I am Legend

richard matheson

He led her into the bedroom. And when he saw in the lamplight how
frightened she was, he pulled her close and stroked her hair.

“It’s all right,” he said. “All right, Ruth. No matter what we find, it’ll
be all right. Don’t you understand?”

He sat her down on the stool and her face was completely blank, her
body shuddering as he heated the needle over a Bunsen flame.

He bent over and kissed her on the cheek.
“It’s all right now,” he said gently. “It’s all right.”
She closed her eyes as he jabbed in the needle. He could feel the pain
in his own finger as he pressed out blood and rubbed it on the slide.
“There. There,” he said anxiously, pressing a little cotton to the nick
on her finger. He felt himself trembling helplessly. No matter how he
tried to control it, he couldn’t. His fingers were almost incapable of
making the slide, and he kept looking at Ruth and smiling at her, trying
to take the look of taut fright from her features.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Please don’t. I’ll cure you if you’re in-
fected. I will Ruth, I will.”
She sat without a word, looking at him with listless eyes as he worked.
Her hands kept stirring restlessly in her lap.
“What will you do if–if I am,” she said then.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Not yet. But there are a lot of things we can do.”
“What?”
“Vaccines, for one.”
“You said vaccines didn’t work,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
“Yes, but–” He broke off as he slid the glass slide onto the microscope.
“Robert, what could you do?”
She slid off the stool as he bent over the microscope.
“Robert, don’t look!” she begged suddenly, her voice pleading.
But he’d already seen.
He didn’t realize that his breath had stopped. His blank eyes met hers.
“Ruth,” he whispered in a shocked voice.
The wooden mallet crashed down on his forehead.

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A burst of pain filled Robert Neville’s head and he felt one leg give
way. As he fell to one side he knocked over the microscope. His right
knee hit the floor and he looked up in dazed bewilderment at her fright-
twisted face. The mallet came down again and he cried out in pain. He
fell to both knees and his palms struck the floor as he toppled forward.
A hundred miles away he heard her gasping sob.

“Ruth,” he mumbled.
“I told you not to!” she cried.
He clutched out at her legs and she drove the mallet down a third
time, this time on the back of his skull.
“Ruth!”
Robert Neville’s hands went limp and slid off her calves, rubbing
away part of the tan. He fell on his face and his fingers drew in convul-
sively as night filled his brain.

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Chapter 19

WHEN HE OPENED HIS eyes there was no sound in the house.
He lay there a moment looking confusedly at the floor. Then, with a

startled grunt, he sat up. A package of needles exploded in his head and
he slumped down on the cold floor, hands pressed to his throbbing skull.
A clicking sound filled his throat as he lay there.

After a few minutes he pulled himself up slowly by gripping the edge
of the bench. The floor undulated beneath him as he held on tightly,
eyes closed, legs wavering.

A minute later he managed to stumble into the bathroom. There he
threw cold water in his face and sat on the bathtub edge pressing a cold,
wet cloth to his forehead.

What had happened? He kept blinking and staring at the white-tiled floor.
He stood up and walked slowly into the living room. It was empty. The
front door stood half open in the gravy of early morning. She was gone.
Then he remembered. He struggled back to the bedroom, using the
walls to guide him.
The note was on the bench next to the overturned microscope. He
picked up the paper with numbed fingers and carried it to the bed.
Sinking down with a groan, he held the letter before his eyes. But the

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letters blurred and ran. He shook his head and pressed his eyes shut.
After a little while he read:

Robert:
Now you know. Know that I was spying on you, know that almost
everything I told you was a lie.
I’m writing this note, though, because I want to save you if I
can.
When I was first given the job of spying on you, I had no feelings
about your life. Because I did have a husband, Robert. You killed
him.
But now it’s different. I know now that you were just as much
forced into your situation as we were forced into ours. We are
infected. But you already know that. What you don’t understand
yet is that we’re going to stay alive. We’ve found a way to do that
and we’re going to set up society again slowly but surely. We’re
going to do away with all those wretched creatures whom death
has cheated. And, even though I pray otherwise, we may decide to
kill you and those like you.

Those like me? he thought with a start. But he kept reading.

I’ll try to save you. I’ll tell them you’re too well armed for us to
attack now. Use the time I’m giving you, Robert! Get away from
your house, go into the mountains and save yourself. There are
only a handful of us now. But sooner or later we’ll be too well or-
ganized, and nothing I say will stop the rest from destroying you.
For God’s sake, Robert, go now, while you can!

I know you may not believe this. You may not believe that we
can live in the sun for short periods now. You may not believe that
my tan was only make-up. You may not believe that we can live
with the germ now.

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That’s why I’m leaving one of my pills.
I took them all the time I was here. I kept them in a belt around
my waist. You’ll discover that they’re a combination of defibril-
lated blood and a drug. I don’t know myself just what it is. The
blood feeds the germs, the drug prevents its multiplication. It was
the discovery of this pill that saved us from dying, that is helping
to set up society again slowly.
Believe me, it’s true. And escape!
Forgive me, too. I didn’t mean to hit you, it nearly killed me to
do it. But I was so terribly frightened of what you’d do when you
found out.
Forgive me for having to lie to you about so many things. But
please believe this: When we were together in the darkness, close
to each other, I wasn’t spying on you. I was loving you.
Ruth

He read the letter again. Then his hands fell forward and he sat there
staring with empty eyes at the floor. He couldn’t believe it. He shook his
head slowly and tried to understand, but adjustment eluded him.

He walked unsteadily to the bench. He picked up the small amber
pill and held it in his palm, smelled it, tasted it. He felt as if all the se-
curity of mason were ebbing away from him. The framework of his life
was collapsing and it frightened him.

Yet how did he refute the evidence? The pill, the tan coming off her
leg, her walking in the sun, her reaction to garlic.

He sank down on the stool and looked at the mallet lying on the
floor. Slowly, ploddingly, his mind went over the evidence.

When he’d first seen her she’d run from him. Had it been a ruse? No,
she’d been genuinely frightened. She must have been startled by his cry,
then, even though she’d been expecting it, and forgotten all about her
job. Then later, when she’d calmed down, she’d talked him into thinking
that her reaction to garlic was the reaction of a sick stomach. And she

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