01 - Gray Plague by Lloyd Eshbach

Dive into a gripping end-of-the-world sci-fi adventure that draws inspiration from H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds and In The Days of the Comet. This thrilling tale promises an unforgettable journey through a captivating dystopian landscape! (Summary by BellonaTimes)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter one of The Gray Plague by L. A. Ashbach.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot organ reading by Matt Perrard. The Gray

(00:22):
Plague by L. A. Eshbach. Side note Maimed and captive
in the depths of an interplanetary meteor craft lay the
only possible savior of plague written Earth, chapter one. Five
months before the beginning of that period of madness, that

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time of chaos and death that became known as the
Gray Plague, the first of the strange meteors fell to Earth.
It landed a few miles west of al Paso, Texas,
on the morning of March eleventh. In a few hours,
a great throng of people gathered around the dully smoldering

(01:06):
mass of fire pitted rock, the upper half of which
protruded from the Earth where it had buried itself like
a huge, roughly outlined hemisphere. And then, when the crowd
had assumed its greatest proportions, the meteor, with a mighty
earth shaking roar, exploded a vast flood of radiance more

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brilliant than the light of the sun lit up the
sky for miles around one moment, a throng of curious people,
a number of scientists, newspaper men, a crashing explosion, and
then a great, yawning pit, sending forth a blinding radiance,
destruction and death where life had been. The brilliant light

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streamed from the pit for about ten minutes, then, like
a snuffed out candle flame, it vanished. The second of
the strange meteors landed on the evening of March thirteenth
in the city of Peking, China. It demolished several buildings
and buried itself beneath the ruins. The Chinese, unaware of

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the tragedy at al Paso, gathered in the vicinity, and
when the meteor exploded at about ten o'clock that night,
were instantly destroyed. As in Texas, the great pit emitted
a cloud of dazzling life for about ten minutes, throwing
a brilliant glow over the city and its surroundings, then

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was extinguished. The people of the world awoke to the
fact that events worthy of more than passing interests were occurring.
The press of every nation began giving the strange meteors.
More and more publicity statements of different pseudoscientists were published

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in explanation of the meteor's origin. Statements that arouse caused
worldwide conjecture. Approximately twenty four hours after the falling of
the second missile, the third one fell, landing near Madrid, Spain.
The Spaniards, having received news of the Alpasso and Peking tragedies,

(03:16):
avoided the ugly mass of rock as though it were
a dreaded pestilence. In every way, its action was similar
to that of its two predecessors. The interest of the
world was doubled now. The unusual similarity of the action
of the meteors and the regularity of their landings seemed

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indicative of a definite hostile purpose behind it all, a
menace from the unknown apparel from the skies. Scientists began
giving serious consideration to the unusual phenomenon, pottering around in
the pits wearing airs of puzzlement, but their investigations were
of no avail, for nothing of any great significance came

(03:59):
to light through their efforts. At about that time, an
announcement was made that created a furore. Astronomers in different
parts of the United States reported that they had observed
a bright flare of light leaping up from the darkened
portion of the planet Venus. The astronomers had no definite

(04:20):
idea of anything of importance in back of what they
had seen, but not so the masses. The flare, they said,
was caused by the release of another meteor from Venus
missiles hurled by Veneerians menacing the Earth. The silver planet
became the subject of universal discussion. Innumerable fantastic articles about

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it appeared in magazine sections of Sunday newspapers, and the
astronomers of Earth turned their telescopes toward Venus with an
interest they had never felt before. Four days of expect
and waiting passed by after the third meteor had fallen,
while interest continued mounting at an accelerating pace, and then,

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at about two o'clock in the morning of the eighteenth
three great observatories, two in North America and one in England,
recorded the falling of an extraordinarily large and unusually brilliant
meteor that glowed with an intense bluish white light as
it entered the Earth's atmosphere, and unlike most meteors, this

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one was not consumed by its intense heat, but continued
gleaming brilliantly until it vanished below the horizon. Simultaneous with
the falling of the meteor, the Earth was rocked by
one of the worst quakes in history. Seismographs in all
parts of the world recorded the tremors of the Earth,

(05:53):
each indicating that the disturbance had occurred somewhere beneath the
Atlantic Ocean. Evidently, the four meteor had fallen into the ocean,
for the shaking of the Earth was obviously the result
of the collision. That quakes had not followed the landing
of the first three was due to the fact that
they had been far smaller than the fourth. And then

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a short time after the earthquake, the worst storm in
two hundred years broke over the Atlantic Waves. Mountain high
piled themselves upon each other in a wild frenzy. A
shrieking wind lashed the waters into a liquid chaos. Great
ocean liners were tossed about like tiny chips. An appalling

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number of smaller ships were lost in that insane storm.
Nor was the destruction confined to the sea. For all
along the Atlantic coast of North America and Europe, mighty
walls of water rushed in and wrecked entire towns and cities. Fortunately,
the storm was of short duration. A few few hours

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after it began, it subsided. For a number of weeks,
public attention was centered upon the meteors and storm, but gradually,
when nothing further occurred, the fickle interest of the masses
began to wane. A month after the storm, the strange
meteors were no longer mentioned by the press, and consequently

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had passed from the public mind. Only the astronomers remembered
keeping their telescopes trained on Venus night after night. Four
months passed by, during which nothing of an unusual nature
came to the attention of the world. But at the
end of that time, it suddenly dawned upon those nations

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whose shores touched the Atlantic Ocean that something extraordinary was happening.
It was taking place so insidiously, so quietly, that it
had attracted no great attention. A series of inexplicable sea
disasters had begun. Every ship that had traveled over a

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certain regular steamship route had disappeared, leaving no trace. Mysteriously,
without warning, they had vanished, without a single so s
being sent. Seven freighters had been lost. The disappearances had
been called to the world's attention by the shipping companies,
alarmed at the gradual loss of their boats. Then other

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mysterious vanishings came to the attention of the world. Ships
in all parts of the Atlantic were being lost. When
this fact became known, Transatlantic commerce ceased almost overnight. With
the exception of a few privately owned yachts and freighters,
the Atlantic became deserted, and finally, a few days after

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the world became aware of the strange disappearance on the Atlantic,
the Great Plague introduced itself to humanity. Attempts were made
to press the facts, but the tragedy of the freighter Charleston,
in all its ghastliness and horror, became known in spite
of all attempts at secrecy. On the morning of August third,

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the Charleston was found half buried in the sand of
a beach on the coast of Florida, cast there, evidently
by a passing storm. The freighter had been one of
the first boats to disappear. When the ship's discoverers boarded her,
their eyes were greeted by a sight whose ghastliness filled
them with a numbing horror. Indeed, so terrifying was the

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spectacle on the Charleston that the discoverers, four boys of
adolescent age, left in fierce stricken haste, nor could they
be induced to return to the ship's deck. Later, a
group of men from a nearby town boarded the freighter
to investigate the boy's amazing report. In the group was
a newspaper reporter who chanced to be in the vicinity

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on a minor story. It was through the reporter's account
that the facts became known as quickly as they did.
When the men clamored up the side of the Charleston
to her deck, they saw a spectacle the like of
which had never before been seen on earth. Although they
had been prepared for the horror to some extent by

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the story of the boys, the sight of the Charleston
exceeded their description to such a degree that for the
moment the men were rendered speechless. The deck of the
Charleston was a shambles, a scene of sudden, chilling death.
All about were strewn gray, lifeless bodies. Death had overtaken

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the crew in the midst of their duties. Suddenly, without warning,
it seemed, bodies strewn about, yet nowhere was the sign
of decay. Bodies lifeless for days or weeks, yet intact.
The men were fearfully impressed by the strangely grotesque positions
of the corpses. With a few exceptions, they lay on

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the deck in abnormal, twisted masses of gray colored flesh. Somehow,
they seemed flattened, as though they had been soft, jelly
like and had flowed had settled flat against the deck.
Some were no more than three inches thick and had
spread out to such an extent that they looked like

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fantastic caricatures of human bodies. That unnatural change in their
structure and the ghastly dead gray color of their skins
gave the corpses a horrifying, utterly repulsive appearance that made
the flesh of the men crawl. The bodies had a
strangely soft aspect, as though they were still jelly like.

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One of the men, bolder than the rest, touched a
body and withdrew his hand in revulsion and surprise, for
the ugly mass was cold and as hard as bone,
the tissues of the flesh seemingly replaced by a solid,
bony substance. Later investigation revealed that all the dead on
the Charleston had assumed a similar bone like solidity. When

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the men left the freighter to report the tragedy to
the proper authorities, their faces were blanched and their nerves
badly shaken. Yet their horror was nothing when compared with
what it would have been had they known what was
to follow. Rapidly, the story of the Charleston spread by

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means of the press, over the radio, even by word
of mouth. The story of the horror on the freighter
was given publicity all over the United States and Canada.
It spread, and from thence to the rest of the world.
Eagerly was the story accepted. Here at least was the
explanation of the sea disasters, and then, more than ever before,

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was yet left ocean shunned. The bodies of the seamen
on the freighter were turned over to scientists for experimentation
and research. It was thought that they might be able
to discover the cause of the great depth, and, with
a knowledge of its cause, create something with which to
free the Atlantic from its scorge. The scientist's investigations only

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served to mystify the world to a greater degree. The
only thing that came to light was the cause of
the body's bone like rigidity. In some inexplicable way, the
bones in the seamen had dissolved, and, according to appearances,
while the bodies were plastic, had flattened out and then
strange and unnatural though it seemed the calcium from the

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dissolved bones had gathered at the surface of each body, and,
combining with the flesh and skin, had formed the hard
bony shell that gave them their ghastly grayness and their
appearance of petrification. Aside from this, the scientists learned nothing.
The cause of this amazing phenomenon was a complete mystery

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to them. Slowly, methodically, step by step, the unusual had
been taking place from the time of the landing of
the first strange meteor up to the discovery of the Charleston.
There had been a gradual increase in the significance of
each succeeding event. Then finally came the climax, the Great

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Plague itself. All that proceeded it faded into significance before
the horror of the dread pestilence that seized the world
with its destroying talons. A short time after the discovery
of the Charleston, the plague made its first appearance on land. Slowly, pitilessly, inexorably,

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it began taking its toll all along the Atlantic coast,
from Newfoundland to Brazil, from the British Isles to each other.
Wherever people lived near the ocean, thousands were stricken with
the dread malady. The old and infirm were the most
quickly affected. Their weakened bodies could not withstand the ravage
of the plague, as could those of younger people. An

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old man walking along a large thoroughfare in Savannah, Georgia,
suddenly uttered a fearful shriek and sank to the pavement.
While the pedestrians watched with bulging eyes. He seemed to shrink,
to flatten, to flow, liquidly, turning a ghastly gray. Within
an hour, he was as hard as the men of

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the Charleston. Of all the millions, perhaps he was the first.
Others followed in the wake of the first victim, young
as well as old. Three hours after the death in Savannah,
every channel of communication was choked with news of a
constantly increasing number of casualties. A Boston minister preaching a

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funeral sermon collapsing beside the coffin, a lineman on a
telegraph pole, overcome, falling and splashing a thousand incongruous tragedies,
shocking humanity. In Europe, the action of the plague was
the same as in North America. Death stalking the sea coast,
destroying thousands, ignorant fishermen, men of learning, women, and children

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of every age. All were grist to be ground in
the middle of the great plague. Before a week had
gone by, no one remained alive in the villages, towns,
and cities all along the Atlantic New York, London, all
the large coast cities were deserted by the living, left
to the rigid dead. From the largest metropolis to the

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smallest hamlet, all became body flooded tombs. And then on
the morning of October twelfth, news was given to the
world that threw mankind into a panic. The plague was
moving inland, slowly yet relentlessly. It spread, no longer confining
its effect to the sea coast, but moving farther and

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farther inland, toward the heart of the two continents, driving
mankind before it. For people fled in insane terror before
the advancing death, nor was there escape from the menace,
no antidote to counteract, no sanctuary wherein to hide. To
north and south, to east and west, the pestilent spread,

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destroying as it went. Unless there were some miraculous intervention,
the human race would be destroyed. Officials of the world
were at their wits end. Scientists threw up their hands
in despair. The plague was an insoluble puzzle, in agmatical,
utterly inexplicable beyond the knowledge of Earth. Scientists and doctors

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were brutally slain during that period by fear crazed mobs
because of their inability to rescue the world world from
the grip of the plague. Thousands of people died while
striving to escape the gray depth, crushed by passing motor
vehicles or starving in the congested areas. Gone was the
boasted civilization of man, Humanity sinking rapidly to the level

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of the beast, gone destroyed in a few weeks, And
then one day, when the inn seemed perilously close, there
was ushered into the presence of the remnant of the
United States officials who had gathered in San Francisco, a
twisted monstrosity of a man fearfully scarred and deformed. He

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was closeted with them for two hours. At the end
of that time, an excited official communicated with the leader
of the American scientists. A cure for the plague has
been discovered, he cried, in joyful tones. Man still has
a chance. Before an hour had passed by, scientists were

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in possession of cultures of germs that would destroy the
baccilli of the Gray Death. The hope of salvation restored
some semblance of order, and in a very short time
the development of the germs was going forward as rapidly
as skilled bacteriologists could carry it. Forces of doctors were
marshaled to administer the cure, inoculating all who were untouched

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by the plague. At about that time, a small bronze
colored sphere arose into the air above San Francisco and
sped eastward with amazing velocity. It flashed over the United States,
over the Atlantic Ocean, and over western Europe, finally landing
in the midst of the European hordes. There, its operator,

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a deformed cripple, left bacteria similar to those he had
given to the United States. In a short time, Europe, too,
was busily engaged in developing the bacteria and inoculating her people.
Many others died before the world was rendered immune. But
at last mankind let its labors cease. The Gray Plague

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was overcome. Then the work of reclaiming the deserted areas
was begun. Then two was started, the ghastly task of
disposing of the countless rigid dead. And finally a great
steamer left New York Harbor and started across the Atlantic.
It was the purpose of the men on board to
destroy utterly the source of the plague. But long before

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that occurred, humanity had heard the story of Philip Parkinson,
the man who saved the world, had heard and had
honored the deliverer of mankind. Parkinson's story follows in the
Chapter one of The Gray Plague SA