He drew out a large sheet of paper, which he’d drawn the accommodation area on. There were two blocks of rooms—with the bathrooms and showers between them, one south of the bathrooms, one north.

  “First the south block. Ed moves into the double room with Louise, and Chandra moves out of there and gets the single room in that block. Meanwhile, Stav and I will share the bunk room but keep the divider in place.” This put R.J. between Stav’s room and Chandra’s, Matt noticed. Those two would have to be very sneaky to get past without being heard. “Matt and the doc get the second double in that block.”

  Matt elbowed Peter and spoke softly. “We’re in the party dorm.” Peter ignored that and spoke to R.J.

  “Can I suggest you have Louise and Edvin move into the currently unused double room and Matt and I have the one Louise and Chandra are in currently, so I’m closer in case I need to get to the infirmary quickly?”

  “Does five seconds matter that much?” Brooks asked.

  “As a former ER doctor, I can tell you that yes, it sometimes does.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Louise said. “I don’t mind swapping.”

  “What about me?” Brooks demanded. “Where do I sleep? The generator shed?”

  “You get the single room on the north block. No other change to the rooms in that section. Jay and Doctor Crawford stay in their room and Kasper and Vicky in theirs. The bunk room in that block stays empty.”

  “Don’t see why I have to move,” Brooks muttered. “Put Chandra in the single bedroom in the north block. I don’t want to be kept awake all night by that baby.”

  “I think it’s best,” R.J. said. His steady stare made Brooks wilt. He muttered reluctant agreement and backed down. Matt wondered if R.J. wanted Brooks away from the younger members of the group.

  “Since we’ll all be concentrated in the two blocks, we can close off the heat vents in the whole of the rest of the building overnight. The person on night watch can wrap up warm and use a small space heater. If everyone’s agreeable, we’ll make all the arrangements tomorrow.”

  “Shall we vote?” Crawford said. They did, and it was unanimous—though Brooks’s hand was the slowest to go up. That was kind of a novelty. People voting on where Matt slept.

  “Then we’re adjourned,” Crawford said, tapping her makeshift gavel.

  And just like that, Matt and Peter were a couple. Official. People had voted on it.

  They didn’t spend that night together. Matt suspected Peter felt strangely self-conscious with everyone knowing about them. He didn’t give Peter the opportunity to awkwardly ask him not to join him that night. As the evening closed and the electricity was turned off, Matt spoke to Peter in the darkness, illuminated only by lanterns.

  “I’m going to stay in the bunk room with the guys. You know, for our last night. For old time’s sake.”

  Peter smiled. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Matt sighed. “What we need for that proper end-of-term feeling are snacks and beer. But you can’t have everything.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two afternoons later, Matt and Peter were snuggling on Peter’s bunk in their new room when the overhead light went on. In the distance they heard the sound of the generator kicking in.

  Matt sat up. “Why’s the power on?” He hopped off the bed and turned off the light. The room dimmed again. Their room was on the inner side of the block of bedrooms, away from the outer wall. That made it warmer but meant they had no window, only a skylight.

  “R.J. said he was going to use the shortwave today,” Peter said. Matt climbed back on the bunk with him. Almost a week after moving in, they still had two separate bunks, because they weren’t so easy to push together. They had wooden sides holding the mattresses in. If you simply pushed them together, there was a gap several inches wide in the middle. Some carpentry would be involved in turning them into a double bed.

  “Monthly news update, huh?” Matt snuggled in against Peter’s neck, started to lick and nibble it. “I wonder if the stock market reopened yet.”

  “Idiot,” Peter said.

  “Mark my words, it will be the first thing to come back.”

  “What’s the use of money anymore?”

  “Some people always have a use for money. They don’t like to accept it’s worthless.”

  “You’re probably right.” Peter shrugged. “Who cares, though? It can’t touch us here. Nothing can touch us here.”

  Matt didn’t answer. Peter talked as if he never expected to leave the island. He couldn’t think they could survive here forever, could he? Bring up Hope here? He wasn’t despairing about it, not talking of them dying of cold or starvation or scurvy or something. He seemed almost…content about it. He’d talked that way a lot more since the two of them got together. It was flattering to think Matt made Peter happy enough to never want to escape, to live their lives here together, never to go ashore, where there was at least a tiny, tiny chance Peter might find Harrison again. But Matt wasn’t convinced they could live here indefinitely.

  After necking for a while, a good fifteen minutes—all the time in the world—he rested a hand on Peter’s crotch and caressed him, feeling him grow hard under the thick fabric. Peter groaned into his mouth, sighed out, “Yes,” softly, longingly. Blindly, never taking his eyes from Peter’s face, Matt undid the button of the jeans and worked the zip down. He slid his hand in under the cotton shorts, and Peter arched into it.

  “Your hand is cold.”

  “Your cock is hot. You’ll soon warm me up. Oh, Peter—”

  A yell from outside the door made him freeze.

  “Hey! Everyone come out here right now! All of you, come here.”

  R.J.? Was that really R.J.? He’d never heard him so…agitated. Matt gasped and almost fell off the bed at the sound of pounding on their door. Peter zipped his pants quickly, but R.J. didn’t come into the room, just shouted from outside.

  “Lane, Warner, if you’re in there, get out here.”

  “What the hell, R.J.?” Matt called, but the man was gone. Matt heard his boots clattering on the floor of the corridor outside. Distantly Hope started to wail, and Vicky started demanding what all the damn yelling was about; the baby was trying to sleep.

  Matt and Peter looked at each other wide-eyed.

  “The building must be on fire,” Matt said.

  “He’d have shouted fire, then, or pulled the alarm. We’d better go see what’d going on. It must be something serious to get R.J. so excited.”

  “What if there’s a zombie?” Matt asked as the two of them scrambled around getting into their boots. “Another one from that boat, or another boat or…something.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Matt grabbed a hooded fleece sweater as they left the room, pulled it on over his head. They came into the main corridor and found most of the rest of the group milling about asking what was going on. R.J. popped his head out of the door into the radio room, which lay at the north end of the building, off a corridor at right angles to the main one.

  “In here,” he called. “Come on! Hurry up. I could lose the signal.”

  “This better be important,” Vicky muttered darkly, rocking the crying Hope. Hell hath no fury like a woman whose baby has been woken up. Hell also had no fury like a bush pilot woken up after she’d been on night watch. Jay was hastily dressed, yawning, and grumpy. Her short hair was sticking up at all angles.

  “If it’s not something worth waking me for, I’m gonna kill him,” she announced.

  They crowded into the radio room. It barely held them all, and Matt found himself crammed between some big piece of machinery and Peter. He leaned into Peter and slipped an arm around his waist.

  “Abby,” R.J. said. “I’m back, and I’ve got the rest of the group with me.”

  “I can hear them,” Abby said. “I certainly hear little Hope there.” Vicky shushed Hope gently, and the baby started to calm down.

  “Abby is with the group in Wisconsin, in the air force base,” R.J. reminded them. Matt remembered. He’d spoken to Abby a couple of times on the radio. They were a large group of around a hundred people, well ensconced, and had defended their bolt-hole with minimum casualties for over two years. There were several former air force personnel among their number—including Abby, who’d been some kind of radio technician. The group called out hellos to Abby.

  “Abby,” R.J. said. “Sorry to make you repeat yourself, but please tell the rest of them what you told me. Otherwise I think they’re going to assume I made it up.”

  “Okay.” Her voice sounded tinny and almost faded out until R.J. fiddled some knobs. “…this group on an old rig in California, or rather off the coast.”

  “Say again,” R.J. said. “You’ve been in touch with them, you said?”

  “Yes, over the radio.”

  “We’ve spoken to that group a couple of times ourselves.”

  “Right. So a few months ago they got on to us and told us their doctor had created a vaccine.”

  She didn’t have to say a vaccine for what. The group stirred and looked at one another.

  “She’s ex-CDC, apparently. Retired. And she succeeded. They’ve got a vaccine. You hear? They’ve got a vaccine.”

  “We hear you,” R.J. said over the babble that burst from the group around him. Peter didn’t babble. He stared. He didn’t turn to Matt to so much as share a wild glance with him. He stared at the radio as if the machine itself could tell him something.

  “According to them,” Abby said, “after you get the vaccine, the zombies don’t try to bite you anymore. They think you’re already infected or something. And even if you were bitten, the vaccine would stop you getting sick and, you know, coming back. They said one of their guys was bitten and they gave him the trial vaccine and he didn’t get sick. He was fine. Is fine.”

  “Sounds like the rabies vaccine,” Louise said. “You can get it to prevent infection at all, or after exposure.”

  “There was a lot of early speculation that the vaccine was related to rabies,” Peter said, then raised his voice. “Dr. Lane here, Abby, the group’s physician. Have you any proof this is for real?”

  “Not yet. Apparently some of the group are traveling about and giving a demo of the vaccine to people and offering it to them. A dozen of our group have gone to reconnoiter, find them, and see if it’s real.”

  “If it is…” Crawford said, sounding awestruck. “It changes everything. It’s the turning point.”

  “We should talk to the people on the rig,” Peter said. “This doctor, I have to talk to her. It could be some kind of hoax or—”

  “They left the rig,” Abby said. “They’re someplace on the mainland. They’ve set up someplace to make more vaccine. I’ve heard some people calling it Vaccine City.”

  “Where?” R.J. asked.

  “I don’t know. They’re not advertising. I think…I think you have to find their guys doing the demo first, and I guess they decide if they trust you enough to tell you where Vaccine City is, if you want to go there. Because I guess if you do, you have to work on the vaccine project. Getting it out to people.”

  “Why hide?” Peter demanded, voice heavy with skepticism.

  “I guess because they own the most valuable thing in the world.”

  Matt almost shivered at the ominous implication of her words. He’d imagined people still fighting over useless money and gold. But they’d certainly fight over a vaccine. Hell, a cure. She said they gave it to a guy who’d been bitten and he’d been fine. Maybe you had to give it to them soon after infection. It surely wouldn’t work on someone who was already dead and reanimated.

  “So, do you know where these demo guys are, Abby?” R.J. asked.

  “The last location we had was a place called Thompson’s Neck in Wyoming. Sounds like they set up camp for a few days in a deserted small town—never a city; the cities are too dangerous. People go to them. Then they move on but leave something behind to say where they went, so you can track them down if you miss them.”

  “Will you call us when your people get back or you hear from them? So we know what happens.”

  “Sure,” Abby said. “This is huge. If it’s real, it’s…it’s everything we’ve all been praying for. Will you guys come home then?”

  Home. She meant the US, but that was only home for a few of the group. What were the chances of Matt ever getting back to New Zealand? Chandra to India, Louise to England, Stav to Greece, and Kasper and Ed to Norway? Zero. A vaccine gave them a better chance of rebuilding the world. But nobody was about to start running scheduled air services.

  R.J. spoke, answering Abby but looking around at the group. “That’s the question we’re going to have to ask ourselves, I guess. I’m gonna sign off. We’re burning power here. I’ll check in with you every three days to see if you’ve heard from your recon team.”

  “Okay. R.J., the rest of you, you stay warm.”

  She signed off, and R.J. closed down the radio. “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to shut the generator back down. Ten minutes, we all meet in the rec room.”

  * * * *

  There was none of the usual fussing around before the regular group meetings this time. No distribution of hot drinks, no chatter or shuffling of notes. Everyone waited tensely for R.J. to return from the generator shed. If they spoke, it was quietly to those sitting close to them. Peter sat on a couch with Matt on one side and Jay on the other. Neither spoke to him, both looking thoughtful. Dr. Crawford had a notebook and pen. Ever practical and no doubt the veteran of a thousand meetings in academia.

  R.J. came back in after what seemed like an age, using a flashlight to see his way through the gloomy central corridor, which got little natural light. He came in and turned off the flashlight, and rather than taking a chair, he perched on one of the high bar stools.

  Asserting authority. Higher than the rest of us. An old trick. He couldn’t think he could tell the group what to do, no matter the position of authority he held within it. But he could direct the argument that would follow.

  “Let’s get started,” he said. “Doc, what are your thoughts about the vaccine? Is it credible?”

  “Without seeing data about it, I can’t say. I’m dubious about one person, in less than ideal conditions, managing to do what the CDC and everyone else couldn’t do.”

  “But there is one thing she had that they didn’t,” Crawford said. “Time. Even we know how fast everything fell apart back then. The CDC and others had the facilities but lost the people. They only had a couple of weeks to do it. She’s had two years and, according to Abby, was a specialist.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Peter said. “And if she also had access to the work that had been done before the CDC was abandoned or overrun, then she might have built on that.”

  “So it’s not impossible?” R.J. asked. “There could be a vaccine?”

  “It’s possible,” Peter said. “That’s all I’ll concede at this point.”

  He didn’t know what he wanted to believe. That it was real, or that it was a hoax.

  “So what do we do if it’s real?” R.J. asked. “If it’s a hoax, then we all go on as we are. There’s nothing to decide. If it’s real, then we have a choice to make. Do we stay here, or do we find a way to leave and go find these vaccine guys?”

  “Why not wait for someone to come to us?” Brooks asked. “If this vaccine is real, if people are distributing it, then why not wait at least until more people have got it and things are more established? We have the radio. Once the time is right, we can ask for help. Someone could turn up here with a supply of vaccine.”

  Peter hated to agree with Brooks, but he liked the point. “The group in Moosonee, if someone with the vaccine makes it to there, then they could bring it out to us. When we tell them where we really are.”

  “We can’t sit here and wait while other people are out there making shit happen,” Louise said. “We’d be pretty damn pathetic if we did that.”

  “Smart, not pathetic,” Brooks said. “Vicky, Kasper, you can’t tell me you want to put Hope in danger that way.”

  “Could we do like Abby’s group?” Jay asked. “Send part of the group to go get the vaccine, if it’s real, and bring it back?”

  “They’re a much larger group,” R.J. said. “Our whole group is the size of the recon party they’ve sent. And it’s a much longer trip for us to take, there and back. What if whoever left couldn’t get back at all?”

  “All of that would also take months and months,” Matt said. “If they didn’t get back before winter closes in, they’d have to wait until spring. Can we spend another winter here?”

  “Our supply situation can only get worse,” R.J. said. “Most of the dried and canned food will be gone by winter. Yet more of Dr. Lane’s drugs will have expired. However well we ration it, the fuel won’t last the whole winter. The solar panels will barely give us enough power for lightbulbs in the winter, and certainly not enough to power the stove or the radio. We might be okay for wood for the furnace and for cooking, if we start using dried dung too and sacrificing more of the wood from this building. But the wood will run out eventually, and the caribou dung isn’t going to cut it. Not enough to keep us alive.”

  “So by next spring we’ll be living in two rooms heated by dung, and living on caribou meat and gulls’ eggs, with no medicine and no radio?” Jay put it pretty succinctly.

  “That’s about the size of it,” R.J. said.

  “But we could make it to spring,” Brooks said. “It might be uncomfortable, but we could make it.”

  “I don’t want to live that way,” Louise said. “I’d rather take my chances on the mainland, now I know there’s hope. Now that I know we can help spread that hope and shape the future. I can’t sit here idle.”

  “I agree,” Matt said. He cast Peter a rather guilty look. “It feels wrong. We’re smart people, with specialist skills. We have a duty to get out there and help.”