Without food and with hunger hollowing out their insides it was the longest day yet. The constant walking over the last few days was also starting to take its toll on their bodies in spite of the relatively mild pace they’d set, and even with Trev’s arguments about the benefits of going slower they ended up having to take a break every few hours after all, to slump in whatever shade they could find and drink a bit of water.
The only other change that day was that several FETF convoys passed by, all headed south on the other side of the median. Every time one passed the FETF patrols would go into a frenzy clearing the road of refugees, showing every sign of opening fire at anyone who so much as took a step towards the vehicles. The convoys were mostly made up of food trucks, but there were a few armored transports at the front and back of the line with soldiers leaning out with automatic weapons looking ready to fire at the slightest provocation.
“They’re looking a bit jumpy,” Matt mentioned several hours into their hike while watching the fifth convoy of the day pass. “Not sure I like seeing soldiers on the verge of opening fire on civilians. This is Utah, not some place in the Middle East.”
Trev shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me if convoys have been getting attacked. That’s a lot of food and other vital supplies driving past. If people are willing to murder some guy with a garbage bag full of charcoal from a burned out truck they’d go for these too if they had the numbers and equipment.”
“It’s insane,” Matt said with a shake of his head. “Just over two weeks and this place is already like a war torn third world country.”
“What do you mean, “like?” Trev asked. It wasn’t completely a joke. He immediately felt bad about the flippant remark, but after being confronted by a barrage of awful things he felt like if he couldn’t laugh at something he’d go insane.
His friend wasn’t ready to let the remark go, though. He stopped and turned to glare at Trev. “Do you just hate our country or something? I haven’t heard you say a single good thing about our government, and the sight of all this suffering doesn’t seem to bother you.”
The question offended Trev, but he did his best to keep his anger in check. “The government isn’t the country. I love the US, but by that I mean the people and the culture and the places I’ve visited. I love the communities I’ve lived in, especially Aspen Hill, and want to help them however I can. I also wholeheartedly support those willing to uphold the just and and moral laws of the land. But I also support the Founding Fathers’ ideas on the role of government, and you have to admit that ours has long since expanded beyond that role. Especially in the last few decades.”
Trev looked at the stream of refugees around them. “As for this suffering of course it bothers me. It’s just that when you’ve accepted that the nation is heading towards some sort of collapse, when it actually happens it doesn’t come as quite a shock and it’s easier to acknowledge reality. And thanks to Lewis and my own observations I accepted that long before the Gulf refineries attack.” Trev turned back to his friend. “It doesn’t make it any easier to see, but what choice do we have but to keep going?”
His friend looked away, and after a moment started going again. Trev caught up and they walked for a while in silence.
Salt Lake City was in even worse shape than Provo-Orem had been. Fires didn’t seem to have been quite as much of a problem, but in their place had come other destruction. Some of the skyscrapers were burned out wrecks, their steel cores skeletal, but for the most part they were unburned but nearly every window was shattered. The streets were filled with rubbish, as if looters had emptied out buildings to sort through the junk for anything of value, and the few people he saw moving along the sidewalks or weaving through the permanently stalled cars in the streets had the furtive look of the hunted. Across one intersection a streetcar had been tipped over, and its heavily dented roof suggested it had borne the fury of kicking feet and blunt instruments.
The only relief was that they didn’t see any bodies, either because someone was taking them away for respectful disposal or, less likely, not as many people had died in the violence as Trev feared. Either way it was a relief to get through downtown.
In the early afternoon they reached the junction where I-80 split from I-15 going west, and there they found a FETF station with several water trucks offering a place to refill their bottles and emergency medical aid for those who needed it. That was also where FETF directed them down I-80 towards the refugee camp with a promise of a meal when they arrived. It turned out Antelope Island was indeed a peninsula at the moment, dry and clear with only a few places of inch-deep water.
While Trev and Matt had a long drink and refilled the few bottles they’d emptied on the morning’s hike, Trev noticed that most of the traffic heading north with them was turning east towards Antelope Island, leaving a much thinner stream of humanity to continue on up I-15. Another thing he noticed was that there was almost no one coming east along I-80: the traffic was all one-way. Which made sense considering that west of here was nothing but salt flats and desert most of the way to California. He was pretty sure none of the people leaving I-15 were planning on going anywhere but Antelope Island.
There was nowhere else to go in that direction.
They followed I-80 past Salt Lake City International Airport, which surprisingly enough had a few flights taking off and landing. Transports bringing desperately needed supplies to FETF for the camp, Trev was certain. Not too far beyond the airport another FETF station turned them all due north on the final stretch to Antelope Island. As he had guessed not a single person kept going west past that point, and they followed along in the sea of humanity like bits of driftwood.
It was nearing late afternoon as he and Matt made their way up a slight rise that they noticed people stopping at the top of it, clumping together and murmuring to themselves in relief, surprise, and in a lot of cases dismay. They discovered why once they finished making the climb and saw the view below.
Antelope Island was big, covering a larger area than all of Salt Lake City. Because of that size it might’ve been tempting to assume that the camp huddled up against a fence topped with barbed wire stretching all the way across the end of the peninsula to close it off wasn’t all that large. Only it was. Large enough to hold the population of Aspen Hill a hundred times over, maybe more.
“What are we going to do?” Matt mumbled, staring at the sprawling carpet of tents in despair. “There’s got to be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people in there! There’s no way we’ll find April and Terry and their boys in all that!”
Trev shook his head in mild disagreement. In spite of its size the camp was much, much more organized than any other refugee camp he’d seen. For one thing there was the fact that it had actual tents, made of canvas and arranged in orderly rows, with latrines strategically located to efficiently service the maximum number of people. Even if the camp had a hundred thousand people in it that sort of planning was actually a very good sign.
He looked at the well-guarded entrance, near the southwestern end of the fence closest to where they were. It looked like an amusement park entrance on steroids, with several open gates, FETF coordinators lining tables beneath shaded tents, and hundreds of FETF soldiers making their way among the newcomers directing them this way and that almost like shepherds. “We might actually be in luck. Come on.” He started forward.