The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,142

possessed; the thought left him, alone.

A new feeling moved through him then, cold and final, like a draft from an open door onto the deepest hour of winter, onto the stilled space between stars. When daybreak found him he would be no more. Amy, he thought as the stars began to fall, everywhere and all around; and he tried to fill his mind with just her name, his daughter’s name, to help him from his life.

Amy, Amy, Amy.

III

THE

LAST CITY

2 A.V.

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,

“Music, When Soft Voices Die”

NOTICE OF EVACUATION

U.S. Military Forces Command

Eastern Quarantine Zone, Philadelphia, PA

By order of Gen. Travis Cullen, Acting General of the Army and Supreme Commander of the Eastern Quarantine Zone, and His Honor George Wilcox, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia:

All minor children between four (4) and thirteen (13) years of age 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 immediate embarkation.

Each child MUST bring:

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

Proof of residency, such as a utility bill in the name of parent or legal guardian, or a valid refugee card.

Current immunization record.

A responsible adult to assist with evacuation processing.

Each child MAY bring:

ONE container for personal effects, measuring no larger 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:

Firearms

Any knife or penetrating weapon longer than 3 inches

Pets

No parents or guardians will be allowed to enter Amtrak 30th Street Station.

Any person or persons interfering with the evacuation will be SHOT.

Any unauthorized person attempting to board the trains will be SHOT.

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

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 A.V.

[Excerpt begins.]

… and it was chaos. So many years gone by, but you never forget a sight like that, the thousands of people, all of them so frightened, pressing against the fences, the soldiers and dogs trying to keep folks calm, the shots fired in the air. And me, not more than eight years old, with my little suitcase, the one my mama had packed for me the night before, bawling the whole time, because she knew what she was doing, that she was sending me away forever.

The jumps had taken New York, Pittsburgh, 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 heard my daddy talking to some other men from our street about how the virus was different there, it just flat-out killed everyone, so I’m supposing 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 out my skin when she told me this, I just started crying my eyes out, thinking I would wake up one day and kill her and my daddy and my cousins the way the jumps liked to do. She hugged me hard and told me, no no, Ida, it’s different, that’s not the same kind of a thing at all, you hush now and stop your crying, 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 come down with a sniffle or something in they throat.

That’s what we called them, jumps. Not vampires, though 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,