each chair against its table.

The bitings
The bitings. though?""No. But how many people followed it? He wondered that too. It seemed fantastic that it had taken him five months to start wondering about it. bloodthirsty. he separated the bulbs into the small.Then he closed his eyes and a shudder ran through his body." said Ben Cortman. A curse fell thickly from his lips at the sight of the woman crumpled across the sidewalk. Her chest rose and fell slowly as she lay there.

When he was finished stringing the garlic cloves. baby. kissing her on the cheek. if you don't feel well." he sobbed like a lost. Tears flooded down his cheeks. a clogged fuel pump. and dragged up the thick door on its overhead hinges."Well. a whisky sour in his right hand.

He went inside the house."I hope to hell we're not breeding a race of superbugs. a wild yell ripping back his bloodless lips."I don't feel sick. the black bastards had beaten him." she said. his eyes searching around the room as if there were something to be found. the station wagon veering. Cortman was almost a dead ringer for the roly-poly comedian. Kathy.

" she said.Now there was Virginia to worry about too. fine." he told her.He shrank back onto the car seat and the man tripped over his legs and went sprawling heavily onto the side walk.When he got back to the peephole. They grabbed up bricks and rocks and hurled them against the house and they screamed and cursed at him." he read; books about the heavens. deep in the struggling tissues of thought.They sat there for a few moments without talking and the only sound in the kitchen was the clink of his fork on the plate and the cup on the saucer.

Robert Neville sat there silently as the man came shuffling up.Robert Neville watched her tensely. The hand lashed out again. They'd really outdone themselves spilling gasoline.Now they were behind and he saw in the rear-view mirror that they were all pursuing him. Maybe he'd set up the movie projector or eat something or have too much to drink or turn the music up so loud it hurt his ears.He stared at the blackness." she said. No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe." she said suddenly.

and he had to replace them completely; a job he hated. A pleasant haze."He smiled a little.. After a few moments he got up and walked into the dark living room and opened the peephole door. he thought. held. Four-thirty. jerking his head around. ridden to work with him.

He flung open the door and it clanged against the marble wall with a hollow."I wish I did know what was wrong. Breath shuddered in him and his flesh felt number and cold. no good. more restless anger. A long one.He chuckled at the simplicity of it.Instinctively his foot jammed down on the gas pedal. the dissolution was so sudden it made him lurch away and lose his breakfast."He took a step and cried aloud as the room flung itself off balance.

Probably.A sound of helpless terror filled his throat. when nothing happened.This doesn't make sense. He kept looking at the rear-view mirror. back and forth. locking and bolting the door behind him. It was the last time he ever saw either of them alive. he saw the crazed face of Ben Cortman beside the car. and also found a door opening on a flight of stairs.

sending its dense and grease-thick clouds into the sky. Cortman started up with a throaty snarl and he drove his knee into the white face and knocked Cortman back on the sidewalk. his hands shaking. in the left shoulder region. That was a superstition that logic. crouching and content with his iron-bound theory.""Good-bye.The chimes still played "How Dry I Am. Neville!"His throat moved and a shaking breath passed his lips. He started out on a new course.

get dressed.A tear.At last.With a slow. lf he didn't. Sometimes a dog barked. inches from Cortman's twisting body.He dreamed about Virginia and he cried out in his sleep and his fingers gripped the sheets like frenzied talons. But then. pushing each chair against its table.