WASHINGTON, July 10-President Hughes ordered U.S. military forces to abandon the Chicago perimeter today, after a night of heavy losses when Army and National Guard units were overwhelmed by a large force of Infected Persons moving into the city.

“A great American city has been lost,” Mr. Hughes said in a printed statement. “Our prayers are with the people of Chicago and the fighting men and women who gave their lives to defend them. Their memory will sustain us in this great struggle.”

The attack came just after nightfall, when U.S. forces positioned along the South Loop reported a force of unknown size amassing outside the city’s central business district.

“This assault was clearly organized,” said General Carson White, commander of the Central Quarantine Zone, who called this “a disturbing development.”

“A new defensive perimeter has been established on Route 75, from Toledo to Cincinnati,” White told reporters early Tuesday morning. “That’s our new Rubicon.”

When questioned about reports that large numbers of troops were abandoning their posts, White replied that he had “heard nothing of the kind” and called such rumors “irresponsible.”

“These are the bravest men and women I’ve ever had the honor to serve with,” the general said.

New outbreaks of the illness were reported in cities from Tallahassee, FL, and Charleston, SC, to Helena, MT, and Flagstaff, AZ, as well as southern Ontario and northern Mexico. Casualty estimates provided by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control now top 30 million. The Pentagon placed the number of Infected Persons at another 3 million.

Large portions of St. Louis, abandoned on Sunday, were burning tonight, as were portions of Memphis, Tulsa, and Des Moines. Observers on the ground reported seeing low-flying aircraft over the city’s famous arch moments before the fires broke out and quickly engulfed the downtown area. No one in the administration has confirmed rumors that the fires are part of a federal effort to disinfect the major cities of the Central Quarantine Zone.

Gasoline was scarce or nonexistent virtually everywhere in the country, as transportation corridors continued to be choked by people fleeing the spread of the epidemic. Food was also hard to come by, as were medical supplies from bandages to antibiotics.

Many of the nation’s stranded refugees found themselves with no place to go and no way to get there.

“We’re stuck, just like everybody else,” said David Callahan, outside a McDonald’s east of Pittsburgh. Callahan had driven with his family, a wife and two young children, from Akron, OH -a journey that ordinarily would have taken just two hours but that night had taken twenty. Nearly out of gas, Callahan had pulled off at a comfort station in suburban Monroeville, only to find that the pumps were dry and the restaurant had run out of food two day ago.

“We were going to my mother’s in Johnstown, but now I heard it’s there too,” Callahan said, as an Army convoy, fifty vehicles long, passed on the empty westbound side of the roadway.

“No one knows where to go,” he said. “These things are everywhere.”

Though the illness has yet to appear beyond the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, nations around the world appeared to be preparing themselves for this eventuality. In Europe, Italy, France, and Spain have closed their borders, while other nations have stockpiled medical supplies or banned intercity travel. The U.N. General Assembly, meeting for the first time at The Hague since vacating its New York headquarters early last week, passed a resolution of international quarantine, forbidding any shipping or aircraft from approaching within 200 miles of the North American continent.

Across the U.S., churches and synagogues reported record attendance, as millions of the faithful gathered in prayer. In Texas, where the virus is now widespread, Houston Mayor Barry Wooten, the bestselling author and former head of Holy Splendor Bible Church, the nation’s largest, declared the city “a Gateway to Heaven” and urged residents and refugees from elsewhere in the state to gather at Houston’s Reliant Stadium to prepare for “our ascension to the throne of the Lord, not as monsters but as men and women of God.”

In California, where the infection has yet to appear, the state legislature met in an emergency session last night and quickly passed the First California Articles of Secession, severing the state’s ties to the United States and declaring it a sovereign nation. In her first action as president of the Republic of California, former governor Cindy Shaw ordered all U.S. military and law enforcements assets within the state placed under the command of the California National Guard.

“We will defend ourselves, as any nation has the right to do,” Shaw told the legislature, to thundering applause. “ California, and all that it stands for, will endure.”

Reacting to the news from Sacramento, Hughes administration spokesman Tim Romer told reporters, “This is absurd on its face. Now is obviously not the time for any state or local government to take the safety of the American people into its own hands. Our position remains that California is part of the United States.”

Romer also cautioned that any military or law enforcement personnel in California who interfered with federal relief efforts would face harsh sanctions.

“Make no mistake,” Romer said. “They will be regarded as unlawful enemy combatants.”

By Wednesday, California had been recognized by the governments of Switzerland, Finland, the tiny South Pacific Republic of Palau, and the Vatican.

The government of India, apparently in response to the departure of U.S. military forces from South Asia, yesterday repeated its earlier threats to use nuclear weapons against rebel forces in eastern Pakistan.

“Now is the time to contain the spread of Islamic extremism,” Indian Prime Minister Suresh Mitra told Parliament. “The watchdog is sleeping.”

So there it was, Wolgast thought. There it was at last. There was a term he knew and thought of now; he had heard it used only in the context of aviation, to explain how, on an otherwise clear day, a plane could fall so quickly from the sky. OBE. Overcome by events. That was what was happening now. The world-the human race-had been overcome by events.

Take care of Amy, Lacey had said. Amy is yours. He thought of Doyle, placing the keys to the Lexus in his hand, Lacey’s kiss on his cheek; Doyle running after them, waving them on, yelling, “Go, go;” Lacey leaping from the car, to call the stars-for that’s how Wolgast thought of them, as human stars, burning with a lethal brightness-down upon her.

The time for sleeping, for rest, was over. Wolgast would stay awake all night, watching the door with Carl’s.38 in one hand and the Springfield in the other. It was a cool night, the temperature down in the fifties, and Wolgast had set the woodstove going when they’d returned from the store. He took the paper now and folded it into quarters, into eighths, and finally sixteenths, and opened the door to the woodstove. Then he placed the paper in the fire, watching with amazement at how quickly it disappeared.