The second phase of the ambush began with an overwhelming roar of gunfire. This was the proverbial Mad Minute that Jake had often heard José and Tomas talking about. With the ambushers almost shoulder to shoulder, the brass and fired shotshells came down like hailstones. The firing started as a continuous roar. The looters immediately began to run, mostly to the rear and toward the field of tree stumps on the far side of the highway. Just a few of them had the discipline to drop to the ground in the grassy median between two stretches of the highway pavement and return fire. But these men were all quickly targeted and shot.
Despite their numerical superiority, the looters were overwhelmed by the ambush. Most of them were in absolute panic. They ran, only to be cut down by the withering rifle and shotgun fire. Many of the looters were trampled by the weight of the sheer number of their fellows trying to flee.
Only a few looters ran toward their ambushers. Tomas later commented to Janelle, “Those were probably the handful that had military training and had been taught to charge an ambush. But they couldn’t get through our wall of lead. Talk about a target-rich environment.”
In a later conversation with Jake and José, Tomas also mentioned that the ambush had been “at least a full order of magnitude larger than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. It was devastating. And to see it all pulled off so well by a bunch of civilians was even more amazing.”
The tempo of the firing gradually died down. The casualties among the ambushers were light. Only fifteen men were wounded and seven killed. Most of these were head, neck, arm, or shoulder wounds. Four of the head wounds were instantly fatal. Three men accidentally injured themselves with ricocheted bullet jacket fragments. By resting their scoped rifles’ forends on the railroad track, they unwittingly put their rifle bores in alignment with the second track. Because the scopes were mounted parallel but two to three inches higher than the axis of their rifle bores, it appeared that they had clear shots, but some of their low-angle shots actually hit the track just an arm’s length forward of their muzzles.
Jake and Tomas were virtually unscathed. Jake, however, did have a hot piece of .223 brass go down the collar of his shirt. It left a painful nearly horizontal red burn at the base of his neck in the perfect shape of the brass that would become a distinctive scar.
The ambush was a lopsided success. Dead looters were scattered across the highway lanes, the median, and in the adjoining fields in huge numbers. As the ambushers’ rate of fire dropped to just sporadic shots, Jake could hear screams and moans from wounded looters.
The man next to Jake had a 3-9-power variable scope mounted on his Mini-14. He turned the ring of the scope to 9-power and then began deliberately scanning the bodies of the looters. He rested the forend of his Ruger on the sandbag that Tomas had given him for a steady aim. Whenever he saw a chest rising and falling, or any other sign of life, he would take a head shot. He continued this for fifteen minutes. After most men had finished shooting and busied themselves with reloading, the man in the Realtree cap shot another fifty rounds, changing magazines twice. During the second magazine swap, he muttered, “There are still a lot of them playing possum.” The occasional rifle fire sounded up and down the line as others were taking similar coup de grâce shots.
About twenty minutes after the most intense firing of the ambush, an order was passed down the line: “Reload before the order to advance.” Very few men needed this reminder. But there was still the clatter of many rifle actions as nervous men double-checked that their guns were fully loaded. Jake still had five loaded magazines, and Tomas had four. They deliberately shifted their empty magazines to the rearmost pouches on their web gear to avoid confusion.
A few yards down the line, a man shouted, “I’m down to two rounds. Any y’all got a spare M14 magazine for my M1A?” A loaded magazine was quickly passed down the line to him, with the proviso, “You owe me, big-time. Make every shot count.”
Jake heard two similar requests made in rapid succession—one for .30-30 ammunition and one for .243 Winchester ammunition. Both requests were filled. Then a man just fifteen feet down from Jake and Tomas shouted, “I need some .25-06.” After a pause, he said with greater urgency, “Does anyone have any .25-06, please? I’ve got zero rounds!”
Someone heckled. “You gotta be kidding. This ain’t the wide-open prairie. You should have bought a .308.”
A whistle was blown and the captains relayed the order down the line. “Forward!”
Nearly everyone stood up, many of them unsteady after so many hours in a prone position. A few stayed behind to tend the wounded. The ambushers pressed forward in an uneven skirmish line. There were sporadic shots as men shot at looters suspected of playing dead.
The bodies of many of the looters were in tangled clumps. Most of them were in the grassy median between the two paved lanes of the highway or in the field beyond. The smell of the blood and the smell of the feces were overpowering—as many of the looters had been shot through the intestines or had involuntarily soiled themselves. There was blood everywhere—far more than Jake Altmiller had expected. In places where the bodies were closest together, the ground was flooded with blood, collecting in bright red, half-inch-deep puddles that were already starting to turn black around their edges. A few of the ambushers vomited at the horrific sight.
As they walked forward, Tomas commented, “Christo. I seen a lot on my deployments, but never anything quite like this.”
What surprised Jake the most was seeing all the stray shoes. Nearly everywhere he looked, there were shoes and sandals that the looters had lost in the panic of the ambush, especially in the tightly packed groups where they had trampled each other.
Less than a hundred of the looters had escaped into the woods at the southeast end of the ambush zone. The ambushers first checked all of the bodies for signs of life. There were many coup de grâce shots, mostly using pistols and revolvers since rifle ammunition was considered precious. Two unarmed black teenagers were found playing possum near the southeast of the ambush. The leaders of the ambush let them live so they could deliver a message. “You run back to Tampa and tell them what happened here, and warn them what happens to any looters who head up this-a-way.”
Thousands of weapons and more than a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition were collected. A few of the guns had been rendered inoperable by bullet hits, but most of them were still serviceable, albeit sticky with blood. Others had been ruined—like shotguns with their barrels pierced by rifle bullets—but they could still be salvaged for valuable parts. Since the looters had outnumbered the ambushers so heavily, most of the men each went home with between one and four captured guns. Tomas picked up a parkerized Ithaca Model 37 Military and Police shotgun with an 8-round magazine. Aside from one notch in the bottom of the buttstock where a bullet had grazed it, the shotgun was in good working order. Jake got a Springfield Armory XD 40 pistol and three extra magazines. He also found a Kel-Tec SU-16 rifle beneath one of the bodies.
Seeing the Kel-Tec, Tomas declared, “Not the best, but at least those take standard AR or M16 magazines. That’ll be good for barter.” Tomas showed Jake how to unload the rifle and fold its stock. Once it was folded, the gun fit easily in Jake’s rucksack with room to spare.
Stripping the guns, magazines, ammunition, and holsters from the looters turned into a chaotic grabfest. Tomas commented that it was like some giant piñata had burst and rained down guns and magazines. The nicest gun they saw recovered was a Tavor TAR-21—a bullpup configuration .223 rifle designed in Israel. The gun’s new owner was ecstatic. The rapid-pace gun snatching was followed by countless impromptu barter transactions. One ambusher took the initiative to shout, “I got two AKs and a Glock .40 here. I’ll trade all three of them for a FAL or an M1A.” Everywhere around them, trades were being made. It looked incongruous to see this trading going on, as everyone was walking amidst so many lifeless bodies. As Jake later recounted the scene to Jan
elle, “It was like some strange flashback of the aftermath of a medieval battle, with the peasants stripping the swords and bows and armor from the bodies of the defeated army. It was just surreal.”
Several uniformed police officers from Mount Dora and Tavares filled shopping carts with the less desirable guns that had been passed over. There were mostly single- and double-barreled shotguns and .22 rifles. Jake wondered whether the policemen had been ordered to do this, or whether they were just taking advantage of the situation for their own gain. In either case, no looters would have these weapons now.
Jake noticed that the man who had just been asking for .25-06 ammunition had found himself a CETME .308 rifle. The rifle looked a lot like an HK91, but it had a wooden stock and forend. Jake nodded to the man, and said, “That’ll do. Scrounge as much .308 ball ammo as you can.”
Tomas added his own advice. “You may have heard that CETME will also take G3 or HK91 magazines, but you might have to file on the mags a bit, depending on the receiver’s tolerances.” Jake always marveled at the depth and breadth of firearms knowledge that Tomas possessed.
After most of the ambushers had started walking homeward, a pair of D6 bulldozers were started and walked around the north end of the roadblock. With many successive passes, they cut a four-foot-deep trench for a length of 350 yards for a mass grave. A few of the most widely scattered bodies were dragged in by hand, but most of them were simply pushed into the grave with the bulldozer blades. Before the grave was refilled with earth, a Catholic minister gave a funeral oration.
Jake and Tomas didn’t talk much as they walked home. Their elation at the success of the ambush was tempered by its bloody aftermath. Jake summed it up when he resignedly said, “It had to be done.” He didn’t sleep well for a month.
24
MADAGASCAR
“A very few—very few—isolated locations around the world, where it was possible to impose a rigid quarantine and where authorities did so ruthlessly, escaped the disease entirely. American Samoa was one such place. There not a single person died of influenza.
“Across a few miles of ocean lay western Samoa, seized from Germany by New Zealand at the start of the war. On September 30, 1918, its population was 38,302, before the steamer Talune brought the disease to the island. A few months later, the population was 29,802. Twenty-two percent of the population died.”
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza
Tavares, Florida—January, the Third Year
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.
25
INTO THE DEEP
“Kriget är icke en ström eller en sjö utan ett hav med allt ont.” (Loosely translated: “War is not a river, or a lake, but an ocean of all that is evil.”)
—Gustavus Adolphus
On Board Tiburon, Celebes Sea—November, the Second Year
On their third night of motoring through the Celebes Sea, Tatang’s boat came close to several small low-lying islands. When they shut down the engine at dawn, the GPS showed that they were eight miles from the nearest island on their starboard side and eleven miles to another on their port side. As dawn broke, none of these islands could be seen over the horizon. But as the boat gradually drifted during the day, the palm tree cover of the nearest island came into view. By the late afternoon, they were feeling exposed.
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