SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  As the noise of their hysterical concert faded round a corner a death-cart rumbled up, and the two victims were unceremoniously pitched into it, one of the men remarking, “They’re fresh ‘uns this time, better luck!”

  Such was the requiem passed on departed spirits by those whose occupation had long since made them callous to suffering and death.

  All the medical profession stuck nobly to their posts, though death was busy amongst their ranks; and volunteers amongst the nurses, male and female, were never wanting as places had to be filled.

  But what could medical science do against a disease that recognized no conventional rules, and raged in the open country as it did in the crowded towns?

  Experts from Europe and America came over and sacrificed their lives, and still no check could be found.

  All agreed that the only chance was in an atmospheric disturbance that would break up the drought and dispel the stagnant atmosphere that brooded like a funeral pall over the continent.

  But the meteorologists could give no hope.

  All they could say was that a cycle of rainless years had set in, and that at some former time Australia had passed through the same experience.

  A strange comet, too, of unprecedented size, had made its appearance in the Southern Hemisphere, and astronomers were at a loss to account for the visitor.

  So the fiery portent flamed in the midnight sky, further adding to the terrors of the superstitious.

  It was during one night, walking late through the stricken city, I met with the following adventure.

  My work at the hospitals had been hard, but I felt no fatigue. The despair brooding over everyone had shadowed me with its influence.

  Think what it was to be shut up in a pest city without a chance of escape, either by sea or by land!

  I wandered through the streets, Campbell’s lines running in my head, “And ships were drifting with the dead to shores where all was dumb.”

  Suddenly a door opened, and a young woman staggered out, and reeling, almost fell against me.

  I supported her, and she seemed to somewhat recover from the frightful horror that had apparently seized her.

  She stared at me, and then said, “Oh! I can stand it no longer. The rats came first, and now hideous things have come through the window, and are watching his breath go out. Are you a doctor?”

  “I am not a doctor,” I answered; “but I’m one of those who attend to the dying. It is all we can do.”

  “Will you come with me? My husband is dying, and I dare not go back alone, and I dare not leave him to die alone. He has raved of fearful things.”

  The street lamps were unlighted, but by the glare of the threatening comet that lit up the heavens I could see her face, and the mortal terror in it.

  I was just reassuring her when someone approaching stopped close to us.

  “Ha, ha!” Laughed the stranger, who was frenzied with drink; “another soul going to be damned. Let me see him. I’ll cheer him on his way,” and he waved a bottle of whiskey.

  I turned to remonstrate with the fellow, when I saw a change come over his face that transformed it from frenzy of intoxication into comparative sobriety.

  “Your name, woman; your husband’s name?” He gasped.

  As if compelled to answer, she replied, “Sandover, Herbert Sandover?”

  “Can I come too?” Said the man, addressing me in an altered tone. “I know Herbert, knew him of old; but his wife doesn’t remember me.”

  “Keep quiet, and don’t disturb the dying,” I said; and giving my arm to the woman, went into the house.

  On the bed lay a man, plague-stricken, and raving in delirium.

  No wonder.

  On the rail at the head of the bed and on the rail at the foot sat two huge bats.

  Not the harmless Australian variety that lives in the twilight limestone caves; nor the fruit-eating flying-fox; but a larger kind still, the hideous flesh-feeding vampire of New Guinea and Borneo.

  For since Australia became a pest-house the flying carnivora of the Archipelago had invaded the continent.

  There sat these demon-like creatures, with their vulpine heads and huge leathery wings, with which they were slowly fanning the air.

  And the dying man lay and raved at them.

  Disturbed by our entrance, the obscene things flapped slowly out of the open window, and the sick man turned to us with a hideous laugh, which was echoed by the strange man who had joined us.

  “Herbert Sandover,” he said, “you know me, Bill Kempton, the man you robbed and ruined. I’m just in time to see you die. I came to Australia after you to twist your thievish neck, but the Plague has done it. Grin, man, grin, it’s pleasant to meet an old friend.”

  I tried to stop him, but vainly; and from the look on the dying man’s face I could see that it was a case of recognition in reality.

  The woman had sunk upon her knees and buried her head in her hands.

  Kempton still continued his mad taunting. Taking a tumbler from the table he poured some whiskey into it, and drank it.

  “This is the stuff to keep the plague away,” he shouted; “but you, Sandover, never drank. Oh no! Too clever for that. Spoil your nerve for cheating. But I’ll live, you cur, and see you tumbled into the death-cart.”

  So he raved at the dying man, and one of the great vampires came back and perched on the windowsill.

  Raising himself in bed by a last effort, Sandover fixed his eyes on the thing, and screamed that it should not come for him before his time.

  As if incensed by his gestures, the vampire suddenly sprang fiercely at him, uttering a whistling snarl of rage.

  Fixing its talons in him and burying its teeth in his neck, it commenced worrying the poor wretch and buffeting him with its wings.

  Calling to Kempton, I rushed forward to try and beat it off, but its mate suddenly appeared. Quite powerless to aid, I picked up the woman, who had fainted, and carried her out of the room.

  Kempton, now quite mad, continued fighting the vampires, but at last, torn and bleeding, he followed us into the street.

  I was endeavoring to restore the woman, and he only stopped to assure me that the devils were eating Sandover, and then reeled off.

  When the woman came to her senses I left her by her own request, to wait till the Death-Cart came round.

  I called there the next morning, but never saw her again.

  Amidst such sights and scenes as these the summer passed on, burning and relentless. The cattle and sheep were dying in hundreds and thousands, and it looked as though Australia would soon be a lifeless waste, arid ever to remain so.

  4

  One morning it was pasted up that news had come from Eucla that the barometer there gave notice of an atmospheric disturbance approaching from the southwest.

  That was all, and no more could be elicited.

  The line-men at the next station started to ascertain the cause of the silence; and after a few days they wired to say that they had found the men on the station all dead.

  But the self-registering instruments had continued their work, and the storm was daily expected from Cape Leuwin.

  The days preceding our deliverance from the pest were some of the worst experienced; as though the approaching storm drove before it all the foul-brooding vapors that had so long oppressed us, and they had assembled to make a last stand on the East coast.

  One morning I felt a change, a cool change in the air.

  Going into the street, I saw, to my surprise, many people there, gathered together in groups, and gazing upwards at a strange sight.

  The vampires were leaving the city. Ceaseless columns of them were flying eastward, and men watched them with relieved faces, as though a dream of maddening horror was passing away.

  Then came a sound such as must have been have been heard in the quaint old city of legendary lore when the pied piper sounded his magic flute.

  The pest rats were flying.

  All that day it continue
d, and some reported that they plunged into the sea and disappeared.

  At any rate, they vanished utterly, and with them other loathsome vermin that had been fattening on the dead and the living dead.

  Everyone seemed to see new life ahead.

  Men spoke cheerily to each other of adopting means of clearing and cleansing the city, but that work was taken out of their hands.

  That might the cyclonic storm that had raged across the continent burst upon us. All the long-dormant forces of the air seemed to have met in conflict.

  For three days its fury was appalling. The violent rain and constant thunder and lightning added to the tumult.

  No one stirred out during those three days of tempest and destruction.

  Nature in her own mighty way had set to work to purge the country of the plague.

  It was while this storm was at its fiercest that the Post Office tower and the Town Hall tower were shattered and hurled in ruins to the ground. No one, so far as I know, witnessed the catastrophe.

  The morning of the fourth day broke calm, clear, and beautiful.

  At midnight the tempest had lulled; and when daylight came, the sun rose in a sky lightly flecked with roseate morning clouds.

  Accompanied by a friend, I started out to see the ruined city, and those who were left alive in it.

  The streets still ran with floodwater, but the higher levels had pretty well drained off; and once they were gained, our progress was easy.

  Martin Place was choked with the ruins of the tower, and the many other buildings that had succumbed; while not a single verandah was left standing in any street. We went to the Harbor.

  The tide was receding, carrying with it the turbid waters that rushed into it from all points; carrying it, too, wreckage and human bodies.

  A strong current was setting seaward through the Heads, and bore out to the Pacific all the decaying remnants of the past visitation.

  The deserted ships in the Harbor had been torn from their moorings and either sunk or blown ashore.

  Wreck and desolation were visible everywhere, but the air was pure, cool, and grateful; and our hearts rose in spite of the difficulties that lay before us, for the looming horror of the plague had been lifted.

  5

  Of what followed, your histories tell you.

  How the overwhelming disaster knit the states together in a closer federation than legislators ever had forged.

  How from that hour sprung forth a new, purged, and purified Australian race.

  All this is record of the Australian nation; mine are but some reminiscences of a time of horror unparalleled, which no man anticipated would have visited the Southern Continent.

  THE GREAT CATASTROPHE

  George Davey

  The following is another disaster story set in the future and which shows some of the growing pessimism about the over reliance on new technology, and especially on electricity. I can find out nothing about George Davey, although he was also a passable artist as he illustrated his own story when it appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine in 1910. — M.A.

  I

  The Experience of a Survivor

  BEING ONE of the few human beings that escaped alive from the disaster of London, I have been asked to describe my experience. It is now almost four months ago since the tragedy occurred, and in America have appeared hundreds of disjointed accounts, fragmentary stories, biographs, and records, which have given the American public, at least, a general idea of the event; but, as I was an actual eyewitness to almost everything that took place, I am able to give several details which will, I think, be of some interest to our electrical officials.

  In the first place, I am glad to learn that we and other nations are taking the lesson. In the city of New York already the council has disconnected several electrical conduits, and I hear that the German tribunal has ordered all district telegrams to be sent by the old-fashioned method of wires. I expect this will be inconvenient to German residents, but it is better so until further investigation into the cause of the London disaster can be made.

  It is an undeniable fact that we have had many warnings at various times of the liability of electricity to get out of human control, and actually as far back as the year 1912 I find an account in a very rare copy of an old newspaper, printed in London at that time, and called the Daily Record, which, I think, is one of the first of the warnings which have occurred at intervals during the last two centuries. It is an account of an electrical train accident at Liverpool, which took place in a tunnel, and a few people were killed. Then there is the well-known Auckland affair; and the sensational episode at the capital of Japan; also the disaster which happened to one of the Pacific Trust’s aeroplanes about seven years ago; and here in Chicago there are still a few residents who can recollect the curious incident of the green man, which again shows the unknowable paths electricity may take.

  Now, to proceed with my story, it was on the evening of the 42nd–3rd (or, as they would have called it in the old romantic days, August the 7th) that I first witnessed what I know now to have been the preliminary sign of the subsequent events. The preceding night, I remember, a severe thunderstorm had occurred, which, it was reported by the news agencies, had somewhat disturbed the wires at many of the overhead airship stations, and I have an idea that this circumstance had a good deal to do with the catastrophe. I do not agree at all with Councillor Gruvier’s theory that the first cause took place under the earth, in spite of the fact that he is our premier electrician. However, on the evening of the 42nd, I was returning from business, and left my auto-car at the office, preferring to walk, by way of a change; and I remember I was amused by a fussy old gentleman, who accosted me, and remarked that “he was glad to see I preferred the good, old-fashioned method of walking, friend. In his young days, friend, there wasn’t so many of these confounded electric chair-cars about! Nowadays, every little whipper-snapper who owned a cent could rush about on his car, and they ought to be made to have a license, friend, a license!”

  I had been traversing the Great Portsmouth Road, and even then there seemed to be a vague sense of impending disaster — an indefinable feeling of danger.

  The Great Portsmouth Road (I believe it is now reopened) is very similar to most of our great American roads. The monotonous, low whirring of the thousands of auto-cars, the yelling of the traffic directors, and every now and then the heavy clanging of some airship bell overhead. I remember, also, on that night very few people were walking, and I had nearly the whole of the side footways, reserved for pedestrians, to myself. Soon I turned into Regent Street, one of the oldest streets in the city, and a principal side street of the Great Portsmouth Road, and here I paused to gaze awhile at the scene below me.

  The numberless cars, vehicles, and public trains were all speeding as swiftly as ever to their destinations, bewildering the eye, when suddenly everything seemed to be forcibly stopped by some invisible power; in an instant the yelling and confusion were terrific; nearly every car crashed into another, people were thrown out and under wheels, and even as I looked showers of blue sparks darted along the great public conduits on each side of the way, and I felt a curious sensation, as of an electric shock.

  By this time many people had joined me on the footway, and were excitedly exchanging opinions as to what was the matter.

  The whole duration of the episode was hardly ten minutes. The road officials made investigations, and could discover nothing wrong; one or two cars began to move again, and very soon traffic was resumed in the ordinary manner. With the exception of one or two slight injuries no one was hurt. Although I was puzzled by the incident, I did not think it very serious; but, being a journalist, I had no doubt it would make “good copy,” so rushing to the nearest telephone office, I speedily sent an account of the affair in to my newspaper.

  After this I proceeded to my lodging, a couple of rooms in one of the Municipal Housing Company’s buildings. I went to bed, still pondering over the strange occurrence
I had witnessed, and at last I fell to sleep. It must have been about half-past three in the morning when I was awakened by the great public alarm bell, and a tremendous roaring and shouting outside; hastily dressing myself, I rushed out, and not troubling to wait for the lift, went down the circular stair-slide, crowds of people going down with me, asking each other in alarmed tones, “What was wrong? What has happened?”

  I did not find out what was the matter, even when I got into the street, but thousands of frightened people were running along the footways, and numberless cars and vehicles were going full speed along both sides of the road, in one direction. “Run for your lives!” People were shouting, and the cry was taken up by a thousand voices echoing into the air. Out into the crowd I was carried along, buffeted and bewildered. Even in this panic, which was only the beginning, many people were thrown over the balustrades of the footways, to be crushed and mangled by the racing cars beneath. Many were the calls for “Ambulance! Ambulance!” But the ambulance officials had disappeared. Yet no cause for this great panic could I see; neither was it any use inquiring. Several people I asked, like myself, simply did not know. All the same they were as panic stricken as the others.

  One man I asked, however, replied in an excited fashion:

  “I tell you, friend, it’s a punishment from God! I know it! I know it! And a green flame, a — ” and then this extraordinary man was borne along out of my hearing.

  Then, being (though I say it myself) somewhat of a logical disposition, I made up my mind to see the danger for myself before running away from it; so I commenced to push and fight my way in the opposite direction.

  II.

  EVERYWHERE I went were thousands — nay, millions — of people, all panic-stricken; and as I progressed further towards the east, I began to hear more news. Some said the whole of London was on fire; some said it was a green fire; one man, brawny and half naked, tore along, screaming, “The lightning! The lightning!”