We had begun by this time to collect our big dogs. We needed them for protection and hunting. In the beginning we had a boxer and a police dog. We hunted other dogs to feed on. The transition of my wife from a charming, rather fastidious young American girl to a primeval savage was most interesting. She soon learned to use a knife and to skin an animal as well as I did. She was never a good shot, having difficulty in closing her left eye, so I got her a shotgun and a .32-caliber Colt. I told her that if anyone attacked, she was to wait till he was right on her, then push the muzzle of the pistol into his stomach—she would feel it go in—and then continue pulling the trigger till she passed out. No girl could have had better instructions. Fortunately, she never had to follow them. The only near disaster occurred once when I was some distance away, but her assailant was pulled down by the dogs, and when I arrived, the man who had approached her was dead. This reassured me because I had not been, until that moment, quite certain how the dogs would act, as they were young and unused to dangerous work.
This was about the time that we heard the first stories of the Red Death, the strange dancing disease that was, according to the information we had, sweeping not only the country, but the world. We soon saw evidences of it. In fact, one of these dancers was the second man our dogs killed. The disease was contagious. The first symptom was the appearance of great health and gaiety, which was followed by a mad happiness; we would see rosy-faced couples dancing and singing in the streets as the disease began to spread. In the later phase, the victim either fell into a coma or attacked anyone in the vicinity without warning. This is what happened one evening as we were about to cross Sixth Avenue: a man and a woman suddenly appeared and began pirouetting and jitterbugging. I hoped they would pay no attention to us, but the man saw us. I knew that we were in for trouble, for he suddenly got beyond the happy stage and became murderous. He reached me with incredible speed and had me down before I could do anything to defend myself. But as he gripped me, my wife fired three shots into him from her .32 and the dogs attacked him, the boxer grasping his thigh and the police dog his shoulder. They knocked him onto his back and quickly finished him off.
I picked up the sack I had been carrying and felt very shaken, for I was certain I had been contaminated, and now had to work out plans for a method of restraint that my wife could use which would prevent my hurting her when I reached the paroxysms of fury that were the final symptoms of the disease. I had my own theory and was certain that if she did not touch me she would be all right. Naturally, no one knew much about the disease, but I had the idea that with restraint there was the possibility of survival, death occurring through the berserk rage, which had the effect of burning up the victim. I therefore conceived the plan of going to the local police station— we had dumped our sack of loot—and getting a pair of handcuffs and some chains. The incubation period was said to be a week, but to take no chances I found a ring bolt, fastened it in the floor of the apartment and attached the chain and handcuffs to it at once. All I had to do now, the minute I got the first symptoms, the feeling of joy and the flush that went with it, was to handcuff myself and then hope for the best. I told Mildred of this plan and gave her her instructions. She was to keep out of my reach, give me no food but plenty of water. This she was to put in a tin measuring cup and push into my reach.
The precautions I had taken frightened my wife, and I had to spend the next few days reassuring her, telling her that there was nothing to fear and that it was all done “just in case.” For my own part, I, was certain that I could not have failed to contract the disease, and so we spent our time hunting furiously for more canned provisions and collecting a reserve of wood and water. I also obtained more ammunition for the shotgun, because this was the best weapon for Mildred: a scattergun to point in the general direction of anything that frightened her was more likely to be of use than any other kind.
What follows is all that I can remember of the days that ensued. I do not actually remember them at all and have reconstructed the story from what I remember of what Mildred told me when it was over.
It seems, according to what she said, that on the seventh day—our guess about the incubation period had apparently been right—I woke in great form in the morning and began to sing opera. The remarkable thing was that I sang in tune, which was extraordinary, for I have no ear for music. This proved that I was ill. With expanded chest and wide-open mouth I stood on the roof singing to the silent city. Then I dressed, putting on a brown suit with a white pin stripe. I also put on my gaudiest tie, one that I had bought when we were working in Hollywood. It was a red-white-and-green affair made of silk, hand blocked, and about a foot wide at the wide end. I had never dared to wear it before. I then danced all by myself, tripping lightly up and down to unheard music, and then undressed and broke into a series of Zulu war dances. At this moment some glimmering of sanity must have returned to me, because Mildred said I covered my face with my hands and burst into tears; when the paroxysm was over I picked up the handcuffs, clipped them over my wrists, and lay down like a chained dog to sleep.
What came next must have been completely terrifying for my wife. I am a big man, six feet two, and I weighed two hundred pounds. Having slept for some hours, I woke in the fury that is the secondary symptom of the disease. Having circled the room to test the length of my chain, I crouched on my haunches like an animal and leaped at her. Fortunately, the right bolt held and I was dragged back, being pulled onto my shoulders and falling on my back with my handcuffed hands between my legs. This seemed to have knocked me out for a moment, but I was only playing possum. Forgetting what I had told her, and with a wife’s instinct of solicitude, she came to see if I were hurt. In a second I was up, and raising my manacled hands, I swung them down at her head in an attempt to stun her. She jumped back just in time and then decided to obey the instructions I had given her. Fetching a tin cup full of water, she pushed it into my reach with the tip of a jointed fishing rod. I seized it and tried to draw her to me, but the tip came off in my hand.
For ten days I remained in alternating states of animal fury and animal sleep. The sitting room resembled the den of a beast. Filthy, naked except for a blanket that I used not for modesty but for warmth, I growled and sulked, wringing my fingers and licking my wrists where the steel had bitten into the flesh and worn away the skin so that it was a ring of festering sores. I drank quantities of water, cup after cup, and each time I had done so I threw the cup at Mildred’s head with a clumsy two-handed throw. My ribs stood out in arcs about my chest, my stomach was sunken, my eyes stared wildly; my whole skin was pink shading into red, almost scarlet; while my face and neck, in contrast to the rest of my body, were swollen, apparently suffused with blood to the point where I was unrecognizable. For some reason, the sebaceous glands were stimulated by the fever, and hair grew in great profusion all over my body.