Lewis started drifting towards the eastern edge of camp, looking for signs of the large group of ragged men on the horizon. If nothing else it let him take his eyes off the squalor and suffering around him, which was a depressing sight. If the camp coordinator was mismanaging things this badly now, he shuddered to think how they’d fare when winter blew in.
The outcast refugees took even longer than he’d expected, likely due to exhaustion and depravation. The first thing Lewis noticed when they appeared along the road was that there were far fewer of them than there had been when he’d passed them this morning. Less than five hundred, at a quick count. He knew a hundred or so had split off to go their own way before the others had even left to return to the camp, and during the trip back it looked like more had made the same decision.
A lot more. He couldn’t see how that many people dispersed throughout the area wouldn’t be a huge problem for Aspen Hill and everyone else living within ten miles, including Rogers and his refugee camp. Travelers might be attacked, as well as foragers and hunters from the nearby towns and camps, and even isolated homes and smaller settlements might find themselves in danger.
And all for what? Because some town that hadn’t done anything to him refused to let him steal their food or dump more mouths to feed on them? For all the evil he’d done Ferris had simply been greedy, certain of his superiority, and completely lacking a conscience. On the other hand Rogers was looking more and more insane by the day, and to make it worse he wielded far more power than the FETF administrator ever had.
Either that or Rogers was getting desperate watching his camp fall apart, and in his flailing around grasped at solutions that only made things worse. Whatever the camp coordinator’s problem was, he needed to be relieved of command for what he was doing. Better yet court-martialed.
The second thing Lewis noticed was, if anything, even more alarming. Soldiers were mobilizing from the camp to drive out and meet the refugees, and it didn’t look like a welcoming party.
Sure enough, Rogers’s men stopped their trucks across the road in an obvious roadblock, taking cover behind them with weapons held ready to bring to bear on the approaching men, who stopped and stared in dismay and growing despair.
Lewis was too far away to hear what the soldiers told the refugees, but the end result had many of the men slumping in defeated exhaustion right there on the road, ignoring the shouts and threats trying to chivvy them back away from the camp while those refugees who still had some energy turned and shuffled back eastward.
It was hard not to feel profound sympathy for those men, even knowing that many of them were criminals and malcontents. He doubted more than a few had done enough to deserve such a fate, and none had been afforded due process or other consideration.
Incredibly, once the soldiers had turned the refugees away they piled into their trucks and drove back into camp. As if they seriously expected a bunch of starving, desperate men to turn around and walk off without causing any trouble, just because they asked them to. Either that or they didn’t care either way.
Rogers sure ran a tight ship.
Of course the ragged men did turn around and leave, even the ones slumped down on the road finally pulling themselves to their feet and shuffling off. But over the next half hour Lewis watched dozens of them sneak into camp. Lewis somehow doubted they planned to just go back to being docile residents after the way they’d been treated, either; Rogers had likely just turned most if not all of those returning into violent troublemakers, where before only a handful had been.
What was even more worrisome was the fact that it was only dozens, instead of the hundreds who’d been turned away. That meant there were now even more people out there unaccounted for, disenfranchised and starving, and each one was potentially a danger to Aspen Hill. To his friends and family.
And that was unacceptable.
Lewis left under the cover of darkness, using his night vision gear to easily avoid the camp guards and the few scattered campsites, one of them large enough to hold at least fifty men, as he sought out Trent’s group who’d been tailing the refugees. He wanted to avoid using his radio unless he had to, so he wouldn’t draw attention from the camp. Luckily it only took a bit of searching to find the Aspen Hill group making their way home, well off the road.
After briefly sharing reports they made for the road and, with Lewis in the lead guiding them through the darkness, started east at a jog. In spite of weariness and lack of ideal traveling conditions they all agreed that they wanted to get home that night if they could, rather than having to set up camp again.
Lewis was reasonably satisfied with his information gathering. His phone carried dozens of pictures and a few snippets of video and conversations relevant to what was going on. Enough to support his findings and possibly even strong enough to be presented as evidence; although most of the audio was hearsay, the video of the soldiers turning away the returning refugees was hard to dispute.
Assuming they managed to find someone willing and able to do something before the whole area collapsed into chaos.
Chapter Eleven
Downward Spiral
Ed Larson jumped off his cot as a large man wearing sergeant’s stripes, flanked by two enlisted soldiers holding rifles, stormed into the barrack tent and made a beeline for him.
“Is there some—” Ed started to ask.
“Where’s the rest of your group?” the sergeant snarled.
The tone combined with the aggressive approach and armed escort threw Ed off, and it took him several seconds to stammer out an answer. “Th-they’re out in camp.”
“Get them!” the big man roared. “You have five minutes.” Rather than storming off, he motioned to his soldiers to take up a position at the tent’s entrance and plopped down on a nearby cot glowering at Ed, clearly waiting for him to comply.
Ed retrieved his radio with a shaking hand. It was tuned to one of the civilian frequencies approved by the military, of which they had their pick since very few other people had working radios to communicate with aside from the military and those working for them, who also used their own frequencies. It was likely someone was listening in on all radio communication, but that didn’t matter since they only used them to check in on each other.
“Aspen Hill delegation,” he said, aware of how stilted and formal his voice sounded, “we’ve been called in to speak to—” he hesitated, taking his thumb off the transmit button as he glanced at the sergeant. “Colonel Grimes?”
“Right,” the man growled.
Ed pressed the button again. “—to Colonel Grimes. He wants to see us immediately.”
Lucas’s voice came over the radio loud and clear. “Copy that. Me and Carrie are on our way.” Moments later Scott and Ben confirmed they would be there soon as well.
Although they’d agreed to take shifts Ed was usually the one who found himself here in camp. He wasn’t sure what the others had got up to in the six days they’d been cooling their heels waiting for Grimes to call them in, but from the sounds of it they’d been reasonably productive in negotiating trades, making friends, and gathering news.
As for the situation in Aspen Hill, they’d heard some chatter over the radio yesterday that might’ve been about their town, but hadn’t been able to get in touch with Chauncey or anyone else from Aspen Hill to find out what was happening.