When Matt finished the soldiers looked at each other and shrugged. “All right, travel safely,” one said as the others turned to clear them a space to go the other way against the flow of refugees.
Trev did his best not to look shocked. He’d actually felt a lot of trepidation coming to the gate, afraid they wouldn’t be allowed to leave. But even while hoping that they’d be able to he hadn’t expected it to ever be that easy.
In spite of himself Matt looked a bit surprised too. “Just like that? We were afraid we’d have trouble getting out.”
One of the soldiers handling the refugees shrugged. “We’re having a hard enough time feeding and managing everyone here. If you’ve got a better situation somewhere else and you can take care of yourselves everyone wins.”
“How about food for the journey?” Trev asked, stepping forward. “On the way up here the food in our packs was confiscated at a roadblock.”
At that the soldiers lost a bit of their good cheer. “Don’t know anything about roadblock confiscations,” the first soldier answered. “If they’re happening none of those supplies are making it here. Are you sure it wasn’t thieves pretending to be law enforcement?”
“It looked pretty official,” Matt answered, giving Trev a warning look. Looked like his friend still didn’t trust him to open his mouth after the way he’d handled himself at the roadblock. “They said it was some sort of martial law mandate that all food being carried by people should be considered stolen and confiscated.”
The soldiers exchanged apathetic looks and a few shrugged. “Sounds like BS to me. I haven’t heard of any mandate like that. They were probably just after your food.”
Trev had to wonder why the cops at the roadblock would make up a law just to steal their food when they already had them at gunpoint. Maybe to help them sleep better at night knowing they’d done something slightly less vile than armed robbery, or maybe so he and Matt wouldn’t complain to other law enforcement? Or maybe there really was such a mandate and these FETF soldiers didn’t know about it.
Matt didn’t seem to care about any of that, his focus on the here and now. “Anyway it happened and now we’ve got no food and a long way to travel. Is there a way we could get some rations? Some refugees told us you’ve been giving people enough to get them to wherever they’ve been sent.”
“We were, for a while,” the lone female soldier in the group said. “Now we aren’t. Sorry, we have our own mandate that’s actually real and came down the chain. We can only distribute food within the camp, to encourage people to stay put. It’s the best way to prevent more riots as well as making it easier to be sure everyone’s getting a fair share.”
“Most of the people in here had nothing to do with the riots, though,” Trev pointed out. “Weren’t the rioters being sent to Point of the Mountain?”
A few of the soldiers snorted. “The ones we caught,” the first soldier replied. “I wouldn’t be so sure that makes many of the refugees we’re protecting in here innocent. From what I’ve seen I’ll bet you good money that the rioters were some of the first people to come looking for a handout when we set up this camp. And it’s not like the people in here have been twiddling their thumbs and singing Kumbayah, either. We’ve had constant problems keeping the peace, and more crimes and instances of mass unrest seem to happen every day.”
The soldier who’d been speaking pointed to the cleared path through the crowd in invitation. “So leave while you still can and best of luck to you out there.”
“Thanks,” Matt said sincerely as he caught Trev’s arm, motioned back to his sister and her family, and hurried through the crowd. Once they were out of ear shot his friend turned to him. “Come on, man. Talking to the FETF guards made me uncomfortable enough without you interrogating them. With every question you asked I expected them to change their minds and turn us back. Is there some childhood trauma you’re working through that makes you lip off to people who can cause you problems?”
“You don’t think it was worth it to at least ask and maybe get some food for the trip?” Trev shot back. “Besides, I didn’t say anything they’d have a problem with.”
“You never know these days,” Matt said, but he let the matter drop.
To avoid the flood of refugees coming the other way they walked a hundred feet or so to the right of the beaten path, uncomfortably aware of eyes on them with every step they took. Trev wasn’t happy about the attention, and he became even less happy a little over an hour later when they reached I-80 and he realized the others wanted to go straight south from there rather than following the highway back to I-15 and taking the Interstate all the way down to Spanish Fork.
“We’re not like you guys,” April said firmly when he protested. “We don’t have the strength to go days without food, especially not the boys, and since we won’t be able to manage nearly the same speed as you did coming up we have to find a solution. We talked it over with Matt and agreed it would be better to skirt the suburbs west of the big cities so we can forage: anything left in gardens, animals we might be able to catch, heck, even insects.”
“Also we’ll be near the Jordan River so we can get water more reliably,” Terry added. “We don’t have many bottles so we have to stay closer to whatever water sources we can find.”
Matt nodded. “I told them about your cache along 6, so our priority will be to get there as quickly as possible. But until then we need food so we have to try this.”
Trev didn’t like it but he could see the point they were making. Terry and April had to bring their possessions in an overloaded wagon and small backpacks, they weren’t used to hiking, and they had the children. There was no way they’d be able to race hunger south to the cache. “It’s going to be ten times more dangerous even in the suburbs so we’ll have to be constantly on guard. And we might not even find food,” he warned.
“Then we keep going towards our goal as we look and we travel carefully.” April gave him a patient look. “If you want to split off and rush for home we’ll understand.”
He did his best not to feel insulted by the offer. He’d come all this way to help them… did they honestly think he was going to ditch them now just when things were getting hardest? In answer he started across I-80, motioning. “Let’s go, then. It took us 4 days to get up here, it might take twice that long getting back. The sooner we get started the better.”
The others followed as he led the way east on the Interstate to the first off ramp. Where it reached the first intersection they stood for a long time looking at the street leading south and listening for any sounds of danger.
“Shouldn’t we keep going?” Terry asked.
“Shh,” Trev hissed, starting for the nearest source of cover behind a parked van on the other side of the intersection. “Time to get back to slinking our way through the urban jungle.”
Matt followed, wary and with a hand on his spray, and when they reached the van they stopped and looked around warily as they waited for the others to catch up to them. “What are you doing?” April asked.
Matt turned to her, expression grim. “We’ve seen a lot of chaos on these streets while making our way up here. Some really bad stuff. Luckily we were able to avoid it by being careful, but on our way south we need to do our best to be quiet and not be noticed. So no talking and we keep our ears open.”
“Okay sure,” Terry said. He glanced back at the wagon, which Paul was currently riding on while Aaron walked alongside. “I might have to have you help me with this and carrying the boys as we travel.”