It’s been roughly a year since the beginning of a contagion that seemingly turns humans into vampires, and Robert Neville is the last living person in Los Angeles. He wakes one day to find the weather cloudy, which complicates his usual routine—as the Undead (infected people who specifically died and came back to life) trying to kill him are most susceptible to daylight, like vampires. He checks his house and the hothouse in the yard for any loose or broken planks from the Undead’s nightly attempts to attack him, replaces them, then collects fresh garlic to hang around the front door. Neville also has a mirror hanging there, but worries that it will soon crack and prove useless at warding off the Undead. He does not bother to keep his house clean as “he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him” (3). He then uses his workshop to make stakes from wooden dowels. Neville completes his daily chores in a state of anger and frustration, though he notes how easy it is to become used to this mode of life because he has no choice.