The Exodus Poem by David Lewis Paget

I think it began with the airline strike,
No planes, not in, nor out,
The pilots didn't know who to blame,
‘Not us, ' they said, ‘old Scout! '
‘It must be a Union thing, ' they said,
But then the trains had stopped,
And the truckies set their trucks in a ring
That the diesel tax be dropped.

A city of half a million
Where everyone stayed at home,
Petrol ran out at the bowsers, so
There was nowhere left to roam,
‘It could only happen in Westernport,
This City of the Damned, '
The people moaned, and the airwaves groaned,
And the Internet was jammed.

People were phoning the government
But they weren't returning calls,
The Mayor had gone on a golfing trip,
They said, to Cedar Falls,
The ‘News' had run out of newsprint
By the end of the second week,
So the paper stands were empty, and
The Internet was weak.

The ISP's said sorry, but
Our Networks are closing down,
There's been some trouble with hackers
From some place in another town,
The radio went on the blink
And the TV screens were snow,
The people gathered on pavements
Wandering round, no place to go!

The blackout lasted another week,
Then the city's power failed,
The engineers had scratched their heads,
‘We have to get this nailed! '
But then the water had stopped its flow
Through half a million pipes,
And the fear in the city began to grow
As thieves took over the night.

Before the strike, the news had been
That the Yanks were back in space,
Right back up there with the Russkies
With the Chinese, saving face,
They'd each gone on an exploring binge,
The Yanks had gone to Mars,
While the Russkies tackled Saturn, and
The Chinese, out to the stars.

We'd heard no more, the airwaves dead
With just the noise from space,
Crackling through transistors as
More women carried Mace,
When Sunday morn, on the fourth weekend,
They got a genny fired,
Pedalling on an ancient bike,
Tooks turns, until they tired,

There was just enough for a laptop, though
Its batteries had been flat,
They brought a flickering picture up
To see where they were at,
They hooked it up to a satellite
And they called up Google Earth,
And ranged the view wherever they could,
But all they found was dearth.

The land lay waste on continents
That had housed a billion souls,
The cities and towns were quiet, as if
The people had turned to trolls,
America was a vacant place
While Europe lay serene,
And even the seas had ceased to move,
Not a breaker to be seen!

We live in the city of Westernport
The City of the Damned,
There isn't a thing alive out there,
No man to till the land,
And people are starving in the streets,
I think we can't go on…
‘But what of the rest of the human race? '
‘They disappeared! They're gone! '