“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, trying 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.

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.