Because if she were like the others, there was only one course open. And it was better not to know anything about the people you killed.
His hands twitched at his sides, his blue eyes gazed flatly at her. What if it had been a freak occurrence? What if she had snapped out of coma for a little while and gone wandering? It seemed possible. And yet, as far as he knew, daylight was the one thing the germ could not endure. Why wasn’t that enough to convince him she was normal?
Well, there was only one way to make sure.
He bent over and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Wake up,” he said.
She didn’t stir. His mouth tightened and his fingers drew in on her soft shoulder.
Then he noticed the thin golden chain around her throat. Reaching in with rough fingers, he drew it out of the bosom of her dress.
He was looking at the tiny gold cross when she woke up and recoiled into the pillow. She’s not in coma; that was all he thought.
“What are you d-doing?” she asked faintly.
It was harder to distrust her when she spoke. The sound of the human voice was so strange to him that it had a power over him it had never had before.
“I’m — nothing,” he said.
Awkwardly he stepped back and leaned against the wall. He looked at her a moment longer. Then he asked, “Where are you from?”
She lay there looking blankly at him.
“I asked you where you were from,” he said. Again she said nothing. He pushed himself away from the wall with a tight look on his face.
“Ing — Inglewood,” she said hastily.
He looked at her coldly for a moment, then leaned back against the wall.
“I see,” he said. “Did — did you live alone?”
“I was married.”
“Where is your husband?”
Her throat moved. “He’s dead.”
“For how long?”
“Last week.”
“And what did you do after he died?”
“Ran.” She bit into her lower lip. “I ran away.”
“You mean you’ve been wandering all this time?”
“Y–yes.”
He looked at her without a word. Then abruptly he turned and his boots thumped loudly as he walked into the kitchen. Pulling open a cabinet door, he drew down a handful of garlic cloves. He put them on a dish, tore them into pieces, and mashed them to a pulp. The acrid fumes assailed his nostrils.
She was propped up on one elbow when he came back. Without hesitation he pushed the dish almost to her face.
She turned her head away with a faint cry.
“What are you doing?” she asked, and coughed once.
“Why do you turn away?”
“Please–”
“Why do you turn away?”
“It smells!” Her voice broke into a sob. “Don’t! You’re making me sick!”
He pushed the plate still closer to her face. With a gagging sound she backed away and pressed against the wall, her legs drawn up on the bed.
“Stop it! Please!" she begged.
He drew back the dish and watched her body twitching as her stomach convulsed.
“You’re one of them,” he said to her, quietly venomous.
She sat up suddenly and ran past him into the bathroom. The door slammed behind her and he could hear the sound of her terrible retching.
Thin-lipped, he put the dish down on the bedside table. His throat moved as he swallowed.
Infected. It had been a clear sign. He had learned over a year before that garlic was an allergen to any system infected with the vampiris bacillus. When the system was exposed to garlic, the stimulated tissues sensitized the cells, causing an abnormal reaction to any further contact with garlic. That was why putting it into their veins had accomplished little. They had to be exposed to the odor.
He sank down on the bed. And the woman had reacted in the wrong way.
After a moment Robert Neville frowned. If what she had said was true, she’d been wandering around for a week. She would naturally be exhausted and weak, and under those conditions the smell of so much garlic could have made her retch.
His fists thudded down onto the mattress. He still didn’t know, then, not for certain. And, objectively, he knew he had no right to decide on inadequate evidence. It was something he’d learned the hard way, something he knew and believed absolutely.
He was still sitting there when she unlocked the bathroom door and came out. She stood in the hall a moment looking at him, then went into the living room. He rose and followed. When he came into the living room she was sitting on the couch.
“Are you satisfied?” she asked.
“Never mind that,” he said. “You’re on trial, not me.”
She looked up angrily as if she meant to say something. Then her body slumped and she shook her head. He felt a twinge of sympathy for a moment. She looked so helpless, her thin hands resting on her lap. She didn’t seem to care any more about her torn dress. He looked at the slight swelling of her breast.
Her figure was very slim, almost curveless. Not at all like the woman he’d used to envision. Never mind that, he told himself, that doesn’t matter any more.
He sat down in the chair and looked across at her. She didn’t return his gaze.
“Listen to me,” he said then. “I have every reason to suspect you of being infected. Especially now that you’ve reacted in such a way to garlic.”
She said nothing.
“Haven’t you anything to say?” he asked.
She raised her eyes.
“You think I’m one of them,” she said.
“I think you might be.”
“And what about this?” she asked, holding up her cross.
“That means nothing,” he said.
“I’m awake,” she said. “I’m not in a coma.”
He said nothing. It was something he couldn’t argue with, even though it didn’t assuage doubt.
“I’ve been in Inglewood many times,” he said finally, “Why didn’t you hear my car?”
“Inglewood is a big place,” she said.
He looked at her carefully, his fingers tapping on the arm of the chair.
“I’d — like to believe you,” he said.
“Would you?” she asked. Another stomach contraction hit her and she bent over with a gasp, teeth clenched. Robert Neville sat there wondering why he didn’t feel more compassion for her. Emotion was a difficult thing to summon from the dead, though. He had spent it all and felt hollow now, without feeling.
After a moment she looked up. Her eyes were hard.
“I’ve had a weak stomach all my life,” she said. “I saw my husband killed last week. Torn to pieces. Right in front of my eyes I saw it. I lost two children to the plague. And for the past week I’ve been wandering all over. Hiding at night, not eating more than a few scraps of food. Sick with fear, unable to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. Then I hear someone shout at me.
You chase me over a field, hit me, drag me to your house. Then when I get sick because you shove a plate of reeking garlic in my face, you tell me I’m infected!”
Her hands twitched in her lap. “What do you expect to happen?” she said angrily.
She slumped back against the couch back and closed her eyes. Her hands picked nervously at her skirt. For a moment she tried to tuck in the torn piece, but it fell down again and she sobbed angrily.
He leaned forward in the chair. He was beginning to feel guilty now, in spite of suspicions and doubts. He couldn’t help it. He had forgotten about sobbing women. He raised a hand slowly to his beard and plucked confusedly as he watched her.
“Would . . .“ he started. He swallowed. “Would you let me take a sample of your blood?” he asked. “I could–”
She stood up suddenly and stumbled toward the door.
He got up quickly.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her hands fumbled, awkwardly with the lock.
“You can’t go out there,” he said, surprised. “The street will be full of them in a little while.”
“I’m not staying here,” she sobbed. “What’s the difference if they kill me?”
His hands closed over her arm. She tried to pull away. “Leave me alone!” she cried. “I didn’t ask to come here. You dragged me here. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
He stood by her awkwardly, not knowing what to say.
“You can’t go out,” he said again.
He led her back to the couch. Then he went and got her a small tumbler of whisky at the bar. Never mind whether she’s infected or not, he thought, never mind.
He handed her the tumbler. She shook her head.
“Drink it,” he said. “It’ll calm you down.”
She looked up angrily. “So you can shove more garlic in my face?”
He shook his head.
“Drink it now,” he said.
After a few moments she took the glass and took a sip of the whisky. It made her cough. She put the tumbler on the arm of the couch and a deep breath shook her body.
“Why do you want me to stay?” she asked unhappily.
He looked at her without a definite answer in his mind. Then he said, “Even if you are infected, I can’t let you go out there. You don’t know what they’d do to you.”
Her eyes closed. “I don’t care,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
“I don’t understand it,” he told her over supper. “Almost three years now, and still there are some of them alive. Food supplies are ‘being used up. As far as I know, they still lie in a coma during the day.” He shook his head. “But they’re not dead. Three years and they’re not dead. What keeps them going?”
She was wearing his bathrobe. About five she had relented, taken a bath, and changed. Her slender body was shapeless in the voluminous terry-cloth folds. She’d borrowed his comb and drawn her hair back into a pony tail fastened with a piece of twine.
Ruth fingered her coffee cup.
“We used to see them sometimes,” she said. “We were afraid to go near them, though. We didn’t think we should touch them.”
“Didn’t you know they’d come back after they died?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Didn’t you wonder about the people who attacked your house at night?”
“It never entered our minds that they were–” She shook her head slowly. “It’s hard to believe something like that.”
“I suppose,” he said.
He glanced at her as they sat eating silently. It was hard too to believe that here was a normal woman. Hard to believe that, after all these years, a companion had come. It was more than just doubting her. It was doubting that anything so remarkable could happen in such a lost world.
“Tell me more about them,” Ruth said.
He got up and took the coffeepot off the stove. He poured more into her cup, into his, then replaced the pot and sat down.
“How do you feel now?” he asked her.
“I feel better, thank you.”
He nodded and spooned sugar into his coffee. He felt her eyes on him as he stirred. What’s she thinking? he wondered. He took a deep breath, wondering why the tightness in him didn’t break. For a while he’d thought that he trusted her. Now he wasn’t sure.
“You still don’t trust me,” she said, seeming to read his mind.
He looked up quickly, then shrugged.
“It’s — not that,” he said.
“Of course it is,” she said quietly. She sighed. “Oh, very well. If you have to check my blood, check it.”
He looked at her suspiciously, his mind questioning: Is it a trick? He hid the movement of his throat in swallowing coffee. It was stupid, he thought, to be so suspicious.
He put down the cup.
“Good,” he said. “Very good.”
He looked at her as she stared into the coffee.
“If you are infected,” he told her, “I’ll do everything I can to cure you.”
Her eyes met his. “And if you can’t?” she said.
Silence a moment.
“Let’s wait and see,” he said then.
They both drank coffee. Then he asked, “Shall we do it now?”
“Please,” she said, “in the morning. I — still feel a little ill.”
“All right,” he said, nodding. “In the morning.”
They finished their meal in silence. Neville felt only a small satisfaction that she was going to let him check her blood. He was afraid he might discover that she was infected. In the meantime he had to pass an evening and a night with her, perhaps get to know her and be attracted to her. When in the morning he might have to–
Later, in the living room, they sat looking at the mural, sipping port, and listening to Schubert’s Fourth Symphony.
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said, seeming to cheer up. “I never thought I’d be listening to music again. Drinking wine.”
She looked around the room.
“You’ve certainly done a wonderful job,” she said.
“What about your house?’ he asked.
“It was nothing like this,” she said. “We didn’t have a–”
“How did you protect your house?” he interrupted.
“Oh.–” She thought a moment. “We had it boarded up, of course. And we used crosses.”
“They don’t always work,” he said quietly, after a moment of looking at her.
She looked blank. “They don’t?”
“Why should a Jew fear the cross?” he said. “Why should a vampire who had been a Jew fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of them suffer from hysterical blindness before mirrors. But as far as the cross goes-well, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross.”
She sat holding her wineglass and looking at him with expressionless eyes.