Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

24 MADAGASCAR

Two days after the big ambush on Highway 441, Mayor Jenkins of Mount Dora and Mayor Levin of Tavares had a private meeting at Levin’s home a few hundred yards east of the Ruby Street Grille. This was the fourth time they had a face-to-face meeting since the Crunch began. To get to the meeting, Mayor Jenkins motored west in his 14-foot Glasstream, a twenty-year-old boat that before the Crunch he had used mostly for fishing. After the Crunch, he found it was one the safest ways to travel without a bodyguard, so he often used it to get to meetings and to go barter for local produce.

Not only were the two mayors old friends, but they looked like bookends. They were graying and pudgy, and both wore khaki pants. They were each native-born in their respective towns, and they had attended the University of Central Florida at the same time. Levin had earned a bachelor of science in criminal justice, while Jenkins had majored in business administration. Oddly, their bond didn’t stem from being in the same fraternity or living in the same dormitory. It was because they were both country boys, and both commuted to the university. Unlike the rich city kids in the dorms, who were constantly partying, Levin and Jenkins were relatively sober and studious. And since they drove to their parents’ homes each night, they always felt like observers of the campus life, rather than fully immersed participants. As commuter students, they developed their friendship in quiet conversation at the university library.

Their careers were different, but their success had been roughly parallel. Levin rose through the ranks of the Tavares Police Department to become chief of police. He was a savvy investor who had put all of his liquid assets in silver in 1999. Silver had bottomed two years later, but in subsequent years it had seen tremendous gains. Meanwhile, Jenkins had launched several businesses—which he sold in quick succession. When he was in his thirties he got the itch for politics, starting with the Mount Dora City Council and the County Board of Supervisors. Both men had married in their mid-twenties and then had small families. They both had homes on Lakeshore Drive, although Jenkins had a much larger one.

They first talked briefly about two familiar topics: finding sources of fuel that might be bartered, and developing markets to keep local citrus fruits and corn from going to waste. Then Mayor Jenkins adopted a more serious tone. “Some of the men who were in the two big reserves at the far ends of the ambush have complained that they were shortchanged when the distribution of the weapons from the looters took place. Most of those reserve forces were composed of men—and a few ladies—from Bay Ridge and Plymouth Terrace. I’ve been hearing, in no uncertain terms, from the mayors in both towns. They’re complaining they got shorted.”

“Distribution? It was more like a free-for-all. It looked like that Free Cheese Day riot they had in Miami. We were both at the ambush and saw what happened. I think I was closer to the trailer roadblock than you were. Down at my end, during the ‘distribution,’ there were some harsh words, and even some shoving going on.”

“Well, they still feel like they got shorted. So I think we ought to give them those shopping carts full of guns that our officers collected.”

Mayor Levin nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s throw ’em a bone. We’ll give them each about a hundred guns. In fact, let’s also offer Plymouth Terrace that armored bulldozer. It’s not much use to either of us—since it is more offensive than defensive. It should be fairly easy for them to find another engine to put in it.”

After nodding sharply and letting out a sigh, Byer Levin continued, “I have something much more important that we need to discuss, Lyle.”

“What?”

“I had a long talk with my son this morning. As you know, he’s a ham radio operator and my main source of information on the Big Picture, throughout the southeast and beyond. He’s up past midnight most nights, scanning through the ham bands and international broadcast bands. He says there’s report of a stomach flu, a very bad flu, that is working its way down the coast from the Northeast. It’s now in the Carolinas. It’s hard to tell exactly, but if all the chatter on the amateur nets is true, it is killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it may kill millions before it is done. And from the reports, it’s not the flu itself that is the real killer, but rather the diarrhea that comes with it.”

Lyle Jenkins looked stunned. “I think it’s time to call ‘Madagascar.’”

Byer cocked his head in question.

Lyle went on. “When I was younger, I used to play a computer game called Pandemic II. In that game, the president of Madagascar is always quick to isolate the country to prevent the encroachment of any pandemic. It kind of became a standing joke among gamers, and the term Madagascar even started being used by epidemiologists. ‘Going Madagascar’ is essentially slamming the doors shut—a total quarantine—in the hopes of avoiding the spread of an infectious disease. Since we have the lakes as natural barriers, we may have a chance.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

Within a few days, the soldados manning the roadblocks around Mount Dora and Tavares had been given new instructions to turn back everyone, until further notice.

A new roadblock was set up on the bridge over the Dead River to the north, and they built up a heavy defensive line south of Mount Dora. Another new roadblock was established on the Lake Harris Bridge, on Highway 19. This isolated them from the town of Howey-in-the-Hills.

The mayors issued identical proclamations, calling for special precautions to be taken at shared wells, curtailing public gatherings, and urging frequent hand washing. The proclamations also asked all residents to salute each other rather than shake hands. This was reminiscent of the flu pandemic during World War I, when saluting also became the custom.

Though they were unpopular at first—since they stifled local commerce—the full quarantine roadblocks and other measures worked. While most cities and towns in Florida lost up to thirty percent of their populations in the two waves of flu that followed, Tavares and Mount Dora completely avoided the pandemic.

The pandemic die-off brought an end to large-scale looter forays out of Orlando. Afterward, the looters raids were never in groups larger than forty people. There were still substantial losses by the roadblock teams and QRTs in Tavares, but they could be sustained.