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

manual again and check the wiring. And, if it were too much trouble to
repair, he’d have to install a new generator.

Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat
down with an exhausted grunt.

First, be separated the bulbs into the small, sickle-shaped cloves. Then he
cut each pink, leathery clove in half, exposing the fleshy center buds. The
air thickened with the musky, pungent odor. When it got too oppressive, he
snapped on the air-conditioning unit and suction drew away the worst of it.

Now he reached over and took an icepick from its wall rack. He punched
holes in each clove half, then strung them all together with wire until he
had about twenty-five necklaces.

In the beginning he had hung these necklaces over the windows. But from a
distance they’d thrown rocks until he’d been forced to cover the broken
panes with plywood scraps. Finally one day he’d torn off the plywood and
nailed up even rows of planks instead. It had made the house a gloomy
sepulcher, but it was better than having rocks come flying into his rooms
in a shower of splintered glass. And, once he had installed the three
air-conditioning units, it wasn’t too bad. A man could get used to anything
if he had to.

When he was finished stringing the garlic cloves, he went outside and
nailed them over the window boarding, taking down the old strings, which
had lost most of their potent smell.

He had to go through this process twice a week. Until he found something
better, it was his first line of defense.

Defense? he often thought. For what?

All afternoon he made stakes.


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He lathed them out of thick doweling, band-sawed into nine-inch lengths.
These be held against the whirling emery stone until they were as sharp as
daggers

It was. tiresome, monotonous work, and it filled the air with hot-smelling
wood dust that settled in his pores and got into his lungs and made him
cough.

Yet he never seemed to get ahead. No matter how many stakes he made, they
were gone in no time at all. Doweling was getting harder to find, too.