The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  that’s what . Fighting things that ain’t with things that ain’t! They

  must have been all fools in them days . That’s why they croaked . I

  ain’t goin’ to believe in such rot, I tell you that .”

  Granser promptly began to weep, while Edwin hotly took up his

  defence .

  “Look here, Hare-Lip, you believe in lots of things you can’t

  see .”

  Hare-Lip shook his head .

  “You believe in dead men walking about . You never seen one

  dead man walk about .”

  “I tell you I seen ’em, last winter, when I was wolf-hunting with

  dad .”

  “Well, you always spit when you cross running water,” Edwin

  challenged .

  “That’s to keep off bad luck,” was Hare-Lip’s defence .

  “You believe in bad luck?”

  “Sure .”

  “An’ you ain’t never seen bad luck,” Edwin concluded trium-

  phantly . “You’re just as bad as Granser and his germs . You believe

  in what you don’t see . Go on, Granser .”

  Hare-Lip, crushed by this metaphysical defeat, remained silent,

  and the old man went on . Often and often, though this narrative must

  not be clogged by the details, was Granser’s tale interrupted while

  the boys squabbled among themselves . Also, among themselves

  they kept up a constant, low-voiced exchange of explanation and

  conjecture, as they strove to follow the old man into his unknown

  and vanished world .

  “The Scarlet Death broke out in San Francisco. The first death

  came on a Monday morning . By Thursday they were dying like

  flies in Oakland and San Francisco. They died everywhere—in their

  beds, at their work, walking along the street . It was on Tuesday that I

  saw my first death—Miss Collbran, one of my students, sitting right

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  there before my eyes, in my lecture-room . I noticed her face while

  I was talking . It had suddenly turned scarlet . I ceased speaking and

  could only look at her, for the first fear of the plague was already on

  all of us and we knew that it had come . The young women screamed

  and ran out of the room . So did the young men run out, all but two .

  Miss Collbran’s convulsions were very mild and lasted less than

  a minute . One of the young men fetched her a glass of water . She

  drank only a little of it, and cried out:

  “‘My feet! All sensation has left them .’

  “After a minute she said, ‘I have no feet . I am unaware that I

  have any feet . And my knees are cold . I can scarcely feel that I have

  knees .’

  “She lay on the floor, a bundle of notebooks under her head. And

  we could do nothing . The coldness and the numbness crept up past

  her hips to her heart, and when it reached her heart she was dead .

  In fifteen minutes, by the clock—I timed it—she was dead, there,

  in my own classroom, dead . And she was a very beautiful, strong,

  healthy young woman. And from the first sign of the plague to her

  death only fifteen minutes elapsed. That will show you how swift

  was the Scarlet Death .

  “Yet in those few minutes I remained with the dying woman in

  my classroom, the alarm had spread over the university; and the

  students, by thousands, all of them, had deserted the lecture-room

  and laboratories . When I emerged, on my way to make report to the

  President of the Faculty, I found the university deserted . Across the

  campus were several stragglers hurrying for their homes . Two of

  them were running .

  “President Hoag, I found in his office, all alone, looking very

  old and very gray, with a multitude of wrinkles in his face that I had

  never seen before . At the sight of me, he pulled himself to his feet

  and tottered away to the inner office, banging the door after him and

  locking it . You see, he knew I had been exposed, and he was afraid .

  He shouted to me through the door to go away . I shall never forget

  my feelings as I walked down the silent corridors and out across

  that deserted campus . I was not afraid . I had been exposed, and I

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  looked upon myself as already dead . It was not that, but a feeling

  of awful depression that impressed me . Everything had stopped . It

  was like the end of the world to me—my world . I had been born

  within sight and sound of the university . It had been my predestined

  career . My father had been a professor there before me, and his fa-

  ther before him . For a century and a half had this university, like a

  splendid machine, been running steadily on . And now, in an instant,

  it had stopped. It was like seeing the sacred flame die down on some

  thrice-sacred altar . I was shocked, unutterably shocked .

  “When I arrived home, my housekeeper screamed as I entered,

  and fled away. And when I rang, I found the housemaid had likewise

  fled. I investigated. In the kitchen I found the cook on the point of

  departure . But she screamed, too, and in her haste dropped a suitcase

  of her personal belongings and ran out of the house and across the

  grounds, still screaming . I can hear her scream to this day . You see,

  we did not act in this way when ordinary diseases smote us . We

  were always calm over such things, and sent for the doctors and

  nurses who knew just what to do . But this was different . It struck so

  suddenly, and killed so swiftly, and never missed a stroke . When the

  scarlet rash appeared on a person’s face, that person was marked by

  death . There was never a known case of a recovery .

  “I was alone in my big house . As I have told you often before,

  in those days we could talk with one another over wires or through

  the air . The telephone bell rang, and I found my brother talking to

  me . He told me that he was not coming home for fear of catching

  the plague from me, and that he had taken our two sisters to stop at

  Professor Bacon’s home . He advised me to remain where I was, and

  wait to find out whether or not I had caught the plague.

  “To all of this I agreed, staying in my house and for the first

  time in my life attempting to cook . And the plague did not come out

  on me . By means of the telephone I could talk with whomsoever I

  pleased and get the news . Also, there were the newspapers, and I

  ordered all of them to be thrown up to my door so that I could know

  what was happening with the rest of the world .

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  “New York City and Chicago were in chaos . And what happened

  with them was happening in all the large cities . A third of the New

  York police were dead . Their chief was also dead, likewise the may-

  or . All law and order had ceased . The bodies were lying in the streets

  un-buried . All railroads and vessels carrying food and such things

  into the great city had ceased runnings and mobs of the hungry poor

  were pillaging the stores and warehouses . Murder and robbery and

  drunkenness were everywhere. Already the people had fled from the

  city by millions—at first the rich, in their private motor-cars and di-

&
nbsp; rigibles, and then the great mass of the population, on foot, carrying

  the plague with them, themselves starving and pillaging the farmers

  and all the towns and villages on the way .

  “The man who sent this news, the wireless operator, was alone

  with his instrument on the top of a lofty building . The people re-

  maining in the city—he estimated them at several hundred thou-

  sand—had gone mad from fear and drink, and on all sides of him

  great fires were raging. He was a hero, that man who staid by his

  post—an obscure newspaperman, most likely .

  “For twenty-four hours, he said, no transatlantic airships had ar-

  rived, and no more messages were coming from England . He did

  state, though, that a message from Berlin—that’s in Germany—

  announced that Hoffmeyer, a bacteriologist of the Metchnikoff

  School, had discovered the serum for the plague . That was the last

  word, to this day, that we of America ever received from Europe . If

  Hoffmeyer discovered the serum, it was too late, or otherwise, long

  ere this, explorers from Europe would have come looking for us .

  We can only conclude that what happened in America happened in

  Europe, and that, at the best, some several score may have survived

  the Scarlet Death on that whole continent .

  “For one day longer the despatches continued to come from New

  York . Then they, too, ceased . The man who had sent them, perched

  in his lofty building, had either died of the plague or been consumed

  in the great conflagrations he had described as raging around him.

  And what had occurred in New York had been duplicated in all the

  other cities . It was the same in San Francisco, and Oakland, and

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  Berkeley . By Thursday the people were dying so rapidly that their

  corpses could not be handled, and dead bodies lay everywhere .

  Thursday night the panic outrush for the country began . Imagine,

  my grandsons, people, thicker than the salmon-run you have seen

  on the Sacramento river, pouring out of the cities by millions, madly

  over the country, in vain attempt to escape the ubiquitous death . You

  see, they carried the germs with them . Even the airships of the rich,

  fleeing for mountain and desert fastnesses, carried the germs.

  “Hundreds of these airships escaped to Hawaii, and not only did

  they bring the plague with them, but they found the plague already

  there before them . This we learned, by the despatches, until all order

  in San Francisco vanished, and there were no operators left at their

  posts to receive or send . It was amazing, astounding, this loss of

  communication with the world . It was exactly as if the world had

  ceased, been blotted out . For sixty years that world has no longer ex-

  isted for me . I know there must be such places as New York, Europe,

  Asia, and Africa; but not one word has been heard of them—not

  in sixty years . With the coming of the Scarlet Death the world fell

  apart, absolutely, irretrievably . Ten thousand years of culture and

  civilization passed in the twinkling of an eye, ‘lapsed like foam .’

  “I was telling about the airships of the rich . They carried the

  plague with them and no matter where they fled, they died. I never

  encountered but one survivor of any of them—Mungerson . He was

  afterwards a Santa Rosan, and he married my eldest daughter . He

  came into the tribe eight years after the plague . He was then nine-

  teen years old, and he was compelled to wait twelve years more

  before he could marry . You see, there were no unmarried women,

  and some of the older daughters of the Santa Rosans were already

  bespoken . So he was forced to wait until my Mary had grown to

  sixteen years . It was his son, Gimp-Leg, who was killed last year by

  the mountain lion .

  “Mungerson was eleven years old at the time of the plague . His

  father was one of the Industrial Magnates, a very wealthy, powerful

  man. It was on his airship, the Condor, that they were fleeing, with

  all the family, for the wilds of British Columbia, which is far to the

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  north of here . But there was some accident, and they were wrecked

  near Mount Shasta . You have heard of that mountain . It is far to the

  north . The plague broke out amongst them, and this boy of eleven

  was the only survivor . For eight years he was alone, wandering over

  a deserted land and looking vainly for his own kind . And at last,

  travelling south, he picked up with us, the Santa Rosans .

  “But I am ahead of my story . When the great exodus from the cit-

  ies around San Francisco Bay began, and while the telephones were

  still working, I talked with my brother. I told him this flight from

  the cities was insanity, that there were no symptoms of the plague in

  me, and that the thing for us to do was to isolate ourselves and our

  relatives in some safe place . We decided on the Chemistry Building,

  at the university, and we planned to lay in a supply of provisions,

  and by force of arms to prevent any other persons from forcing their

  presence upon us after we had retired to our refuge .

  “All this being arranged, my brother begged me to stay in my

  own house for at least twenty-four hours more, on the chance of the

  plague developing in me . To this I agreed, and he promised to come

  for me next day . We talked on over the details of the provisioning

  and the defending of the Chemistry Building until the telephone

  died . It died in the midst of our conversation . That evening there

  were no electric lights, and I was alone in my house in the darkness .

  No more newspapers were being printed, so I had no knowledge of

  what was taking place outside .

  “I heard sounds of rioting and of pistol shots, and from my win-

  dows I could see the glare of the sky of some conflagration in the

  direction of Oakland . It was a night of terror . I did not sleep a wink .

  A man—why and how I do not know—was killed on the sidewalk

  in front of the house . I heard the rapid reports of an automatic pistol,

  and a few minutes later the wounded wretch crawled up to my door,

  moaning and crying out for help . Arming myself with two automat-

  ics, I went to him . By the light of a match I ascertained that while he

  was dying of the bullet wounds, at the same time the plague was on

  him. I fled indoors, whence I heard him moan and cry out for half

  an hour longer .

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  “In the morning, my brother came to me . I had gathered into a

  handbag what things of value I purposed taking, but when I saw his

  face I knew that he would never accompany me to the Chemistry

  Building . The plague was on him . He intended shaking my hand, but

  I went back hurriedly before him .

  “‘Look at yourself in the mirror,’ I commanded .

  “He did so, and at sight of his scarlet face, the color deepening as

  he looked at it, he sank down nervelessly in a chair .

  “‘My God!’ he said . ‘I’ve got it . Don’t come near me . I am a dead

  man .’

>   “Then the convulsions seized him . He was two hours in dying,

  and he was conscious to the last, complaining about the coldness

  and loss of sensation in his feet, his calves, his thighs, until at last it

  was his heart and he was dead .

  “That was the way the Scarlet Death slew . I caught up my hand-

  bag and fled. The sights in the streets were terrible. One stumbled

  on bodies everywhere . Some were not yet dead . And even as you

  looked, you saw men sink down with the death fastened upon them .

  There were numerous fires burning in Berkeley, while Oakland and

  San Francisco were apparently being swept by vast conflagrations.

  The smoke of the burning filled the heavens, so that the midday was

  as a gloomy twilight, and, in the shifts of wind, sometimes the sun

  shone through dimly, a dull red orb . Truly, my grandsons, it was like

  the last days of the end of the world .

  “There were numerous stalled motor cars, showing that the gaso-

  line and the engine supplies of the garages had given out . I remem-

  ber one such car . A man and a woman lay back dead in the seats, and

  on the pavement near it were two more women and a child . Strange

  and terrible sights there were on every hand . People slipped by si-

  lently, furtively, like ghosts—white-faced women carrying infants

  in their arms; fathers leading children by the hand; singly, and in

  couples, and in families—all fleeing out of the city of death. Some

  carried supplies of food, others blankets and valuables, and there

  were many who carried nothing .

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  “There was a grocery store—a place where food was sold . The

  man to whom it belonged—I knew him well—a quiet, sober, but

  stupid and obstinate fellow, was defending it . The windows and

  doors had been broken in, but he, inside, hiding behind a counter,

  was discharging his pistol at a number of men on the sidewalk who

  were breaking in . In the entrance were several bodies—of men, I

  decided, whom he had killed earlier in the day . Even as I looked on

  from a distance, I saw one of the robbers break the windows of the

  adjoining store, a place where shoes were sold, and deliberately set

  fire to it. I did not go to the groceryman’s assistance. The time for

  such acts had already passed . Civilization was crumbling, and it was