For the life of him, he didn’t 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 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. 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? He’d 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 one’s really on me.
His face twisted into an expression of raw, unqualified hatred. Bastards! I’ll kill every, mother’s son of you before I’ll 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.
Wouldn’t 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 cigarette’s blue trailing smoke. Well, there wasn’t much chance of that. He had about a thousand cartons in the closet of Kathy’s—He clenched his teeth together. In the closet of the larder, the larder, the larder.
Kathy’s room.
He sat staring with dead eyes at the mural while “The Age of Anxiety” 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, boy, of course you shall.
The whisky gurgled into the glass. 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 ’em.
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 to side. Outside, they prowled and muttered and waited.
Poor vampires, he thought, poor little cusses, pussyfootin’ 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 of 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 vampire’s 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 the 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; lovie—is 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 support, 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 marry 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. That’s 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.
“Come out, Neville!”
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 for—My blood, my blood!
As if it were someone else’s 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 house’s 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; his mind rattled out the attempted joke.
He lurched up and started pacing. What am I going to do now? Go through the routine again? I’ll save you the trouble. Reading-drinking-soundproof-the-house-the 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, I’m 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 he’d 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 on 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 he’d forgotten to set it. He slept soundly and motionlessly, his body like cast iron. When he finally opened his eyes, it was ten o’clock.
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. That’s 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. No 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
