cross goes—well, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross.”
She sat holding her wineglass and looking at him with expressionless eyes.
“That’s why the cross doesn’t always work,” he said.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said. “We used garlic too.”
“I thought it made you sick.”
“I was already sick. I used to weigh a hundred and twenty. I weigh ninety-eight pounds now.”
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? It’s me, he thought. I’ve been by myself too long. I won’t believe anything unless I see it in a microscope. Heredity triumphs again. I’m my father’s 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 girl’s. She certainly didn’t 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.
“I’ve been admiring your mural,” she said. “It almost makes you believe you’re in the woods.”
He grunted.
“It must have taken a lot of work to get your house like this,” she said.
“You should know,” he said. “You went through the same thing.”
“We had nothing like this,” she said. “Our house was small. Our food locker was half the size of yours.”
“You must have run out of food,” he said, looking at her carefully.
“Frozen food,” she said. “We were living out of cans.” He nodded. Logical, his mind had to admit. But he still didn’t like it. It was all intuition, he knew, but he didn’t like it.
“What about water?” he asked then.
She looked at him silently for a moment. “You don’t believe a word I’ve said, do you?” she said.
“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m just curious how you lived.”
“You can’t hide it from your voice,” she said. “You’ve been alone too long. You’ve lost the talent for deceit.”
He grunted, getting the uncomfortable feeling that she was playing with him. That’s ridiculous, he argued. She’s just a woman. She was probably right. He probably was a gruff and graceless hermit. What did it matter?
“Tell me about your husband,” he said abruptly.
Something flitted over her face, a shade of memory. She lifted the glass of dark wine to her lips.
“Not now,” she said. “Please.”
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 she’d 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, he’d know the truth?
“You know,” he said, trying to ease the moment, “I’ve been thinking. If three people could survive the plague, why not more?”
“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked.
“Why not? There must have been others who were immune for one reason or another.”
“Tell me more about the germ,” 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?
“There’s an awful lot of detail,” he said.
“You were saying something about the cross before,” she said. “How do you know it’s true?”
“You remember what I said about Ben Cortman?” he said, glad to restate something she already knew rather than go into fresh material.
“You mean that man you—”
He nodded. “Yes. Come here,” he said, standing. “I’ll show him to you.”
As he stood behind her looking out the peephole, he smelled the odor of her hair and skin. It made him draw back a little. Isn’t that remarkable? he thought. I don’t like the smell. Like Gulliver returning from the logical horses, I find the human smell offensive.
“He’s the one by the lamppost,” he said.
She made a slight sound of acknowledgment. Then she said, “There are so few. Where are they?”
“I’ve killed off most of them,” he said, “but they manage to keep a few ahead of me.”
“How come the lamp is on out there?” she said. “I thought they destroyed the electrical system.”
“I connected it with my generator,” he said, “so I could watch them.”
“Don’t they break the bulb?”
“I have a very strong globe over the bulb.”
“Don’t they climb up and try to break it?”
“I have garlic all over the post.”
She shook her head. “You’ve thought of everything.”
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. Won’t they ever stop?
He knew they wouldn’t until he knew about her for sure.
She turned away from the window then.
“Will you excuse me a moment?” 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.
‘Will you excuse me a moment?’
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, he’d 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—
