Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

“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.”

He drew a black speck out of the orange juice in the glass.

“How the hell they get in the refrigerator I’ll never know,” he said.

“None for me, Bob,” she said.

“No orange juice?”

“No.”

“Good for you.”

“No, thank you, sweetheart,” she said, trying to smile.

He put back the bottle and sat down across from her with his glass of juice.

“You don’t feel any pain?" he said. "No headache, nothing?”

She shook her head slowly.

“I wish I did know what was wrong,” she said.

“You call up Dr. Busch today.”

“I will,” she said, starting to get up. He put his hand over hers.

“No, no, sweetheart, stay there,” he said.

“But there’s no reason why I should be like this.” She sounded angry. That was the way she’d been as long as he’d known her. If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She seemed to regard it as a personal affront.

“Come on,” he said, starting to get up. “I’ll help you back to bed.”

“No, just let me sit here with you,” she said. “I’ll go back to bed after Kathy goes to school.”

“All right. Don’t you want something, though?”

“No.”

“How about coffee?”

She shook her head.

“You’re really going to get sick if you don’t eat,” he said.

“I’m just not hungry.”

He finished his juice and got up to fry a couple of eggs. He cracked them on the side of the iron skillet and dropped the contents into the melted bacon fat. He got the bread from the drawer and went over to the table with it.

“Here, I’ll put it in the toaster,” Virginia said. “You watch your… Oh, God.”

“What is it?”

She waved one hand weakly in front of her face.

“A mosquito,” she said with a grimace.

He moved over and, after a moment, crushed it between his two palms.

“Mosquitoes,” she said. “Flies, sand fleas.”

“We are entering the age of the insect,” he said.

“It’s not good,” she said. “They carry diseases. We ought to put a net around Kathy’s bed too.”

“I know, I know,” he said, returning to the stove and tipping the skillet so the hot fat ran over the white egg surfaces. “I keep meaning to.”

“I don’t think that spray works, either,” Virginia said.

“It doesn’t?”

“No.”

“My God, and it’s supposed to be one of the best ones on the market.”

He slid the eggs onto a dish.

“Sure you don’t want some coffee?’ he asked her.

“No, thank you.”

He sat down and she handed him the buttered toast.

“I hope to hell we’re not breeding a race of superbugs,” he said. “You remember that strain of giant grasshoppers they found in Colorado?’

“Yes.”

“Maybe the insects are… What’s the word? Mutating.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it means they’re… changing. Suddenly. Jumping over dozens of small evolutionary steps, maybe developing along lines they might not have followed at all if it weren’t for…”

Silence.

“The bombings?” she said.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Well, they’re causing the dust storms. They’re probably causing a lot of things.”

She sighed wearily and shook her head.

“And they say we won the war,” she said.

“Nobody won it”

“The mosquitoes won it.”

He smiled a little.

“I guess they did,” he said.

They sat there for a few moments without talking and the only sound in the kitchen was the clink of his fork on the plate and the cup on the saucer.

“You looked at Kathy last night?” she asked.

“I just looked at her now. She looks fine.”

“Good.”

She looked at him studiedly.

“I’ve been thinking, Bob,” she said. “Maybe we should send her east to your mother’s until I get better. It may be contagious.”

“We could,” he said dubiously, “but if it’s contagious, my mother’s place wouldn’t be any safer than here.”

“You don’t think so?” she asked. She looked worried.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, hon. I think probably she’s just as safe here. If it starts to get bad on the block, we’ll keep her out of school.”

She started to say something, then stopped.

“All right,” she said.

He looked at his watch.

“I’d better finish up,” he said.

She nodded and he ate the rest of his breakfast quickly. While he was draining the coffee cup she asked him if he had bought a paper the night before.

“It’s in the living room,” he told her.

"Anything new in it?’

“No. Same old stuff. It’s all over the country, a little here, a little there. They haven’t been able to find the germ yet.”

She bit her lower lip.

“Nobody knows what it is?”

“I doubt it. If anybody did they’d have surely said so by now.

“But they must have some idea.”

“Everybody’s got an idea. But they aren’t worth anything.”

“What do they say?”

He shrugged. “Everything from germ warfare on down.”

“Do you think it is?”

“Germ warfare?”

“Yes,” she said.

“The war’s over,” he said.

“Bob,” she said suddenly, “do you think you should go to work?”