He wasn’t concerned for the half-crazed and dying; but for the healthy who’d decided to wait out the pandemic in the modicum of comfort that their own homes provided. If they had enough food, then there was no reason to venture outside, where looters might attack them, or make contact with the plague carriers unnecessarily. If they sat it out for a week, it would’ve passed over and by which time the government would have arranged for their evacuation. Now their food would spoil and the air conditioning units would be inoperable, and the present heat wave would surely drive them outside. And that, of course, Luke realized, was the reason, to draw the survivors outside, where they'd be rounded-up and transported to the refugee camps, or now, more likely executed on the street. He shuddered and thought of the infirm and elderly fumbling their way around their homes disorientated by the darkness, making their own homes potential death traps. He watched the power grids extinguishing block-by-block towards them, and then pass behind them blinking out into the horizon leaving South Florida in total darkness.
