"Richard Matheson - I Am Legend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Matheson Richard)

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I Am Legend
by
RICHARD MATHESON



PART I: January 1976

Chapter One



ON THOSE CLOUDY DAYS, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and
sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

If he had been more analytical, he might have calculated the approximate
time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetime habit of judging
nightfall by the sky, and on cloudy days that method didnтАЩt work. That was
why he chose to stay near the house on those days.

He walked around the house in the dull gray of afternoon, a cigarette
dangling from the corner of his mouth, trailing threadlike smoke over his
shoulder. He checked each window to 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. IsnтАЩt that amazing? he thought.

In the back yard he checked the hothouse and the water tank. Sometimes the
structure around the tank might be weakened or its rain catchers bent or
broken off. Sometimes they would lob rocks over the high fence around the
hothouse, and occasionally they would tear through the overhead net and
heтАЩd have to replace panes.

Both the tank and the hothouse were undamaged 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 mirror heтАЩd fastened to the
door a month ago. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass
would start to fall off. Let тАШem fall, he thought. It was the last damned
mirror heтАЩd put there; it wasnтАЩt worth it. HeтАЩd put garlic there instead.
Garlic always worked.

He passed slowly through the dim silence of the living room, turned left
into the small hallway, and left again into his bedroom.

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