Enormous Spread of Plague in Nitrogen Area.
100,000 cases.
Spread of Plague through England.
only a few districts free.
Nitrogen Area Decimated.
population dying in the streets.
Doom in the Clyde Valley.
total failure of nitrogen scheme.
death of nordenholt.
The ultimate message was hurriedly printed with blotched type:
The Nitrogen Area is almost Uninhabited, the Remainder of the Population having fled in Panic. The Plague is Spreading Broadcast over England and Scotland. Isolate Yourselves, otherwise Safety is Impossible.
After this had been dropped from the air, the skies remained empty. No aeroplanes appeared.
Thus, with a stunning suddenness, the population of the kingdom learned that their hopes were shattered. It is true that there were still channels of communication open here and there through which the news might have spread to contradict the stories from the sky. But Nordenholt had done his work with demonic certainty. By the very form of his attack he closed these few remaining routes along which the truth might have percolated. Strangers were forbidden to enter any district for fear that they might bring the Plague with them; and thus each community remained closed to the outer world. With the increase in the terror, even neighbouring villages ceased to have any connection with one another. The Leviathan was dead.
With this closing of the avenues of communication, the problem of food-supply became acute. The rations remaining in each centre were distributed hurriedly and inefficiently among the population; and then the end was in sight.
I have no wish to dwell upon that side of the story. I saw glimpses of it, as I shall tell in due course, but all I need do here is to indicate certain results which flowed naturally from the condition of things.
When the coal- and food-shortage became acute, the population divided itself naturally into two classes. On the one hand were those who, moved either by timidity of new conditions or a fear of the Plague, fortified themselves in their dwellings and ceased to stir beyond their doors until the end overtook them; whilst, on the other, a second section of the population driven either by despair or adventurousness, quitted the districts in which it knew there was no hope of survival and went forth into the unknown to seek better conditions.
Thus in the ultimate stages of the débâcle, the country resembled a group of armed camps through which wandered a floating population of many thousand souls, growing more and more desperate as they journeyed onward in search of an unattainable goal. In the movements of this migratory horde, two main streams could be perceived. Those who had set forth from the cities knew that no food remained in the large aggregations of population; and they therefore wandered ever outward from their starting-point; the country legions, knowing that the land was barren, fixed their eyes upon the great centres in the hope that there the stores of food would still be unexhausted. Both were doomed to disappointment, but despair drove them on from point to point.