Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tired of the everyday grind, ever dream of a life
of romantic adventure, want to get away from it all.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We offer you.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Escape, Escape, designed to free you from the four walls
of today for a half hour of high adventure.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You are alone in a world of decay and desolation,
looking down on what was once a great city, while
coming slowly to meet you, her hand stretched out in
greeting to you, is a beautiful girl whose very existence
may be the cause of your death.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Listen now as Escape brings you Jack London's classic novel,
The Scarlet Play.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I am recording this only for myself, for my own sanity,
perhaps even from some age old sense of duty, for
I have not the slightest hope that it will ever
be heard by any living human being. I was at
one time a professor of English literature in the Great
University at San Francisco, Professor James Smith, a man who
(01:49):
believed in reason and intellect, and who abhorred the instincts
of animal nature. But that was before, before the terror
and the madness, so the scarlet plague. This morning I
killed the sheep with my bare hands. Then, squatting on
the ground, I tore a hunch from my prey and
(02:13):
ate it raw. It began simply on a Monday morning.
As I recall, I was having breakfast at the counter
in the campus cafeteria with Bill Dombi of the Physiology department.
He was glancing over the front page of the morning paper.
(02:34):
I don't know why I do it, Jim, do what
buy a paper?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Every morning? Nothing changes but the day. Senator so and
so back in Washington, after whirlwind tour, lovedness killing an Omaha,
you bomb test today and it would.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Talk schedule, But what's that? Tied him down at the
bottom where down the corner, New York fights scarlet plague.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Some news reporters pipe ream I suppose nine persons have
died since last evening, a strange malady which has left
doctors at Manhattan Hospitals admittedly baffled. The disease, if it is,
the disease, strikes without warning and slaves it's victim in
less than an hour. Apparently, the first symptoms are a
feeling of well being and lightheadedness, accompanied by a slight
(03:14):
rise in temperature. A few minutes later, a fiery red
rash appears on the hands and face and spreads rapidly
over the entire body. Within ten to thirty minutes, the
victim goes into coma and dies.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's ridiculous. There's no disease.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
It acts like that it's food poisoning, something of that
sort of Please Bill, I'm eating. Medical authorities are unanimously agreed, however,
that no general danger exists and that there is no
cause for public concern or alarm, which is double talk
for we don't know what it is yet.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
What about a mutation, mutation of heart? Well, how do
I know? You're the physiologist. Oh, you're talking about those
scare stories.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I suppose harmless virus or bacteria mutates and throws down
some new deadly type. Antibiotics won't touch it. Medical science helpless.
A million people wiped out overnight.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It's a possible ability, isn't it all?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Jim back Terious strains are always mutating, and usually the
mutation is less harmful than the parents that it has
been over worked for years past the cream.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Bill. Is it a possibility or not? Yes, it's a possibility.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Hey, you're stalling, Jim. That rooks the only piece you
can move, and you know it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Don't rush me. We still got the queen back here,
let's see m hmm.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
And here is the latest development on the Scarlett play,
the following statement, I wouldn't move public health up to
this hour. The official death toll and Greater New York
is three hundred and twenty one persons in Boston ninety four, Washington,
DC one hundred and eleven, Chicago one hundred eighty one.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Medical spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Around the clock. It is expected momentarily that the causative
agent of the disease will be isolated and an effective
treatment prescribed. Meanwhile, stay home and stay calm. We return
you now to dance time.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Turn it off, Jim, How cane? It spread so fast?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
It's hard to tell, not knowing the period of incubation,
whether it's airborne, contagious by contact, how long it's contagious
before the symptoms show up, not even knowing what it is.
In fact, I'm thing sure, though, something's got to be
done fast.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I guess we can call ourselves lucky out here. There
hadn't been a case reported in San Francisco. No, not yet. Yeh,
(06:09):
when all the breathers of this world are dead, you
still shall live. Such virtue hath my pen where breadth
most breathes, even in the mouths of me. Now, I
did not choose this particular sonnet because of possible contemporary suitability,
but because it does I think best keynote the transitional
(06:32):
phase that later, that later appears in the philosophies and
the poetic Is something wrong back there?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (06:42):
What's the trouble?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Miss Bastin?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Now? Wait now, wait, Mordly Everett, wait, you.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Give me a hand here, this will missus Smith. Look
at my hands, my arms all red now.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
So strange, cold, numb. I'm dying. Everyone who gets it dies.
I'm only nineteen.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I'm dying.
Speaker 8 (07:13):
There there, breathers of this Oh, what's dead?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You now? It's in San Francisco. I sat for a
(07:41):
long time in the empty classroom, paralyzed by shock, by
a strange fear I'd never felt before, the fear of
the unknown. The girl had walked into my class, smiling
and talking, and now she lay dead at the back
of the room. Why, how could it happen so suddenly?
What had caused the plague? Where had the terrors started?
(08:02):
And where would it end? I went to the faculty club.
Bill Domby was listening to the latest reports.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Reports from around the nation include the following figures. Greater
New York estimated one hundred eighty four thousand deaths, Philadelphia
estimated one hundred and fifty thousand deaths. Saint Louis estimated
eighty three thousand deaths. Chicago one moment, please, hey, bulletin
has just been handed to me from London. The scarlet
plague is raging in Europe. Unofficial reports from Russia estimate
(08:32):
the death toll in Moscow at one hundred and eighty thousand,
with additional millions dead and dying throughout the Soviet Union
and China. New bulletins will be broadcast whenever they are received,
for as long as our facilities last.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And we no word of any CUREA eh, Jim, I
didn't hear you come in. I just walked across the campus.
It's completely deserted.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
The faculty club here is the only hold out, and
at that they're only four four counting you, miur Blake
of Ravy Guards. She went over to her room to
pack some keep saying she'll be back. Doctor Barnes out
in the kitchen trying to rustle up something to drink.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Bill that girl who died in my class a while ago.
One minute she was all right, and a minute later
she was dead.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well it's fast, that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Can you get it from contact? I lifted her head,
I put some books on her.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Nobody knows how you get it. I don't suppose contact
matters much. It couldn't be all contact. Not millions of
cases in less than forty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Well, why can't they find a cure? They've had two days?
Speaker 5 (09:40):
Now?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
What are they all doing? Dying? Jim like everybody else?
Speaker 6 (09:45):
Tombee Smith?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh, doctor Barnes.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Yeah, maybe this will help Scotch.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Why not?
Speaker 6 (09:52):
It's the whole case of it out there. I think
it might be a good idea to keep that radio on.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yes, you're probably right, technicians, engineers. They've died by thousands
all over the country. How much longer can services like
radio telephone?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Ago?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
All conveyances, regardless of ownership or occupancy, are being stopped
and turned back at army control points. Stay where you are,
Do not attempt to travel. You are no safer in
one place than another. The plague is everywhere. Repeat, They've
played every ill.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Still try to round anywhere, just as long as it's
somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
Not mutinied. Repeat, the army has not mutiny and seed
over Senate member and Acting President of the United States
and by the Joint chiefs of Staff. In a bulletin
just handed to me, JOHNS. Hopkins regretfully states that doctor
Theodore von Swickler, who had earlier announced partial success in
identifying the cause of an agent of the plague, has
(10:53):
just died. So doctor Swickler left no notes on his work.
Hospital personnel continued.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
To have the lights power failure.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
When there's a flashlight in that death brower. I got it.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
There's a portable radio with batteries.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
In the game room. Oh, let's leave it for the moment. Act. Yes,
the liquor sounds better than the news.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
Well, in that case, wonder what's keeping miss Blake? She
was coming right back.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Hey, wait a minute, where's that light coming from.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It's like a fire. Maybe we can see from the windows.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Not one fire, a thousand fires.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Down there toward the Bay, Berkeley, Oakland and over in
the city. Why what started them open?
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Can't you hear?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Why? Jim?
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Gunfire? Yes, they're not waiting for the plague to do
the job.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Now they're already out in force, the looters, the namers,
the robbers, people with a hate, a grievance.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
If it started already, it'll get a lot worse. Oh yes,
it'll get worse.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You are listening to the Scarlet Plague Tonight's presentation on Escape.
Sunday afternoons, CBS Radio will bring you another of its
successful on the scene reports gathered by its feature project team.
This time we'll take you to the United States wide
open back door, the Mexican border, the crossing point for
two million illegal entrants last year alone. We call this
(12:34):
report the Wetbacks because that's what so many of these
illegal entrants are called as they swim the Rio Grand
into the United States. Here the Wetbacks Sunday on most
of these same stations, and now Escape and the second
act of the Scarlet Plague.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
We stood at the window of the Faculty Club, looking
out across the campus, down over the hills, towards the bay,
where fires lit up the growing night, and where even
fiercer fires of greed and lust and hate burned in
hearts that were beating their last hours or even seconds
(13:29):
of life in this world. For a world was dying
at our feet, and though we had so far been spared,
we knew we too were dying with it.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Contact is still being maintained with guennos Iris, and since
London overseas went silent a few minutes ago, this is
now our only contact outside continental North America.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Makes you know you're.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Only two stations in this country, Washington and Chicago has
been silent for some thirty minutes, and we do not
know whether we are being heard there at this time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
This is unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
The new president of the United States to replace Edmund C. Dover,
who died on the Senate platform while.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Attempting to yeah, what's the use, Well, we still agreed
on leaving. We must.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
If by some miracle we do survive, we'll be out
of food here in three days, and tonight maybe the
last chance to find any, probably looting every store in
the Bay Area.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
Grocery stores, liquor store, jewelers, first shots.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
More of the reason to get started now, then, right,
If we can make three or four trips with the
station wagon tonight, we ought to be set here for
quite a while. What about those pistols, doctor Barnes, We
said there were a couple in the safe.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
Yeah, so I'll get them.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's funny how things are changing. He was chancellor of
this university. Now he's foraging for food.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Yes, well, I'll guess up the station wagon and get
it over here.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So we can anybody here give him turn that flashlight
on the door. Myra, Yeah, thank Heaven.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Yes, still here.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Doctor Barnes was worried about you, Myra. He just went
into the other room. I'll tell him you're here, all right, Jim.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
I was afraid there might not be anybody here. I
was hurrying to get back, and I caught my heel
on the edge of the walk and fell. I think
I hit my head.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Trip to Bell, the whole world dying and you trip
and fall.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
Yes, it is funny, Bil.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
What is it that's wrong? Doctor Barnes is lying just
outside the plague. Yes, but he got the pistols. Thanks.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Do you know how to use one of these, Jim in.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
A general way? Well, we'd better get started, Bill. We
shouldn't be too long, Mara.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
You're not going to leave me here alone.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
She's right, Jim. I wouldn't want to be left alone either.
All right, let's go. We tried the Oakland Docks first.
The big food warehouses along the railroad tracks. It was
(16:03):
a dead end. From a mile away, we could see
the blaze towering into the night sky. The whole dock
area was in flames. We swung the station wagon back
onto the ramp and headed across the Bay Bridge toward
the city itself, fighting our way in and out of
the jumble traffic in the terrified crowds on foot, turning
and twisting among the dead and dying.
Speaker 8 (16:25):
You better go back, Bill, This is getting worse every block.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, I know, trying to get a chance to turn around.
There's there's an alley there by the hotel. Maybe you
can edge in there. It's we're to try anyway.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
Hey, what's who you're bumbing into?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Sorry, I ain't taking a pushing around from nobody.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
Not anymore.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
I understand.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
I told you about where I got.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
You.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Take a look at the forty.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Five who close You can see the bullet coming out.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Watch that.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
He so all right, Betty, got a real good look.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
He's crazy. Come on, hurry, we've got to get out
of here. What about the other man, We'll leave the car.
Come on out this side, this way myra the hotel entrance.
Out of the way, one side. It's not the s.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
All right, Come on, what can we do, Jim?
Speaker 8 (17:26):
They saw us come here, there'll be after us any second.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
The stairway there next to the elevator's hurry, miners, and
maybe we can find a room someplace to hide in
case they come up the stairs.
Speaker 8 (17:39):
Try that one, Jim.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
All right, we've got more gad sorry, come on in
and live. That's what all of us are doing while
we're dying. Hurry, come on in.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
We got plenty plain a drink, pounds of diamonds, turns
some money.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Lots of women are.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Not to worry in the room.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
On my let's go, so.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Come on, let me open another.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Where can we go? Well, the hotel's about twelve or
fourteen stories high. The elevators aren't working. I doubt if
anybody'd bother us, and one of the top floors they
wouldn't have any reason to climb up there. You want
to try it, all right, Jim, let's go. For five
(18:43):
days we stayed on the top floor of the hotel
and no one came up to bother us. Twice. With
pistol in hand, I left Myra in the room and
slipped down into the streets to forage for food and supplies. Gradually,
over the three days, I saw the mobs diminish, thin
out as the Scarlet plague continued to rage unchecked. Then finally,
(19:09):
on the morning of the sixth day, I brought Mayra
down from the room to see what had happened to
the city.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
There's not a person inside, Jim, No one but us,
not another living soul as far as you can see.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Listen, it's not a sound a dead world.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
There must be others, not just us. They're hiding. We'll
take a car and drive and look for them. There
must be others.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But she was wrong. We drove for one hundred miles
all over the city and the countryside around it, and
when we finally stopped on a hill above the bay,
we knew that there was not another living soul in
the whole city. We were the only human beings left
alive in San Francisco, and most likely the only ones
(20:16):
in the entire world. But why why us?
Speaker 8 (20:22):
No one else.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I don't know why. I don't know why any of this.
It's just too fast to begin to comprehend. But we're alive.
That's the only thing that's certain. We're both alive To
be alone. To be the only living human in the
(20:45):
world would mean terror, absolute terror and insanity.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
I feel guilty somehow, being alive and everyone else is dead.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
It can't be any You don't have a choice. It
was nothing we did. And besides, Myra, don't you see
what it means Since we've been spared, mankind itself has
been spared, and civilization. We'll have children. We'll teach them,
(21:19):
see that they remember and pass on the greatness of
the past. Yes, oh, yes, Together together we can do it.
We can give mankind another chance. You and I, Myrah,
we can keep it from being lost forever. Together, everything
is different. There's a new hope, something to live for
(21:39):
and work for. And we.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
We what's wrong?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You, Myrah? What your faith? It's turning scarlet?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Under the direction of Norman McDonald, Escape has Brought You
the Scarlett Plague by Jack London, specially adapted for radio
by Les Crutchfield, starring Vic Perrin. Featured in the cast
were Parley Bear, Virginia greg and John Dayner with Eleanor Tannon,
John Larch, Barney Phillips and Sam Edwards. You're announcer George Walsh.
The special music for Escape is composed and conducted by
(22:32):
Leith Stephens.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Next week, you.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Are standing in the bedroom of an English in the
sound of revelry coming faintly up the stairs, but in
the shadows across the room from you, the gun in
his hand already aimed at you. He's an enemy agent
whose success depends upon.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Your death.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
So listen next week when escape brings you. Ben Wright's
story Affair at Mandrake. Every Saturday evening at the Star's Address,
(23:33):
Enjoy William Conrad as Marshall Matt Dillon in Gun Smoke.
It's a drama of the frontier of America in the
eighteen seventies. Authentic, dramatic, and full of the lore that
made the American cowboy a part of our national heritage.
Remember gun Smoke Saturday Night. Mister Keen, tracer of Lost Persons,
has heard Friday nights on the CBS Radio network
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That a
Tired of the everyday grind, ever dream of a life
of romantic adventure, want to get away from it all.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We offer you.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Escape, Escape, designed to free you from the four walls
of today for a half hour of high adventure.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You are alone in a world of decay and desolation,
looking down on what was once a great city, while
coming slowly to meet you, her hand stretched out in
greeting to you, is a beautiful girl whose very existence
may be the cause of your death.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Listen now as Escape brings you Jack London's classic novel,
The Scarlet Play.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I am recording this only for myself, for my own sanity,
perhaps even from some age old sense of duty, for
I have not the slightest hope that it will ever
be heard by any living human being. I was at
one time a professor of English literature in the Great
University at San Francisco, Professor James Smith, a man who
(01:49):
believed in reason and intellect, and who abhorred the instincts
of animal nature. But that was before, before the terror
and the madness, so the scarlet plague. This morning I
killed the sheep with my bare hands. Then, squatting on
the ground, I tore a hunch from my prey and
(02:13):
ate it raw. It began simply on a Monday morning.
As I recall, I was having breakfast at the counter
in the campus cafeteria with Bill Dombi of the Physiology department.
He was glancing over the front page of the morning paper.
(02:34):
I don't know why I do it, Jim, do what
buy a paper?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Every morning? Nothing changes but the day. Senator so and
so back in Washington, after whirlwind tour, lovedness killing an Omaha,
you bomb test today and it would.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Talk schedule, But what's that? Tied him down at the
bottom where down the corner, New York fights scarlet plague.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Some news reporters pipe ream I suppose nine persons have
died since last evening, a strange malady which has left
doctors at Manhattan Hospitals admittedly baffled. The disease, if it is,
the disease, strikes without warning and slaves it's victim in
less than an hour. Apparently, the first symptoms are a
feeling of well being and lightheadedness, accompanied by a slight
(03:14):
rise in temperature. A few minutes later, a fiery red
rash appears on the hands and face and spreads rapidly
over the entire body. Within ten to thirty minutes, the
victim goes into coma and dies.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's ridiculous. There's no disease.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
It acts like that it's food poisoning, something of that
sort of Please Bill, I'm eating. Medical authorities are unanimously agreed, however,
that no general danger exists and that there is no
cause for public concern or alarm, which is double talk
for we don't know what it is yet.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
What about a mutation, mutation of heart? Well, how do
I know? You're the physiologist. Oh, you're talking about those
scare stories.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I suppose harmless virus or bacteria mutates and throws down
some new deadly type. Antibiotics won't touch it. Medical science helpless.
A million people wiped out overnight.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It's a possible ability, isn't it all?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Jim back Terious strains are always mutating, and usually the
mutation is less harmful than the parents that it has
been over worked for years past the cream.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Bill. Is it a possibility or not? Yes, it's a possibility.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Hey, you're stalling, Jim. That rooks the only piece you
can move, and you know it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Don't rush me. We still got the queen back here,
let's see m hmm.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
And here is the latest development on the Scarlett play,
the following statement, I wouldn't move public health up to
this hour. The official death toll and Greater New York
is three hundred and twenty one persons in Boston ninety four, Washington,
DC one hundred and eleven, Chicago one hundred eighty one.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Medical spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Around the clock. It is expected momentarily that the causative
agent of the disease will be isolated and an effective
treatment prescribed. Meanwhile, stay home and stay calm. We return
you now to dance time.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Turn it off, Jim, How cane? It spread so fast?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
It's hard to tell, not knowing the period of incubation,
whether it's airborne, contagious by contact, how long it's contagious
before the symptoms show up, not even knowing what it is.
In fact, I'm thing sure, though, something's got to be
done fast.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I guess we can call ourselves lucky out here. There
hadn't been a case reported in San Francisco. No, not yet. Yeh,
(06:09):
when all the breathers of this world are dead, you
still shall live. Such virtue hath my pen where breadth
most breathes, even in the mouths of me. Now, I
did not choose this particular sonnet because of possible contemporary suitability,
but because it does I think best keynote the transitional
(06:32):
phase that later, that later appears in the philosophies and
the poetic Is something wrong back there?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (06:42):
What's the trouble?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Miss Bastin?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Now? Wait now, wait, Mordly Everett, wait, you.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Give me a hand here, this will missus Smith. Look
at my hands, my arms all red now.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
So strange, cold, numb. I'm dying. Everyone who gets it dies.
I'm only nineteen.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I'm dying.
Speaker 8 (07:13):
There there, breathers of this Oh, what's dead?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You now? It's in San Francisco. I sat for a
(07:41):
long time in the empty classroom, paralyzed by shock, by
a strange fear I'd never felt before, the fear of
the unknown. The girl had walked into my class, smiling
and talking, and now she lay dead at the back
of the room. Why, how could it happen so suddenly?
What had caused the plague? Where had the terrors started?
(08:02):
And where would it end? I went to the faculty club.
Bill Domby was listening to the latest reports.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Reports from around the nation include the following figures. Greater
New York estimated one hundred eighty four thousand deaths, Philadelphia
estimated one hundred and fifty thousand deaths. Saint Louis estimated
eighty three thousand deaths. Chicago one moment, please, hey, bulletin
has just been handed to me from London. The scarlet
plague is raging in Europe. Unofficial reports from Russia estimate
(08:32):
the death toll in Moscow at one hundred and eighty thousand,
with additional millions dead and dying throughout the Soviet Union
and China. New bulletins will be broadcast whenever they are received,
for as long as our facilities last.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And we no word of any CUREA eh, Jim, I
didn't hear you come in. I just walked across the campus.
It's completely deserted.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
The faculty club here is the only hold out, and
at that they're only four four counting you, miur Blake
of Ravy Guards. She went over to her room to
pack some keep saying she'll be back. Doctor Barnes out
in the kitchen trying to rustle up something to drink.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Bill that girl who died in my class a while ago.
One minute she was all right, and a minute later
she was dead.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well it's fast, that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Can you get it from contact? I lifted her head,
I put some books on her.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Nobody knows how you get it. I don't suppose contact
matters much. It couldn't be all contact. Not millions of
cases in less than forty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Well, why can't they find a cure? They've had two days?
Speaker 5 (09:40):
Now?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
What are they all doing? Dying? Jim like everybody else?
Speaker 6 (09:45):
Tombee Smith?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh, doctor Barnes.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Yeah, maybe this will help Scotch.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Why not?
Speaker 6 (09:52):
It's the whole case of it out there. I think
it might be a good idea to keep that radio on.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yes, you're probably right, technicians, engineers. They've died by thousands
all over the country. How much longer can services like
radio telephone?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Ago?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
All conveyances, regardless of ownership or occupancy, are being stopped
and turned back at army control points. Stay where you are,
Do not attempt to travel. You are no safer in
one place than another. The plague is everywhere. Repeat, They've
played every ill.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Still try to round anywhere, just as long as it's
somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
Not mutinied. Repeat, the army has not mutiny and seed
over Senate member and Acting President of the United States
and by the Joint chiefs of Staff. In a bulletin
just handed to me, JOHNS. Hopkins regretfully states that doctor
Theodore von Swickler, who had earlier announced partial success in
identifying the cause of an agent of the plague, has
(10:53):
just died. So doctor Swickler left no notes on his work.
Hospital personnel continued.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
To have the lights power failure.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
When there's a flashlight in that death brower. I got it.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
There's a portable radio with batteries.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
In the game room. Oh, let's leave it for the moment. Act. Yes,
the liquor sounds better than the news.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
Well, in that case, wonder what's keeping miss Blake? She
was coming right back.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Hey, wait a minute, where's that light coming from.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It's like a fire. Maybe we can see from the windows.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Not one fire, a thousand fires.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Down there toward the Bay, Berkeley, Oakland and over in
the city. Why what started them open?
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Can't you hear?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Why? Jim?
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Gunfire? Yes, they're not waiting for the plague to do
the job.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Now they're already out in force, the looters, the namers,
the robbers, people with a hate, a grievance.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
If it started already, it'll get a lot worse. Oh yes,
it'll get worse.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You are listening to the Scarlet Plague Tonight's presentation on Escape.
Sunday afternoons, CBS Radio will bring you another of its
successful on the scene reports gathered by its feature project team.
This time we'll take you to the United States wide
open back door, the Mexican border, the crossing point for
two million illegal entrants last year alone. We call this
(12:34):
report the Wetbacks because that's what so many of these
illegal entrants are called as they swim the Rio Grand
into the United States. Here the Wetbacks Sunday on most
of these same stations, and now Escape and the second
act of the Scarlet Plague.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
We stood at the window of the Faculty Club, looking
out across the campus, down over the hills, towards the bay,
where fires lit up the growing night, and where even
fiercer fires of greed and lust and hate burned in
hearts that were beating their last hours or even seconds
(13:29):
of life in this world. For a world was dying
at our feet, and though we had so far been spared,
we knew we too were dying with it.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Contact is still being maintained with guennos Iris, and since
London overseas went silent a few minutes ago, this is
now our only contact outside continental North America.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Makes you know you're.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Only two stations in this country, Washington and Chicago has
been silent for some thirty minutes, and we do not
know whether we are being heard there at this time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
This is unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
The new president of the United States to replace Edmund C. Dover,
who died on the Senate platform while.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Attempting to yeah, what's the use, Well, we still agreed
on leaving. We must.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
If by some miracle we do survive, we'll be out
of food here in three days, and tonight maybe the
last chance to find any, probably looting every store in
the Bay Area.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
Grocery stores, liquor store, jewelers, first shots.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
More of the reason to get started now, then, right,
If we can make three or four trips with the
station wagon tonight, we ought to be set here for
quite a while. What about those pistols, doctor Barnes, We
said there were a couple in the safe.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
Yeah, so I'll get them.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's funny how things are changing. He was chancellor of
this university. Now he's foraging for food.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Yes, well, I'll guess up the station wagon and get
it over here.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So we can anybody here give him turn that flashlight
on the door. Myra, Yeah, thank Heaven.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Yes, still here.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Doctor Barnes was worried about you, Myra. He just went
into the other room. I'll tell him you're here, all right, Jim.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
I was afraid there might not be anybody here. I
was hurrying to get back, and I caught my heel
on the edge of the walk and fell. I think
I hit my head.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Trip to Bell, the whole world dying and you trip
and fall.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
Yes, it is funny, Bil.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
What is it that's wrong? Doctor Barnes is lying just
outside the plague. Yes, but he got the pistols. Thanks.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Do you know how to use one of these, Jim in.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
A general way? Well, we'd better get started, Bill. We
shouldn't be too long, Mara.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
You're not going to leave me here alone.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
She's right, Jim. I wouldn't want to be left alone either.
All right, let's go. We tried the Oakland Docks first.
The big food warehouses along the railroad tracks. It was
(16:03):
a dead end. From a mile away, we could see
the blaze towering into the night sky. The whole dock
area was in flames. We swung the station wagon back
onto the ramp and headed across the Bay Bridge toward
the city itself, fighting our way in and out of
the jumble traffic in the terrified crowds on foot, turning
and twisting among the dead and dying.
Speaker 8 (16:25):
You better go back, Bill, This is getting worse every block.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, I know, trying to get a chance to turn around.
There's there's an alley there by the hotel. Maybe you
can edge in there. It's we're to try anyway.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
Hey, what's who you're bumbing into?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Sorry, I ain't taking a pushing around from nobody.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
Not anymore.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
I understand.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
I told you about where I got.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
You.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Take a look at the forty.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Five who close You can see the bullet coming out.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Watch that.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
He so all right, Betty, got a real good look.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
He's crazy. Come on, hurry, we've got to get out
of here. What about the other man, We'll leave the car.
Come on out this side, this way myra the hotel entrance.
Out of the way, one side. It's not the s.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
All right, Come on, what can we do, Jim?
Speaker 8 (17:26):
They saw us come here, there'll be after us any second.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
The stairway there next to the elevator's hurry, miners, and
maybe we can find a room someplace to hide in
case they come up the stairs.
Speaker 8 (17:39):
Try that one, Jim.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
All right, we've got more gad sorry, come on in
and live. That's what all of us are doing while
we're dying. Hurry, come on in.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
We got plenty plain a drink, pounds of diamonds, turns
some money.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Lots of women are.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Not to worry in the room.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
On my let's go, so.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Come on, let me open another.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Where can we go? Well, the hotel's about twelve or
fourteen stories high. The elevators aren't working. I doubt if
anybody'd bother us, and one of the top floors they
wouldn't have any reason to climb up there. You want
to try it, all right, Jim, let's go. For five
(18:43):
days we stayed on the top floor of the hotel
and no one came up to bother us. Twice. With
pistol in hand, I left Myra in the room and
slipped down into the streets to forage for food and supplies. Gradually,
over the three days, I saw the mobs diminish, thin
out as the Scarlet plague continued to rage unchecked. Then finally,
(19:09):
on the morning of the sixth day, I brought Mayra
down from the room to see what had happened to
the city.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
There's not a person inside, Jim, No one but us,
not another living soul as far as you can see.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Listen, it's not a sound a dead world.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
There must be others, not just us. They're hiding. We'll
take a car and drive and look for them. There
must be others.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But she was wrong. We drove for one hundred miles
all over the city and the countryside around it, and
when we finally stopped on a hill above the bay,
we knew that there was not another living soul in
the whole city. We were the only human beings left
alive in San Francisco, and most likely the only ones
(20:16):
in the entire world. But why why us?
Speaker 8 (20:22):
No one else.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I don't know why. I don't know why any of this.
It's just too fast to begin to comprehend. But we're alive.
That's the only thing that's certain. We're both alive To
be alone. To be the only living human in the
(20:45):
world would mean terror, absolute terror and insanity.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
I feel guilty somehow, being alive and everyone else is dead.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
It can't be any You don't have a choice. It
was nothing we did. And besides, Myra, don't you see
what it means Since we've been spared, mankind itself has
been spared, and civilization. We'll have children. We'll teach them,
(21:19):
see that they remember and pass on the greatness of
the past. Yes, oh, yes, Together together we can do it.
We can give mankind another chance. You and I, Myrah,
we can keep it from being lost forever. Together, everything
is different. There's a new hope, something to live for
(21:39):
and work for. And we.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
We what's wrong?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You, Myrah? What your faith? It's turning scarlet?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Under the direction of Norman McDonald, Escape has Brought You
the Scarlett Plague by Jack London, specially adapted for radio
by Les Crutchfield, starring Vic Perrin. Featured in the cast
were Parley Bear, Virginia greg and John Dayner with Eleanor Tannon,
John Larch, Barney Phillips and Sam Edwards. You're announcer George Walsh.
The special music for Escape is composed and conducted by
(22:32):
Leith Stephens.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Next week, you.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Are standing in the bedroom of an English in the
sound of revelry coming faintly up the stairs, but in
the shadows across the room from you, the gun in
his hand already aimed at you. He's an enemy agent
whose success depends upon.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Your death.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
So listen next week when escape brings you. Ben Wright's
story Affair at Mandrake. Every Saturday evening at the Star's Address,
(23:33):
Enjoy William Conrad as Marshall Matt Dillon in Gun Smoke.
It's a drama of the frontier of America in the
eighteen seventies. Authentic, dramatic, and full of the lore that
made the American cowboy a part of our national heritage.
Remember gun Smoke Saturday Night. Mister Keen, tracer of Lost Persons,
has heard Friday nights on the CBS Radio network
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That a
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.