Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

And what now? What did the future hold for him? In a week would she still be here with him, or crumpled in the never cooling fire?

He knew that, if she were infected, he’d have to try to cure her whether it worked or not. But what if she were free of the bacillus? In a way, that was a more nerve-racking possibility. The other way he would merely go on as before, breaking neither schedule nor standards. But if she stayed, if they had to establish a relationship, perhaps become husband and wife, have children—

Yes, that was more terrifying.

He suddenly realized that he had become an ill-tempered and inveterate bachelor again. He no longer thought about his wife, his child, his past life. The present was enough. And he was afraid of the possible demand that he make sacrifices and accept responsibility again. He was afraid of giving out his heart, of removing the chains he had forged around it to keep emotion prisoner. He was afraid of loving again.

When she came out of the bathroom he was still sitting there, thinking. The record player, unnoticed by him, let out only a thin scratching sound.

Ruth lifted the record from the turntable and turned it. The third movement of the symphony began.

“Well, what about Cortman?” she asked, sitting down.

He looked at her blankly. “Cortman?”

“You were going to tell me something about him and the cross.”

“Oh. Well, one night I got him in here and showed him the cross.”

“What happened?”

Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?

His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.

Well, he wasn’t that far gone yet, he thought. I’m a man, not a destroyer.

“What’s wrong?” she said nervously.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said coldly. “I—I’m just thinking.”

She didn’t say any more. She drank her wine and he saw her hand shake as she held the glass. He forced down all introspection. He didn’t want her to know what he felt.

“When I showed him the cross,” he said, “he laughed in my face.”

She nodded once.

“But when I held a torah before his eyes, I got the reaction I wanted.”

“A what?”

“A torah. Tablet of law, I believe it is.”

“And that—got a reaction?”

“Yes. I had him tied up, but when he saw the torah he broke loose and attacked me.”

“What happened?” She seemed to have lost her fright again.

“He struck me on the head with something. I don’t remember what. I was almost knocked out. But, using the torah, I backed him to the door and got rid of him.”

“So you see, the cross hasn’t the power the legend says it has. My theory is that, since the legend came into its own in Europe, a continent predominantly Catholic, the cross would naturally become the symbol of defense against powers of darkness.”

“Couldn’t you use your gun on Cortman?” she asked.

“How do you know I had a gun?”

“I—assumed as much,” she said. “We had guns.”

“Then you must know bullets have no effect on vampires.

“We were… never sure,” she said, then went on quickly: “Do you know why that’s so? Why don’t bullets affect them?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

They sat in silence listening to the music.

He did know, but, doubting again, he didn’t want to tell her.

Through experiments on the dead vampires he had discovered that the bacilli effected the creation of a powerful body glue that sealed bullet openings as soon as they were made. Bullets were enclosed almost immediately, and since the system was activated by germs, a bullet couldn’t hurt it. The system could, in fact, contain almost an indefinite amount of bullets, since the body glue prevented a penetration of more than a few fractions of an inch. Shooting vampires was like throwing pebbles into tar.

As he sat looking at her, she arranged the folds of the robe around her legs and he got a momentary glimpse of brown thigh. Far from being attracted, he felt irritated. It was a typical feminine gesture, he thought, an artificial movement.

As the moments passed he could almost sense himself drifting farther and farther from her. In a way he almost regretted having found her at all. Through the years he had achieved a certain degree of peace. He had accepted solitude, found it not half bad. Now this—ending it all.

In order to fill the emptiness of the moment, he reached for his pipe and pouch. He stuffed tobacco into the bowl and lit it. For a second he wondered if he should ask if she minded. He didn’t ask.

The music ended. She got up and he watched her while she looked through his records. She seemed like a young girl, she was so slender. Who is she? he thought. Who is she really?

“May I play this?” she asked, holding up an album.

He didn’t even look at it. “If you like,” he said.

She sat down as Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto began. Her taste isn’t remarkably advanced, he thought, looking at her without expression.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

Another typical feminine question, he thought. Then he berated himself for being so critical. What was the point in irritating himself by doubting her?

“Nothing to tell,” he said.

She was smiling again. Was she laughing at him?

“You scared the life out of me this afternoon,” she said. “You and your bristly beard. And those wild eyes.”

He blew out smoke. Wild eyes? That was ridiculous. What was she trying to do? Break down his reserve with cuteness?

“What do you look like under all those whiskers?” she asked.

He tried to smile at her but he couldn’t.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just an ordinary face.”

“How old are you, Robert?”

His throat moved. It was the first time she’d spoken his name. It gave him a strange, restless feeling to hear a woman speak his name after so long. Don’t call me that, he almost said to her. He didn’t want to lose the distance between them. If she were infected and he couldn’t cure her, he wanted it to be a stranger that he put away.

She turned her head away.

“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” she said quietly. “I won’t bother you. I’ll go tomorrow.”

His chest muscles tightened.

“But…” he said.

“I don’t want to spoil your life,” she said. “You don’t have to feel any obligation to me just because—we’re the only ones left.”

His eyes were bleak as he looked at her, and he felt a brief stirring of guilt at her words. Why should I doubt her? he told himself. If she’s infected, she’ll never get away alive. What’s there to fear?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I—I have been alone a long time.”

She didn’t look up.

“If you’d like to talk,” he said, “I’ll be glad to—tell you anything I can.”

She hesitated a moment. Then she looked at him, her eyes not committing themselves at all.

“I would like to know about the disease,” she said. “I lost my two girls because of it. And it caused my husband’s death.”

He looked at her and then spoke.

“It’s a bacillus,” he said, “a cylindrical bacterium. It creates an isotonic solution in the blood, circulates the blood slower than normal, activates all bodily functions, lives on fresh blood, and provides energy. Deprived of blood, it makes self-killing bacteriophages or else sporulates.”

She looked blank. He realized then that she couldn’t have understood. Terms so common to him now were completely foreign to her.

“Well,” he said, “most of those things aren’t so important. To sporulate is to create an oval body that has all the basic ingredients of the vegetative bacterium. The germ does that when it gets no fresh blood. Then, when the vampire host decomposes, these spores go flying out and seek new hosts. They find one, germinate—and one more system is infected.”