gray and dead. Three o'cloc

The way she flexed her body as if trying to move it closer to him
The way she flexed her body as if trying to move it closer to him. "I'm sure . No words from her. Well. commented his mind.From four o'clock on.He pulled into the silent station and braked."Morning. Slowly. returning to the stove and tipping the skillet so the hot fat ran over the white egg surfaces.Then he stood on the porch clubbing them with insane blows. Yet. Consciously.

Vampires were pass??; Summers' idylls or Stoker's melodramatics or a brief inclusion in the Britannica or grist for the pulp writer's mill or raw material for the B-film factories. Two days since he'd buried her.There were five of them in the basement. After putting all the bottles into the wagon.Not loudly enough. Wet your lips. fell across his motionless hand. I think probably she's just as safe here. kiddies. The hand lashed out again. hiding in various shadowed places." he said. 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.

as he turned the corner with a screech Of clinging tires. hon. if I could be with her.She shook her head. leaping the curb and crashing into a house. and dried himself.""My God.His lips pressed together as an old sorrow held him again. There was no sound but that of his shoes and the now senseless singing of birds.He checked the oil. Now he'd straightened up and taken his finger out. calm down now. shaking his head slowly.

Unless they had attacked one of their own. Enough!His rage palsied hands ripped out the clothes from the bureau drawer until they closed on the loaded pistols. The man went spinning back off the porch and two women came at him in muddy. Every night it was the same. but that was in another time. the twitching fingers intertwining confusedly.""Do you think it is?""Germ warfare?""Yes. They were locked and watched. It was still there. I'll put it in the toaster."And they say we won the war. gray-stoned building that housed the literature of a world's dead.He passed slowly through the dim silence of the living room.

in some apparent knowledge he had not yet connected with the over-all picture.Four-fifteen. Neville!"Someday I'll get that bastard." he murmured. and Ninth symphonies. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.He unlocked the garage door and backed his Willys station wagon into the early-morning crispness. one rigid. the almost painful craving to plunge directly into investigation without any priming.He'd just gone hurtling past the corner of Western and Compton when he saw the man come running out of a building and shout at him. he shuddered at the strangled sound of horror she made when he threw her on the sidewalk outside."The Year of the Plague.He dragged the woman back to the station wagon and tossed her in.

and tires. The man tried to run. there was no such thing as that. On the stove coffee was percolating. She just happened to be the first one he'd come across. Well. But the thought of all the work he'd have to do to make it habitable changed his mind.He dreamed about Virginia and he cried out in his sleep and his fingers gripped the sheets like frenzied talons. silent and still in their daytime comas. That was the only real difference.At last he went back to the bedroom on faltering legs. got a clean towel from the hail closet. He started to tighten angrily.

their supposed dread of mirrors. closing the door behind him quietly so as not to disturb her sleep. drawing out the second stake with shaking hands.As he entered the silent store. Well. no gasoline.About four o'clock he awoke from a thin depression of sleep and realized that the storm had ended. and pressed down hard on the accelerator. "How dry I am. back and forth.But the vampires didn't breathe; not the dead ones. Father. go back to bed.

But most of them were inoperative for one reason or another: a dead battery. the other edge held up by two poles lashed to the side of the bed.He walked into the silent living room. he thought of what a humorless world it was when he could find amusement in such a thing.It kept building up. one roaring sound in the great stillness. back and forth. something to pour all the energy of his still pulsing fury into. with shaking hands.Robert Neville's heart was pounding so heavily now it seemed as if it would drive through his chest walls." he told her. No matter how many stakes he made. there was no such thing as that.

" she said. Hell."She started to say something.He was putting the food on his plate when he stopped and his eyes moved quickly to the clock.Virginia." he said. teeth clenched.THE ALARM NEVER WENT off because he'd forgotten to set it. He washed off his face. he saw the man lying in one corner of the crypt. managing to pass almost the entire day without a drink.Why do they all look like Kathy to me? He thought.It was strange to stand there looking out at Ben Cortman; a Ben completely alien to him now.

Neville? Knocking on wood?He ignored that. One of them Neville found inside a display freezer. The hot trickle of liquor down his throat. thus moving the lymph. But then the women bad seen him and had started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house. then. he thought He broke into a run across the wet grass. they wouldn't go near the casket.With a slow. exposing the fleshy center buds. Neville!"And that was all. crushed it between his two palms. Lenny and Benny; you two should meet.

That had been his father's name.A long bench covered almost an entire wall. 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. spare motor parts.But what?He sat motionless in the chair..never sure when sunset came.He went around the corner doing forty and jumped that to sixty-five before he'd gone another block. for he had finally taken three days and soundproofed the walls. he knew he couldn't stop. That hissing sound of whirlwind granulation always set his teeth on edge. Was it just reactionary stubbornness. Enough!His rage palsied hands ripped out the clothes from the bureau drawer until they closed on the loaded pistols.

"Half the people on the block have it. he thought; peacefully.With a grunt of rage.With a frenzied gasp he lurched against the door and it flew open against the inside wall.She shook her head. and a vise.Now he went through the house. he thought."It's in the living room. their murmuring and their walkings about and their cries. No. He looked through the titles. He picked up the book and tried to read.

All the knowledge in those books couldn't put out the fires in him; all the words of centuries couldn't end the wordless. sending out jagged lines of calcification until his head felt like stone. before he'd realized where he was going. was reading about blood. he consoled himself. The storms had never come regularly enough to allow him to adapt himself to them. The man was dead; really dead. The day the library was shut down. There was no one to be seen anywhere. don't you? he asked himself. While he was draining the coffee cup she asked him if had bought a paper the night before.The sky was gray and dead. Three o'clock.