Neville wakes in a prison where he is visited by Ruth, who informs him that she is a ranking member of the new society but, unlike the others, does not resent him. Ruth warns Neville that her people will attempt to capture him, and that he should leave his house and escape but Neville disregards Ruth's warning and is captured. When he wakes, Neville discovers a note stating that the infected have slowly overcome their disease until they can spend short periods of time in sunlight and are attempting to rebuild society but fear and hate Neville who has destroyed some of their people along with the true vampires (dead bodies animated by the germ) during his daytime excursions against the latter. Ruth reluctantly allows him a blood sample but knocks him senseless when he realizes she is infected. Suspicious, he questions her motives, but relates the trauma of his past, whereupon they comfort each other. One night Neville is startled awake and finds Ruth about to leave.

Having become accustomed to her, Neville becomes suspicious of Ruth and notices that she is upset when he speaks of killing vampires, on grounds that if her story of survival was true, she would have become hardened to the act. Neville's past is revealed through flashbacks.Īfter bouts of depression and alcoholism, Neville obtains books and other research materials from a library, and through painstaking research discovers the root of the vampiric disease in a strain of bacteria capable of infecting both deceased and living hosts.Īfter three years, Neville sees an apparently uninfected woman, Ruth, abroad in the daylight, and captures her. The narrative details Neville's daily life in Los Angeles as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease, to which he is immune. It is implied that the pandemic was caused by a war, and that dust storms in the cities and an explosion in the mosquito population have resulted. The main character is Robert Neville, apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic whose symptoms resemble vampirism.

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