The Scarlet Plague Page #8

"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

								

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.

[Illustration: The telephone bell rang 088]

“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.

“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 mayor. 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 dirigibles, 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.

[Illustration: Fled from the city by millions 092]

“The man who sent this news, the wireless operator, was alone with his
instrument on the top of a lofty building. The people remaining in the
city--he estimated them at several hundred thousand--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 arrived,
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 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 existed 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 nineteen 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 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 cities
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

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