"VIRGE!"
The dark form recoiled against the wall as Robert Neville's hoarse cry ripped open the silent blackness.
He jerked his body up from the couch and stared with sleep-clouded eyes across the room, his chest pulsing with heartbeats like maniac fists on a dungeon wall.
He lurched up to his feet, brain still foggy with sleep; unable to define time or place.
"Virge?" he said again, weakly, shakily. "Virge?'
"It--it's me," the faltering voice said in the darkness. He took a trembling step toward the thin stream of light spearing through the open peephole. He blinked dully at the light.
She gasped as he put his hand out and clutched her shoulder.
"It's Ruth. Ruth," she said in a terrified whisper. He stood there rocking slowly in the darkness, eyes gazing without comprehension at the dark form before him.
"It's Ruth," she said again, more loudly. Waking came like a hose blast of numbing shock. Something twisted cold knots into his chest and stomach. It wasn't Virge. He shook his head suddenly, rubbed shaking fingers across his eyes.
Then he stood there staring, weighted beneath a sudden depression.
"Oh," he muttered faintly. "Oh, I--"
He remained there, feeling his body weaving slowly in the dark as the mists cleared from his brain.
He looked at the open peephole, then back at her.
"What are you doing?" he asked, voice still thick with sleep.
"Nothing," she said nervously. "I--couldn't sleep."
He blinked his eyes suddenly at the flaring lamplight. Then his hands dropped down from the lamp switch and he turned around. She was against the wall still, blinking at the light, her hands at her sides drawn into tight fists.
"Why are you dressed?" he asked in a surprised voice. Her throat moved and she stared at him. He rubbed his eyes again and pushed back the long hair from his tem?ples.
"I was--just looking out," she said.
"But why are you dressed?"
"I couldn't sleep."
He stood looking at her, still a little groggy, feeling his heartbeat slowly diminish. Through the open peephole he heard them yelling outside, and he heard Cortman shout, "Come out, Neville!" Moving to the peephole, he pushed the small wooden door shut and turned to her.
"I want to know why you're dressed," he said again.
"No reason," she said.
"Were you going to leave while I was asleep?"
''No, I--"
"Were you?"
She gasped as he grabbed her wrist.
"No, no," she said quickly. "How could I, with them out there?"
He stood breathing heavily, looking at her frightened face. His throat moved slowly as he remembered the shock of waking up and thinking that she was Virge.
Abruptly he dropped her arm and turned away. And he'd thought the past was dead. How long did it take for a past to die?
She said nothing as he poured a tumblerful of whisky and swallowed it convulsively. Virge, Virge, he thought miserably, still with me. He closed his eyes and jammed his teeth together.
"Was that her name?" he heard Ruth ask. His muscles tightened, then went slack.
"It's all right," he said in a dead voice. "Go to bed."
She drew back a little. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean--"
Suddenly he knew he didn't want her to go to bed. He wanted her to stay with him. He didn't know why, he just didn't want to be alone.
"I thought you were my wife," he heard himself saying. "I woke up and I thought--"
He drank a mouthful of whisky, coughing as part of it went down the wrong way. Ruth stayed in the shadows, listening.
"She came back, you see," he said. "I buried her, but one night she came back. She looked like--like you did. An outline, a shadow. Dead. But she came back. I tried to keep her with me. I tried, but she wasn't the same any more--you see. All she wanted was--"
He forced down the sob in his throat.
"My own wife," he said in a trembling voice, "coming back to drink my blood!"
He jammed down the glass on the bar top. Turning away, he paced restlessly to the peephole, turned, and went back and stood again before the bar. Ruth said nothing; she just stood in the darkness, listening.
"I put her away again," he said. "I had to do the same thing to her I'd done to the others. My own wife." There was a clicking in his throat. "A stake," he said in a terrible voice. "I had to put a stake in her. It was the only thing I knew to do. I--"
He couldn't finish. He stood there a long time, shivering helplessly, his eyes tightly shut.
Then he spoke again.
"Almost three years ago I did that. And I still remember it, it's still with me. What can you do? What can you do?" He drove a fist down on the bar top as the anguish of memory swept over him again. "No matter how you try, you can't forget or--or adjust or--ever get away from it!"
He ran shaking fingers through his hair.
"I know what you feel, I know. I didn't at first, I didn't trust you. I was safe, secure in my little shell. Now--He shook his head slowly, defeatedly. "In a second, it's all gone. Adjustment, security, peace--all gone."
"Robert."
Her voice was as broken and lost as his.
"Why were we punished like this?" she asked.
He drew in a shuddering breath.
"I don't know," he answered bitterly. "There's no answer, no reason. It just is."
She was close to him now. And suddenly, without hesitation or drawing back, he drew her against him, and they were two people holding each other tightly in the lost measure of night.
"Robert, Robert."
Her hands rubbed over his back, stroking and clutching, while his arms held her firmly and he pressed his eyes shut against her warm, soft hair.
Their mouths held together for a long time and her arms gripped with desperate tightness around his neck.
Then they were sitting in the darkness, pressing close together, as if all the heat in the world were in their bodies and they would share the warmth between them. He felt the shuddering rise and fall of her breasts as she held close to him, her arms tight around his body, her face against his neck. His big hands moved roughly through her hair, stroking and feeling the silky strands.
"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.