（外文电子版资料）Matheson, Richard - I Am Legend.doc

 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 didnt 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. Isnt 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 hed 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 hed fastened to the door a month ago. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass would start to fall off. Let em fall, he thought. It was the last damned mirror hed put there; it wasnt worth it. Hed 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 Nevilles bed and bureau took up so little space, he had converted one side of the room into a shop. A long