The Iron Heel

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XXIV

  NIGHTMARE

  I had not closed my eyes the night before on the Twentieth Century, andwhat of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke,it was night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my watch and hadno idea of the time. As I lay with my eyes closed, I heard the samedull sound of distant explosions. The inferno was still raging. I creptthrough the store to the front. The reflection from the sky of vastconflagrations made the street almost as light as day. One could haveread the finest print with ease. From several blocks away came thecrackle of small hand-bombs and the churning of machine-guns, and from along way off came a long series of heavy explosions. I crept back to myhorse blankets and slept again.

  When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me. It wasdawn of the second day. I crept to the front of the store. A smoke pall,shot through with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the oppositeside of the street tottered a wretched slave. One hand he held tightlyagainst his side, and behind him he left a bloody trail. His eyes rovedeverywhere, and they were filled with apprehension and dread. Once helooked straight across at me, and in his face was all the dumb pathosof the wounded and hunted animal. He saw me, but there was no kinshipbetween us, and with him, at least, no sympathy of understanding; forhe cowered perceptibly and dragged himself on. He could expect no aidin all God's world. He was a helot in the great hunt of helots that themasters were making. All he could hope for, all he sought, was some holeto crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp clang of a passingambulance at the corner gave him a start. Ambulances were not for suchas he. With a groan of pain he threw himself into a doorway. A minutelater he was out again and desperately hobbling on.

  I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite. Myheadache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing. It wasby an effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes and lookat objects. And with the opening of my eyes and the looking cameintolerable torment. Also, a great pulse was beating in my brain. Weakand reeling, I went out through the broken window and down the street,seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles.And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory of what happened in thesucceeding hours is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many eventsare focussed sharply on my brain, but between these indelible picturesI retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in thoseintervals I know not, and never shall know.

  I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It was thepoor hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place. Howdistinctly do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he laythere on the pavement--hands that were more hoof and claw than hands,all twisted and distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palmsa horny growth of callous a half inch thick. And as I picked myselfup and started on, I looked into the face of the thing and saw that itstill lived; for the eyes, dimly intelligent, were looking at me andseeing me.

  After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merelytottered on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was aquiet street of the dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in thecountry would come upon a flowing stream. Only this stream I gazed upondid not flow. It was congealed in death. From pavement to pavement, andcovering the sidewalks, it lay there, spread out quite evenly, withonly here and there a lump or mound of bodies to break the surface. Poordriven people of the abyss, hunted helots--they lay there as the rabbitsin California after a drive.* Up the street and down I looked. There wasno movement, no sound. The quiet buildings looked down upon the scenefrom their many windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm thatmoved in that dead stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strangewrithing gesture of agony, and with it lifted a head, gory with namelesshorror, that gibbered at me and then lay down again and moved no more.

  * In those days, so sparsely populated was the land that wild animals often became pests. In California the custom of rabbit-driving obtained. On a given day all the farmers in a locality would assemble and sweep across the country in converging lines, driving the rabbits by scores of thousands into a prepared enclosure, where they were clubbed to death by men and boys.

  I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side, and thepanic that smote me into consciousness as again I saw the people of theabyss, but this time in a stream that flowed and came on. And then I sawthere was nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly, while from it arosegroans and lamentations, cursings, babblings of senility, hysteria, andinsanity; for these were the very young and the very old, the feeble andthe sick, the helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto.The burning of the great ghetto on the South Side had driven them forthinto the inferno of the street-fighting, and whither they wended andwhatever became of them I did not know and never learned.*

  * It was long a question of debate, whether the burning of the South Side ghetto was accidental, or whether it was done by the Mercenaries; but it is definitely settled now that the ghetto was fired by the Mercenaries under orders from their chiefs.

  I have faint memories of breaking a window and hiding in some shop toescape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burstnear me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up anddown, I could see no human being. But my next sharp recollection beginswith the crack of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am beingfired at by a soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the nextmoment I was screaming and motioning the signals. My memory of riding inthe automobile is very hazy, though this ride, in turn, is broken by onevivid picture. The crack of the rifle of the soldier sitting beside memade me open my eyes, and I saw George Milford, whom I had known in thePell Street days, sinking slowly down to the sidewalk. Even as he sankthe soldier fired again, and Milford doubled in, then flung his bodyout, and fell sprawling. The soldier chuckled, and the automobile spedon.

  The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a manwho walked up and down close beside me. His face was drawn and strained,and the sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead. One hand wasclutched tightly against his chest by the other hand, and blooddripped down upon the floor as he walked. He wore the uniform of theMercenaries. From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled roarof bursting bombs. I was in some building that was locked in combat withsome other building.

  A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned that itwas two in the afternoon. My headache was no better, and the surgeonpaused from his work long enough to give me a powerful drug that woulddepress the heart and bring relief. I slept again, and the next I knew Iwas on top of the building. The immediate fighting had ceased, and Iwas watching the balloon attack on the fortresses. Some one had an armaround me and I was leaning close against him. It came to me quite as amatter of course that this was Ernest, and I found myself wondering howhe had got his hair and eyebrows so badly singed.

  It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in thatterrible city. He had had no idea that I had left New York, and, comingthrough the room where I lay asleep, could not at first believe thatit was I. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune. After watching theballoon attack, Ernest took me down into the heart of the building,where I slept the afternoon out and the night. The third day we spentin the building, and on the fourth, Ernest having got permission and anautomobile from the authorities, we left Chicago.

  My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired. I lay backagainst Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic eyes watched thesoldiers trying to get the machine out of the city. Fighting wasstill going on, but only in isolated localities. Here and there wholedistricts were still in possession of the comrades, but such districtswere surrounded and guarded by heavy bodies of troops. In a hundredsegregated traps were the comrades thus held while the work ofsubjugating them went on. Subjugation meant death, for no quarter wasgiven, and they fought heroically to the last man.*

&
nbsp; * Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one held out eleven days. Each building had to be stormed like a fort, and the Mercenaries fought their way upward floor by floor. It was deadly fighting. Quarter was neither given nor taken, and in the fighting the revolutionists had the advantage of being above. While the revolutionists were wiped out, the loss was not one-sided. The proud Chicago proletariat lived up to its ancient boast. For as many of itself as were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.

  Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back andsent us around. Once, the only way past two strong positions of thecomrades was through a burnt section that lay between. From either sidewe could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the automobile pickedits way through smoking ruins and tottering walls. Often the streetswere blocked by mountains of debris that compelled us to go around. Wewere in a labyrinth of ruin, and our progress was slow.

  The stockyards (ghetto, plant, and everything) were smouldering ruins.Far off to the right a wide smoke haze dimmed the sky,--the town ofPullman, the soldier chauffeur told us, or what had been the town ofPullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had driven the machine outthere, with despatches, on the afternoon of the third day. Some of theheaviest fighting had occurred there, he said, many of the streets beingrendered impassable by the heaps of the dead.

  Swinging around the shattered walls of a building, in the stockyardsdistrict, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for allthe world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us whathad happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, atright angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on thecross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb musthave exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dyingformed the wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living,fighting slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay together, torn and mangled,around and over the wreckage of the automobiles and guns.

  Ernest sprang out. A familiar pair of shoulders in a cotton shirt and afamiliar fringe of white hair had caught his eye. I did not watch him,and it was not until he was back beside me and we were speeding on thathe said:

  "It was Bishop Morehouse."

  Soon we were in the green country, and I took one last glance back atthe smoke-filled sky. Faint and far came the low thud of an explosion.Then I turned my face against Ernest's breast and wept softly for theCause that was lost. Ernest's arm about me was eloquent with love.

  "For this time lost, dear heart," he said, "but not forever. We havelearned. To-morrow the Cause will rise again, strong with wisdom anddiscipline."

  The automobile drew up at a railroad station. Here we would catch atrain to New York. As we waited on the platform, three trains thunderedpast, bound west to Chicago. They were crowded with ragged, unskilledlaborers, people of the abyss.

  "Slave-levies for the rebuilding of Chicago," Ernest said. "You see, theChicago slaves are all killed."

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE TERRORISTS

  It was not until Ernest and I were back in New York, and after weeks hadelapsed, that we were able to comprehend thoroughly the full sweep ofthe disaster that had befallen the Cause. The situation was bitter andbloody. In many places, scattered over the country, slave revolts andmassacres had occurred. The roll of the martyrs increased mightily.Countless executions took place everywhere. The mountains and wasteregions were filled with outlaws and refugees who were being hunted downmercilessly. Our own refuges were packed with comrades who had prices ontheir heads. Through information furnished by its spies, scores of ourrefuges were raided by the soldiers of the Iron Heel.

  Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they retaliated withterroristic tactics. The set-back to their hopes made them despairingand desperate. Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with us spranginto existence and caused us much trouble.* These misguided peoplesacrificed their own lives wantonly, very often made our own plans goastray, and retarded our organization.

  * The annals of this short-lived era of despair make bloody reading. Revenge was the ruling motive, and the members of the terroristic organizations were careless of their own lives and hopeless about the future. The Danites, taking their name from the avenging angels of the Mormon mythology, sprang up in the mountains of the Great West and spread over the Pacific Coast from Panama to Alaska. The Valkyries were women. They were the most terrible of all. No woman was eligible for membership who had not lost near relatives at the hands of the Oligarchy. They were guilty of torturing their prisoners to death. Another famous organization of women was The Widows of War. A companion organization to the Valkyries was the Berserkers. These men placed no value whatever upon their own lives, and it was they who totally destroyed the great Mercenary city of Bellona along with its population of over a hundred thousand souls. The Bedlamites and the Helldamites were twin slave organizations, while a new religious sect that did not flourish long was called The Wrath of God. Among others, to show the whimsicality of their deadly seriousness, may be mentioned the following: The Bleeding Hearts, Sons of the Morning, the Morning Stars, The Flamingoes, The Triple Triangles, The Three Bars, The Rubonics, The Vindicators, The Comanches, and the Erebusites.

  And through it all moved the Iron Heel, impassive and deliberate,shaking up the whole fabric of the social structure in its search forthe comrades, combing out the Mercenaries, the labor castes, and all itssecret services, punishing without mercy and without malice, sufferingin silence all retaliations that were made upon it, and filling the gapsin its fighting line as fast as they appeared. And hand in hand withthis, Ernest and the other leaders were hard at work reorganizing theforces of the Revolution. The magnitude of the task may be understoodwhen it is taken into.*

  * This is the end of the Everhard Manuscript. It breaks off abruptly in the middle of a sentence. She must have received warning of the coming of the Mercenaries, for she had time safely to hide the Manuscript before she fled or was captured. It is to be regretted that she did not live to complete her narrative, for then, undoubtedly, would have been cleared away the mystery that has shrouded for seven centuries the execution of Ernest Everhard.