“I’d better eat before I sleep,” Matt said. “I haven’t had anything since, I dunno, sometime ages ago. What time is it?” He looked at the clock. “Six. In the morning?”

  Peter smiled, taking his hand away. “Yes, in the morning.”

  “Where’d the time go? I bet Vicky didn’t think it flew by.” He was brisk and hearty again. Smiling through his tiredness. “So brekkie will be on soon. Let’s finish cleaning up and go get some. I think I fancy bubble and squeak this morning. You know, for a change…”

  Peter laughed, following him out. Their meals had become monotonous. The “bubble and squeak” Matt spoke of meant last night’s leftovers fried up. Perhaps with some eggs on the side. One thing about being stuck on an island with a ludicrous number of seabirds, no shortage of eggs. Though arguments continued from the expedition party, several of whom had originally come to study the birds, about eating the eggs. Eventually Professor Crawford had convinced her students that twelve people were not going to cause the extinction of the species by taking a few eggs. It was a matter of mathematics, she said. They’d have to eat eggs all day and night to make even a dent. A couple of holdouts had boycotted the eggs for a while, but in the face of the ever-dwindling food stores, and how delicious the eggs smelled when cooking, they had eventually given in and quietly started to eat them too.

  The caribou had the same mathematical argument applied to them. One butchered caribou lasted the group long enough that two more had been born in the time it took them to eat it. Chandra had had to be convinced from a book that caribou was far enough away from beef that she could eat it. Yes, the meals might be monotonous, but the arguments over them certainly had plenty of variety.

  By the time they got into the dining room, the breakfast was on the table in big serving dishes. Louise was almost ignoring her food as she regaled the rest of the table, talking nineteen to the dozen about delivering Vicky’s baby. She was as awed about it as Matt, though rather chattier. Telling everyone over and over what an amazing thing it was. Most of the others were nodding along politely, or ignoring her and concentrating on their food. But Edvin was watching her with a rapt look on his face. He was the younger of two Norwegian scientists who’d been at a small station on the north end of the island, but had joined this group in the larger base at the southern tip when the world…ended. Kasper was the other one, and he and Vicky had paired up within a few months. But Kasper spoke better English than Edvin, who also seemed quite shy. He and Louise had been overcoming their communication difficulties lately though.

  Jay was the first to spot Peter and Matt coming in, and she banged on the table and lifted her mug of tea in a toast. “To the other two heroes of the hour.” A chorus of agreement and a forest of raised mugs made Matt grin sheepishly and blush—which was ridiculously cute on him.

  Peter acknowledged the praise with a nod. “Thank you. But the real hero in a birth is always the mother.” Chandra poured them both tea from the huge insulated pot, and Peter raised his mug. “To Vicky. And to baby Hope.” Another chorus in reply.

  “To Hope.”

  Chapter Two

  Matt wandered into the rec room, still struggling to get his arm into the right hole of his sweater, and yawning. It was going to take him days to recover from that all-nighter. A few years ago he wouldn’t have flickered at one. It must be true that everything went downhill after you hit twenty-five.

  His sleep had been fitful with the sounds of people moving around in the station. Sometimes Stav or Rich slipped into the bunk room to get something, trying their best not to disturb him but not succeeding. Eventually he’d woken from a doze dreaming of eating freshly caught crab, washed down with beer, and realized it was almost dinnertime.

  The rec room was quiet. He’d come in at journaling hour. Just because they’d been left stranded while zombies took over the world, and might die here of cold or starvation, didn’t mean there was a reason to let standards slip. Scientists recorded everything. If you didn’t write it down, it hadn’t happened.

  So the hour before dinner had become journaling hour, when people wrote up their observations about the day. A couple of them were continuing the work they’d come here to do. Chandra had written her doctoral thesis, and Dr. Crawford—and Rich and Vicky—had assessed it and said she’d have a PhD, if there were still a body to award one. With that project completed, she appeared to be working her way through every scientific reference book in the base’s library.

  Matt still kept a journal, but it had turned into more of a personal diary. He’d wait until he went back to the bunk room and snuggled in the blankets to write up his thoughts on the wonder of nature he’d witnessed the night before. He’d given up his scientific work—since humanity was putting out fewer emissions than in the Middle Ages. Retraining as a nurse, a more practical skill, had given him something to focus on and feel he was making a valuable contribution. The fact it meant spending a lot of time with Peter was an added attraction, he’d admit.

  Peter wasn’t in the rec room. Maybe he was still sleeping. He stood a better chance of doing so in private quarters. Matt found a seat and grabbed a book off the shelf at random. He wrapped himself in a blanket and started to read what turned out to be a romance, with a girl in a sun hat on the cover, relaxing at the beach. Matt seriously envied her. They had beaches here, but if you tried to sunbathe on one, you’d die of exposure before the man of your dreams chanced along.

  The only other person in the room not writing up a journal was Jay, who also sat with a book. Even R.J. had caught the journaling bug. As manager of the facility, with the responsibility of keeping everything working and keeping them all alive, he wrote a log. It was technical stuff about inspections and maintenance and about how little stored food and diesel fuel they had left.

  Matt was starting to wonder when everyone would stop scratching away in their journals and get dinner going, when the quiet was interrupted by an uncharacteristic squeal from Chandra. She jumped up and ran to meet Vicky and Kasper, who were coming into the room, Vicky carrying Hope, all bundled up.

  Journals were cast aside. Even Jay, the crusty old bird, joined the group of women cooing over the baby. The men all gave Kasper handshakes and slaps on the back. Peter slipped into the room, looking sleepy, clothes creased and rumpled. He smiled at Matt when he caught his eye, but then looked away, started talking to Vicky.

  R.J. had left the room for a few minutes, while everyone chatted and little Hope slumbered on, oblivious to all the noise. Vicky sat on one of the couches and held court, Kasper standing close by.

  When R.J. returned, he brought something wooden and bulky and put it in the middle of the floor.

  “We don’t have a lot of wood to spare, so we had to improvise,” he said. “Me and Jay put this together in the workshop.” He grinned, looking absurdly proud, quite different from his usual stern demeanor.

  It was a cradle. Or rather, it was a drawer. One large enough to give Hope several months of growing space. Each end had a semicircle of wood screwed to it so it could rock side to side.

  “We sanded down any rough edges and varnished it,” R.J. explained. “So there’s nothing she can hurt herself on. I guess you can put a blanket or a pillow in the bottom for a mattress.”

  “R.J., it’s wonderful,” Vicky said. “We had planned to turn a drawer into a bed for her, but you turned it into a cradle. Thank you.”

  The group trooped through to get dinner after that, a livelier than usual night, celebrating. But soon Vicky had to go back to bed, and Kasper left with her. The rest of the group lingered over tea around the table, in no hurry to start clearing up. They were quiet and thoughtful, until the point it became awkward.

  “It was kind of you to make that cradle, Mr. Russell,” Matt ventured at last, trying to crack the growing ice.

  R.J. shrugged. “Kid needs a bed.”

  “And she has a drawer,” Rich Brooks said. “No disrespect, you did a nice job. But the baby’s still going to be sleeping in a drawer.”

  “I doubt she’ll notice,” Matt said. Rich snorted.

  “As she gets older, she’ll notice that there isn’t much we have that’s suitable for a child to eat. She’ll notice how cold she is.”

  “Better to be alive than not, though,” Louise said.

  “I agree,” Edvin said quickly. He usually did with Louise.

  “Brooks isn’t far wrong,” R.J. said. “This is no place for a baby.”

  “But Inuit once lived on this island with their babies,” Dr. Crawford pointed out.

  “And they all left,” Rich said. “What does that tell you?”

  Matt had seen the remains of the Inuit villages. In fact they’d stripped what wood remained in them. They weren’t archeological sites—they’d last been used in the 1930s. The scientific base was quite sturdy, and even that creaked and rattled in the winter storms. He’d hate to imagine living in one of the small wooden houses, with children.

  “Doctor, you must agree with me,” Rich said, appealing to Peter. “It’s not a healthy place for a child, is it?”

  Peter looked thoughtful, never one to jump in and babble the answer to a serious question. “Between our restricted diet and the lack of sunlight up here, rickets is a serious risk. She might become malnourished. We’re all malnourished here. We’ve got enough calories—for now—but not enough variety.”

  “All those eggs and caribou meat,” Louise said. “It’s like that time I was on the Atkins diet.”

  “For a child, the lack of variety will be a worse problem,” Peter said. “It will hinder her development.”

  “What’s the alternative, though?” Matt asked, hating to disagree with Peter even as he did. “That we wait here for rescue that will never come, until we all die? We have to move forward. Repopulate the planet and, you know, stuff like that. We have to have hope that there’s a better future waiting for us. Having children is…choosing the future over the past.” He finished the last dregs of his tea. “And we won’t be here forever. I’m sure of it.”

  “Fantasy,” Rich snapped. “Who’s going to come and rescue us? The fairies?” He sneered at the word “fairies,” and the double meaning was clear enough to everyone in the room.

  “Really, Richard,” Professor Crawford muttered in mild reproof. Matt let the nonsense wash over him. Rich was a bigger hypocrite than anyone else around the table knew. And he should be careful. Matt might get…chatty one day about certain incidents.

  That killed the conversation stone dead, and people began to clear up and drift off. Matt was on washing-up duty that night along with Stav and Chandra. He took the washing and let them do the drying, loving the chance to get his hands into the hot soapy water. They only got showers every three days here—to conserve energy—but needed washing-up water every day.

  He happily washed, wide-awake and wondering if he should stay up all night or try to sleep again. Stav and Chandra were talking to each other quietly. Matt gave them a glance now and again. Looked like they were going to pair off too, like Vicky and Kasper, and Louise and Edvin. He doubted things would move fast between them, though. She was a shy girl, formal and polite, from what sounded like a very traditional family in India. Matt would lay money on her being a virgin—not that money had any meaning anymore. And not that it was any of his business.

  He supposed it would mean he and Stav would never…give each other a hand, as they had in the past. Stav wasn’t gay. Wasn’t even bi, in Matt’s opinion. If they hadn’t been stuck here, he’d probably never have thought of touching another man. But it was like prison, Matt supposed. You took what you could get.

  It was a shame. Stav was cute, with loads of thick black hair, big brown eyes, and a sexy Greek accent. In good shape, though only five-six, a bit short for Matt. But Chandra, at five-two, didn’t have a problem with it, looking up and smiling at him.

  Matt sighed as he finished the washing up and emptied the bowl for the last time. He left the two of them finishing the drying and went back to the rec room. Empty. He grabbed a couple of the blankets, made himself a nest on a couch, and brooded.

  He couldn’t begrudge Chandra pairing off with Stav, because Stav wasn’t who Matt wanted. When he and Stav had given each other some mutual relief, Matt had always closed his eyes and imagined Peter’s hands moving on him. Darker-skinned, more sure, more expert. A doctor’s hands, and the hands of a mature and experienced gay man. Oh God, the thought was making him hard. He ignored that as best he could. Peter turned him down every time he made even a small advance. Because Peter had a husband back home.

  It drove Matt crazy. He didn’t say, Harrison is probably dead, and even if he’s not, you’ll never see him again. You didn’t actually say that to someone. But he’d hoped Peter would come to the conclusion himself. So far he hadn’t and went on resisting Matt. Not that Matt was pressing his attentions, but he always made it clear he was ready and willing. He tried to take care of his appearance. It was easy to let yourself go here. Stop shaving. Let your hair grow out until you turned into some kind of mountain man. But Matt kept himself well shaved, and his hair trimmed and looking as good as the various amateur barbers and hairdressers around here could manage. And still Peter resisted.

  It was resistance, Matt was sure. Not that he simply didn’t fancy Matt, or white guys in general or something. He was damn sure Peter was attracted to him. He’d been sure of that before they’d become trapped here. He wouldn’t have acted on the attraction back then, not once he’d learned Peter was married. He’d kept his feelings quiet. But afterward…a man wasn’t made of stone.

  Except possibly Dr. Peter Lane.

  Chapter Three

  The arrival of baby Hope had given the group the most excitement they’d had in months. After a second long winter where they huddled in the base and barely went out, the baby was like a springtime all by herself. People grumbled about the noise when she cried, especially at night. But it wasn’t long before everyone at the base had become a substitute grandparent, aunt, uncle, or big brother or sister.

  “I was obviously particularly glad when Hope was born,” Matt said one day in June as he and Louise worked in the kitchen, on that evening’s meal. He liked being rostered with Louise. Her British sense of humor was the closest to his Kiwi one.

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Because finally I’m not the baby of the group anymore.”

  She laughed. “Aw, I’ll always think of you that way.” She shrugged. “You or Chandra anyway.”

  “She’s six months older than me. We compared.”

  “She seems younger.”

  “Yeah,” Matt agreed. He rummaged in one of the kitchen cupboards looking for a pack of dried onion flakes. He found the box, but it was almost empty. “Damn. I’ll have to go grab some of these from the storeroom. Anything else we need?”

  They searched through the list for the meal and found a few things to collect.

  “Okay, back in a sec.” Matt crossed the corridor to the storeroom. From a shelf outside he took a flashlight. That saved on lighting the large storeroom. Unfortunately it also turned it into a creepy maze of shelves and racks. Cold too. He shivered and hurried about his task, wanting to get back into the relatively warm kitchen as soon as possible. He passed the banks of empty shelves to the ever-dwindling number of occupied ones. They’d been lucky in that the base had been fully restocked when their expedition started. Boat trips in Hudson Bay were something to keep to a minimum, so two years of food for a full station had been deposited. They were coming up on two and a half years.

  Rationing helped, along with supplementing their food with caribou meat, eggs, and fish. Adding two extra people hadn’t been a tremendous problem, as the Norwegians brought their food stores with them. But nobody could ignore how low the stores were getting. They couldn’t grow food. Only sturdy arctic sedges grew on the tundra. They’d shortly be eating an Inuit diet.

  Matt checked his list and gathered the items. The sound of a door closing made him look up. It was the door at the south end of the room, not the north end near the kitchen where he’d come in. Whoever it was didn’t use a flashlight. They must have better eyes than him if they could find their way by only the light from some small high windows.

  “Lou?” Matt called. Couldn’t be Lou. She’d have come in the north door. Must be someone after some nonfood supplies. Maybe a new notebook to start yet another journal.

  A dark figure coming close made him jump, and he swept the flashlight up to reveal Rich Brooks. Rich raised a hand to shield his eyes and turned away.

  “Dammit, Matt.”

  “Sorry,” Matt said, lowering the flashlight. He set it on a shelf. “You startled me. Are you looking for something?”

  “I wanted a quick word.”

  “Make it very quick. I’m expected back in the kitchen in a second.”

  “I was wondering if…there was any chance you’d…you know.”

  “Know what?” Matt said. Then clicked on when Rich flushed and wouldn’t meet his eye. “Oh.” Like with Stav, he’d given Rich a helping hand in the past. But it had stopped, because Rich refused to touch Matt in return. Matt didn’t expect a blowjob or kisses or making love. But a bit of simple reciprocation didn’t turn a straight bloke gay if that was what bothered Rich. It was creepy anyway. The guy wasn’t old or anything. Younger than Peter, in fact. But he was one of Dr. Crawford’s team and had been in a supervisory role over the four grad students. Matt had never liked the idea of shagging his teacher.

  “Sorry. Not going to happen. You know why.”

  Rich scowled. “I know you do it for Marinos.”

  “Stav’s willing to give in return.”

  “Is that all sex is to you? A transaction?”

  Matt gave a short laugh. “That’s pretty funny, Rich, because it didn’t sound like you were proposing marriage to me. What were you planning to offer in return?”