I Am Legend and Other Stories Page 4

  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.

  “Neville, Neville!”

  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 Cortman’s long nails rake across his cheek.

  “Neville!”

  The pain made his hand jerk into a rigid fist, which he drove into Cortman’s 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 Neville’s 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 hand.

  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. He’d 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. He’d 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.

  He’d have to take a chance on locking the garage. If he didn’t, they might destroy the generator; they couldn’t have had time to do it already. His footsteps pounded up the driveway to the garage.

  “Neville!”

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

  Cortman’s 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 Neville’s throat

  Abruptly he jerked up his right fist and felt it drive into Cortman’s throat. He heard the choking sound in Cortman’s 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 Neville’s 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 man’s 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 bones 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 didn’t work. With a snarl he turned and ran into the kitchen. The refrigerator was out. He ran from one dark room 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. I’m 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 arms 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 he’d 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 wasn’t until the flaring pain of having his shou
lder 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 man’s 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.

  “Virginia,” he sobbed like a lost, frightened child. “Virginia. Virginia.”

  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 didn’t 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 they’d destroyed. This had been more difficult than he’d 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 didn’t seem quite the time to start experimenting. He couldn’t walk to Santa Monica, so he had to try using one of the many cars parked 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. He’d 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, he 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 he’d put there once; he didn’t remember just when.

  The washing machine they had ruined beyond repair, forcing him to replace it. But that wasn’t hard. The worst part was mopping up all the gasoline they’d spilled from the drums. They’d 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.

  He’d 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 house’s 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 he’d 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 Mozart’s 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 he’d lain awake trying to single out the sound of Virginia’s labored breathing. But he couldn’t 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.

  He’d 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 o’clock 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.

  “What’s the matter?” he mumbled drowsily.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Honey?”

  Her eyes moved slowly to him.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “The same.”

  “Oh.”

  He lay there for a moment looking at her.

  “Well,” 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.

  “What is it?” he asked worriedly.

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

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just can’t sleep.”

  “Why?"

  She made an indecisive sound.

  “Still feel weak?” he asked.

  She tried to sit up but she couldn’t.

  “Stay there, hon,” he said. “Don’t move.” He put his hand on her brow. “You haven’t got any fever,” he told her.

  “I don’t feel sick,” she said. “Just.. tired.”

  “You look pale.”

  “I know. I look like a ghost.”

  “Don’t get up,” he said.

  She was up.

  “I’m not going to pamper myself,” she said. “Go ahead, get dressed. I’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t get up if you don’t feel good, honey.”

  She patted his arm and smiled.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “You get ready.”

  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. He’d finally been compelled to erect a tent over Kathy’s bed to keep the dust from her face. He’d 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 didn’t get a good shave because there was grit in the shaving soap and he didn’t have time for a second lathering. He washed off his face, got a clean towel from the hall closet, and dried himself.

  Before going to the bedroom to get dressed he checked Kathy’s 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.

  “I wish these damn storms would end,” he said as he entered the kitchen ten minutes later. “I’m sure…”

  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.

  “Sweetheart, if you don’t feel well, go back to bed,” he told her. “I can fix my own breakfast.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I was just resting. I’m sorry. I’ll get up and fry you some eggs.”

  “Stay there,” he said. “I’m not helpless.”

  He went to the refrigerator and opened the door.

  “I’d like to know what this is going around,” she said. “Half the people on the block have it, and you say that more than half the plant is absent.”

  “Maybe it’s some kind of virus,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Between the storms and the mosquitoes and everyone being sick, life is rapidly becoming a pain,” he said, pouring orange juice out of the bottle. “And speak of the devil.”