Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

He smiled helplessly.

“What else can I do?” he asked. “We have to eat.”

“I know, but…”

He reached across the table and felt how cold her hand was.

“Honey, it’ll be all right,” he said.

“And you think I should send Kathy to school?”

“I think so,” he said. “Unless the health authorities say schools have to shut down, I don’t see why we should keep her home. She’s not sick.”

“But all the kids at school.”

“I think we’d better, though,” he said.

She made a tiny sound in her throat. Then she said, “All right. If you think so.”

“Is there anything you want before I go?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Now you stay in the house today,” he told her, “and in bed.”

“I will,” she said. “As soon as I send Kathy off.” He patted her hand. Outside, the car horn sounded. He finished the coffee and went to the bathroom to rinse out his mouth. Then he got his jacket from the hall closet and pulled it on.

“Good-by, honey,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Take it easy, now.”

“Good-by,” she said. “Be careful.”

He moved across the lawn, gritting his teeth at the residue of dust in the air. He could smell it as he walked, a dry tickling sensation in his nasal passages.

“Morning,” he said, getting in the car and pulling the door shut behind him.

“Good morning,” said Ben Cortman.

“Dstilled from allium saivum , a genus of Liliaceae comprising garlic, leek, onion, shallot, and chive. Is of pale color and penetrating odor, containing several allyl sulphides. Composition: water, 64.6%; protein, 6.8%; fat, 0.1%; carbohydrates, 26.3%; fiber, 0.8%; ash, 1.4%.”

There it was. He jiggled one of the pink, leathery cloves in his right palm. For seven months now he’d strung them together into aromatic necklaces and hung them outside his house without the remotest idea of why they chased the vampires away. It was time he learned why.

He put the clove on the sink ledge. Leek, onion, shallot, and chive. Would they all work as well as garlic? He’d really feel like a fool if they did, after searching miles around for garlic when onions were everywhere.

He mashed the clove to a pulp and smelled the acrid fluid on the thick cleaver blade.

All right, what now? The past revealed nothing to help him; only talk of insect carriers and virus, and they weren’t the causes. He was sure of it.

The past had brought something else, though; pain at remembering. Every recalled word had been like a knife blade twisting in him. Old wounds had been reopened with every thought of her. He’d finally had to stop, eyes closed, fists clenched, trying desperately to accept the present on its own terms and not yearn with his very flesh for the past. But only enough drinks to stultify all introspection had managed to drive away the enervating sorrow that remembering brought.

He focused his eyes. All right, damn it, he told himself, do something!

He looked at the text again, water—was it that? he asked himself. No, that was ridiculous; all things had water in them. Protein? No. Fat? No. Carbohydrates? No. Fiber? No. Ash? No. What then?

“The characteristic odor and flavor of garlic are due to an essential oil amounting to about 0.2% of the weight, which consists mainly of allyl sulphide and allyl isothicyanate.”

Maybe the answer was there.

Again the book:

“Allyl sulphide may be prepared by heating mustard oil and potassium sulphide at 100 degrees.”

His body thudded down into the living-room chair and a disgusted breath shuddered his long frame. And where the hell do I get mustard oil and potassium sulphide? And the equipment to prepare them in?

That’s great, he railed at himself. The first step, and already you’ve fallen flat on your face.

He pushed himself up disgustedly and headed for the bar. But halfway through pouring a drink he slammed down the bottle. No, by God, he had no intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless, fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.

He checked his watch. Ten-twenty A.M.; still time. He moved to the hallway resolutely and checked through the telephone directories. There was a place in Inglewood.

Four hours later he straightened up from the workbench with a crick in his neck and the allyl sulphide inside a hypodermic syringe, and in himself the first sense of real accomplishment since his forced isolation began.

A little excited, he ran to his car and drove out past the area he’d cleared out and marked with chalked rods. He knew it was more than possible that some vampires might have wandered into the cleared area and were hiding there again. But he had no time for searching.

Parking his car, he went into a house and walked to the bedroom. A young woman lay there, a coating of blood on her mouth.

Flipping her over, Neville pulled up her skirt and injected the allyl sulphide into her soft, fleshy buttock, then turned her over again and stepped back. For a half hour he stood there watching her.

Nothing happened.

This doesn’t make sense, his mind argued. I hang garlic around the house and the vampires stay away. And the characteristic of garlic is the oil I’ve injected in her. But nothing’s happened.

Goddamn it, nothing’s happened!

He flung down the syringe and, trembling with rage and frustration, went home again. Before darkness, he built a small wooden structure on the front lawn and hung strings of onions on it. He spent a listless night, only the knowledge that there was still much left to do keeping him from the liquor.

In the morning he went out and looked at the matchwood on his lawn.

The cross. He held one in his hand, gold and shiny in the morning sun. This, too, drove the vampires away. Why? Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism? There was only one way to find out.

He took the woman from her bed, pretending not to notice the question posed in his mind: Why do you always experiment on women? He didn’t care to admit that the inference had any validity. She just happened to be the first one he’d come across, that was all. What about the man in the living room, though? For God’s sake! he flared back. I’m not going to rape the woman!

Crossing your fingers, Neville? Knocking on wood?

He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien. Once he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic.

Makes a good excuse, doesn’t it, Neville? Oh, shut up.

But he wouldn’t let himself pass the afternoon near her. After binding her to a chair, he secluded himself in the garage and puttered around with the car. She was wearing a torn black dress and too much was visible as she breathed. Out of sight, out of mind…. It was a lie, he knew, but he wouldn’t admit it.

At last, mercifully, night came. He locked the garage door, went back to the house, and locked the front door, putting the heavy bar across it. Then he made a drink and sat down on the couch across from the woman.

From the ceiling, right before her face, hung the cross. At six-thirty her eyes opened. Suddenly, like the eyes of a sleeper who has a definite job to do upon awakening; who does not move into consciousness with a vague entry, but with a single, clear-cut motion, knowing just what is to be done.

Then she saw the cross and she jerked her eyes from it with a sudden raffling gasp and her body twisted in the chair.

“Why are you afraid of it?” he asked, startled at the sound of his own voice after so long.