I Am Legend

The plot of the book tells about the original form of the zombie apocalypse (vampire apocalypse), in which the cause of the pandemic was a special microbe "vampiris". The main character of the novel, Robert Neville, became the only person not infected with a disease whose symptoms resemble vampirism. He lives in an armored house in Los Angeles, devoting his free time to scientific research and the search for a cure for the disease that destroyed humanity. Neville himself has immunity to vampirism, which he believes he got after being bitten by an infected bat (Neville was ill for a long time, but was able to recover). Every day he prepares for a night siege of the house by vampires. In the morning and afternoon, he repairs his shelter, hangs garlic heads around the perimeter, is engaged in killing sleeping vampires in other people's houses, gets rid of their corpses. Let's describe the plot in more detail:

The novel begins with Neville hanging garlic, preparing cokes, and then going to bed. At night, infected people come to the door of his home, tease Neville and try to lure him out of the house. In particular, Neville recognizes his former friend Ben Cortman among the vampires. In the morning, he finds two victims of the virus, whom he will burn in the quarry, and then goes to the store, where he kills the infected owner and hostess. Overcome by sad thoughts, he decides to take a ride, as a result of which he finds himself at Virginia's grave. In the cemetery, he sees the corpse of a vampire and realizes that sunlight is ruinous for them. Then he decides to experiment and bring out a sleeping vampire. She dies in agony. After that, the main character realizes that his watch is standing, and night is already falling. He breaks through the vampires to his house, tries to fight them back, but realizes the futility of this venture. When he manages to restore electricity to the house, find a new car and fix everything, Neville resolves to find a cure. He takes books and other necessary materials from the library, and then through painstaking research discovers that the cause of vampirism is a microbe that infects both the living and the dead.

But Neville can't go any further in his scientific research. This plunges him into the abyss of despair, he begins to drink. When he is already hungry for death, a dog runs up to the house during the day, and Neville decides to tame him. One of the following days, the dog returns from a walk infected and dies after a while.

One day, Neville runs into a woman named Ruth on the street. She can't stand the smell of garlic and strongly opposes the killing of vampires, but behaves as if she is not infected. Under pressure from Neville, Ruth agrees to donate blood for analysis to check if there is an infection in it. When it turns out that the blood is infected, Ruth runs away from home, leaving a note. In it, she writes that she and a group of other infected people have adapted to the disease, can spend a little time in the sunlight and even try to restore social order. They fear and hate Neville because he unwittingly destroyed some of them along with real vampires. These infected consider Neville a predator and sent Ruth to him as a spy. Ruth also writes that they hunt "true" (not controlling themselves) vampires and have established the production of pills that contain the symptoms of the disease.

In the letter, Ruth warns Neville that hunters will come for him and advises him to run. However, Neville, tired of a lonely and monotonous existence, remains in the house. Infected people come to him at night, kill all vampires from outside and storm the house. Neville is wounded and taken prisoner. Ruth visits him in prison. She reports that she is a high-ranking member of the new society, but, unlike the others, she is not afraid and does not hate Neville. Ruth would like to help him escape, but the crowd demands execution. The woman also says that Neville was the last person on Earth.

In the finale of the novel, before the execution, Neville looks out of the window at the faces of the infected: they are distorted by fear and hatred. The hero feels that for them "he is a monstrous geek... much more dangerous than the infection they have already adapted to live with. He was a monster that until now no one could catch, no one could see. The proof of his existence was only the bloody corpses of their loved ones and lovers — he felt and understood who he was to them, and looked at them without hatred." Neville realizes that he has no place among these people. He swallows one by one the poisoned pills that Ruth brought him so that he would avoid an even more painful death.