Matt frowned. “Why wouldn’t we go get it?”
“Because you’re talking about a 30 mile round trip, maybe more. It’s only a bit more than that to Midvale at this point. And if we bring more food with us we might have to worry about it being stolen again, by authorities or by anyone else we meet. Since our destination will very likely end up being a FETF camp anyway the food we brought would be as good as gone, and we’d lose almost a full day going to get it.”
Those were all good points. “You’re talking about over two full days of going hungry, assuming we go directly there and come directly back and somehow managed to make the same time with April’s family traveling with us. It’ll probably end up being twice that time, maybe more since the camp will be an even farther walk. Do you really want to go almost a full week without eating?”
Trev smiled. “Not quite a full week. If your sister’s still at their house they might still have their food storage, and if they’re at Antelope Island we should be able to get a meal there. It is a refugee camp after all.”
Matt couldn’t argue with that reasoning. His sense of urgency prodded him to continue on and find April and her family as quickly as he could, but things could get really bad really fast if they didn’t have food. “If you’re willing to go hungry I’m willing to try it.”
His friend responded by turning and continuing on up I-15. They passed a swarm of refugees coming the other way, many of whom called out asking for news or ribbing them for going the wrong direction. Matt did his best to respond with his own jokes and wise cracks, but he couldn’t help but notice that Trev had sunk into brooding. His friend was probably still steaming about the roadblock, and Matt couldn’t blame him. He’d come to rely on his Glock and he’d paid dearly for ammunition and accessories for it, but it had still been a gift and he hadn’t had it for long. Losing the 1911 had to be much harder.
He only hoped they didn’t miss those guns before they got back to Aspen Hill.
With all the chaos in the populated areas Trev continued to voice his fears that they’d run into trouble walking on I-15 with so many people around, and kept his hand near the bear spray in his pocket and encouraged Matt to do the same. But it turned out violence on the road wasn’t very common at all, and for more reason than just that everyone was tired and dispirited and more interested in flight than fighting.
For all the breakdown of law and order there was a government presence on I-15 keeping the peace and protecting the refugees. Not just on the roadblocks leading into cities like the one they’d encountered, either. As they walked north they passed small fortified emplacements manned by policemen or highway patrol every ten or so miles, as well as six-soldier squads from the various Armed Forces wearing FETF armbands and patrolling up and down along the median, nonlethal weapons ready to use at the slightest sign of disorder. Matt saw more and more of these squads the farther north they went.
And they weren’t just there for show, either. At one point Trev and Matt had to swing wide around a large group that had stopped in the middle of the road for some internal dispute with lots of yelling and even a bit of pushing. As they walked past the disturbance a FETF patrol coming the other way hurried over, raising shotguns loaded with beanbag rounds to pan the entire group as they shouted for everyone to break it up.
The crowd immediately dispersed, and without even bothering to find out what had happened the soldiers split the group to keep the people involved in the argument apart and sent them to walk on different sides of the median. They then followed along between the two groups for a ways to make sure they stayed separated.
Far from being resentful of this show of force everyone on the highway, even those who’d had weapons pointed at them, looked grateful at the imposition of order. Matt couldn’t help but wonder if the highway was actually the safest place in Utah Valley in spite of the endless throng of refugees. He doubted either FETF or law enforcement were keeping anything near this sort of presence in the cities themselves. They realistically couldn’t, not with all the rioting and with fires burning unchecked.
At least he assumed there were fires. The horizon ahead was so hazy that Matt would’ve thought they were clouds if the sky wasn’t perfectly clear, but he knew that wasn’t it. The haze had to be from smoke, and it was coming from the direction of the sister cities of Provo and Orem. There was a lot of it, too.
The presence of raging fires in the cities didn’t surprise him at all, considering what he’d seen before leaving a week ago. It might’ve been tempting to believe everything was still calm while they’d been hiking through the houses of Spanish Fork before hitting the roadblock, where there hadn’t been much sign of the violence and chaos that raged in more populated areas farther north.
But even there Matt had still noticed a few smashed windows and doors gaping open as if the houses had been swiftly abandoned or looters had broken in and left them like that. He’d even seen a few front lawns with possessions smashed and scattered across the grass, like they’d been tossed outside through doors and windows for the sheer joy of it.
His guess that he was looking at smoke from numerous fires was confirmed a few hours later as the sun went down, when he saw the haze ahead start to glow from beneath. Around that time they reached a point where I-15 passed right next to Utah Lake, and Trev guided them off the highway to refill their water bottles using his fancy purifier. He also made sure they both drank to bursting before continuing on.
The lake water looked nasty and Matt had strong doubts about it, but Trev’s purifier was a quality one and seemed to do the job. By the time the water had been run through it seemed okay, aside from a stronger than usual mineral taste. Still, Matt let his friend drink first since it had been his bright idea.
Although the purifier worked pretty fast it still consumed a lot of time filling so many containers, and while he waited Matt watched the glow beneath the clouds hanging over the valley ahead go from a slight orange to a dark, livid red. It looked as if entire cities were burning, the glow spreading everywhere.
Trev finished filling the bottles and they continued on, doing their best to ignore the first pangs of hunger. While they walked the Interstate in the deepening twilight Matt noticed that all the buildings in sight hadn’t been as fortunate as the ones down in Spanish Fork. Every window he saw was smashed, every door destroyed or removed and the doorways gaping open. Walls had been graffitied with obscenities, some directed at just about every demographic that could possibly be blamed for the Gulf refineries attack but the overwhelming majority at the government itself for dropping the ball. FETF especially seemed to have drawn the brunt of the tag artists’ fury, in spite of the fact that they were here imposing order and giving aid.
And those were the better off buildings. Some were no more than burned shells, and the farther north they went the more fire damage they saw. Until finally they passed a residential area that had completely gone up in the flames, even the lawns turned to ash and playgrounds reduced to twisted and melted wrecks.
It wasn’t much longer before full dark made further travel too difficult to continue, much to Matt’s relief. They were both exhausted, in spirit as well as in body. And yet in spite of the difficulty the flow of refugees flooding the road still continued south, their steps lit by the livid red glow of fires on the horizon. Neither Matt nor his friend had said a word in hours, not since commenting on the devastation when they first began seeing signs of it, and at some point they both decided to stop at once.
Still without a word being said Trev led the way to the right side of I-15 and across the strip of barren land to the fence running alongside it. Even after tossing their packs over to lighten themselves both had trouble climbing the fence, and Matt didn’t drop down on the other side so much as roll over the top and fall, barely managing to keep from injuring himself as he landed. Trev dropped down beside him with a loud grunt, and together they picked up their packs and made their way to the dense thicket of scrub oak that had drawn Trev here.