The story opens with the horror of life for the protagonist, who apparently is the sole survivor of a bacterial plague catastrophe, the symptoms of which are like vampirism. Harry Smith gets ready for a siege night from a vampire mass. He spends the day hours repairing his abode boarding windows, hanging garlic garlands, disposing of vampire corpses, and gathering supplies.The tale is Smith's effort to understand, and perhaps cure, the illness that killed mankind, showing his study of vampirism, and its potential causes. Via flashback, Smith's history is exposed. Furthermore, his emotional struggle to manage with losing his family is dealt with by going about an every day schedule.Smith sees the devastation of the infected survivors as a right, even, to be pursued for his own and mankind's survival, yet, in the conclusion, he sees a future culture wherein infection is ordinary and he, Smith, a lethal, biologic abnormal. He then grasps that, just as vampires were myth in pre-infection times, now he, Harry Smith, is myth for the new individual race born of the infection.