The Scarlet Plague is a 1912 novella by Jack London. It's expressed as the recollections of James Smith who is an old man in the late twenty first century after nearly all humans were wiped out by a disease in 2013. He recounts the tale to his grandson and some other kids who make up the smattering of remaining humans in the region of San Francisco. The Scarlet Plague first appeared in New York and soon swept over the earth in a matter of weeks. The infected's skin rapidly turned blood red and they died within hours of this symptom. Smith was a English professor teaching at the University of California when the pandemic apocalypse occurred. During a lecture one of his students suddenly turned red and the whole class fled in terror. Assuming he's infected Smith retreated to his home to await his end. In the rest of the city law and order rapidly dissolved into looting, violence, and arson. James never came down with any symptoms and coordinated with his brother over the phone. They and some others decided to hole up in the university's chemistry building with a bunch of canned goods to wait out the madness rather than attempt fleeing the city like everyone else. His brother arrived only to be informed that he's reddening and Smith watches his brother pass from a (hopefully) safe distance. Thus traumatized, Smith went to the chemistry building and joined the group. After twenty four hours without anybody in their number reddening they congratulated themselves that they are safe. They dug a well. The city burned. The powder magazines at Point Pinole military base exploded and shattered every window on the chemistry building. The prowlers attempted an invasion but were quickly rebuffed. One of the people in their shelter turned scarlet.
They ejected the poor woman but it was far too late for that to accomplish anything. The group started losing people rapidly and their refuge filled with the dead. They made an exodus from the chemistry building and the city but more and more of them perished to the scarlet death. Within days Smith is the last man left. He's forced to assume that he has a natural immunity but it's cold comfort at the end. With nothing better in the vicinity Smith struck out for Yosemite and ended up spending three years in the grand hotel. He ate the canned food, hunted the game, and stewed in his isolation. Once grieving had long enough to metastasize into boredom he returned to San Fransisco valley in search of other survivors. The first human he encountered was Chauffeur who was a chauffeur and seems to be sticking with that for a name. Chauffeur is a blatant and unapologetic asshole who has the former heiress Vesta Van Warden working as a slave and is taking great delight in degrading her. In the brief moments that Chauffeur is out of earshot she begs Smith to murder him but Smith is the smaller man and a useless coward beside so when Chauffeur told him of other survivor Smith departed. He found and joined what came to be known as the Santa Rosa Tribe and his life continued more or less how you would expect from there to the present situation where he's explaining to his grandson some sixty years later.
I read two other stories by London and I liked both of them. I didn't like this story. London goes out of his way to show that the children are mean, ignorant, superstitious little savages speaking broken English. James Smith is a self righteous elitist who spends the entire story pining for a 2013 that was a deeply unequal autocracy openly ruled by corporations that were explicitly turning into hereditary dynasties. Smith goes on at length about how Vesta Van Warden was the wife of a future magnate, how exalted her kind were in the past, and how degraded she was by her treatment by Chauffeur for that reason. He laments that the human race is starting from nothing once again and will have to climb through all of the stages of barbarism on the way to civilization once again only to be wiped out again in the next plague.
Having read The Iron Heel, I feel comfortable saying that London was not a fan of technocratic oligarchies so the 2013 he describes is not supposed to be a good future. At the same time both Smith and the children he's talking to are contemptible in their own ways and the writing isn't being coy about asserting that. There are good people in the story but they're kind of incidental and I sense that we aren't meant to doubt the plausibility of the endless cycle of civilization's collapse. Jack London died (some suspect it was suicide) in terrible health four years after this story was published. He was just forty. This story drips with contempt tinged with utter hopelessness. I can't help but connect those two things together but I'm not sure what to do with that connection. London's portrayal of humanity strikes me as an ugly caricature. All of this is to say that I would not recommend this story unless you are specifically looking for stuff set in the late post pandemic apocalypse genre, turn of the last century works, and/or just like full on downers. If you are into one of those read it on Project Gutenberg or listen to it on Librivox.
IRON NODER XVI: MORE STUBBORN-HARD THAN HAMMER'D IRON