Description: ALL ALONE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WALL. I GOT TO FIGURE OUT WHAT COME NEXT. Only so many places to run to when you ain''t got a tribe. Maybe I find another group of OPs somewhere, but Lydia''s tribe been one of the biggest and strongest. If they ain''t safe, nobody be. It ain''t easy finding a tribe, neither. Everyone take babies glad enough. If you live with folks your whole life, you ain''t so likely to turn against them. But if they take in someone older, even if they only seven or eight, they ain''t got an idea what kind of egg they got--chicken or snake. So even if you ain''t turning against them, they might turn against you, just to be sure. Lydia say she want Baby Girl to have a better life. Can''t see how a tribe gonna give her that. Ain''t no such thing as a better life in Orleans. Not really. Only chance this baby got be in the Outer States. So I gotta get her there. OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY Champion Marie Lu Crossed Ally Condie The 5th Wave Rick Yancey Flygirl Sherri L. Smith Fractured Teri Terry Legend Marie Lu Matched Ally Condie Prodigy Marie Lu Reached Ally Condie Slated Teri Terry SEPTEMBER 14, 2004 EDMUND BROUSSARD MOUNTED THE STEPS TO the levee above the old Caf Du Monde off of Jackson Square. The sky was pale and colorless above him, the grass a vibrant green at his feet as he faced the wide expanse of the rolling Mississippi River. Behind him, a handful of revelers on the ironwork balconies of the French Quarter could be heard drinking their Hurricanes and ignoring the voluntary evacuation order that had sent so many tourists home. The caf was still serving their hot beignets and chicory coffee. A few persistent people strolled the green lawns of the square outside St. Louis Cathedral. Edmund opened the black case he carried in his left hand and pulled out his trumpet. The yellow brass reflected the city back on itself in the flat afternoon light. He put the horn to his lips and defiantly blew "When the Saints Go Marching In" into the unnaturally still air. He was not leaving New Orleans, no matter what the weathermen said. He was not leaving his home. New Orleans would stand against any storm that came her way. The TV crews loved it, the image of a lone man facing nature, refusing to bend. * * * Hurricane Ivan turned east, barely brushing the city with rain as it ran its devastating course along the coast of Alabama. It returned to the mouth of the Mississippi and faltered there. New Orleans was spared. Laissez les bons temps rouler. The fabled city that care forgot danced on. The next time, they were not so lucky. August 29, 2005 HURRICANE KATRINA Saffir-Simpson Category 3 at landfall Casualties: 971; Survivors: 30,000 September 14, 2014 HURRICANE ISAIAH Saffir-Simpson Category 4 at landfall Casualties: 532; Survivors: 27,800 August 25, 2015 HURRICANE LORENZO Saffir-Simpson Category 3 at landfall Casualties: 1,432; Survivors: 22,345 June 30, 2016 HURRICANE OLGA Saffir-Simpson Category 5 at landfall Casualties: 2,022; Survivors: 20,323 July 27, 2017 HURRICANE LAURA Saffir-Simpson Category 4 at landfall Casualties: 1,371; Survivors: 18,952 July 29, 2017 HURRICANE PALOMA Saffir-Simpson Category 5 at landfall Casualties: estimated 3,500; Survivors: estimated 15,452 October 20, 2019 HURRICANE JESUS Category 6 at landfall, based on new Saffir-Simpson Scale Casualties: estimated 8,000; Survivors: estimated below 10,000 AFTER THE STORM DEATHS CAME OTHER CASUALTIES: deaths by debris, cuts, tetanus, or loss of blood; suicide; heart attacks caused by stress of loss, or stress of rebuilding, or just as often from the lack of medicines used to treat common ailments. The list of no-longer-treatable diseases grew: diabetes, asthma, cancer. Domestic violence rose, along with murder. Then came the Fever. And the Quarantine. Excerpt from the DECLARATION OF QUARANTINE issued by FEMA and the Center for Disease Control, September 20, 2020: ------------------------------ For the safety of the population at large, we deem it advisable to seal off all storm-affected areas of the Gulf Coast region. No citizens or personnel will be allowed to cross the border without blood testing for Delta Fever. This is an epidemic of proportions we have not witnessed since the Spanish Influenza of 1918. The Quarantine will be reevaluated as the disease runs its course and we make progress toward treatment and a cure. Until then, all borders will be sealed. Excerpt from the DECLARATION OF SEPARATION, courtesy of the Smithsonian Collection, March 11, 2025: ------------------------------ Therefore it is with great regret and pain for our fellow citizens that the United States Senate has agreed to withdraw our governance of the affected states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The shape of our great nation has been altered irrevocably by Nature, and now Man must follow suit in order to protect the inalienable rights of the majority, those being the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the foremost of those being Life. Signed this day, the Eleventh of March, Two Thousand Twenty-Five, in the presence of witnesses, The President of the United States of America The Senate of the United States of America The House of Representatives of the United States of America The Governor of the former State of Alabama The Governor of the former State of Florida The Governor of the former State of Georgia The Governor of the former State of Louisiana The Governor of the former State of Texas OCTOBER 30, 2056 THERE BE SEAGULLS CATCHING THE BREEZE overhead. I sneeze and wipe my nose on the back of my bare brown arm. "That''s the batch of it, Miss de la Guerre. The two books, the formula, and the bottle, genuine glass." The smuggler McCallan point his boot at the things spread out on my blanket over the broken ground. We be near the Market, where the old levee used to be, across from St. Louis Cathedral. What once been a green hill now be a beach dune made of debris--everything from washing machines to refrigerators and old cars been hauled and dumped here trying to shore up the levee. But the land gave way when the river rose, and the junk be left behind. Daddy used to say you could give a history of the place just by looking at those layers of trash. Beneath us, on the river side of the hill, be a dusty gray beach of pulverized concrete, ground thin by storms. "The fabled cement beaches of Orleans," McCallan call them. "Finer than the black volcanic sand of Hawaii, or the pink sugar sand of the old Caribbean." I don''t know about that. Nothing left of Hawaii or the Caribbean since the water rose and the storms grew heated. It''d take a deep-sea diver just to find them. But Orleans still be here. I snort at the blanket and give McCallan a hard look. "And the blood, old man? I done give you a good, solid downpay on it. What about that?" McCallan''s eyes crinkle like he be laughing at me. He should know better. Grinning like a fool only make me angry. "Sorry, sugar, they were out of both positive and negative at the banks. There''s a blood supply shortage out there." He wave his gloved hand behind him, toward the wall and the Outer States. "I ain''t risking my neck and smuggling to the Delta when I''m about to retire, now am I?" I fold my arms. "We had a deal. I need that blood." McCallan shake his head. "We could use more with your fire back home," he say. "I''ll be missing you, Miss de la Guerre, that''s for sure." I''ll be missing him, too, though I won''t say it. McCallan an old guy, almost forty, but he smart. He been smuggling for more than ten years. He know who to bribe, where to breach the Wall, how to get over while the guard be changing, how to avoid the sniffer drones. I ain''t the only one he doing trade with, neither. His regulars know his goods be clean and fresh. He don''t sell dirty blood or fake medicine. Even after the government closed the Delta, he kept working--trading with the tribes. Delta Fever be harder to kill than a swamp fox. It be always changing, the way those little buggers switch back on they own trails. But if it stay confined to a blood type, if folks keep to theyselves by type of blood, then it slow down somehow. And that why folks like McCallan be necessary. Tribes ain''t able to mix together long enough for real trade. "I did my best, Miss Fen," he say and spread his fingers with a shrug. I spit in the gravel and hold out my hand. "I want a refund." McCallan sigh. "D''you want the stuff I got or no? I''ve come a long way and I''m not so sure anybody else is keen enough to buy these damn books off me. Baby Naming and The Developing Years. What are you up to, Fen? You''re not knocked up now, are you?" he ask, eyeing my belly. Shoot, skinny as I be, I sure as hell ain''t pregnant. Lydia say I''d pass for a boy, if not for the braids she do for me, all wrapped in a topknot on my head to keep out of the way. "Man, will you stop staring and just make good?" I say. McCallan blush inside his encounter suit, one of the old kind with thick, mucus-looking skin that turn orangey-yellow when the heat rise in his cheeks. I''d be like to suffocate in something so thick

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