ôAll right, boy,ö he said. ôAll right.ö

The dog shrank back as Neville stuck the blanket underneath the bench and
then stood up. Neville went over to the door and remained there a minute
looking back. If only I could do something, he thought helplessly. But I
canÆt even get close to him.

Well, he decided grimly, if the dog didnÆt accept him soon, heÆd have to
try a little chloroform. Then he could at least work on the dog, fix its
paw and try somehow to cure it.

He went back to the kitchen but he couldnÆt eat. Finally he dumped the
contents of his plate into the garbage disposal and poured the coffee back
into the pot. In the living room he made himself a drink and downed it. It
tasted flat and unappetizing. He put down the glass and. went back to the
bedroom with a somber face.

The dog had dug itself under the folds of the blanket and there it was
still shaking, whining ceaselessly. No use trying to work on it now, he
thought; itÆs too frightened.

He walked back to the bed and sat down. He ran his hands through his hair
and then put them over his face. Cure it, cure it, he thought, and one of
his hands bunched into a fist to strike feebly at the mattress.

Reaching out abruptly, he turned off the light and lay down fully clothed.
Still lying down, he worked off his sandals and listened to them thump on
the floor.

Silence. He lay there staring at the ceiling. Why donÆt I get up? he
wondered. Why donÆt I try to do something?

He turned on his side. Get some sleep. The words came automatically. He
knew he wasnÆt going to sleep, though. He lay in the darkness listening to
the dogÆs whimpering.

Die, itÆs going to die, he kept thinking, thereÆs nothing in the world I
can do.

At last, unable to bear the sound, he reached over and switched on the
bedside lamp. As he moved across the room in his stocking feet, he heard
the dog trying suddenly to jerk loose from the blanketing. But it got all
tangled up in the folds and began yelping, terror-stricken, while its body
flailed wildly under the wool.

Neville knelt beside it and put his hands on its body. He heard the choking
snarl and the muffled click of its teeth as it snapped at him through the
blanket.

ôAll right,ö he said. ôStop it now.ö

The dog kept struggling against him, its high-pitched whining never
stopping, its gaunt body shaking without control. Neville kept his hands
firmly on its body, pinning it down, talking to it quietly, gently.

ôItÆs all right now, fella, all right. NobodyÆs going to hurt you. Take it
easy, now. Come on, relax, now. Come on, boy. Take it easy. Relax. ThatÆs
tight, relax. ThatÆs it. Calm down. NobodyÆs going to hurt you. WeÆll take
care of you.ö

He went on talking intermittently for almost an hour, his voice a low,
hypnotic murmuring in the silence of the room. And slowly, hesitantly, the
dogÆs trembling eased off. A smile faltered on NevilleÆs lips as he went on
talking, talking.

ôThatÆs right. Take it easy, now. WeÆll take care of you.ö

Soon the dog lay still beneath his strong hands, the only movement its
harsh breathing. Neville began patting its head, began running his right
hand over its body, stroking and soothing.

ôThatÆs a good dog,ö he said softly. ôGood dog. IÆll take care of you now.
Nobody will hurt you. You understand, donÆt you, fella? Sure you do. Sure.
YouÆre my dog, arenÆt you?ö

Carefully he sat down on the cool linoleum, still patting the dog.

ôYouÆre a good dog, a good dog.ö

His voice was calm, it was quiet with resignation.

After about an hour he picked up the dog. For a moment it struggled and
started whining, but Neville talked to it again and it soon calmed down.

He sat down on his bed and held the blanket-covered dog in his lap. He sat
there for hours holding the dog, patting and stroking and talking. The dog
lay immobile in his lap, breathing easier.

It was about eleven that night when Neville slowly undid the blanket folds
and exposed the dogÆs head.

For a few minutes it cringed away from his hand, snapping a little. But he
kept talking to it quietly, and after a while his hand rested on the warm
neck and he was moving his fingers gently, scratching and caressing.

He smiled down at the dog, his throat moving.

ôYouÆll be all better soon,ö he whispered. ôReal soon.ö The dog looked up
at him with its dulled, sick eyes and then its tongue faltered out and
licked roughly and moistly across the palm of NevilleÆs hand.

Something broke in NevilleÆs throat. He sat there silently while tears ran
slowly down his cheeks.

In a week the dog was dead.





                              Chapter Fourteen



THERE WAS NO DEBAUCH of drinking. Far from it. He found that he actually
drank less. Something had changed. Trying to analyze it, he came to the
conclusion that his last drunk had put him on the bottom, at the very nadir
of frustrated despair. Now, unless he put himself under the ground, the
only way he could go was up.

After the first few weeks of building up intense hope about the dog, it had
slowly dawned on him that intense hope was not the answer and never had
been. In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild
dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle,
and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it
seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the
cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the
desired hand.

Burying the dog had not been the agony he had supposed it would be. In a
way, it was almost like burying threadbare hopes and false excitements.
From that day on he learned to accept the dungeon he existed in, neither
seeking to escape with sudden derring-do nor beating his pate bloody on its
walls.

And, thus resigned, he returned to work.



It had happened almost a year before, several days after he had put
Virginia to her second and final rest.

Hollow and bleak, a sense of absolute loss in him, he was walking the
streets late one afternoon, hands listless at his sides, feet shuffling
with the rhythm of despair. His face mirrored nothing of the helpless agony
he felt. His face was a blank.

He had wandered through the streets for hours, neither knowing nor caring
where he was going. All he knew was that he couldnÆt return to the empty
rooms of the house, couldnÆt look at the things they had touched and held
and known with him. He couldnÆt look at KathyÆs empty bed, at her clothes
hanging still and useless in the closet, couldnÆt look at the bed that he
and Virginia had slept in, at VirginiaÆs clothes, her jewelry, all her
perfumes on the bureau. He couldnÆt go near the house.

And so he walked and wandered, and he didnÆt know where he was when the
people started milling past him, when the man caught his arm and breathed
garlic in his face.

ôCome, brother, come,ö the man said, his voice a grating rasp. He saw the
manÆs throat moving like clammy turkey skin, the red-splotched cheeks, the
feverish eyes, the black suit, unpressed, unclean. ôCome and be saved,
brother, saved.ö

Robert Neville stared at the man. He didnÆt understand. The man pulled him
on, his fingers like skeleton fingers on NevilleÆs arm.

ôItÆs never too late, brother,ö said the man. ôSalvation comes to him who .
.

The last of his words were lost now in the rising murmur of sound from the
great tent they were approaching. It sounded like the sea imprisoned under
canvas, roaring to escape. Robert Neville tried to loose his arm.

ôI donÆt want toùö

The man didnÆt hear. He pulled Neville on with him and they walked toward
the waterfall of crying and stamping. The man did not let go. Robert
Neville felt as if he were being dragged into a tidal wave.

ôBut I donÆtùö

The tent had swallowed him then, the ocean of shouting, stamping,
hand-clapping sound engulfed him. He flinched instinctively and felt his
heart begin pumping heavily. He was surrounded now by people, hundreds of
them, swelling and gushing around him like waters closing in. And yelling
and clapping and crying out words Robert Neville couldnÆt understand.

Then the cries died down and he heard the voice that stabbed through the
half-light like knifing doom, that crackled and bit shrilly over the
loud-speaker system.

ôDo you want to fear the holy cross of God? Do you want to look into the
mirror and not see the face that Almighty God has given you? Do you want to
come crawling back from the grave like a monster out of hell?ö

The voice enjoined hoarsely, pulsing, driving.

ôDo you want to be changed into a black unholy animal? Do you want to stain
the evening sky with hell-born bat wings? I ask youùdo you want to be
turned into godless, night-cursed husks, into creatures of eternal
damnation?ö

ôNo!ö the people erupted, terror-stricken. ôNo, save us!ö

Robert Neville backed away, bumping into flailing-handed, white-jawed true
believers screaming out for succor from the lowering skies.

ôWell, IÆm telling you! IÆm telling you, so listen to the word of God!
Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation and the slain of the Lord
shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of
the earth! Is that a lie, is that a lie?ö

ôNo! No!ö

ôI tell you that unless we become as little children, stainless and pure in
the eyes of Our Lordùunless we stand up and shout out the glory of Almighty
God and of His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, our Saviorùunless we fall
on our knees and beg forgiveness for our grievous offensesùwe are damned!
IÆll say it again, so listen! We are damned, we are damned, we are damned!

ôAmen!ö

ôSave us!"

The people twisted and moaned and smote their brows and shrieked in mortal
terror and screamed out terrible hallelujahs.

Robert Neville was shoved about, stumbling and lost in a treadmill of
hopes, in a crossfire of frenzied worship.

ôGod has punished us for our great transgressions! God has unleashed the
terrible force of His almighty wrath! God has set loose the second deluge
upon usùa deluge, a flood, a world-consuming torrent of creatures from
hell! He has opened the grave, He has unsealed the crypt, He

has turned the dead from their black tombsùand set them upon us! And death
and hell delivered up the dead which were in them! ThatÆs the word of God!
0 God, You have punished us, 0 God, You have seen the terrible face of our
transgressions, 0 God, You have struck us with the might of Your almighty
wrath!ö

Clapping hands like the spatter of irregular rifle fire, swaying bodies
like stalks in a terrible wind, moans of the great potential dead, screams
of the fighting living. Robert Neville strained through their violent
ranks, face white, hands before him like those of a blind man seeking
shelter.

He escaped, weak and trembling, stumbling away from them. Inside the tent
the people screamed. But night had already fallen.



He thought about that now as he sat in the living room nursing a mild
drink, a psychology text resting on his lap.

A quotation had started the train of thought, sending him back to that
evening ten months before, when heÆd been pulled into the wild revival
meeting.

ôThis condition, known as hysterical blindness, may be partial or complete,
including one, several, or all objects.ö

That was the quotation heÆd read. It had started him working on the problem
again.

A new approach now. Before, he had stubbornly persisted in attributing all
vampire phenomena to the germ. If certain of these phenomena did not fit in
with the bacilli, he felt inclined to judge their cause as superstition.
True, heÆd vaguely considered psychological explanations, but heÆd never
really given much credence to such a possibility. Now, released at last
from unyielding preconceptions, he did.

There was no reason, he knew, why some of the phenomena could not be
physically caused, the rest psychological. And, now that he accepted it, it
seemed one of those patent answers that only a blind man would miss. Well,
I always was the blind-man type, he thought in quiet amusement.

Consider, he thought then, the shock undergone by a victim of the plague.

Toward the end of the plague, yellow journalism had spread a cancerous
dread of vampires to all corners of the nation. He could remember himself
the rash of pseudoscientific articles that veiled an out-and-out fright
campaign designed to sell papers.

There was something grotesquely amusing in that; the frenetic attempt to
sell papers while the world died. Not that all newspapers had done that.
Those papers that had lived in honesty and integrity died the same way.

Yellow journalism, though, had been rampant in the final days. And, in
addition, a great upsurge in revivalism had occurred. In a typical
desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to
primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had
they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with
terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

And then, Robert Neville thought, to have this hideous dread vindicated. To
regain consciousness beneath hot, heavy soil and know that death had not
brought rest. To find themselves clawing up through the earth, their bodies
driven now by a strange, hideous need.

Such traumatic shocks could undo what mind was left. And such shocks could
explain much.

The cross, first of all.

Once they were forced to accept vindication of the dread of being repelled
by an object that had been a focal point of worship, their minds could have
snapped. Dread of the cross sprang up. And, driven on despite already
created dreads, the vampire could have acquired an intense mental loathing,
and this self-hatred could have set up a block in their weakened minds
causing them be blind to

their own abhorred image. It could make them lonely, soul-lost slaves of
the night, afraid to approach anyone, living a solitary existence, often
seeking solace in the soil of their native land, struggling to gain a sense
of communion with something, with anything.

The water? That he did accept as superstition, a carryover of the
traditional legend that witches were incapable of crossing running water,
as written down in the story of Tam OÆShanter. Witches, vampiresùin all
these feared beings there was a sort of interwoven kinship. Legends and
superstitions could overlap, and did.

And the living vampires? That was simple too now.

In life there were the deranged, the insane. What better hold than
vampirism for these to catch on to? He was certain that all the living who
came to his house at night were insane, thinking themselves true vampires
although actually they were only demented sufferers. And that would explain
the fact that theyÆd never taken the obvious step of burning his house.
They simply could not think that logically.

He remembered the man who one night had climbed to the top of the light
post in front of the house and, while Robert Neville had watched through
the peephole, had leaped into space, waving his arms frantically. Neville
hadnÆt been able to explain it at the time, but now the answer seemed
obvious. The man had thought he was a bat.

Neville sat looking at the half-finished drink, a thin smile fastened to
his lips.

So, he thought, slowly, surely, we find out about them. Find out that they
are no invincible race. Far from it; they are a highly perishable race
requiring the strictest of physical conditions for the furtherance of their
Godforsaken existence.

He put the drink down on the table.

I donÆt need it, he thought. My emotions donÆt need feeding any more. I
donÆt need liquor for forgetting or for escaping. I donÆt have to escape
from anything. Not now.

For the first time since the dog had died he smiled and felt within himself
a quiet, well-modulated satisfaction. There were still many things to
learn, but not so many as before. Strangely, life was becoming almost
bearable. I don the robe of hermit without a cry, he thought.

On the phonograph, music played, quiet and unhurried.

Outside, the vampires waited.





                            PART III: June 1978



                              Chapter Fifteen



HE WAS OUT HUNTING for Cortman. It had become a relaxing hobby, hunting for
Cortman; one of the few diversions left to him. On those days when he
didnÆt care to leave the neighborhood and there was no demanding work to be
done on the house, he would search. Under cars, be-hind bushes, under
houses, up fireplaces, in closets, under beds, in refrigerators; any place
into which a moderately corpulent male body could conceivably be squeezed.

Ben Cortman could be in any one of those places at one time or another. He
changed his hiding place constantly. Neville felt certain that Cortman knew
he was singled out for capture. He felt, further, that Cortman relished the
peril of it. If the phrase were not such an obvious anachronism, Neville
would have said that Ben Cortman had a zest for life. Sometimes he thought
Cortman was happier now than he ever had been before.

Neville ambled slowly up Compton Boulevard toward the next house he meant
to search. An uneventful morning had passed. Cortman was not found, even
though Neville knew he was somewhere in the neighborhood. He had to be,
because he was always the first one at the house at night. The other ones
were almost always strangers. Their turnover was great, because they
invariably stayed in the

neighborhood and Neville found them and destroyed them. Not Cortman.

As he strolled, Neville wondered again what heÆd do if he found Cortman.
True, his plan had always been the same: immediate disposal. But that was
on the surface. He knew it wouldnÆt be that easy. .Oh, it wasnÆt that he
felt anything toward Cortman. It wasnÆt even that Cortman represented a
part of the past. The past was dead and he knew it and accepted it.

No, it wasnÆt either of those things. What it probably was, Neville
decided, was that he didnÆt want to cut off a recreational activity. The
rest were such dull, robot-like creatures. Ben, at least, had some
imagination. For some reason, his brain hadnÆt weakened like the othersÆ.
It could be, Neville often theorized, that Ben Cortman was born to be dead.
Undead, that is, he thought, a wry smile playing on his full lips.

It no longer occurred to him that Cortman was out to kill him. That was a
negligible menace.

Neville sank down on the next porch with a slow groan. Then, reaching
lethargically into his pocket, he took out his pipe. With an idle thumb he
tamped rough tobacco shreds down into the pipe bowl. In a few moments smoke
swirls were floating lazily, about his head in the warm, still air.

It was a bigger, more relaxed Neville that gazed out across the wide field
on the other side of the boulevard. An evenly paced hermit life had
increased his weight to 230 pounds. His face was full, his body broad and
muscular underneath the loose-fitting denim he wore. He had long before
given up shaving. Only rarely did he crop his thick blond beard, so that it
remained two -to three inches from his skin. His hair was thinning and was
long and straggly. Set in the deep tan of his face, his blue eyes were calm
and unexcitable.

He leaned back against the brick step, puffing out slow

clouds of smoke. Far out across that field he knew there was still a
depression in the ground where he had buried Virginia, where she had
unburied herself. But knowing it brought no glimmer of reflective sorrow to
his eyes. Rather than go on suffering, he had learned to stultify himself
to introspection. Time had lost its multidimensional scope. There was Only
the present for Robert Neville; a present based on day-to-day survival,
marked by neither heights of joy nor depths of despair. I am predominantly
vegetable, he often thought to himself. That was the way he wanted it.

Robert Neville sat gazing at the white spot out in the field for several
minutes before he realized that it was moving.

His eyes blinked once and the skin tightened over his face. He made a
slight sound in his throat, a sound of doubting question. Then, standing
up, he raised his left hand to shade the sunlight from his eyes.

His teeth bit convulsively into the pipestem.

A woman.

He didnÆt even try. to catch the pipe when it fell from his mouth as his
jaw went slack. For a long, breathless moment, he stood there on the porch
step, staring.

He closed his eyes, opened them. She was still there. Robert Neville felt
the increasing thud in his chest as he watched the woman.

She didnÆt see him. Her head was down as she walked across the long field.
He could see her reddish hair blowing in the, breeze, her arms swinging
loosely at her sides. His throat moved. It was such an incredible sight
after threeÆ years that his mind could not assimilate it. He kept blinking
and staring as he stood motionless in the shade of the house.

A woman. Alive. In the daylight.

He stood, mouth partly open, gaping at the woman. She was young, he could
see now as she came closer; probably in her twenties. She wore a wrinkled
and dirty white dress. She was very tan, her hair was red. In the dead
silence of the afternoon Neville thought he heard the crunch of her shoes
in the long grass.

IÆve gone mad. The words presented themselves abruptly. He felt less shock
at that possibility than he did at the notion that she was real. He had, in
fact, been vaguely preparing himself for just such a delusion. It seemed
feasible. The man who died of thirst saw mirages of lakes. Why shouldnÆt a
man who thirsted for companionship see a woman walking in the sun?

He started suddenly. No, it wasnÆt that. For, unless his delusion had sound
as well as sight, he now heard her walking through the grass. He knew it
was real. The movement of her hair, of her arms. She still looked at the
ground. Who was she? Where was she going? Where had she been?

He didnÆt know what welled up in him. It was too quick to analyze, an
instinct that broke through every barrier of time-erected reserve.

His left arm went up.

ôHi!ö he cried. He jumped down to the sidewalk. ôHi, there!ö

A moment of sudden, complete silence. Her head jerked up and they looked at
each other. Alive, he thought. Alive!

He wanted to shout more, but he felt suddenly choked up. His tongue felt
wooden, his brain refused to function. Alive. The word kept repeating
itself in his mind, Alive, alive, alive.

With a sudden twisting motion the young woman turned and began running
wildly back across the field.

For a moment Neville stood there twitching, uncertain of what to do. Then
his heart seemed to burst and he lunged across the sidewalk. His boots
jolted down into the street and thudded across.

ôWait!ö he heard himself cry.

The woman did not wait. He saw her bronze legs pumping as she fled across
the uneven surface of the field. And suddenly he realized that words could
not stop her. He thought of how shocked he had been at seeing her. How much
more shocked she must have felt hearing a sudden shout end long silence and
seeing a great, bearded man waving at her!

His legs drove him up over the other curb and into the field. His heart was
pounding heavily now. SheÆs alive! He couldnÆt stop thinking that. Alive. A
woman alive!

She couldnÆt run as fast as he could. Almost immediately Neville began
catching up with her. She glanced back over her shoulder with terrified
eyes.

ôI wonÆt hurt you!ö he cried, but she kept running.

Suddenly she tripped and went crashing down on one knee. Her face turned
again and he saw the twisted fright on it.

ôI wonÆt hurt you!ö he yelled again.

With a desperate lunge she regained her footing and ran on.

No sound now but the sound of her shoes and his boots thrashing through the
heavy grass. He began jumping over the grass to avoid its impending height
and gained more ground. The skirt of her dress whipped against the grass,
holding her back.

ôStop!ö he cried, again, but more from instinct than with any hope that she
would stop.

She didnÆt. She ran still faster and, gritting his teeth, Neville put
another burst of speed into his pursuit. He followed in a straight line as
the girl weaved across the field, her light reddish hair billowing behind
her.

Now he was so close he could hear her tortured breathing. He didnÆt like to
frighten her, but he couldnÆt stop now. Everything else in the world seemed
to have fallen from view but her. He had to catch her.

His long, powerful legs pistoned on, his boots thudded on the earth.

Another stretch of field. The two of them ran, panting. She glanced back at
him again to see how close he was. He didnÆt realize how frightening he
looked; six foot three in his boots, a gigantic bearded man with an intent
look.

Now his hand lurched out and he caught her by the right shoulder.

With a gasping scream the young woman twisted away and stumbled to the
side. Losing balance, she fell on one hip on the rocky ground. Neville
jumped forward to help her up. She scuttled back over the ground and tried
to get up, but she slipped and fell again, this time on her back. Her skirt
jerked up over her knees. She shoved herself up with a breathless whimper,
her dark eyes terrified.

ôHere,ö he gasped, reaching out his hand.

She slapped it aside with a slight cry and struggled to her feet. He caught
her by the arm and her free hand lashed out, raking jagged nails across his
forehead and right temple. With a grunt he jerked back his arm and she
whirled and began running again.

Neville jumped forward again and caught her by the shoulders.

ôWhat are you afraidùö

He couldnÆt finish. Her hand drove stingingly across his mouth. Then there
was only the sound of gasping and struggling, of their feet scrabbling and
slippingÆ on the earth, crackling down the thick grass.

ôWill you stop!ö he cried, but she kept battling.

She jerked back and his taut fingers ripped away part of her dress. He let
go and the material fluttered down to her waist. He saw her tanned shoulder
and the white brassiere cup over her left breast.

She clawed out at him and he caught her wrists in an iron grip. Her right
foot drove a bone-numbing kick to his skin.

ôDamn it!ö

With a snarl of rage he drove his right palm across her face. She staggered
back, then looked at him dizzily. Abruptly she started crying helplessly.
She sank to her knees before him, holding her arms over her head as if to
ward off further blows.

Neville stood there gasping, looking down at her cringing form. He blinked,
then took a deep breath.

ôGet up,ö he said. ôIÆm not going to hurt you.ö

She didnÆt raise her head. He looked down confusedly at her. He didnÆt know
what to say.

ôI said IÆm not going to hurt you,ö he told her again.

She looked up. But his face seemed to frighten her again, for she shrank
back. She crouched there looking up at him fearfully.

ôWhat are you afraid of?ö he asked.

He didnÆt realize that his voice was devoid of warmth, that it was the
harsh, sterile voice of a man who had lost all touch with humanity.

He took a step toward her and she drew back again with a frightened gasp.
He extended his hand.

ôHere,ö he said. ôStand up.ö

She got up slowly but without his help. Noticing suddenly her exposed
breast, she reached down and held up the torn material of her dress.

They stood there breathing harshly and looking at each other. And, now that
the first shock had passed, Neville didnÆt know what to say. HeÆd been
dreaming of this moment for years. His dreams had never been like this.

ôWhat . .. whatÆs your name?ö he asked.

She didnÆt answer. Her eyes stayed on his face, her lips kept trembling.

ôWell?ö he asked loudly, and she flinched.

ôR-Ruth.ö Her voice faltered.

A shudder ran through Robert NevilleÆs body. The sound of her voice seemed
to loosen everything in him.

Questions disappeared. He felt his heart beating heavily. He almost felt as
if he were going to cry.

His hand moved out, almost unconsciously. Her shoulder trembled under his
palm.

ôRuth,ö he said in a flat, lifeless voice.

His throat moved as he stared at her.

ôRuth,ö he said again.

The two of them, the man and the woman, stood facing each other in the
great, hot field.







                              Chapter Sixteen



THE WOMAN LAY MOTIONLESS on his bed, sleeping. It was past four in the
afternoon. At least twenty times Neville had stolen into the bedroom to
look at her and see if she were awake. Now he sat in the kitchen drinking
coffee and worrying.

What if she is infected, though? he argued with himself. The worry had
started a few hours before, while Ruth was sleeping. Now, he couldnÆt rid
himself of the fear. No matter how he reasoned, it didnÆt help. All right,
she was tanned from the sun, she had been walking in the daylight. The dog
had been in the daylight too.

NevilleÆs fingers tapped restlessly on the table.

Simplicity had departed; the dream had faded into disturbing complexity.
There had been no wondrous embrace,Æ no magic words spoken. Beyond her name
he had got nothing from her. Getting her to the house had been a battle.
Getting her to enter had been even worse. She had cried and begged him not
to kill her. No matter what he said to her, she kept crying and begging. He
had visualized something on the order of a Hollywood production; stars in
their eyes, entering the house, arms about each other, fade-out. Instead he
had been forced to tug and cajole and argue and scold while she held back.
The entrance had been less than romantic. He had to drag her in.

Once in the house, she had been no less frightened. HeÆd tried to act
comfortingly, but all she did was cower in one corner the way the dog had
done. She wouldnÆt eat or drink anything he gave her. Finally heÆd been
compelled to take her in the bedroom and lock her in. Now she was asleep.

He sighed wearily and fingered the handle of his cup. All these years, he
thought, dreaming about a companion. Now I meet one and the first thing I
do is distrust her, treat her crudely and impatiently.

And yet there was really nothing else he could do. He had accepted too long
the proposition that he was the only normal person left. It didnÆt matter
that she looked normal. HeÆd seen too many of them lying in their coma that
looked as healthy as she. They werenÆt, though, and he knew it. The simple
fact that she had been walking in the sunlight wasnÆt enough to tip the
scales on the side of trusting acceptance. He had doubted too long. His
concept of the society had become ironbound. It was almost impossible for
him to believe that there were others like him. And, after the first shock
had diminished, all the dogma of his long years alone had asserted itself.

With a heavy breath he rose and went back to the bedroom. She was still in
the same position. Maybe, he thought, sheÆs gone back into coma again.

He stood over the bed, staring down at her. Ruth. There was so much about
her he wanted to know. And yet he was almost afraid to find out. Because if
she were like the others, there was only one course open. And it was better
not to know anything about the people you killed.

His hands twitched at his sides, his blue æeyes gazed flatly at her. What
if it had been a freak occurrence? What if she had snapped out of coma for
a little while and gone wandering? It seemed possible. And yet, as far as
he knew, daylight was the one thing the germ could not endure. Why wasnÆt
that enough to convince him she was normal?

Well, there was only one way to make sure.

He bent over and put his hand on her shoulder.

ôWake up,ö he said.

She didnÆt stir. His mouth tightened and his fingers drew in on her soft
shoulder.

Then he noticed the thin golden chain around her throat. Reaching in with
rough fingers, he drew it out of the bosom of her dress.

He was looking at the tiny gold cross when she woke up and recoiled into
the pillow. SheÆs not in coma; that was all he thought.

ôWhat are you d-doing?ö she asked faintly.

It was harder to distrust her when she spoke. The sound of the human voice
was so strange to him that it had a power over him it had never had before.

ôIÆm ... nothing,ö he said.

Awkwardly he stepped back and leaned against the wall. He looked at her a
moment longer. Then he asked, ôWhere are you from?ö

She lay there looking blankly at him.

ôI asked you where you were from,ö he said. Again she said nothing. He
pushed himself away from the wall with a tight look on his face.

ôIng-Inglewood,ö she said hastily.

He looked at her coldly for a moment, then leaned back against the wall.

ôI see,ö he said. ôDid ... did you live alone?ö

ôI was married.ö ôWhere is your husband?ö Her throat moved. ôHeÆs dead.ö
ôFor how long?ö ôLast week.ö

ôAnd what did you do after he died?ö

ôRan.ö She bit into her lower lip. ôI ran away.ö

ôYou mean youÆve been wandering all this time?ö

ôY-yes.ö

He looked at her without a word. Then abruptly he turned and his boots
thumped loudly as he walked into the kitchen. Pulling open a cabinet door,
he drew down a handful of garlic cloves. He put them on a dish, tore them
into pieces, and mashed them to a pulp. The acrid fumes assailed his
nostrils.

She was propped up on one. elbow when he came back. Without hesitation he
pushed the dish almost to her face.

She turned her head away with a faint cry.

ôWhat are you doing?ö she asked, and coughed once.

ôWhy do you turn away?ö

ôPlease...ö

ôWhy do you turn away?ö

ôIt smells!ö Her voice broke into a sob. ôDonÆt! YouÆre making me sick!ö

He pushed the plate still closer to her face. With a gagging sound she
backed away and pressed against the wall, her legs drawn up on the bed.

ôStop it! Please!" she begged.

He drew back the dish and watched her body twitching as her stomach
convulsed.

ôYouÆre one of them,ö he said to her, quietly venomous.

She sat up suddenly and ran past him into the bathroom. The door slammed
behind her and he could hear the sound of her terrible retching.

Thin-lipped, he put the dish down on the bedside table. His throat moved as
he swallowed.

Infected. It had been a clear sign. He had learned over a year before that
garlic was an allergen to any system infected with the vampiris bacillus.
When the system was exposed to garlic, the stimulated tissues sensitized
the cells, causing an abnormal reaction to any further contact with garlic.
That was why putting it into their veins had accomplished little. They had
to be exposed to the odor.

He sank ædown on the bed. And the woman had reacted in the wrong way.

After a moment Robert Neville frowned. If what she had said was true, sheÆd
been wandering around for a week. She would naturally be exhausted and
weak, and under those conditions the smell of so much garlic could have
made her retch.

His fists thudded down onto the mattress. He still didnÆt know, then, not
for certain. And, objectively, he knew he had no right to decide on
inadequate evidence. It was something heÆd learned the hard way, something
he knew and believed absolutely.

He was still sitting there when she unlocked the bathroom door and came
out. She stood in the hall a moment looking at him, then went into the
living room. He rose and followed. When he came into the living room she
was sitting on the couch.

ôAre you satisfied?ö she asked.

ôNever mind that,ö he said. ôYouÆre on trial, not me.ö

She looked up angrily as if she meant to say something. Then her body
slumped and she shook her head. He felt a twinge of sympathy for a moment.
She looked so helpless, her thin hands resting on her lap. She didnÆt seem
to care any more about her torn dress. He looked at the slight swelling of
her breast. Her figure was very slim, almost curveless. Not at allÆ like
the woman heÆd used to envision. Never mind that, he told himself, that
doesnÆt matter any more.

He sat down in the chair and looked across at her. She didnÆt return his
gaze.

ôListen to me,ö he said then. ôI have every reason to suspect you of being
infected. Especially now that youÆve reacted in such a way to garlic.ö

She said nothing.

ôHavenÆt you anything to say?ö he asked.

She raised her eyes.

ôYou think IÆm one of them,ö she said.

ôI think you might be.ö

ôAnd what about this?ö she asked, holding up her cross.

ôThat means nothing,ö he said.

ôIÆm awake,ö she said. ôIÆm not in a coma.ö

He said nothing. It was something he couldnÆt argue with, even though it
didnÆt assuage doubt.

ôIÆve been in Inglewood many times,ö he said finally, ôWhy didnÆt you hear
my car?ö

ôInglewood is a big place,ö she said.

He looked at her carefully, his fingers tapping on the arm of the chair.

ôIÆd ... like to believe you,ö he said.

ôWould you?ö she asked. Another stomach contraction hit her and she bent
over with a gasp, teeth clenched. Robert Neville sat there wondering why he
didnÆt feel more compassion for her. Emotion was a difficult thing to
summon from the dead, though. He had spent it all and felt hollow now,
without feeling.

After a moment she looked up. Her eyes were hard.

ôIÆve had a weak stomach all my life,ö she said. ôI saw my husband killed
last week. Torn to pieces. Right in front of my eyes I saw it. I lost two
children to the plague. And for the past week IÆve been wandering all over.
Hiding at night, not eating more than a few scraps of food. Sick with fear,
unable to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. Then I hear someone
shout at me. You chase me over a field, hit me, drag me to your house. Then
when I get sick because you shove a plate of reeking garlic in my face, you
tell me IÆm infected!ö

Her hands twitched in her lap.

ôWhat do you expect to happen?ö she said angrily.

She slumped back against the couch back and closed her eyes. Her hands
picked nervously at her skirt. For a moment she tried to tuck in the torn
piece, but it fell down again and she sobbed angrily.

He leaned forward in the chair. He was beginning to feel guilty now, in
spite of suspicions and doubts. He couldnÆt help it. He had forgotten about
sobbing women. He raised a hand slowly to his beard and plucked confusedly
as he watched her.

ôWould . . .ô he started. He swallowed. ôWould you let me take a sample of
your blood?ö he asked. ôI couldùö

She stood up suddenly and stumbled toward the door.

He got up quickly.

ôWhat are you doing?ö he asked.

She didnÆt answer. Her hands fumbled, awkwardly with the lock.

ôYou canÆt go out there,ö he said, surprised. ôThe street will be full of
them in a little while.ö

ôIÆm not staying here,ö she sobbed. ôWhatÆs the difference if they kill
me?ö

His hands closed over her arm. She tried to pull away. ôLeave me alone!ö
she cried. ôI didnÆt ask to come here. You dragged me here. Why donÆt you
leave me alone?ö

He stood by her awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

ôYou canÆt go out,ö he said again.

He led her back to the couch. Then he went and got her a small tumbler of
whisky at the bar. Never mind whether sheÆs infected or not, he thought,
never mind.

He handed her the tumbler. She shook her head.

ôDrink it,ö he said. ôItÆll calm you down.ö

She looked up angrily. ôSo you can shove more garlic in my face?ö

He shook his head.

ôDrink it now,ö he said.

After a few moments she took the glass and took a sip of the whisky. It
made her cough. She put the tumbler on the arm of the couch and a deep
breath shook her body.

ôWhy do you want me to stay?ö she asked unhappily.

He looked at her without a definite answer in his

mind. Then he said, ôEven if you are infected, I canÆt let you go out
there. You donÆt know what theyÆd do to you.ö

Her eyes closed. ôI donÆt care,ö she said.





                             Chapter Seventeen



ôI DONÆT UNDERSTAND IT,ö he told her over supper. ôAlmost three years now,
and still there are some of them alive. Food supplies are æbeing used up.
As far as I know, they still lie in a coma during the day.ö He shook his
head. ôBut theyÆre not dead. Three years and theyÆre not dead. What keeps
them going?ö

She was wearing his bathrobe. About five she had relented, taken a bath,
and changed. Her slender body was shapeless in the voluminous terry-cloth
folds. SheÆd borrowed his comb and drawn her hair back into a pony tail
fastened with a piece of twine.

Ruth fingered her coffee cup.

ôWe used to see them sometimes,ö she said. æWe were afraid to go near them,
though. We didnÆt think we should touch them.ö

ôDidnÆt you know theyÆd come back after they died?ö

She shook her head. ôNo.ö

ôDidnÆt you wonder about the people who attacked your house at night?ö

ôIt never entered our minds that they were .. .ô She shook her head slowly.
ôItÆs hard to believe something like that.ö

ôI suppose,ö he said.

He glanced at her as they sat eating silently. It was hard too to believe
that here was a normal woman. Hard to believe that, after all these years,
a companion had come. It was more than just doubting her. It was doubting
that anything so remarkable could happen in such a lost world.

ôTell me more about them,ö Ruth said.

He got up and took the coffeepot off the stove. He poured more into her
cup, into his, then replaced the pot and sat down.

ôHow do you feel now?ö he asked her.

ôI feel better, thank you.ö

He nodded and spooned sugar into his coffee. He felt her eyes on him as he
stirred. WhatÆs she thinking? he wondered. He took a deep breath,
æwondering why the tightness in him didnÆt break. For a while heÆd thought
that he trusted her. Now he wasnÆt sure.

ôYou still donÆt trust me,ö she said, seeming to read his mind.

He looked up quickly, then shrugged.

ôItÆs ... not that,ö he said.

ôOf course it is,ö she said quietly. She sighed. ôOh, very well. If you
have to check my blood, check it.ö

He looked at her suspiciously, his mind questioning: Is it a trick? He hid
the movement of his throat in swallowing coffee. It was stupid, he thought,
to be so suspicious.

He put down the cup.

ôGood,ö he said. ôVery good.ö

He looked at her as she stared into the coffee.

ôIf you are infected,ö he told her, ôIÆll do everything I can to cure you.ö

Her eyes met his. ôAnd if you canÆt?ö she said.

Silence a moment.

ôLetÆs wait and see,ö he said then.

They both drank coffee. Then he asked, ôShall we do it now?ö

ôPlease,ö she said, ôin the morning. I ... still feel a little ill.ö

ôAll right,ö he said, nodding. ôIn the morning."

They finished their meal in silence. Neville felt only a small satisfaction
that she was going to let himÆ check her blood. He was afraid he might
discover that she was infected. In the meantime he had to pass an evening
and a night with her, perhaps get to know her and be attracted to her. When
in the morning he might have to...

Later, in the living room, they sat looking at the mural, sipping port, and
listening to SchubertÆs Fourth Symphony.

ôI wouldnÆt have believed it,ö she said, seeming ôto cheer up. ôI never
thought IÆd be listening to music again. Drinking wine.ö

She looked around the room.

ôYouÆve certainly done a wonderful job,ö she said.

ôWhat about your house?Æ he asked.

ôIt was nothing like this,ö she said. æWe didnÆt have a-ö

ôHow did you protect your house?ö heÆ interrupted.

ôOh.ùö She thought a moment. ôWe had it boarded up, of course. And we used
crosses.ö

ôThey donÆt always work,ö he said quietly, after a moment of looking at
her.

She looked blank. ôThey donÆt?ö

ôWhy should a Jew fear the cross?ö he said. ôWhy should a vampire who had
been a Jew fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of
them suffer from hysterical blindness before mirrors. But as far as the
cross goesùwell, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist,
for that matter, would fear the cross.ö

She sat holding her wineglass and looking at him with expressionless eyes.

ôThatÆs why the cross doesnÆt always work,ö he said.

ôYou didnÆt let me finish,ö she said. ôWe used garlic too.ö

ôI thought it made you sick.ö

ôI was already sick. I used to weigh a hundred and twenty. I weigh
ninety-eight pounds now.ö

He nodded. But as he went into the kitchen to get another bottle of wine,
he thought, She would have adjusted to it by now. After three years.

Then again, she might not have. What was the point in doubting her now? She
was going to let him check her blood. What else could she do? ItÆs me, he
thought. IÆve been by myself too long. I wonÆt believe anything unless I
see it in a microscope. Heredity triumphs again. IÆm my fatherÆs son, damn
his moldering bones.

Standing in the dark kitchen, digging his blunt nail under the wrapping
around the neck of the bottle, Robert Neville looked into the living room
at Ruth.

His eyes ran over the robe, resting a moment on the slight prominence of
her breasts, dropping then to the bronzed calves and ankles, up to the
smooth kneecaps. She had a body like a young girlÆs. She certainly didnÆt
look like the mother of two.

The most unusual feature of the entire affair, he thought, was that he felt
no physical desire for her.

If she had come two years before, maybe even later, he might have violated
her. There had been some terrible moments in those days, moments when the
most terrible of solutions to his need were considered, were often dwelt
upon until they drove him half mad.

But then the experiments had begun. Smoking had tapered off, drinking lost
its compulsive nature. Deliberately and with surprising success, he had
submerged himself in investigation.

His sex drive had diminished, had virtually disappeared. Salvation of the
monk, he thought. The drive had to go sooner or later, or no normal man
could dedicate himself to any life that excluded sex.

Now, happily, he felt almost nothing; perhaps a hardly discernible stirring
far beneath the rocky strata of abstinence. He was content to leave it at
that. Especially since there was no certainty that Ruth was the companion
he had waited for. Or even the certainty that he could allow her to live
beyond tomorrow. Cure her?

Curing was unlikely.

He went back into the living room with the opened bottle. She smiled at him
briefly as he poured more wine for her.

ôIÆve been admiring your mural,ö she said. ôIt almost makes you believe
youÆre in the woods.ö

He grunted.

ôIt must have taken a lot of work to get your house like this,ö she said.

ôYou should know,ö he said. ôYou went through the same thing.ö

ôWe had nothing like this,ö she said. ôOur house was small. Our food locker
was half the size of yours.ö

ôYou must have run out of food,ö he said, looking at her carefully.

ôFrozen food,ö she said. ôWe were living out of cans.ö He nodded. Logical,
his mind had to admit. But he still didnÆt like it. It was all intuition,
he knew, but he didnÆt like it.

ôWhat about water?ö he asked then.

She looked at him silently for a moment.

ôYou donÆt believe a word IÆve said, do you?ö she said.

ôItÆs not that,ö he said. ôIÆm just curious how you lived.ö

ôYouÆ canÆt hide it from your voice,ö she said. ôYouÆve been alone too
long. YouÆve lost the talent for deceit.ö

He grunted, getting the uncomfortable feeling that she was playing with
him. ThatÆs ridiculous, he argued. SheÆs just a woman. She was probably
right. He probably was a gruff and graceless hermit. What did it matter?

ôTell me about your husband,ö he said abruptly.

Something flitted over her face, a shade of memory. She lifted the glass of
dark wine to her lips.

ôNot now,ö she said. ôPlease.ö

He slumped back on the couch, unable to analyze the formless
dissatisfaction he felt. Everything she said and

did could be a result of what sheÆd been through. It could also be a lie.

Why should she lie? he asked himself. In the morning he would check her
blood. What could lying tonight profit her when, in a matter of hours, heÆd
know the truth?

ôYou know,ö he said, trying to ease the moment, ôIÆve been thinking. If
three people could survive the plague, why not more?ö

ôDo you think thatÆs possible?ö she asked.

ôWhy not? There must have been others who were immune for one reason or
another.ö

ôTell me more about the germ,ö she said.

He hesitated a moment, then put down his wineglass. What if he told her
everything? What if she escaped and came back after death with all the
knowledge that he had?

ôThereÆs an awful lot of detail,ö he said.

ôYou were saying something about the cross before,ö she said. ôHow do you
know itÆs true?ö

ôYou remember what I said about Ben Cortman?ö he said, glad to restate
something she already knew rather than go into fresh material.

ôYou mean that man youùö

He nodded. ôYes. Come here,ö he said, standing. ôIÆll show him to you.ö

As he stood behind her lookingÆ out the peephole, he smelled the odor of
her hair and skin. It made him draw back a little. IsnÆt that remarkable?
he thought. I donÆt like the smell. Like Gulliver returning from the
logical horses, I find the human smell offensive.

ôHeÆs the one by the lamppost,ö he said.

She made a slight sound of acknowledgment. Then she said, ôThere are so
few. Where are they?ö

ôIÆve killed off most of them,ö he said, ôbut they manage to keep a few
ahead of me.ö

ôHow come the lamp is on out there?ö she said. ôI thought they destroyed
the electrical system.ö

ôI connected it with my generator,ö he said, ôso I could watch them.ö

ôDonÆt they break the bulb?ö

ôI haveÆ a very strong globe over the bulb.ö

ôDonÆt they climb up and try to break it?ö

ôI have garlic all over the post.ö

She shook her head. ôYouÆve thought of everything.ö

Stepping back, he looked at her a moment. How can she look at them so
calmly, he wondered, ask me questions, make comments, when only a week ago
she saw their kind tear her husband to pieces? Doubts again, he thought.
WonÆt they ever stop?

He knew they wouldnÆt until he knew about her for sure.

She turned away from the window then.

ôWill you excuse me a moment?ö she said.

He watched her walk into the bathroom and heard her lock the door behind
her. Then he went back to the couch after closing the peephole door. A wry
smile played on his lips. He looked down into the tawny wine depths and
tugged abstractedly at his beard.

ôWill you excuse me a moment?Æ

For some reason the words seemed grotesquely amusing, the carry-over from a
lost age. Emily Post mincing through the graveyard. Etiquette for Young
Vampires.

The smile was gone.

And what now? What did the future hold for him? In a week would she still
be here with him, or crumpled in the never cooling fire?

He knew that, if she were infected, heÆd have to try to cure her whether it
worked or not. But what if she were free of the bacillus? In a way, that
was a more nerve-racking possibility. The other way he would merely go on
as before, breaking neither schedule nor standards. But if she stayed, if
they had to establish a relationship, perhaps become husband and wife, have
children...

Yes, that was more terrifying.

He suddenly realized that he had become an ill-tempered and inveterate
bachelor again. He no longer thought about his wife, his child, his past
life. The present was enough. And he was afraid of the possible demand that
he make sacrifices and accept responsibility again. He was afraid of giving
out his heart, of removing the chains he had forged around it to keep
emotion prisoner. He was afraid of loving again.

When she came out of the bathroom he was still sitting there, thinking. The
record player, unnoticed by him, letÆ out only a thin scratching sound.

Ruth lifted the record from the turntable and turned it. The third movement
of the symphony began.

ôWell, what about Cortman?ö she asked, sitting down.

He looked at her blankly. ôCortman?ö

ôYou were going to tell me something about him and the cross.ö

ôOh. Well, one night I got him in here and showed him the cross.ö

ôWhat happened?ö

Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn
her?

His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he
had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.

Well, he wasnÆt. that far gone yet, he thought. IÆm a man, not a destroyer.

ôWhatÆs wrong?ö she said nervously.

ôWhat?ö

ôYouÆre staring at me.ö

ôIÆm sorry,ö he said coldly. ôI ... IÆm just thinking.ö

She didnÆt say any more. She drank her wine and he saw her hand shake as
she held the glass. He forced down all introspection. He didnÆt want her to
know what he felt.

ôWhen I showed him the cross,ö he said, ôhe laughed in my face.ö

She nodded once.

ôBut when I held a torah before his eyes, I got the reaction I wanted.ö

ôA what?ö

ôA torah. Tablet of law, I believe it is.ö

ôAnd that... got a reaction?ö

ôYes. I had him tied up, but when he saw the torah he broke loose and
attacked me.ö

ôWhat happened?ö She seemed to have lost her fright again.

ôHe struck me on the head with something. I donÆt remember what. I was
almost knocked out. But, using the torah, I backed him to the door and got
rid of him.ö



ôSo you see, the cross hasnÆt the power the legend says it has. My theory
is that, since the legend came into its own in Europe, a continent
predominantly Catholic, the cross would naturally become the symbol of
defense against powers of darkness.ö

ôCouldnÆt you use your gun on Cortman?ö she asked.

ôHow do you know I had a gun?ö

ôI ... assumed as much,ö she said. ôWe had guns.ö

ôThen you must know bullets have no effect on vampires.

ôWe were . . . never sure,ö she said, then went on quickly: ôDo you know
why thatÆs so? Why donÆt bullets affect them?ö

He shook his head. ôI donÆt know,ö he said.

They sat in silence listening to the music.

He did know, but, doubting again, he didnÆt want to tell her.

Through experiments on the dead vampires he had discovered that the bacilli
effected the creation of a powerful body glue that sealed bullet openings
as soon as they were made. Bullets were enclosed almost immediately, and
since the system was activated by germs, a bullet couldnÆt hurt it. The
system could, in fact, contain almost an indefinite amount of bullets,
since the body glue prevented a penetration of more than a few fractions of
an inch. Shooting vampires was like throwing pebbles into tar.

As he sat looking at her, she arranged the folds of the robe around her
legs and he got a momentary glimpse of brown thigh. Far from being
attracted, he felt irritated. It was a typical feminine gesture, he
thought, an artificial movement.

As the moments passed he could almost sense himself drifting farther and
farther from her. In a way he almost regretted having found her at all.
Through the years he had achieved a certain degree of peace. He had
accepted solitude, found it not half bad. Now this ... ending it all.

In order to fill the emptiness of the moment, he reached for his pipe and
pouch. He stuffed tobacco into the bowl and lit it. For a second he
wondered if he should ask if she minded. He didnÆt ask.

The music ended. She got up and he watched her while she looked through his
records. She seemed like a young girl, she was so slender. Who is she? he
thought. Who is she really?

ôMay I play this?ö she asked, holding up an album.

He didnÆt even look at it. ôIf you like,ö he said.

She sat down as RachmaninoffÆs Second Piano Concerto began. Her taste isnÆt
remarkably advanced, he thought, looking at her without expression.

ôTell me about yourself,ö she said.

Another typical feminine question, he thought. Then he berated himself for
being so critical. What was the point in irritating himself by doubting
her?

ôNothing to tell,ö he said.

She was smiling again. Was she laughing at him?

ôYou scared the life out of me this afternoon,ö she said. ôYou and your
bristly beard. And those wild eyes.ö

He blew out smoke. Wild eyes? That was ridiculous. What was she trying to
do? Break down his reserve with cuteness?

ôWhat do you look like under all those whiskers?ö she asked.

He tried to smile at her but he couldnÆt.

ôNothing,ö he said. ôJust an ordinary face.ö

ôHow old are you, Robert?ö

His throat moved. It was the first time sheÆd spoken his name. It gave him
a strange, restless feeling to hear a woman speak his name after so long.
DonÆt call me that, he almost said to her. He didnÆt want to lose the
distance between them. If she were infected and he couldnÆt cure her, he
wanted it to be a stranger that he put away.

She turned her head away.

ôYou donÆt have to talk to me if you donÆt want to,ö she said quietly. ôI
wonÆt bother you. IÆll go tomorrow.ö

His chest muscles tightened.

ôBut . . .ô he said.

ôI donÆt want to spoil your life,ö she said. ôYou donÆt have to feel any
obligation to me just because ... weÆre the only ones left.ö

His eyes were bleak as he looked at her, and he felt a brief stirring of
guilt at her words. Why should I doubt her? he told himself. If sheÆs
infected, sheÆll never get away alive. WhatÆs there to. fear?

ôIÆm sorry,ö he said. ôI ... I have been alone a long time.ö

She didnÆt look up.

ôIf youÆd like to talk,ö he said, ôIÆll be glad to ... tell you anything I
can.ö

She hesitated a moment. Then she looked at him, her eyes not committing
themselves at all.

ôI would like to know about the disease,ö she said. ôI lost my two girls
because of it. And it caused my husband's death.ö

He looked at her and then spoke.

ôItÆs a bacillus,ö he said, ôa cylindrical bacterium. It creates an
isotonic solution in the blood, circulates the blood slower than normal,
activates all bodily functions, lives on fresh blood, and provides energy.
Deprived of blood, it makes self-killing bacteriophages or else
sporulates.ö

She looked blank. He realized then that she couldnÆt have understood. Terms
so common to him now were completely foreign to her.

ôWell,ö he said, ômost of those things arenÆt so important. To sporulate is
to create an oval body that has all the basic ingredients of the vegetative
bacterium. The germ does that when it gets no fresh blood. Then, when the
vampire host decomposes, these spores go flying out and seek new hosts.
They find one, germinateùand one more system is infected.ö

She shook her head incredulously.

ôBacteriophages are inanimate proteins that are also created when the
system gets no blood. Unlike the spores, though, in this case abnormal
metabolism destroys the  cells.ö

Quickly he told her about the imperfect waste disposal of the lymphatic
system, the garlic as allergen causing anaphylaxis, the various vectors of
the disease.

ôThen why are we immune?ö she asked.

For a long moment he looked at her, withholding any answer. Then, with a
shrug, he said, ôI donÆt know about you. As for me, while I was stationed
in Panama during the war I was bitten by a vampire bat. And, though I canÆt
prove it, my theory is that the bat had previously encountered a true
vampire and acquired the vampiris germ. The germ caused the bat to seek
human rather than animal blood. But, by the time the germ had passed into
my sys¡

tern, it had been weakened in some way by the batÆs system. It made me
terribly ill, of course, but it didnÆt kill me, and as a result, my body
built up an immunity to it. ThatÆs my theory, anyway. I canÆt find any
better reason.ö

ôBut ... didnÆt the same thing happen to others down there?ö

ôI donÆt know,ö he said quietly. ôI killed the bat.ö He shrugged. ôMaybe I
was the first human it had attacked.ö

She looked at him without a word, her surveillance making Neville feel
restive. He went on talking even though he didnÆt really want to.

Briefly he told her about the major obstacle in his study of the vampires.

ôAt first I thought the stake had to hit their hearts,ö he said. ôI
believed the legend. I found out that wasnÆt so. I put stakes in all parts
of their bodies and they died. That made me think it was hemorrhage. But
then one day ..

And he told her about the woman who had decomposed before his eyes.

ôI knew then it couldnÆt be hemorrhage,ö he went on, feeling a sort of
pleasure in reciting his discoveries. ôI didnÆt know what to do. Then one
day it came to me.ö

ôWhat?ö she asked.

ôI took a dead vampire. I put his arm into an artificial vacuum. I
punctured his arm inside that vacuum. Blood spurted out.ö He paused. ôBut
thatÆs all.ö

She stared at him.

ôYou donÆt see,ö he said.

ôI .... No,ö she admitted.

ôWhen I let air back into the tank, the arm decomposed,ö he said.

She still stared.

ôYou see,ö he said, ôthe bacillus is a facultative saprophyte. It lives
with or without oxygen; but with a difference. Inside the system, it is
anaerobic and sets up a symbiosis with the system. The vampire feeds it
fresh

blood, the bacteria provides the energy so the vampire can get more fresh
blood. The germ also causes, I might add, the growth of the canine teeth.ö

ôYes?ö she said.

ôWhen air enters,ö he said, ôthe situation changes instantaneously. The
germ becomes aerobic and, instead of being symbiotic, it becomes virulently
parasitic.ö He paused. ôIt eats the host,ö he said.

ôThen the stake . . .ô she started.

ôLets air in. Of course. Lets it in and keeps the flesh open so that the
body glue canÆt function. So the heart has nothing to do with it. What I do
now is cut the wrists deep enough so that the body glue canÆt work.ö He
smiled a little. ôWhen I think of all the time I used to spend making
stakes!ö

She nodded and, noticing the wineglass in her hand, put it down.

ôThatÆs why the woman I told you about broke down so rapidly,ö he said.
ôSheÆd been dead so long that as soon as air struck her system the germs
caused spontaneous dissolution.ö

Her throat moved and a shudder ran down through her.

ôItÆs horrible,ö she said.

He looked at her in surprise. Horrible? WasnÆt that odd? He hadnÆt thought
that for years. For him the word ôhorrorö had become obsolete. A surfeiting
of terror soon made terror a clichΘ. To Robert Neville the situation merely
existed as natural fact. It had no adjectives.

ôAnd what about the ... the ones who are still alive?ö she asked.

ôWell,ö he said, ôwhen you cut their wrists the germ naturally becomes
parasitic. But mostly they die from simple hemorrhage.ö

ôSimpleùö

She turned away quickly and her lips were pressed into a tight, thin line.

ôWhatÆs the matter?ö he asked.

ôN-nothing. Nothing,ö she said.

He smiled. ôOne gets used to these things,ö he said. ôOne has to.ö

Again she shuddered, the smooth column of her throat contracting.

ôYou canÆt abide by RobertÆs Rules of Order in the jungle,ö he said.
ôBelieve me, itÆs the only thing I can do. Is it better to let them die of
the disease and returnùin a far more terrible way?ö

She pressed her hands together.

ôBut you said a lot of them areùare still living,ö she said nervously. ôHow
do you know theyÆre not going to stay alive?ö

ôI know,ö he said. ôI know the germ, know how it multiplies. No matter how
long their systems fight it, in the end the germ will win. IÆve made
antibiotics, injected dozens of them. But it doesnÆt work, it canÆt work.
You canÆt make vaccines work when theyÆre already deep in the disease.
Their bodies canÆt fight germs and make antibodies at the same time. It
canÆt be done, believe me. ItÆs a trap. If I didnÆt kill them, sooner or
later theyÆd die and come after me. I have no choice; no choice at all.ö

They were silent then and the only sound in the room was the rasping of the
needle on the inner grooves of the record. She wouldnÆt look at him, but
kept staring at the floor with bleak eyes. It was strange, he thought, to
find himself vaguely on the defensive for what yesterday was accepted
necessity. In the years that had passed he had never once considered the
possibility that he was wrong. It took her presence to bring about such
thoughts: And they were strange, alien thoughts.

ôDo you actually think IÆm wrong?ö he asked in an incredulous voice.

She bit into her lower lip.

ôRuth,ö he said.

ôItÆs not for me to say,ö she answered.







                              Chapter Eighteen



ôVIRGE!ö

The dark form recoiled against the wall as Robert NevilleÆs hoarse cry
ripped open the silent blackness.

He jerked his body up from the couch and stared with sleep-clouded eyes
across the room, his chest pulsing with heartbeats like maniac fists on a
dungeon wall.

He lurched up to his feet, brain still foggy with sleep; unable to define
time or place.

ôVirge?ö he said again, weakly, shakily. ôVirge?Æ

ôItùitÆs me,ö the faltering voice said in the darkness. He took a trembling
step toward the thin stream of light spearing through the open peephole. He
blinked dully at the light.

She gasped as he put his hand out and clutched her shoulder.

ôItÆs Ruth. Ruth,ö she said in a terrified whisper. He stood there rocking
slowly in the darkness, eyes gazing without comprehension at the dark form
before him.

ôItÆs Ruth,ö she said again, more loudly. Waking came like a hose blast of
numbing shock. Something twisted cold knots into his chest and stomach. It
wasnÆt Virge. He shook his head suddenly, rubbed shaking fingers across his
eyes.

Then he stood there staring, weighted beneath a sudden depression.

ôOh,ö he muttered faintly. ôOh, I . .

He remained there, feeling his body weaving slowly in the dark as the mists
cleared from his brain.

He looked at the open peephole, then back at her.

ôWhat are you doing?ö he asked, voice still thick with sleep.

ôNothing,ö she said nervously. ôI ... couldnÆt sleep.ö

He blinked his eyes suddenly at the flaring lamplight. Then his hands
dropped down from the lamp switch and he turned around. She was against the
wall still, blinking at the light, her hands at her sides drawn into tight
fists.

ôWhy are you dressed?ö he asked in a surprised voice. Her throat moved and
she stared at him. He rubbed his eyes again and pushed back the long hair
from his tem¡ples.

ôI was . .. just looking out,ö she said.

ôBut why are you dressed?ö

ôI couldnÆt sleep.ö

He stood looking at her, still a little groggy, feeling his heartbeat
slowly diminish. Through the open peephole he heard them yelling outside,
and he heard Cortman shout, ôCome out, Neville!ö Moving to the peephole, he
pushed the small wooden door shut and turned to her.

ôI want to know why youÆre dressed,ö he said again.

ôNo reason,ö she said.

ôWere you going to leave while I was asleep?ö

ææNo, I . .

ôWere you?ö

She gasped as he grabbed her wrist.

ôNo, no,ö she said quickly. ôHow could I, with them out there?ö

He stood breathing heavily, looking at her frightened face. His throat
moved slowly as he remembered the shock of waking up and thinking that she
was Virge.

Abruptly he dropped her arm and turned away. And heÆd thought the past was
dead. How long did it take for a past to die?

She said nothing as he poured a tumblerful of whisky and swallowed it
convulsively. Virge, Virge, he thought

miserably, still with me. He closed his eyes and jammed his teeth together.

ôWas that her name?ö he heard Ruth ask. His muscles tightened, then went
slack.

ôItÆs all right,ö he said in a dead voice. ôGo to bed.ö

She drew back a little. ôIÆm sorry,ö she said. ôI didnÆt mean . .

Suddenly he knew he didnÆt want her to go to bed. He wanted her to stay
with him. He didnÆt know why, he just didnÆt want to be alone.

ôI thought you were my wife,ö he heard himself saying. ôI woke up and I
thoughtùö

He drank a mouthful of whisky, coughing as part of it went down the wrong
way. Ruth stayed in the shadows, listening.

ôShe came back, you see,ö he said. ôI buried her, but one night she came
back. She looked likeùlike you did. An outline, a shadow. Dead. But she
came back. I tried to keep her with me. I tried, but she wasnÆt the same
any more ... you see. All she wanted wasùö

He forced down the sob in his throat.

ôMy own wife,ö he said in a trembling voice, ôcoming back to drink my
blood!ö

He jammed down the glass on the bar top. Turning away, he paced restlessly
to the peephole, turned, and went back and stood again before the bar. Ruth
said nothing; she just stood in the darkness, listening.

ôI put her away again,ö he said. ôI had to do the same thing to her IÆd
done to the others. My own wife.ö There was a clicking in his throat. ôA
stake,ö he said in a terrible voice. ôI had to put a stake in her. It was
the only thing I knew to do. Iùö

He couldnÆt finish. He stood there a long time, shivering helplessly, his
eyes tightly shut.

Then he spoke again.

ôAlmost three years ago I did that. And I still remember

it, itÆs still with me. What can you do? What can you do?ö He drove a fist
down on the bar top as the anguish of memory swept over him again. ôNo
matter how you try, you canÆt forget orùor adjust orùever get away from
it!ö

He ran shaking fingers through his hair.

ôI know what you feel, I know. I didnÆt at first, I didnÆt trust you. I was
safe, secure in my little shell. Now ... He shook his head slowly,
defeatedly. ôIn a second, itÆs all gone. Adjustment, security, peaceùall
gone.ö

ôRobert.ö

Her voice was as broken and lost as his.

ôWhy were we punished like this?ö she asked.

He drew in a shuddering breath.

ôI donÆt know,ö he answered bitterly. ôThereÆs no answer, no reason. It
just is.ö

She was close to him now. And suddenly, without hesitation or drawing back,
he drew her against him, and they were two people holding each other
tightly in the lost measure of night.

ôRobert, Robert.ö

Her hands rubbed over his back, stroking and clutching, while his arms held
her firmly and he pressed his eyes shut against her warm, soft hair.

Their mouths held together for a long time and her arms gripped with
desperate tightness around his neck.

Then they were sitting in the darkness, pressing close together, as if all
the heat in the world were in their bodies and they would share the warmth
between them. He felt the shuddering rise and fall of her breasts as she
held close to him, her arms tight around his body, her face against his
neck. His big hands moved roughly through her hair, stroking and feeling
the silky strands.

ôIÆm sorry, Ruth.ö

ôSorry?ö

ôFor being so cruel to you, for not trusting you.ö

She was silent, holding tight.

ôOh, Robert,ö she said then, ôitÆs so unfair. So unfair. Why are we still
alive? Why arenÆt we all dead? It would be better if we were all dead.ö

ôShhh, shhh,ö he said, feeling emotion for her like a released current
pouring from his heart and mind. ôItÆll be all right.ö

He felt her shaking her head slowly against him.

ôIt will, it will,ö he said.

ôHow can it?ö

ôIt will,ö he said, even though he knew he really couldnÆt believe it, even
though he knew it was only released tension forming words in his mind.

ôNo,ö she said. ôNo.ö

ôYes, it will. It will, Ruth.ö

He didnÆt know how long it was they sat there holding each other close. He
forgot everything, time and place; it was just the two of them together,
needing each other, survivors of a black terror embracing because they had
found each other.

But then he wanted to do something for her, to help her.

ôCome,ö he said. ôWeÆll check you.ö

She stiffened in his arms.

ôNo, no,ö he said quickly. ôDonÆt be afraid. IÆm sure we wonÆt find
anything. But if we do, IÆll cure you. I swear IÆll cure you, Ruth.ö

She was looking at him in the darkness, not saying a word. He stood and
pulled her up with him, trembling with an excitement he hadnÆt felt in
endless years. He wanted to cure her, to help her.

ôLet me,ö he said. ôI wonÆt hurt you. I promise I wonÆt. LetÆs know.. LetÆs
find out for sure. Then we can plan and work. IÆll save you, Ruth. I will.
Or IÆll die myself.ö

She was still tense, holding back.

ôCome with me, Ruth.ö

Now that the strength of his reserve had gone, there was

nothing left to brace himself on, and he was shaking like a palsied man.

He led her into the bedroom. And when he saw in the lamplight how
frightened she was, he pulled her close and stroked her hair.

ôItÆs all right,ö he said. ôAll right, Ruth. No matter what we find, itÆll
be all right. DonÆt you understand?ö

He sat her down on the stool and her face was completely blank, her body
shuddering as he heated the needle over a Bunsen flame.

He bent over and kissed her on the cheek.

ôItÆs all right now,ö he said gently. ôItÆs all right.ö

She closed her eyes as he jabbed in the needle. He could feel the pain in
his own finger as he pressed out blood and rubbed it on the slide.

ôThere. There,ö he said anxiously, pressing a little cotton to the nick on
her finger. He felt himself trembling helplessly. No matter how he tried to
control it, he couldnÆt. His fingers were almost incapable of making the
slide, and he kept looking at Ruth and smiling at her, try¡ing to take the
look of taut fright from her features.

ôDonÆt be afraid,ö he said. ôPlease donÆt. IÆll cure you if youÆre
infected. I will Ruth, I will.ö

She sat without a word, looking at him with listless eyes as he worked. Her
hands kept stirring restlessly in her lap.

ôWhat will you do ifùif I am,ö she said then.

ôIÆm not sure,ö he said. ôNot yet. But there are a lot of things we can
do.ö

ôWhat?ö

ôVaccines, for one.ö

ôYou said vaccines didnÆt work,ö she said, her voice shaking a little.

ôYes, but . . .ô He broke off as he slid the glass slide onto the
microscope.

ôRobert, what could you do?ö

She slid off the stool as he bent over the microscope.

ôRobert, donÆt look!ö she begged suddenly, her voice pleading.

But heÆd already seen.

He didnÆt realize that his breath had stopped. His blank eyes met hers.

ôRuth,ö he whispered in a shocked voice.

The wooden mallet crashed down on his forehead.

A burst of pain filled Robert NevilleÆs head and he felt one leg give way.
As he fell to one side he knocked over the microscope. His right knee hit
the floor and he looked up in dazed bewilderment at her fright-twisted
face. The mallet came down again and he cried out in pain. He fell to both
knees and his palms struck the floor as he toppled forward. A hundred miles
away he heard her gasping sob.

ôRuth,ö he mumbled.

ôI told you not to!ö she cried.

He clutched out at her legs and she drove the mallet down a third time,
this time on the back of his skull.

ôRuth!ö

Robert NevilleÆs hands went limp and slid off her calves, rubbing away part
of the tan. He fell on his face and his fingers drew in convulsively as
night filled his brain.





                              Chapter Nineteen



WHEN HE OPENED HIS eyes there was no sound in the house.

He lay there a moment looking confusedly at the floor. Then, with a
startled grunt, he sat up. A package of needles exploded in his head and he
slumped down on the cold floor, hands pressed to his throbbing skull. A
clicking sound filled his throat as he lay there.

After a few minutes he pulled himself up slowly by gripping the edge of the
bench. The floor undulated beneath him as he held on tightly, eyes closed,
legs wavering.

A minute later he managed to stumble into the bathroom. There he threw cold
water in his face and sat on the bathtub edge pressing a cold, wet cloth to
his forehead.

What had happened? He kept blinking and staring at the white-tiled floor.

He stood up and walked slowly into the living room. It was empty. The front
door stood half open in the gray of early morning. She was gone.

Then he remembered. He struggled back to the bedroom, using the walls to
guide him.

The note was on the bench next to the overturned microscope. He picked up
the paper with numbed fingers and carried it to the bed. Sinking down with
a groan, he held the letter before his eyes. But the letters blurred and
ran. He shook his head and pressed his eyes shut. After a little while he
read:



Robert:

Now you know. Know that I was spying on you, know that almost everything I
told you was a lie.

IÆm writing this note, though, because I want to save you if I can.

When I was first given the job of spying on you, I had no feelings about
your life. Because I did have a husband, Robert. You killed him.

But now itÆs different. I know now that you were just as much forced into
your situation as we were forced into ours. We are infected. But you
already know that. What you donÆt understand yet is that weÆre going to
stay alive. WeÆve found a way to do that and weÆre going to set up society
again slowly but surely. WeÆre going to do away with all those wretched
creatures whom death has cheated. And, even though I pray otherwise, we may
decide to kill you and those like you.



Those like me? he thought with a start. But he kept reading.



IÆll try to save you. IÆll tell them youÆre too well armed for us to attack
now. Use the time IÆm giving you, Robert! Get away from your house, go into
the mountains and save yourself. There are only a handful of us now. But
sooner or later weÆll be too well organized, and nothing I say will stop
the rest from destroying you. For GodÆs sake, Robert, go now, while you
can!

I know you may not believe this. You may not believe that we can live in
the sun for short periods now. You may not believe that my tan was only
make-up. You may not believe that we can live with the germ now.

ThatÆs why IÆm leaving one of my pills.

I took them all the time I was here. I kept them in a belt around my waist.
YouÆll discover that theyÆre a combination of defebrinated blood and a
drug. I donÆt know myself just what it is. The blood feeds the germs, the
drug prevents its multiplication. It was the discovery of this pill that
saved us from dying, that is helping to set up society again slowly.

Believe me, itÆs true. And escape!

Forgive me, too. I didnÆt mean to hit you, it nearly killed me to do it.
But I was so terribly frightened of what youÆd do when you found out.

Forgive me for having to lie to you about so many things. But please
believe this: When we were together in the darkness, close to each other, I
wasnÆt spying on you. I was loving you.


                      Ruth



He read the letter again. Then his hands fell forward and he sat there
staring with empty eyes at the floor. He

couldnÆt believe it. He shook his head slowly and tried to understand, but
adjustment eluded him.

He walked unsteadily to the bench. He picked up the small amber pill and
held it in his palm, smelled it, tasted it. He felt as if all the security
of mason were ebbing away from him. The framework of his life was
collapsing and it frightened him.

Yet how did he refute the evidence? The pill, the tan coming off her leg,
her walking in the sun, her reaction to garlic.

He sank down on the stool and looked at the mallet lying on the floor.
Slowly, ploddingly, his mind went over the evidence.

When heÆd first seen her sheÆd run from him. Had it been a ruse? No, sheÆd
been genuinely frightened. She must have been startled by his cry, then,
even though sheÆd been expecting it, and forgotten all about her job. Then
later, when sheÆd calmed down, sheÆd talked him into thinking that her
reaction to garlic was the reaction of a sick stomach. And she had lied and
smiled and feigned hopeless acceptance and carefully got all the
information sheÆd been sent after. And, when sheÆd wanted to leave, she
couldnÆt because of Cortman and the others. He had awakened then. They had
embraced, they had

His white-knuckled fist jolted down on the bench. ôI was loving you.ö Lie.
Lie! His fingers crumpled up the letter and flung it away bitterly.

Rage made the pain in his head flare hotly and he pressed both hands
against it and closed his eyes with a groan.

Then he looked up. Slowly he slid off the stool and placed the microscope
back on its base.

The rest of her letter wasnÆt a lie, he knew that. Without the pill,
without any evidence of word or memory, he knew. He knew what even Ruth and
her people didnÆt seem to know.

He looked into the eyepiece for a long time. Yes, he knew. And the
admission of what he saw changed his entire world. How stupid and
ineffective he felt for never having foreseen it! Especially after reading
the phrase a hundred, a thousand times. But then heÆd never really
appreciated it. Such a short phrase it was, but meaning so much.

Bacteria can mutate.





                           PART IV: January 1979



                               Chapter Twenty



THEY CAME BY NIGHT. Came in their dark cars with their spotlights and their
guns and their axes and pikes. Came from the blackness with a great sound
of motors, the long white arms of their spotlights snapping around the
boulevard corner and clutching out at Cimarron Street.

Robert Neville was sitting at the peephole when they came. He had put down
a book and was sitting there watching idly when the beams splashed white
across the bloodless vampire faces and they whirled with a gasp, their dark
animal eyes staring at the blinding lights.

Neville jumped back from the peephole, his heart thudding with the abrupt
shock. For a moment he stood there trembling in the dark room, unable to
decide what to do. His throat contracted and he heard the roar of the car
motors even through the soundproofing on his house. He thought of the
pistols in his bureau, the sub-machine gun on his workbench, thought of
defending his house against them.

Then he pressed his fingers in until the nails dug at his palms. No, heÆd
made his decision, heÆd worked it out carefully through the past months. He
would not fight.

With a heavy, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach he stepped back
to the peephole and looked out.

The street was a scene of rushing, violent action illuminated by the bald
glare of the spotlights. Men rushed at men, the sound of running boots
covered the pavement. Then a shot rang out, echoing hollowly; more shots.

Two male vampires went thrashing down onto their sides. Four men grabbed
them by the arms and jerked them up while two other men drove the
glittering lance points of their pikes into the vampiresÆ chests. NevilleÆs
face twitched as screams filled the night. He felt his chest shuddering
with labored breath as he watched from his house.

The dark-suited men knew exactly what they were doing. There were about
seven vampires visible, six men and a woman. The men surrounded the seven,
held their flailing arms, and drove razor-tipped pikes deep into their
bodies. Blood spouted out on the dark pavement and the vampires perished
one by one. Neville felt himself shivering more and more. Is this the new
society? The words flashed across his mind. He tried to believe that the
men were forced into what they were doing, but shock brought terrible
doubt. Did they have to do it like this, with such a black and brutal
slaughtering? Why did they slay with alarum by night, when by day the
vampires could be dispatched in peace?

Robert Neville felt tight fists shaking at his sides. He didnÆt like the
looks of them, he didnÆt like the methodical butchery. They were more like
gangsters than men forced into a situation. There were looks of vicious
triumph on their faces, white and stark in the spotlights. Their faces were
cruel and emotionless.

Suddenly Neville felt himself shudder violently, remembering. Where was Ben
Cortman?

His eyes fled over the street but he couldnÆt see Cortman. He pressed
against the peephole and looked up and down the street. He didnÆt want them
to get Cortman, he realized, didnÆt want them to destroy Cortman like that.
With a sense of inward shock he could not analyze in the rush of the
moment, he realized that he felt more deeply toward the vampires than he
did toward their executioners.

Now the seven vampires lay crumpled and still in their pools of stolen
blood. The spotlights were moving around the street, flaying open the
night. Neville turned his head away as the brilliant glare blazed across
the front of his house. Then the spotlight had turned about and he looked
again.

A shout. NevilleÆs eyes jumped toward the focus of the spotlights.

He stiffened.

Cortman was on the roof of the house across the street. He was pulling
himself up toward the chimney, body flattened on the shingles.

Abruptly it came to Neville that it was in that chimney that Ben Cortman
had hidden most of the time, and he felt a wrench of despair at the
knowledge. His lips pressed together tightly. Why hadnÆt he looked more
carefully? He couldnÆt fight the sick apprehension he felt at the thought
of CortmanÆs being killed by these brutal strangers. Objectively, it was
pointless, but he could not repress the feeling. Cortman was not theirs to
put to rest.

But there was nothing he could do.

With bleak, tortured eyes he watched the spotlights cluster on CortmanÆs
wriggling body. He watched the white hands reaching out slowly for
handholds on the roof. Slowly, slowly, as if Cortman had all the time in
the world. Hurry up! Neville felt himself twitch with the unspoken words as
he watched. He felt himself straining with CortmanÆs agonizingly slow
movements.

The men did not shout, they did not command. They raised their rifles now
and the night was torn open again with their exploding fire.

Neville almost felt the bullets in his own flesh. His body jerked with
convulsive shudders as he watched CortmanÆs body jerk under the impact of
the bullets.

Still Cortman kept crawling, and Neville saw his white face, his teeth
gritted together. The end of Oliver Hardy, he thought, the death of all
comedy and all laughter. He didnÆt hear the continuous fusillade of shots.
He didnÆt even feel the tears running down his cheeks. His eyes were
riveted on the ungainly form of his old friend inching up the brightly lit
roof.

Now Cortman rose up on his knees and clutched at the chimney edge with
spasmodic fingers. His body lurched as more bullets struck. His dark eyes
glared into the blinding spotlights, his lips were drawn back in a
soundless snarl.

Then he was standing up beside the chimney and NevilleÆs face was white and
taut as he watched Cortman start to raise his right leg.

And then the hammering machine gun splattered CortmanÆs flesh with lead.
For a moment Cortman stood erect in the hot blast, palsied hands raised
high over his head, a look of berserk defiance twisting his white features.

ôBen,ö Neville muttered in a croaking whisper.

Ben CortmanÆs body folded, slumped forward, fell. It slid and rolled slowly
down the shingled incline, then dropped into space. In the sudden silence
Neville heard the thump of it from across the street. Sick-eyed, he watched
the men rush at the writhing body with their pikes.

Then Neville closed his eyes and his nails dug furrows in the flesh of his
palms.

A clumping of boots. Neville jerked back into the darkness. He stood in the
middle of the room, waiting for them to call to him and tell him to come
out. He held himself rigidly. IÆm not going to fight, he told himself
strongly. Even though he wanted to fight, even though he already hated the
dark men with their guns and their bloodstained pikes.

But he wasnÆt going to fight. He had worked out his decision very
carefully. They were doing what they had to do, albeit with unnecessary
violence and seeming relish. He had killed their people and they had to
capture him and save themselves. He would not fight. HeÆd throw himself
upon the justice of their new society. When they called to him he would go
out and surrender, it was his decision.

But they didnÆt call. Neville lurched back with a gasp as the ax blade bit
deeply into the front door. He stood trembling in the dark living room.
What were they doing? Why didnÆt they call on him to surrender? He wasnÆt a
vampire, he was a man like them. What were they doing?

He whirled and stared at the kitchen. They were chopping at the boarded-up
back door too. He took a nervous step toward the hallway. His frightened
eyes rushed from the back to the front door. He felt his heart pumping. He
didnÆt understand, he didnÆt understand!

With a grunt of shocked surprise he jumped into the hail as the enclosed
house rang with the gun explosion. The men were shooting away the lock on
the front door. Another reverberating shot made his ears ring.

And, suddenly, he knew. They werenÆt going to take him to their courts, to
their justice. They were going to exterminate him.

With a frightened murmur he ran into the bedroom. His hands fumbled in the
bureau drawer.

He straightened up on trembling legs, the guns in his hands. But what if
they were going to take him prisoner? HeÆd only judged by the fact that
they hadnÆt called on him to come out. There were no lights in the house;
maybe they thought he was already gone.

He stood shivering in the darkness of the bedroom, not knowing what to do,
mutters of terror filling his throat Why hadnÆt he left! Why hadnÆt he
listened to her and left? Fool!

One of his guns fell from nerveless fingers as the front door was crushed
in. Heavy feet thudded into the living room and Robert Neville shuffled
back across the floor,

his remaining pistol held out with rigid, blood-drained fingers. They
werenÆt going to kill him without a fight!

He gasped as he collided with the bench. He stood there tautly. In the
front room a man said something he couldnÆt understand, then flashlight
beams shone into the hall. Neville caught his breath. He felt the room
spinning around him. So this is the end. It was the only thing he could
think. So this is the end.

Heavy shoes thumped in the hail. NevilleÆs fingers tightened still more on
the pistol and his eyes stared with wild fright at the doorway.

Two men came in.

Their white beams played around the room, struck his face. The two men
recoiled abruptly.

ôHeÆs got a gun!ö one of them cried, and fired his pistol.

Neville heard the bullet smash into the wall over his head. Then the pistol
was jolting in his hand, splashing his face with bursts of light. He didnÆt
fire at any one of them; he just kept pulling the trigger automatically.
One of the men cried out in pain.

Then Neville felt a violent club blow across his chest. He staggered back,
and jagged, burning pain exploded in his body. He fired once more, then
crashed to his knees, the pistol slipping from his fingers.

ôYou got him!ö he heard someone cry as he fell on his face. He tried to
reach out for the pistol but a dark boot stamped on his hand and broke it.
Neville drew in his hand with a rattling gasp and stared through
pain-glazed eyes at the floor.

Rough hands slid under his armpits and pulled him up. He kept wondering
when they would shoot him again. Virge, he thought, Virge, IÆm coming with
you now. The pain in his chest was like molten lead poured over him from a
great height. He felt and heard his boot tips scraping over the floor and
waited for death. I want to die in

my own house, he thought. He struggled feebly but they didnÆt stop. Hot
pain raked saw-toothed nails through his chest as they dragged him through
the front room.

ôNo,ö he groaned. ôNo!ö

Then pain surged up from his chest and drove a barbed club into his brain.
Everything began spinning away into blackness.

ôVirge,ö he muttered in a hoarse whisper.

And the dark men dragged his lifeless body from the house. Into the night.
Into the world that was theirs and no longer his.





                             Chapter Twenty-One



SOUND; A MURMURED RUSTLE in the air. Robert Neville coughed weakly, then
grimaced as the pain filled his chest. A bubbling groan passed his lips and
his head rolled slightly on the flat pillow. The sound grew stronger, it
be-came a rumbling mixture of noises. His hands drew in slowly at his
sides. Why didnÆt they take the fire off his chest? He could feel hot coals
dropping through openings in his flesh. Another groan, agonized and
breathless, twitched his graying lips. Then his eyes fluttered open.

He stared at the rough plaster ceiling for a full minute without blinking.
Pain ebbed and swelled in his chest with an endless, nerve-clutching throb.
His face remained a taut, lined mask of resistance to the pain, If he
relaxed for a second, it enveloped him completely; he had to fight it. For
the first few minutes he could only struggle with the pain, suffering
beneath its hot stabbing. Then, after a while, his brain began to function;
slowly, like a machine faltering, starting and stopping, turning and
jamming gears.

Where am I? It was his first thought. The pain was awful. He looked down at
his chest and saw that it was bound with a wide bandage, a great, moist
spot of red rising and falling jerkily in the middle of it. He closed his
eyes and swallowed. IÆm hurt, he thought. IÆm hurt badly. His mouth and
throat felt powdery dry. Where am I, what am I...

Then he remembered; the dark men and the attack on his house. And he knew
where he was even before he turned his head slowly, achingly, and saw the
barred windows across the tiny cubicle. He looked at the windows for a long
time, face tight, teeth clenched together. The sound was outside; the
rushing, confused sound.

He let his head roll back on the pillow and lay staring at the ceiling. It
was hard to understand the moment on its own terms. Hard to believe it
wasnÆt all a nightmare. Over three years alone in his house. Now this.

But he couldnÆt doubt the sharp, shifting pain in his chest and he couldnÆt
doubt the way the moist, red spot kept getting bigger and bigger. He closed
his eyes. IÆm going to die, he thought

He tried to understand that. But that didnÆt work either. In spite of
having lived with death all these years, in spite of having walked a
tightrope of bare existence across an endless maw of deathùin spite of that
he couldnÆt understand it. Personal death still was a thing beyond
comprehension.

He was still on his back when the door behind him opened.

He couldnÆt turn; it hurt too much. He lay there and listened to footsteps
approach the bed, then stop. He looked up but the person hadnÆt come into
view yet. My executioner, he thought, the justice of this new society. He
closed his eyes and waited.

The shoes moved again until he knew the person was by the cot. He tried to
swallow but his throat was too dry. He ran his tongue over his lips.

ôAre you thirsty?ö.

He looked up with dulled eyes at her and suddenly his heart began
throbbing. The increased blood flow made the pain billow up and swallow him
for a moment. He couldnÆt cut off the groan of agony. He twisted his head
on the pillow, biting his lips and clutching at the blanket feverishly. The
red spot grew bigger.

She was on her knees now, patting perspiration from his brow, touching his
lips with a cool, wet cloth. The pain began to subside slowly and her face
came into gradual focus. Neville lay motionless, staring at her with
pain-filled eyes.

ôSo,ö he finally said.

She didnÆt answer. She got up and sat on the edge of the bed. She patted
his brow again. Then she reached over his head and he heard her pouring
water into a glass.

The pain dug razors into him as she lifted his head a little so he could
drink. This is what they must have felt when the pikes went into them, he
thought. This cutting, biting agony, the escape of lifeÆs blood.

His head fell back on the pillow:

ôThank you,ö he murmured.

She sat looking down, at him, a strange mixture of sympathy and detachment
on her face. Her reddish hair was drawn back into a tight cluster behind
her head and clipped there. She looked very clean-cut and self-possessed.

ôYou wouldnÆt believe me, would you?ö she said.

A little cough puffed out his cheeks. His mouth opened and he sucked in
some of the damp morning air.

ôI ... believed you,ö he said.

ôThen why didnÆt you go?ö

He tried, to speak but the words jumbled together. His throat moved and he
drew in another faltering breath.

ôI ... couldn't,ö he muttered. ôI almost went several times. Once I even
packed and ... started out. But I couldnÆt, I couldnÆt ... go. I was too
used to the ... the

house. It was a habit, just . . . just like the habit of living. I got . .
. used to it.ö

Her eyes ran over his sweat-greased face and she pressed her lips, together
as she patted his forehead again.

ôItÆs too late now,ö she said then. ôYou know that, donÆt you?ö

Something clicked in his throat as he swallowed.

ôI know,ö he said.

He tried to smile but his lips only twitched.

ôWhy did you fight them?ö she said. ôThey had orders to bring you in
unharmed. If you hadnÆt fired at them they wouldnÆt have harmed you.ö

His throat, contracted.

ôWhat difference . . .ô he gasped.

His eyes closed and he gritted his teeth tightly to force back the pain.

When he opened them again she was still there. The expression on her face
had not changed.

His smile was weak and tortured.

ôYour ... your society is ... certainly a fine one,ö he gasped. ôWho are
those ... those gangsters who came to get me? The ... the council of
justice?ö

Her look was dispassionate. SheÆs changed, he thought suddenly.

ôNew societies are always primitive,ö she answered. ôYou should know that.
In a way weÆre like a revolutionary groupùrepossessing society by violence.
ItÆs inevitable. Violence is no stranger to you. YouÆve killed. Many
times.ö

ôOnly to ... to survive.ö

ôThatÆs exactly why weÆre killing,ö she said calmly. ôTo survive. We canÆt
allow the dead to exist beside the living. Their brains are impaired, they
exist for only one purpose. They have to be destroyed. As one whoÆ killed
the dead and the living, you know that.ö

The deep breath he took made the pain wrench at his in-

sides. His eyes were stark æwith pain as he shuddered. ItÆs got to end
soon, he thought. I canÆt stand much more of this. No, death did not
frighten him. He didnÆt understand it, but he didnÆt fear it either.

The swelling pain sank down and the clouds passed from his eyes. He looked
up at her calm face.

ôI hope so,ö he said. ôBut ... but did you see their faces when they ...
they killed?ö His throat moved convulsively. ôJoy,ö he mumbled. ôPure joy.ö

Her smile was thin and withdrawn. She has changed, he thought, entirely.

ôDid you ever see your face,ö she asked, ôwhen you killed?ö She patted his
brow with the cloth. ôI saw it-.--remember? It was frightening. And you
werenÆt even killing then, you were just chasing me.ö

He closed his eyes. Why am I listening to her? he thought. SheÆs become a
brainless convert to this new violence.

ôMaybe you did see joy on their faces,ö she said. ôItÆs not surprising.
TheyÆre young. And they are killersù assigned killers, legal killers.
TheyÆre respected for their killing, admired for it. What can you expect
from them? TheyÆre only fallible men. And men can learn to enjoy killing.
ThatÆs an old story, Neville. You know that.ö

He looked up at her. Her smile was the tight, forced smile of a woman who
was trying to forgo being a woman in favor of her dedication.

ôRobert Neville,ö she said, ôthe last of the old race.ö

His face tightened.

ôLast?Æ he muttered, feeling the heavy sinking of utter loneliness in him.

ôAs far as we know,ö she said casually. ôYouÆre quite unique, you know.
When youÆre gone, there wonÆt be any-. one else like you within our
particular society.ö

He looked toward the window.

ôThose are ... people ... outside,ö he said.

She nodded. ôTheyÆre waiting.ö ôFor my death?Æ

ôFor your execution,ö she said.

He felt himself tighten as he looked up at her.

ôYouÆd better hurry,ö he said, without fear, with a sudden defiance in his
hoarse voice.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then something seemed to give
in her. Her face grew blank.

ôI knew it,ö she said softly. ôI knew you wouldnÆt be afraid.ö

Impulsively she put her hand over his.

ôWhen I first heard that they were ordered to your house, I was going to go
there and warn æyou. But then I knew that if you were still there, nothing
would make you go. Then I was going to try to help you escape after they
brought you in. But they told me youÆd been shot and I knew that escape was
impossible too.ö

A smile flitted over her lips.

ôIÆm glad youÆre not afraid,ö she said. ôYouÆre very brave.ö Her voice grew
soft. ôRobert.ö

They were silent and he felt her hand tighten on his.

ôHow is it you can ... come in here?ö he asked then.

ôIÆm a ranking officer in the new society,ö she said.

His hand stirred under hers.

ôDonÆt ... let it get . . .ô He coughed up blood. ôDonÆt let it get ... too
brutal. Too heartless.ö

ôWhat can Iùö she started, then stopped. She smiled at him. ôIÆll try,ö she
said.

He couldnÆt go on. The pain was getting worse. It twisted and turned like a
clutching animal in his body.

Ruth leaned over him.

ôRobert,ö she said, ôlisten to me. They mean to execute you. Even though
youÆre wounded. They have to. The people have been out there all night,
waiting. TheyÆre terrified of you, Robert, they hate you. And they want
your life.ö

She reached up quickly and unbuttoned her blouse. Reaching under her
brassiere, she took out a tiny packet and pressed it into his right palm.

ôItÆs all I can do, Robert,ö she whispered, ôto make it easier. I warned
you, I told you to go.ö Her voice broke a little. ôYou just canÆt fight so
many, Robert.ö

ôI know.ö The words were gagging sounds in his throat.

For a moment she stood over his bed, a look of natural compassion on her
face. It was all a pose, he thought, her coming in and being so official.
She was afraid to be herself. I can understand that.

Ruth bent over him and her cool lips pressed on his.

ôYouÆll be with her soon,ö she murmured hastily.

Then she straightened up, her lips pressed together tightly. She buttoned
the two top buttons of her blouse. A moment longer she looked down at him.
Then her eyes glanced at his right hand.

ôTake them soon,ö she murmured, and turned away quickly.

He heard her footsteps moving across the floor. Then the door was shutting
and he heard the sound of it being locked. He closed his eyes and felt warm
tears pushing out from beneath the lids. Good-by, Ruth.

Good-by, everything.

Then, suddenly, he drew in a quick breath. Bracing himself, he pushed
himself up to a sitting position. He refused to let himself collapse at the
burning pain that exploded in his chest. Teeth grating together, he stood
up on his feet. For a moment he almost fell, but, catching his balance, he
stumbled across the floor on vibrating legs he could hardly feel.

He fell against the window and looked out.

The street was filled with people. They milled and stirred in the gray
light of morning, the sound of their talking like the buzzing of a million
insects.

He looked out over the people, his left hand gripping the bars with
bloodless fingers, his eyes fever-lit.

Then someone saw him.

For a moment there was an increased babbling of voices, a few startled
cries.

Then sudden silence, as though a heavy blanket had fallen over their heads.
They all stood looking up at him with their white faces. He stared back.
And suddenly he thought, IÆm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority
concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.

Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their facesùawe, fear,
shrinking horrorùand he knew that they were afraid of him. To them he was
some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the
disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had
left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved
ones. And he understood what they felt and did not hate them. His right
hand tightened on the tiny envelope of pills. So long as the end did not
come with violence, so long as it did not have to be a butchery before
their eyes

Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did
not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and
black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to
him even in his pain.

A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall
while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final
lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a
new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.

I am legend.