The Passage (45 page)

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
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[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
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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
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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, but when I asked my daddy about that and showed him the pictures he told me no, vampires were just something in a made-up story, nice-looking men in suits and capes with good 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 them jumps on account of that’s what they did when they got you. They jumped. My daddy said, no matter what you call them, they are some mean sons of bitches. You stay inside like the Army says, Ida. It shocked me to hear him speaking such, because my daddy was a deacon of the A.M.E., and I’d never heard him talk like that, use words of the kind. Nights was the worst of it, especially that winter. We didn’t have the lights like we do now. There weren’t much food except what the Army gave 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 jumps got in. My daddy had boarded up the windows of our house and he kept a gun, too, kept it with him all night as he sat at the kitchen table by candlelight, listening to the radio, maybe sipping a bit. He’d been a communication officer in the Navy and knew about such things. One night I came in and found him crying there. Just sitting with his face in his hand and shaking and weeping, the tears all running down his cheeks. Don’t know what it was that woke me except maybe the sound of him. He was a strong man, 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 something scare you? And he shook his head and said, God don’t love us no more, Ida. Maybe it was something we 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 time I didn’t know it, but I think maybe the night he was crying was when he heard about the train. It could have been something else
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Only the good Lord knows why he spared Philadelphia long as he did. I barely remember it now, except the feeling of it, time to time. Little things, like stepping out with my daddy at night to get a water ice up the corner, and my friends at school, Joseph Pennell Elementary, and a little girl named Sharise who lived down the corner from us, the two of us could just keep each other going for hours and hours. I looked for her on the train but I never did find her
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I remember my address: 2121 West Laveer. There was a college near
there, and stores, and busy streets, and all sorts of people going to and fro in the day to day. And I remember a time when my daddy took me downtown, out of our neighborhood, on the bus to see the windows at Christmastime. I couldn’t have been much more than five years old at the time. The bus carried us past the hospital where my daddy worked, taking X-rays, which were photographic pictures of people’s bones, he’d had that job since he’d gotten out of the service and met my mama, and he always said it was the perfect job for a man like him, how he got to look at the insides of things. He’d wanted to be a doctor but taking the X-rays was the next best thing. Outside the store he showed me the windows, all done up fancy for Christmas, with lights and snow and a tree and moving figures inside them, elves and reindeer and such. I’d never been happy like that in all my life, just to see so beautiful a sight, standing in the cold like we were, the two of us together. We were going to pick up a present for Mama, he told me, his big hand on my head like he did, a scarf or maybe gloves. The streets were all full of people, so many people, all different ages and looks to them. I like to think about it even now, to send my mind back to that day. No one remembers Christmas anymore, but it was a bit like First Night is now. I don’t recall if we got the scarf and gloves or not. Probably we did
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That’s all gone now, all of it. And stars. Time to time I think that’s what I miss seeing most of all, back in the Time Before. From the window of my bedroom I could look over the roofs of the buildings and the houses and see them, these points of light in the sky, hanging there like God his own self had strung the sky for Christmas. It was my mama who told me the names for some and how you could watch them awhile and start to see pictures up there, simple things like spoons and people and animals. I used to think you could look at the stars and that was God, right there. Like looking straight into his face. You needed the dark to see him plain. Maybe he forgot us and maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was us who forgot, when we couldn’t see the stars no more. And to tell the truth they’re the one thing I’d like to see again before I die
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There were other trains, I do believe. We’d heard about trains leaving from all over, that other cities had sent them before the jumps got in. Maybe it was just people talking like they do when they’re scared, grasping at any bit of hope that floats on past. I don’t know how many made it all the way to where they were going. Some were sent to California, some to places with names I don’t just now recall. There was only one we ever heard from, back in the early days. Before the Walkers and the One Law, when radio was still allowed. Someplace in New Mexico, I do believe it was. But
something happened to their lights and we didn’t hear from them again after that. From what Peter and Theo and the others tell me, I do believe we are the only one left now
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But the train and Philadelphia and what all happened that winter was what I meant to write on. Folks was in the worst way. The Army was everywhere, not just soldiers but tanks and other things of the kind. My daddy said they were there to protect us from the jumps, but to me they were just big men with guns, most of them white, and my daddy had always told me to look on the bright side, Ida, but not to trust the white man—that’s how he said it, like they was all one man—though of course that seems funny now, folks all blended together like they are. Probably whoever is reading this doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. We knew a fellow from up the way got himself shot, just for trying to catch a dog. I suppose he thought eating a dog was better than nothing. But the Army shot him and strung him up on a light post on Olney Avenue with a sign pinned to his chest that said “looter.” Don’t know what he was trying to loot except maybe a dog that was half starved and going to die anyway
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Then one night we heard the loudest boom and then another and another and planes screaming over our heads, and my daddy told me they’d blown the bridges, and all the next day we saw more planes and smelled fire and smoke, and we knew the jumps was close. Whole parts of the city were on fire. I went to bed and woke up later to the sounds of a set-to. Our place was just four rooms and voices had a way of carrying, you couldn’t sneeze in one room without somebody in another saying bless you. I heard my mama crying and crying, and my father saying to her, you can’t, we have to, you be strong, Anita, things of the kind, and then the door to my room swung open and I saw my daddy standing there. He was holding a candle and I’d never in my life seen him with such a look upon his face. Like he’d seen a ghost, and the ghost was his own self. He dressed me quick for the cold and said, be good now, Ida, and go say goodbye to your mother, and when I did she held me a long, long time, crying so hard it makes me hurt to think of it, even now, all these years gone by. I saw the little suitcase by the door and said, are we going somewhere, Mama? We leaving? But she didn’t answer me, she just went on crying and crying and holding me like she did, until my daddy made her let go. Then we left, my daddy and me. Just the two of us
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It wasn’t till we were outside that I realized it was still the middle of the night. It was cold and blowing. Flakes were falling and I thought it was snow but when I licked one off my hand I realized it was ashes. You could smell the smoke and it was stinging my eyes and throat. We had to walk a
long way, most of the night. The only things moving on the streets were the Army trucks, some of them with horns on top and voices coming out of them, telling people not to steal, stay calm, about the evacuation. There were some folks about but not many, though we saw more and more the farther we went, until the streets were thick with people, no one saying a word, all walking the same direction as us, carrying they things. I don’t think I’d even figured it out in my mind that it was just the Littles who were going
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It was still dark when we got to the station. I’ve already said a thing or two about that. My father told me we’d got there early so as to avoid the lines, he always hated lines, but it was like half the city had the same idea. We waited a long time, but things were turning ugly, you could feel it. Like a storm was coming, the air whizzing and cracking with it. Folks was too afraid. The fires were going out, the jumps were coming, that’s what people were saying. We could hear great booms in the distance, like thunder, and planes flying overhead, fast and low. And each time you saw one your ears would pop and you’d hear a boom a second after, and the ground would shake below your feet. Some folks had Littles with them but not all. My father held my hand tight. There was an opening in the fence where the soldiers were letting people in and that’s what we had to get through. It was so tight with the people pressed together I could hardly take a breath. Some of the soldiers had dogs. Whatever happens, you hold on to me, Ida, my daddy said. Just hold on
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We got close enough that we could see the train, down below us. We were on a bridge, the rails running under it. I tried to follow its length with my eyes but I couldn’t, that’s how long it was. It seemed to stretch forever, a hundred cars long. It didn’t look like any train I ever saw. The cars didn’t have no windows, and long poles stuck out from the sides with nets hanging from them, like the wings of a bird. On the roof there were soldiers with big guns in metal cages, like something you’d put a canary in. At least I supposed they were soldiers, on account of they were wearing shiny silver suits, to protect them from the fires
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