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PART I: January 1976

Chapter One

ON THOSE CLOUDY DAYS, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset caet back

If he had been ht have calculated the approximate time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetihtfall by the sky, and on cloudy days that method didn't work That hy he chose to stay near the house on those days

He walked around the house in the dull gray of afternoon, a cigarette dangling fro threadlike smoke over his shoulder He checked eachto see if any of the boards had been loosened After violent attacks, the planks were often split or partially pried off, and he had to replace them completely; a job he hated Today only one plank was loose Isn't that aht

In the back yard he checked the hothouse and the water tank Soht be weakened or its rain catchers bent or broken off Soh fence around the hothouse, and occasionally they would tear through the overhead net and he'd have to replace panes

Both the tank and the hothouse were undaed today He went to the house for a hammer and nails As he pushed open the front door, he looked at the distorted reflection of himself in the cracked o In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass would start to fall off Let 'eht It was the last daarlic there instead Garlic alorked

He passed slowly through the di rooain into his bedroom

Once the room had been warmly decorated, but that was in another time Noas a room entirely functional, and since Neville's bed and bureau took up so little space, he had converted one side of the room into a shop

A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy band saood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise Above it, on the wall, were haphazard racks of the tools that Robert Nèville used

He took a hammer from the bench and picked out a few nails from one of the disordered bins Then he went back outside and nailed the plank fast to the shutter The unused nails he threw into the rubble next door

For a while he stood on the front lawn looking up and down the silent length of Cilish-Ger, deterht blue of his eyes, which moved now over the charred ruins of the houses on each side of his He'd burned the on his roof from the adjacent ones

After a few , slow breath and went back into the house He tossed the haarette and had hisdrink

Later he forced hirind up the five-day accue in the sink He knew he should burn up the paper plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash out the sinks and the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets and pillowcase on his bed; but he didn't feel like it

For he was a s had no importance to him

It was al a basketful of garlic

In the beginning it had arlic in such quantity his stomach had been in a state of constant turmoil Now the smell was in his house and in his clothes, and soht it was even in his flesh

He hardly noticed it at all

When he had enough bulbs, he went back to the house and dumped them on the drainboard of the sink As he flicked the wall switch, the light flickered, then flared into norusted hiss passed his clenched teeth The generator was at it again He'd have to get out that da And, if it were too enerator

Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat doith an exhausted grunt

First, be separated the bulbs into the small, sickle-shaped cloves Then he cut each pink, leathery clove in half, exposing the fleshy center buds The air thickened with the ot too oppressive, he snapped on the air-conditioning unit and suction dreay the worst of it

Now he reached over and took an icepick from its wall rack He punched holes in each clove half, then strung theether ire until he had about twenty-five necklaces

In the beginning he had hung these necklaces over the s But from a distance they'd thrown rocks until he'd been forced to cover the broken panes with plywood scraps Finally one day he'd torn off the plywood and nailed up even rows of planks instead It had loo into his roolass And, once he had installed the three air-conditioning units, it wasn't too bad Aif he had to