“We need the citizens to go to the refugee camps. We’re offering food, medicine and shelter, yet there’s still too much resistance. We have round-up patrols but they are taking up too much of the military’s valuable time. So, I have decided to pull the plug, to force the more independently minded to hasten their way to the camps.”
“What do you mean, Mister President?” asked Quinn. “How are you going to force the population to the camps?”
“We are literally pulling the plug.”
04:30 AM
From Orlando pretty much bang in the center of the peninsular of Florida down to Miami the average ground height above sea level is just twelve feet. Much of the coastal districts even lower still, and what with the latest trend in scare stories of global warming Floridians now had the specter of a tsunami to contend with along with their annual and often fatal hurricanes. Florida had experienced a tidal-wave centuries ago, an earthquake off the coast of Portugal, had caused a tidal-wave that swamped the present day Miami and almost five miles inland. What with the boxing day tsunami in 2004 and the more recent 2011 event in Tohoku, Japan, triggered by an earthquake that had a devastating effect on the local area and was still fresh in Japan’s collective memory, it was a wonder anyone lived in such low lying areas. It was claimed that Cinderella’s castle at Disney World was the highest non-residential point in Florida.
Luke appreciated Florida’s flat as a pancake landscape, because it gave him a birds-eye view positioned from on top of the Coral Tower, the thirty story incompleted condo, that skirted the I-95 freeway gave him an unobscured vantage point.
Luke thought about how fantastic it would be to soar from the top of the tower on his hang-glider. To catch a thermal and soar around and around the tower and would probably be able to land back on the top.
He turned to Sophie and said; “I’d love to jump off the tower.”
“Excuse me?” she said as her jaw dropped open and she thought her travelling companion had suicidal tendencies.
He saw her confusion and laughed. “No, I meant on a hang-glider. That’s how I like to spend my time, soaring around like a bird.”
“You would not catch me in one of those contraptions, far too dangerous.”
“Not if you know what you’re doing. I’ll take you for a flight, you’d love it.”
“Uhuh, not me. I’m happiest with my feet planted firmly on the ground thank you very much.”
He smiled at her and returned his attention down below, where he could watch troop movements, and could see them coming from miles away.
The Coral Tower had stood empty for two years since erected. A white elephant that demonstrated not all buildings will have a line of salivating buyers with open pocket books. The builders had speculated on a glut of eager buyers, but gotten their predictions badly wrong, ending up going bankrupt in the process.
From the deck on the roof, the views were spectacular. Luke observed a nearby private airstrip, wondering if anyone was contemplating a low-flight escape, but it was too far away to tell. He guessed that he could see roughly thirty miles to the south, he could easily see the glow of the Miami sky scrapers and about the same to the north, he could make out the Atlantic coast-line and although could not see them, he knew navy vessels were lurking out there.
Waiting.
All at once a block of skyscrapers in downtown Miami plunged into darkness, followed swiftly by another and then another. He tapped Sophie on the shoulder and pointed. She watched open mouthed as block-by-block the skyscrapers were swallowed by the night.
“Man, can you believe it?” Luke said in stunned surprise.
They watched in shocked silence as Miami went black, followed by Fort Lauderdale suffering the same fate, as grid by grid the city descended into darkness.
03:39 AM
Alvin Borelli had broken into the convenience store at the ground level of the luxury block of his ocean facing penthouse on Miami’s south beach. He loved the art deco architecture of the oceanfront blocks. They divided opinion — you either loved them or hated them, no middle ground. He naturally enough loved them. The shapes of the buildings resembling ocean-liners or as others had unkindly described them, as wedding cakes. The beachfront had fallen into decline some time ago and had gained a sleazy reputation. However, the area had been cleaned up recently and now commanded premium real-estate dollars to gaze out onto the beach and ocean beyond.
Alvin ignored the TV broadcasts and mobile military loudspeaker announcements for all civilians to make their way to the designated refugee camps. Yeah, right, he thought. How foolish did they think he was? He did not intend to be crammed into a sports arena with potential Bubonic Plague victims. No chance! It made him shudder to think of all those people polluting his air. God, how disgusting. It would have played havoc with his lifelong claustrophobia, he could just about bear to get into the elevator to his penthouse apartment. And even that was a private elevator. No way could he have those unclean sweating bodies crushed against his in the main elevator. He counted himself lucky that his career had afforded him the luxury of not only a penthouse apartment but a private elevator, straight to the top, not the interminable waiting as the elevator creaked from floor-to-floor on it’s deathly slow progress to the top of the building.
His lucrative career being the supply of heroin into Florida since the early ’80s, where gentlemen, like himself, at the top would do the deals and make the contacts, no macho posturing was necessary, they dealt with it like any other business and everyone made money.
That was before the wetbacks had muscled in, mostly Castro’s garbage. The criminals and the gibbering insane had swamped the city, and the greasy filth had upset the apple cart for a while, under-cutting him on price, cutting the merchandize making it a dangerous product, with their ridiculous policy of tit-for-tat killing of their rivals, the ‘you kill one of ours we’ll kill one of yours’, nonsense, was bad for business. What was the point of all the he-man theatrics, it meant no business sense?
The ’80s and ’90s had been a bad time, until the families took back control and rebalanced the power, and then it was back to business as normal, of supply and demand, that would never end, well, until the user inevitably died, but there were always more, plenty more addicts to take their place.
The ‘families’ had been slow to realize the potential of heroin, strangely taking a moral high ground against drugs initially; yet happy to force underage girls into prostitution, disregarding the misery that money-lending and protection rackets caused, yet drugs had them clutching at their under-skirts like maiden aunts. It had been a massive mistake, not just from a lucrative point of view, but it had let the coloreds get a foothold in the supply and distribution of the illicit commodity, not dissimilar to booze during prohibition, the mobsters had no qualms about making and distributing. It was strange that they had been reticent about drugs and heroin in particular, that was in the early days, of course, but not anymore.
He dealt with the supply and shipment of the product in an organized professional way, same as any other business, the equilibrium restored once more and Alvin Borelli counted himself blessed, because as a top-level mobster he had gotten into the trade early and made a fine living at it. He had no sympathy for the junkies, in fact, he despised them for being so weak-willed and no one had put a gun to their heads and forced them to take the narcotic in the first place. So why bleat about it once hooked? In fact, it gave them another income stream, because the hopeless junkie would turn tricks in desperation for the cash they so badly needed. If they were lookers he’d use them himself, but junkies aged prematurely, getting creased and wrinkly, often losing their teeth, and they would soon slide down the scale until they were out on street corners offering blowjobs for ten bucks a pop.