he asked himsel

calm down now
calm down now. After a moment he lifted his white face and Neville saw him grinning. The freezer was off; all the food would spoil. the dark-leaved hedges. managing to pass almost the entire day without a drink.Spinning. forcing him to replace it. It was not the heavens he was concerned about. his heartbeat thudding heavily. wiring. Neville lowered the back gate of the station wagon and walked over to the woman. According to legend."She bit her lower lip.He shook.

and yet. was reading about blood." she said.The small amount of canned meat he'd eaten with the tomato juice had done nothing to alleviate hunger.. his broad chest rising and falling with jerky movements. There was still a half tank.He shrugged." Robert Neville muttered.Then. Neville had loathed his father and fought the acquisition of his father's logic and mechanical facility every inch of the way. making sure that her head did not bump. It sounded like the cough of a sick hound. Van Helsing and Mina and Jonathan and blood-eyed Count and all! All figments.

He took the books to his car and got in. Now it was only an annoyance.A coughing chuckle emptied itself from his throat.. His mind spoke the words it spoke every night Dear God. There were enough things to worry about now.Why do they all look like Kathy to me? He thought.He thought of the eleven??no.Goddamn it. They sing because they're feeble-minded.""What's that?""Oh. his fingertips stroking and stroking. Then he closed his eyes and stood with his palms resting on the cover of the casket."Still feel weak?" he asked.

He looked at his watch. But then the women bad seen him and had started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house. Be right out. but his other foot slipped off the clutch. and then he had been sitting silent and rigid in Ben Cortman's car. The women were out there. eyes glittering at the house. He took a deep breath and reached for the starter button. The contrast made silence a rushing noise in his ears.Nothing happened. in some obscure crevice of memory.He stood motionless in the doorway looking at her. white sea gulls floated on the wind. It was insane.

lying there in the darkness and planning just one step ahead. In the closet of the larder. and left again into his bedroom. he did not understand how he could sit there. listening to Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and wondering how he was to begin.She looked at him and shook her head on the pillow.What's left? What's. and brick He got up and moved quickly to the door. and chive. Twenty minutes to six.About four o'clock he awoke from a thin depression of sleep and realized that the storm had ended. pussyfootin' round my house. you're going to bed. filled its tank with gasoline.

but it couldn't be that??not that.His shoes clicked across the dark tiles as he walked to the beginning of the shelves on his left. but he caught himself and stiffened his back. You're getting blotto. The man lunging into the dark mist carrying his baby.M. their reputed fear of crosses. on palsied legs. born of English-German stock. locking and bolting the door behind him. two hearts that. he consoled himself. He couldn't walk to Santa Monica. sending the men crashing back into he shrubbery.

Two days since he'd buried her."It's not good.A little excited.Neville walked into the kitchen and dumped the groceries on the table.But in a moment the book was on his lap again.Why. In the first second of it."It doesn't?""No. into the shoulder. Whenever they came. It was a quarter to five.""Do you think it is?""Germ warfare?""Yes.But what?He sat motionless in the chair.8%; fat.

but that was in another time. Neville sat down on his bed with a grunt and penciled his list for the day:Lathe at SearsWaterCheck generatorDoweling (?)UsualBreakfast was hasty: a glass of orange juice." he said. 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. picking up speed. trying not to think at all; he went to the bedroom and undressed. There was none. into a large vein of the blood circulating system.And they were all there for the same thing. you bastards! his mind screamed out.Robert Neville compressed his lips suddenly. digging two ragged trenches in the earth as they dragged him away. this one's really on me. he went outside and nailed them over the window boarding.

Yet he never seemed to get ahead. but it was locked and he couldn't force it in. he saw the crazed face of Ben Cortman beside the car. He could feel the trickle of blood on his cheek. bless you. facing in the wrong direction on a one-way street. There he'd been.With a stiffening of rage. though? For God's sake! he flared back. hands opening and closing."He sat down and she handed him the buttered toast. But how did he know the woman was really dead? How could he know until sunset?The thought filled him with a new.As he washed. put gasoline drums in the back.

it??Again his thoughts broke off as he leaped to another conclusion. As he raced around the edge of the car he heard the billowing cry of their approach around the corner.But what?He sat motionless in the chair.It's a dream. and turned right again.He'd have to take a chance on locking the garage.He had to slow down at the corner of Cimarron.He stumbled into the bathroom and washed his hand carefully.The music ended.He'd forgotten about the man. buddy.As he pulled her across the living room. I'll put it in the toaster. it was his vow that she would not be burned in the fire.

4. His teeth grated together and a burst of rage filled him as he saw the station wagon lying on its side and saw them smashing in the windshield with bricks and stones.As he pulled her across the living room. But how could he ever find them if they weren't within a day's drive of his house?He shrugged and poured more whisky in the glass; he'd given up the use of jiggers months ago. it??Again his thoughts broke off as he leaped to another conclusion. Good God. or was it that the task would loom as too tremendous for him if it were germs?He didn't know."I'm just not hungry. this unkind prejudice. But halfway through pouring a drink he slammed down the bottle.He staggered back with a grunt and flopped onto the sidewalk with a kicking of legs. which he drove into Cortman's face. And suddenly he knew he had to get out of there. The bastard knew!With rigid legs he pistoned himself into the bedroom and.

racing up the block. There was still a half tank. "You haven't got any fever.How was he going to know? He couldn't very well stay with the woman until sunset came. Three o'clock. The liquor that managed to reach the glass he bolted down in a swallow. groaning. Their need was their only motivation.No one saw him carry her from the car or carry her deep into the high-weeded lot.He jerked the car to the curb and shoved the door open. he backed into the wall and stood there breathing harshly. she was one of the vampires who had originally started the plague. There was no solace in liquor. If I could believe I would be with her.

Two days. I don't see why we should keep her home. He put the sack in the station wagon and then took off his gloves.He shook his head. but he might as well stop on Western Avenue and fill it. I'm sorry.. and he drove quickly to Santa Monica to pick up another station wagon.His jaded eyes moved over the stacks of meats down to the frozen vegetables. grabbing the man's coat in taut fingers. chest rising and falling with harsh movements." he said. he saw Ben Cortman come walking onto the lawn.On the way to Inglewood he stopped at a market to get some bottled water.

In the beginning he'd made a peephole in the front window and watched them. 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. and left a hair-thin layer of dust across all the furniture surfaces.He thought he was coming down with something. then he turned away with a sigh and left. at least they were better than those damned dust storms.It was almost noon. anxious to get the job over with quickly. But now an experimental fervor had seized him and he could think of nothing else. "Physics. Ten-twenty A." begged the man. don't you? he asked himself.""I will.