"I'm sorry, Ruth."
"Sorry?"
"For being so cruel to you, for not trusting you."
She was silent, holding tight.
"Oh, Robert," she said then, "it's so unfair. So unfair. Why are we still alive? Why aren't we all dead? It would be better if we were all dead."
"Shhh, shhh," he said, feeling emotion for her like a released current pouring from his heart and mind. "It'll be all right."
He felt her shaking her head slowly against him.
"It will, it will," he said.
"How can it?"
"It will," he said, even though he knew he really couldn't believe it, even though he knew it was only released tension forming words in his mind.
"No," she said. "No."
"Yes, it will. It will, Ruth."
He didn't know how long it was they sat there holding each other close. He forgot everything, time and place; it was just the two of them together, needing each other, survivors of a black terror embracing because they had found each other.
But then he wanted to do something for her, to help her.
"Come," he said. "We'll check you."
She stiffened in his arms.
"No, no," he said quickly. "Don't be afraid. I'm sure we won't find anything. But if we do, I'll cure you. I swear I'll cure you, Ruth."
She was looking at him in the darkness, not saying a word. He stood and pulled her up with him, trembling with an excitement he hadn't felt in endless years. He wanted to cure her, to help her.
"Let me," he said. "I won't hurt you. I promise I won't. Let's know--Let's find out for sure. Then we can plan and work. I'll save you, Ruth. I will. Or I'll die myself."
She was still tense, holding back.
"Come with me, Ruth."
Now that the strength of his reserve had gone, there was nothing left to brace himself on, and he was shaking like a palsied man.
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, try?ing 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 infected. 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.
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 convulsively as night filled his brain.
Chapter Nineteen
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 gray 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 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 organized, 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.
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 defebrinated 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 security 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.