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

A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy
band saw; a wood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise. Above it, on the wall,
were haphazard racks of the tools that Robert N├иville used.

He took a hammerfrom 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 Cimarron Street. He was a tall man, thirty-six, born of
English-German stock, his features undistinguished except for the long,
determined mouth and the bright blue of his eyes, which moved now over the
charred ruins of the houses on each side of his. HeтАЩd burned them down to
prevent them from jumping on his roof from the adjacent ones.




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After a few minutes he took a long, slow breath and went back into the
house. He tossed the hammer on the living-room couch, then lit another
cigarette and had his midmorning drink.

Later he forced himself into the kitchen to grind up the five-day
accumulation of garbage 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 didnтАЩt feel like it.

For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to
him.



It was almost noon. Robert Neville was in his hothouse collecting a
basketful of garlic.

In the beginning it had made him sick to smell garlic 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 sometimes he thought 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 normal brilliance. A disgusted hiss passed his clenched
teeth. The generator was at it again. HeтАЩd have to get out that damned