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 don’t you stop pouring alcohol into yourself? he thought. Why don’t 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 he’d 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, he’d 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 I’ll get an early start.
He lay there on the bed and took deep breaths of the darkness, hoping for sleep. But the silence didn’t 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 heard 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, “Come out, Neville!”
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. He’d 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 wasn’t 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 wouldn’t bother searching for Ben Cortman that morning; there were too many other things to do. For a second, he thought about the soundproofing job he’d resolved to do on the house. Well, the hell with it, he thought. I’ll do it tomorrow or some cloudy day.
He got into the station wagon and checked his list. “Lathe at Sears”; 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 Neville’s 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 couldn’t 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 was 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 wagon. He always felt as though he
