The Scarlet Plague Page #7

"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

								

sooner was a person dead than the body seemed to fall to pieces, to
fly apart, to melt away even as you looked at it. That was one of the
reasons the plague spread so rapidly. All the billions of germs in a
corpse were so immediately released.

“And it was because of all this that the bacteriologists had so little
chance in fighting the germs. They were killed in their laboratories
even as they studied the germ of the Scarlet Death. They were heroes.
As fast as they perished, others stepped forth and took their places.
It was in London that they first isolated it. The news was telegraphed
everywhere. Trask was the name of the man who succeeded in this, but
within thirty hours he was dead. Then came the struggle in all the
laboratories to find something that would kill the plague germs. All
drugs failed. You see, the problem was to get a drug, or serum, that
would kill the germs in the body and not kill the body. They tried to
fight it with other germs, to put into the body of a sick man germs that
were the enemies of the plague germs--”

“And you can't see these germ-things, Granser,” Hare-Lip objected, “and
here you gabble, gabble, gabble about them as if they was anything,
when they're nothing at all. Anything you can't see, ain't, 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 triumphantly.
“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 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 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 father 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
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