The Scarlet Plague Page #13

"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

								

think there are lots of wild horses down here in the coast valleys, but
they are as nothing compared with those of the San Joaquin. Strange to
say, the cows, when they went wild, went back into the lower mountains.
Evidently they were better able to protect themselves there.

“In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers had been less in
evidence, for I found many villages and towns untouched by fire. But
they were filled by the pestilential dead, and I passed by without
exploring them. It was near Lathrop that, out of my loneliness, I picked
up a pair of collie dogs that were so newly free that they were urgently
willing to return to their allegiance to man. These collies accompanied
me for many years, and the strains of them are in those very dogs there
that you boys have to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain has
worked out. These brutes are more like domesticated wolves than anything
else.”

Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the goats were safe,
and looked at the sun's position in the afternoon sky, advertising
impatience at the prolixity of the old man's tale. Urged to hurry by
Edwin, Granser went on.

“There is little more to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding
a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on
to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel
there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was
abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was
full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that
none but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. Then
I could stand it no more. I felt that I was going crazy. Like the dog,
I was a social animal and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I had
survived the plague, there was a possibility that others had survived.
Also, I reasoned that after three years the plague germs must all be
gone and the land be clean again.

[Illustration: With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out 144]

“With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out. Again I crossed the San
Joaquin Valley, the mountains beyond, and came down into Livermore
Valley. The change in those three years was amazing. All the land had
been splendidly tilled, and now I could scarcely recognize it, 'such was
the sea of rank vegetation that had overrun the agricultural handiwork
of man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had always
been cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. The
weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always been
fought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, when
the hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation smothered and destroyed
practically all the domesticated vegetation. The coyotes were greatly
increased, and it was at this time that I first encountered wolves,
straying in twos and threes and small packs down from the regions where
they had always persisted.

“It was at Lake Temescal, not far from the one-time city of Oakland,
that I came upon the first live human beings. Oh, my grandsons, how can
I describe to you my emotion, when, astride my horse and dropping down
the hillside to the lake, I saw the smoke of a campfire rising through
the trees. Almost did my heart stop beating. I felt that I was going
crazy. Then I heard the cry of a babe--a human babe. And dogs barked,
and my dogs answered. I did not know but what I was the one human alive
in the whole world. It could not be true that here were others--smoke,
and the cry of a babe.

“Emerging on the lake, there, before my eyes, not a hundred yards away,
I saw a man, a large man. He was standing on an outjutting rock and
fishing. I was overcome. I stopped my horse. I tried to call out but
could not. I waved my hand. It seemed to me that the man looked at me,
but he did not appear to wave. Then I laid my head on my arms there
in the saddle. I was afraid to look again, for I knew it was an
hallucination, and I knew that if I looked the man would be gone. And so
precious was the hallucination, that I wanted it to persist yet a little
while. I knew, too, that as long as I did not look it would persist.

“Thus I remained, until I heard my dogs snarling, and a man's voice.
What do you think the voice said? I will tell you. It said: 'Where in
hell did you come from??'

“Those were the words, the exact words. That was what your other
grandfather said to me, Hare-Lip, when he greeted me there on the shore
of Lake Temescal fifty-seven years ago. And they were the most ineffable
words I have ever heard. I opened my eyes, and there he stood before me,
a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How I
got off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I was
clasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embraced
him, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew away
from me. Yet did I cling to his hand and cry.”

Granser's voice faltered and broke at the recollection, and the weak
tears streamed down his cheeks while the boys looked on and giggled.

“Yet did I cry,” he continued, “and desire to embrace him, though the
Chauffeur was a brute, a perfect brute--the most abhorrent man I have
ever known. His name was... strange, how I have forgotten his name.
Everybody called him Chauffeur--it was the name of his occupation, and
it stuck. That is how, to this day, the tribe he founded is called the
Chauffeur Tribe.

[Illustration: Everybody called him Chauffeur 149]

“He was a violent, unjust man. Why the plague germs spared him I can
never understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysical
notions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in the
universe. Why did he live?--an iniquitous, moral monster, a blot on the
face of nature, a cruel, relentless, bestial cheat as well. All he
could talk about was motor cars, machinery, gasoline, and garages--and
especially, and with huge delight, of his mean pilferings and sordid
swindlings of the persons who had employed him in the days before the
coming of the plague. And yet he was spared, while hundreds of millions,
yea, billions, of better men were destroyed.

[Illustration: Vesta the one woman 150]

“I went on with him to his camp, and there I saw her, Vesta, the one
woman. It was glorious and... pitiful. There she was, Vesta Van Warden,
the young wife of John Van Warden, clad in rags, with marred and scarred
and toil-calloused hands, bending over the campfire and doing scullion
work--she, Vesta, who had been born to the purple of the greatest
baronage of wealth the world had ever known. John Van Warden, her
husband, worth one billion, eight hundred millions and President of the
Board of Industrial Magnates, had been the ruler of America. Also,
sitting on the International Board of Control, he had been one of the

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