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-PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,

"Music, When Soft Voices Die"

NOTICE OF EVACUATION

US Military Forces Command

Eastern Quarantine Zone, Philadelphia, PA

By order of Gen Travis Cullen, Acting General of the Army and Supreme Coe Wilcox, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia:

All e and residing in the uninfected areas MARKED IN GREEN ("Safe Zones") within the City of Philadelphia and the three counties west of the Delaware River (Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks) are ordered to report to AMTRAK 30th STREET STATION for i:

A birth certificate, Social Security card, or valid United States passport

Proof of residency, such as a utility bill in the naee card

Current immunization record

A responsible adult to assist with evacuation processing

Each child MAY bring:

ONE container for personal effects, er than 22″ × 14″ × 9″ DO NOT BRING PERISHABLES Food and water will be provided on the train

A bedroll or sleeping bag

The following items will NOT be permitted on the trains or within the EVACUEE PROCESSING AREA:

Firearer than 3 inches

Pets

No parents or guardians will be allowed to enter A with the evacuation will be SHOT

Any unauthorized person atte to board the trains will be SHOT

God Save the People of the United States and the City of Philadelphia

Chapter EIGHTEEN

From the Journal of Ida Jaxon ("The Book of Auntie")

Presented at the Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period

Center for the Study of Human Cultures and Conflicts

University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic

April 16-21, 1003 AV

[Excerpt begins]

and it was chaos So ht like that, the thousands of people, all of theainst the fences, the soldiers and dogs trying to keep folks calht years old, with ht before, bawling the whole ti h, D C Most the whole country, as far as I recall I had folks in all those places There was lots we didn’t know Such as what happened to Europe or France or China, though I’d heardto some other men from our street about how the virus was different there, it just flat-out killed everyone, so I’ it was possible that Philadelphia was the last city left with people in it in the whole world at that time We were an island When I asked my mama about the war, she explained that the jumps were people like you and me, just sick I’d been sick myself so it scared me about outI would wake up one day and kill her and ged me hard and told me, no no, Ida, it’s different, that’s not the sa, which I did But even so for a while it didn’t make no sense to me, why there was a war on and there was soldiers everywhere if folks had just co in they throat

That’s e called theh you heard the word said That’s what my cousin Terrence said they were He showed me in a comic that he had, which was a kind of picture book as I recall, but when I asked my daddy about that and showed hi in a ood manners, and this here’s real, Ida Ain’t no story about it There’s lots of names for them now, of course, flyers and smokes and drinks and virals and such, but we called theot you They jumped My daddy said, no matter what you call them, they are some mean sons of bitches You stay inside like the Ar such, because my daddy was a deacon of the AME, and I’d never heard hihts was the worst of it, especially that winter We didn’t have the lights like we do now There weren’t ave us, no heat except what you could find to burn The sun went down and you could feel it, that fear, snapping down like a lid on everything We didn’t know if that would be the night the juot in My daddy had boarded up the s of our house and he kept a gun, too, kept it with hiht, listening to the radio,a bit He’d been a cos One night I ca with his face in his hand and shaking and weeping, the tears all running down his cheeks Don’t knohat it was that wokeman, my daddy, and it shamed me to see him in such a state as that I said Daddy, what is it, why you crying like you are, did so scare you? And he shook his head and said, God don’t love us nowe did But he don’t He’s up and flown the coop on us Then my mama came in and told him to hush up Monroe, you’re drunk, and shooed me back to bed That was my daddy’s name, Monroe Jaxon the Third My mama was Anita At the tiht he was crying hen he heard about the train It could have been so else