The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  each for himself .”

  IV

  I went away hastily, down a cross-street, and at the first corner

  I saw another tragedy . Two men of the working class had caught

  a man and a woman with two children, and were robbing them . I

  knew the man by sight, though I had never been introduced to him .

  He was a poet whose verses I had long admired . Yet I did not go to

  his help, for at the moment I came upon the scene there was a pistol

  shot, and I saw him sinking to the ground . The woman screamed,

  and she was felled with a fist-blow by one of the brutes. I cried out

  threateningly, whereupon they discharged their pistols at me and I

  ran away around the corner . Here I was blocked by an advancing

  conflagration. The buildings on both sides were burning, and the

  street was filled with smoke and flame. From somewhere in that

  murk came a woman’s voice calling shrilly for help . But I did not go

  to her . A man’s heart turned to iron amid such scenes, and one heard

  all too many appeals for help .

  “Returning to the corner, I found the two robbers were gone .

  The poet and his wife lay dead on the pavement . It was a shock-

  ing sight . The two children had vanished—whither I could not tell .

  And I knew, now, why it was that the fleeing persons I encountered

  slipped along so furtively and with such white faces . In the midst of

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 770

  our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a

  race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of our calamity,

  they turned upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us .

  And they destroyed themselves as well .

  “They inflamed themselves with strong drink and committed a

  thousand atrocities, quarreling and killing one another in the general

  madness . One group of workingmen I saw, of the better sort, who

  had banded together, and, with their women and children in their

  midst, the sick and aged in litters and being carried, and with a num-

  ber of horses pulling a truck-load of provisions, they were fighting

  their way out of the city. They made a fine spectacle as they came

  down the street through the drifting smoke, though they nearly shot

  me when I first appeared in their path. As they went by, one of their

  leaders shouted out to me in apologetic explanation . He said they

  were killing the robbers and looters on sight, and that they had thus

  banded together as the only-means by which to escape the prowlers .

  “It was here that I saw for the first time what I was soon to see so

  often . One of the marching men had suddenly shown the unmistak-

  able mark of the plague . Immediately those about him drew away,

  and he, without a remonstrance, stepped out of his place to let them

  pass on . A woman, most probably his wife, attempted to follow him .

  She was leading a little boy by the hand . But the husband com-

  manded her sternly to go on, while others laid hands on her and

  restrained her from following him . This I saw, and I saw the man

  also, with his scarlet blaze of face, step into a doorway on the op-

  posite side of the street . I heard the report of his pistol, and saw him

  sink lifeless to the ground .

  “After being turned aside twice again by advancing fires, I suc-

  ceeded in getting through to the university . On the edge of the cam-

  pus I came upon a party of university folk who were going in the

  direction of the Chemistry Building . They were all family men, and

  their families were with them, including the nurses and the servants .

  Professor Badminton greeted me, I had difficulty in recognizing

  him. Somewhere he had gone through flames, and his beard was

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 771

  singed off . About his head was a bloody bandage, and his clothes

  were filthy.

  “He told me he had prowlers, and that his brother had been killed

  the previous night, in the defence of their dwelling .

  “Midway across the campus, he pointed suddenly to Mrs . Swin-

  ton’s face . The unmistakable scarlet was there . Immediately all the

  other women set up a screaming and began to run away from her .

  Her two children were with a nurse, and these also ran with the

  women . But her husband, Doctor Swinton, remained with her .

  “‘Go on, Smith,’ he told me . ‘Keep an eye on the children . As for

  me, I shall stay with my wife . I know she is as already dead, but I

  can’t leave her . Afterwards, if I escape, I shall come to the Chemis-

  try Building, and do you watch for me and let me in .’

  “I left him bending over his wife and soothing her last moments,

  while I ran to overtake the party . We were the last to be admitted

  to the Chemistry Building. After that, with our automatic rifles we

  maintained our isolation . By our plans, we had arranged for a com-

  pany of sixty to be in this refuge . Instead, every one of the num-

  ber originally planned had added relatives and friends and whole

  families until there were over four hundred souls . But the Chemistry

  Building was large, and, standing by itself, was in no danger of be-

  ing burned by the great fires that raged everywhere in the city.

  “A large quantity of provisions had been gathered, and a food

  committee took charge of it, issuing rations daily to the various fam-

  ilies and groups that arranged themselves into messes . A number of

  committees were appointed, and we developed a very efficient orga-

  nization. I was on the committee of defence, though for the first day

  no prowlers came near . We could see them in the distance, however,

  and by the smoke of their fires knew that several camps of them

  were occupying the far edge of the campus . Drunkenness was rife,

  and often we heard them singing ribald songs or insanely shouting .

  While the world crashed to ruin about them and all the air was filled

  with the smoke of its burning, these low creatures gave rein to their

  bestiality and fought and drank and died . And after all, what did it

  matter? Everybody died anyway, the good and the bad, the efficients

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 772

  and the weaklings, those that loved to live and those that scorned to

  live . They passed . Everything passed .

  “When twenty-four hours had gone by and no signs of the plague

  were apparent, we congratulated ourselves and set about digging a

  well . You have seen the great iron pipes which in those days carried

  water to all the city-dwellers. We feared that the fires in the city

  would burst the pipes and empty the reservoirs . So we tore up the

  cement floor of the central court of the Chemistry Building and dug

  a well . There were many young men, undergraduates, with us, and

  we worked night and day on the well. And our fears were confirmed.

  Three hours before we reached water, the pipes went dry .

  “A second twenty-four hours passed, and still the plague did not

  appear among us . We thought we were saved . But we did not know

  what I afterwards decided to be true, namely, that the period of the

  incubation of the plague germs in a human
’s body was a matter of

  a number of days . It slew so swiftly when once it manifested itself,

  that we were led to believe that the period of incubation was equally

  swift . So, when two days had left us unscathed, we were elated with

  the idea that we were free of the contagion .

  “But the third day disillusioned us . I can never forget the night

  preceding it . I had charge of the night guards from eight to twelve,

  and from the roof of the building I watched the passing of all man’s

  glorious works. So terrible were the local conflagrations that all the

  sky was lighted up. One could read the finest print in the red glare.

  All the world seemed wrapped in flames. San Francisco spouted

  smoke and fire from a score of vast conflagrations that were like

  so many active volcanoes . Oakland, San Leandro, Haywards—all

  were burning; and to the northward, clear to Point Richmond, other

  fires were at work. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle. Civilization,

  my grandsons, civilization was passing in a sheet of flame and a

  breath of death . At ten o’clock that night, the great powder maga-

  zines at Point Pinole exploded in rapid succession. So terrific were

  the concussions that the strong building rocked as in an earthquake,

  while every pane of glass was broken . It was then that I left the roof

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 773

  and went down the long corridors, from room to room, quieting the

  alarmed women and telling them what had happened .

  “An hour later, at a window on the ground floor, I heard pande-

  monium break out in the camps of the prowlers . There were cries

  and screams, and shots from many pistols . As we afterward conjec-

  tured, this fight had been precipitated by an attempt on the part of

  those that were well to drive out those that were sick . At any rate,

  a number of the plague-stricken prowlers escaped across the cam-

  pus and drifted against our doors . We warned them back, but they

  cursed us and discharged a fusillade from their pistols . Professor

  Merryweather, at one of the windows, was instantly killed, the bullet

  striking him squarely between the eyes. We opened fire in turn, and

  all the prowlers fled away with the exception of three. One was a

  woman . The plague was on them and they were reckless . Like foul

  fiends, there in the red glare from the skies, with faces blazing, they

  continued to curse us and fire at us. One of the men I shot with my

  own hand . After that the other man and the woman, still cursing us,

  lay down under our windows, where we were compelled to watch

  them die of the plague .

  “The situation was critical . The explosions of the powder maga-

  zines had broken all the windows of the Chemistry Building, so that

  we were exposed to the germs from the corpses . The sanitary com-

  mittee was called upon to act, and it responded nobly . Two men

  were required to go out and remove the corpses, and this meant

  the probable sacrifice of their own lives, for, having performed the

  task, they were not to be permitted to reenter the building . One of

  the professors, who was a bachelor, and one of the undergraduates

  volunteered . They bade good-bye to us and went forth . They were

  heroes . They gave up their lives that four hundred others might live .

  After they had performed their work, they stood for a moment, at

  a distance, looking at us wistfully . Then they waved their hands in

  farewell and went away slowly across the campus toward the burn-

  ing city .

  “And yet it was all useless. The next morning the first one of

  us was smitten with the plague—a little nurse-girl in the family of

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 774

  Professor Stout . It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental poli-

  cies . On the chance that she might be the only one, we thrust her

  forth from the building and commanded her to be gone .

  “She went away slowly across the campus, wringing her hands

  and crying pitifully . We felt like brutes, but what were we to do?

  There were four hundred of us, and individuals had to be sacrificed.

  “In one of the laboratories three families had domiciled them-

  selves, and that afternoon we found among them no less than four

  corpses and seven cases of the plague in all its different stages .

  “Then it was that the horror began . Leaving the dead lie, we

  forced the living ones to segregate themselves in another room . The

  plague began to break out among the rest of us, and as fast as the

  symptoms appeared, we sent the stricken ones to these segregated

  rooms . We compelled them to walk there by themselves, so as to

  avoid laying hands on them . It was heartrending . But still the plague

  raged among us, and room after room was filled with the dead and

  dying. And so we who were yet clean retreated to the next floor and

  to the next, before this sea of the dead, that, room by room and floor

  by floor, inundated the building.

  “The place became a charnel house, and in the middle of the

  night the survivors fled forth, taking nothing with them except arms

  and ammunition and a heavy store of tinned foods . We camped on

  the opposite side of the campus from the prowlers, and, while some

  stood guard, others of us volunteered to scout into the city in quest

  of horses, motor cars, carts, and wagons, or anything that would

  carry our provisions and enable us to emulate the banded working-

  men I had seen fighting their way out to the open country.

  “I was one of these scouts; and Doctor Hoyle, remembering that

  his motor car had been left behind in his home garage, told me to

  look for it . We scouted in pairs, and Dombey, a young undergradu-

  ate, accompanied me . We had to cross half a mile of the residence

  portion of the city to get to Doctor Hoyle’s home . Here the buildings

  stood apart, in the midst of trees and grassy lawns, and here the fires

  had played freaks, burning whole blocks, skipping blocks and often

  skipping a single house in a block . And here, too, the prowlers were

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 775

  still at their work . We carried our automatic pistols openly in our

  hands, and looked desperate enough, forsooth, to keep them from

  attacking us . But at Doctor Hoyle’s house the thing happened . Un-

  touched by fire, even as we came to it the smoke of flames burst

  forth .

  “The miscreant who had set fire to it staggered down the steps

  and out along the driveway . Sticking out of his coat pockets were

  bottles of whiskey, and he was very drunk. My first impulse was to

  shoot him, and I have never ceased regretting that I did not . Stag-

  gering and maundering to himself, with bloodshot eyes, and a raw

  and bleeding slash down one side of his bewhiskered face, he was

  altogether the most nauseating specimen of degradation and filth I

  had ever encountered . I did not shoot him, and he leaned against a

  tree on the lawn to let us go by . It was the most absolute, wanton act .

  Just as we were opposite him, he suddenly drew a pistol and shot

  Dombey through the head . The next instant I
shot him . But it was

  too late . Dombey expired without a groan, immediately . I doubt if he

  even knew what had happened to him .

  “Leaving the two corpses, I hurried on past the burning house

  to the garage, and there found Doctor Hoyle’s motor car . The tanks

  were filled with gasoline, and it was ready for use. And it was in this

  car that I threaded the streets of the ruined city and came back to the

  survivors on the campus . The other scouts returned, but none had

  been so fortunate . Professor Fairmead had found a Shetland pony,

  but the poor creature, tied in a stable and abandoned for days, was

  so weak from want of food and water that it could carry no burden

  at all . Some of the men were for turning it loose, but I insisted that

  we should lead it along with us, so that, if we got out of food, we

  would have it to eat .

  “There were forty-seven of us when we started, many being

  women and children . The President of the Faculty, an old man to

  begin with, and now hopelessly broken by the awful happenings of

  the past week, rode in the motor car with several young children and

  the aged mother of Professor Fairmead . Wathope, a young professor

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 776

  of English, who had a grievous bullet-wound in his leg, drove the

  car . The rest of us walked, Professor Fairmead leading the pony .

  “It was what should have been a bright summer day, but the

  smoke from the burning world filled the sky, through which the sun

  shone murkily, a dull and lifeless orb, blood-red and ominous . But

  we had grown accustomed to that blood-red sun . With the smoke

  it was different . It bit into our nostrils and eyes, and there was not

  one of us whose eyes were not bloodshot . We directed our course

  to the southeast through the endless miles of suburban residences,

  travelling along where the first swells of low hills rose from the flat

  of the central city . It was by this way, only, that we could expect to

  gain the country .

  “Our progress was painfully slow . The women and children could

  not walk fast . They did not dream of walking, my grandsons, in the

  way all people walk to-day . In truth, none of us knew how to walk .

  It was not until after the plague that I learned really to walk . So it

  was that the pace of the slowest was the pace of all, for we dared not