By that point his injuries were actually less of a concern than fatigue. He’d been doing his best to take it slow, but carrying the heavy pack for extended periods of time was taking its toll and he wasn’t getting many chances to rest his muscles. He decided to rest most of the fifth day and continue on the sixth.
While he was resting he found a pond on some private property but didn’t see any sign of a house or any other way to contact the owner. He got his first opportunity to break out his water filter and read the instructions on how to use it properly. It was surprisingly simple, but he still had to wonder how long it would’ve taken him to figure it out on his own.
The day of rest helped him more than he realized, even though he woke up on the sixth day sore and feeling like he had zero energy. In spite of that he made good speed, managing to travel most of the rest of the way to Aspen Hill before dark. It was the first day he’d really gone any sort of significant distance, although still far slower than he would’ve preferred.
Finally on the seventh day, an entire grueling week since the attack, he woke and packed up camp, passing the sign he’d slept beneath informing him that the turnoff for Aspen Hill was only 5 miles away, with the town itself another 4 miles along that road with the mountains of Manti-La Sal looming farther to the west.
50 miles carrying a pack that stretched him to the limits of his strength had turned out to be a much farther distance than he’d expected, especially while nursing injuries, but with any luck he’d be there sometime in the afternoon.
Professor Vasquez wasn’t there when Matt arrived for his first class seventh day after the attack. According to Heidi, his TA, the professor hadn’t shown up for any of his classes yesterday afternoon either, his office was empty and locked up, and he couldn’t be reached on his cell phone.
The Spanish teacher was in good company considering that less than a quarter of the enrolled students had shown up for class. That made three of Matt’s seven classes canceled, and in Chemistry they’d just spent the last few days watching the news while Dr. Harris spouted off his opinions on who’d been behind the attack and what the future of the US held, theories that made Trev’s dire predictions seem sane in comparison.
All things considered Matt wouldn’t be surprised if his remaining classes folded within the next few days, and he finally decided to accept reality and not even bother attending them. He had a feeling that no matter what he might want his college experience had pretty much been put on hiatus.
He couldn’t believe the change the university had gone through in just a week. It seemed like everybody had just given up on things returning to normal. The students and faculty who still remained spent most of their time huddled in groups talking about the situation or watching the news: ironically in spite of the heavy electricity restrictions being enforced by campus administration all the lounges were lit pretty much 24/7 and every TV turned on to various channels.
On his way back to his dorm Matt passed through the bookstore, more out of curiosity than because he needed anything. All the books were still there, but the stands that had held food or impulse buy nicknacks were disconcertingly empty, although he did find several empty 2-liter soda bottles that he gathered up to take back to the dorm with him.
Even the big bulk candy dispensary against one wall was cleaned out, aside from an array of flat multi-colored splotches on the floor around it that painted a pretty good picture of what had happened since he’d last been through here. He could just imagine students pushing and shoving to fill their backpacks as candy spilled everywhere to be trampled underfoot.
Not that the cafeteria was any better. Most of the restaurants had closed and all the various food stands and shelves were empty. The only business booming there was the ration line managed by the administration, which stretched back across the cavernous space in spite of the fact that they scanned your card to limit you to a once a day visit and you got barely a cup of food, usually oatmeal or some nuts and dried fruit.
Matt had already been through it not half an hour ago before heading to the class that turned out to be canceled. While in line he’d done his best to read his textbooks as he shuffled forward with the other students and faculty jostling impatiently around him. The pitiful meal had barely seemed worth the effort, but his dorm’s kitchen was looking pretty bare in spite of the couple weeks’ worth of cheap food he and his roommates had had on hand and the scrounging he and Chad had done the first day. He wanted to conserve what was left for as long as possible.
A fight had broken out just after he got his food, ending up in a mad shove forward that had turned the meandering line into a blob around the food counter as people clamored to get their share before the chaos made the ration dispenser close. In that odd way of things the desperate effort to try to prevent something ended up being the cause of it, and within minutes the people manning the counter fled back into the kitchen and locked the door, leaving the crowd to fight over the abandoned food.
For all he knew the ration line was closed for good now, just like his classes were shutting down. How long before the campus became a refugee camp as students and faculty with nowhere else to go struggled to survive?
Ironically in spite of everything that conspired to make up Matt’s mind to finally give in and go home, the way Trev had warned him a week ago that he should, he’d stubbornly stayed waiting for the straw that broke the camel’s back. Had it finally arrived with what he’d seen in the ration line followed by the cancelation of his Spanish class? Deep in his mind he knew it had, although he wasn’t consciously ready to admit he was returning to his dorm from classes for the last time.
The campus was eerily deserted, with the sort of hush that reminded Matt of the tension in a crowded room just after somebody shouted angrily and was escorted out. Or around groups of fans from different teams before a fight broke out. Either way the stillness gave Matt the willies, and he hurried from the bookstore to his dorm.
He found the lounge packed with students as usual, not only because power to the rest of the building was shut off during the day but because news developments literally occurred hourly to be displayed on the several large screens. Sometimes minutely. Ironically while the physical world ground to a standstill the internet kept going a mile a minute, at least until the power ran out, so even though news teams couldn’t physically go out to where events were occurring they could still get video footage from people at the scene. The background behind the newscasters was usually dominated by shaky camera clips urgently narrated by their breathless, usually barely audible owners.
He paused to watch the news for a while, although the developing stories and video feeds were so similar they could’ve come from one place instead of all over the nation. It turned out the “wait and see” policy the President had advocated on the first day after the attack wasn’t much better than Matt’s own. In less than a week Matt had been proven wrong about people holding together until things could get back to normal, but the Commander-in-Chief’s resolution hadn’t even lasted that long.
An official nationwide state of emergency had been declared just 3 days after the attack, after the first riots started and the first cities began reporting food shortages critical enough that already tens of thousands of their citizens were going without meals. Martial law and a strict curfew had been imposed on the cities with the largest populations and the President had appeared back on TV for another speech.
This one hadn’t been quite as calm and reassuring, and the only nuggets of good news offered were that construction of the new refineries was already underway and that the Federal government had officially dispatched FETF, the Federal Emergency Task Force, along with elements of the National Guard working with other branches of the Armed Forces, to render aid and restore order in the cities where circumstances were most desperate. He also promised further aid to every city in the nation as the situation warranted. And, finally, he’d practically begged citizens to remain calm and orderly, stating that civil unrest would only cause problems for everyone.