The Scarlet Plague Page #12

"The Scarlet Plague" by Jack London, published in 1912, is a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2073, sixty years after a deadly pandemic—called the Scarlet Plague—wiped out most of humanity in 2013.

• Novel

								

burn, and it was more rarely that we saw houses freshly on fire.

“Several of us scouted among the private garages in search of motor cars
and gasoline. But in this we were unsuccessful. The first great flights
from the cities had swept all such utilities away. Calgan, a fine young
man, was lost in this work. He was shot by prowlers while crossing a
lawn. Yet this was our only casualty, though, once, a drunken brute
deliberately opened fire on all of us. Luckily, he fired wildly, and we
shot him before he had done any hurt.

“At Fruitvale, still in the heart of the magnificent residence section
of the city, the plague again smote us. Professor Fairmead was the
victim. Making signs to us that his mother was not to know, he turned
aside into the grounds of a beautiful mansion. He sat down forlornly on
the steps of the front veranda, and I, having lingered, waved him a last
farewell. That night, several miles beyond Fruitvale and still in the
city, we made camp. And that night we shifted camp twice to get away
from our dead. In the morning there were thirty of us. I shall never
forget the President of the Faculty. During the morning's march his
wife, who was walking, betrayed the fatal symptoms, and when she
drew aside to let us go on, he insisted on leaving the motor car and
remaining with her. There was quite a discussion about this, but in the
end we gave in. It was just as well, for we knew not which ones of us,
if any, might ultimately escape.

“That night, the second of our march, we camped beyond Haywards in the
first stretches of country. And in the morning there were eleven of us
that lived. Also, during the night, Wathope, the professor with the
wounded leg, deserted us in the motor car. He took with him his sister
and his mother and most of our tinned provisions. It was that day, in
the afternoon, while resting by the wayside, that I saw the last airship
I shall ever see. The smoke was much thinner here in the country, and I
first sighted the ship drifting and veering helplessly at an elevation
of two thousand feet. What had happened I could not conjecture, but even
as we looked we saw her bow dip down lower and lower. Then the bulkheads
of the various gas-chambers must have burst, for, quite perpendicular,
she fell like a plummet to the earth.

[Illustration: She fell like a plummet to the earth 132]

“And from that day to this I have not seen another airship. Often and
often, during the next few years, I scanned the sky for them, hoping
against hope that somewhere in the world civilization had survived. But
it was not to be. What happened with us in California must have happened
with everybody everywhere.

“Another day, and at Niles there were three of us. Beyond Niles, in the
middle of the highway, we found Wathope. The motor car had broken down,
and there, on the rugs which they had spread on the ground, lay the
bodies of his sister, his mother, and himself.

“Wearied by the unusual exercise of continual walking, that night I
slept heavily. In the morning I was alone in the world. Canfield and
Parsons, my last companions, were dead of the plague. Of the four
hundred that sought shelter in the Chemistry Building, and of the
forty-seven that began the march, I alone remained--I and the Shetland
pony. Why this should be so there is no explaining. I did not catch the
plague, that is all. I was immune. I was merely the one lucky man in
a million--just as every survivor was one in a million, or, rather, in
several millions, for the proportion was at least that.”




V


“For two days I sheltered in a pleasant grove where there had been no
deaths. In those two days, while badly depressed and believing that my
turn would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and recuperated. So
did the pony. And on the third day, putting what small store of tinned
provisions I possessed on the pony's back, I started on across a very
lonely land. Not a live man, woman, or child, did I encounter, though
the dead were everywhere. Food, however, was abundant. The land then
was not as it is now. It was all cleared of trees and brush, and it was
cultivated. The food for millions of mouths was growing, ripening, and
going to waste. From the fields and orchards I gathered vegetables,
fruits, and berries. Around the deserted farmhouses I got eggs and
caught chickens. And frequently I found supplies of tinned provisions in
the store-rooms.

“A strange thing was what was taking place with all the domestic
animals. Everywhere they were going wild and preying on one another. The
chickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed, while the pigs were
the first to go wild, followed by the cats. Nor were the dogs long in
adapting themselves to the changed conditions. There was a veritable
plague of dogs. They devoured the corpses, barked and howled during the
nights, and in the daytime slunk about in the distance. As the time went
by, I noticed a change in their behavior. At first they were apart from
one another, very suspicious and very prone to fight. But after a not
very long while they began to come together and run in packs. The dog,
you see, always was a social animal, and this was true before ever he
came to be domesticated by man. In the last days of the world before the
plague, there were many many very different kinds of dogs--dogs without
hair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so small that they would make scarcely
a mouthful for other dogs that were as large as mountain lions. Well,
all the small dogs, and the weak types, were killed by their fellows.
Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild life and bred
out. As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disappeared, and
there remained, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that you
know to-day.”

“But the cats don't run in packs, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo objected.

“The cat was never a social animal. As one writer in the nineteenth
century said, the cat walks by himself. He always walked by himself,
from before the time he was tamed by man, down through the long ages of
domestication, to to-day when once more he is wild.

“The horses also went wild, and all the fine breeds we had degenerated
into the small mustang horse you know to-day. The cows likewise went
wild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that a few of the chickens
survived you know yourself. But the wild chicken of to-day is quite a
different thing from the chickens we had in those days.

“But I must go on with my story. I travelled through a deserted land. As
the time went by I began to yearn more and more for human beings. But I
never found one, and I grew lonelier and lonelier. I crossed Livermore
Valley and the mountains between it and the great valley of the San
Joaquin. You have never seen that valley, but it is very large and it is
the home of the wild horse. There are great droves there, thousands and
tens of thousands. I revisited it thirty years after, so I know. You

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