He agreed that there was always something. She took the carafe of water and headed for the room she bunked in with Dr. Crawford. Peter drank the last of his cocoa, washed up the mug in what little hot water was left after doing the dishes from dinner, and left the kitchen.

  He checked around his infirmary, making sure all was tidy and locked up. An emergency battery-powered light gave him enough illumination to find his way around. Leaving that on, in case he was called in the night, he went into the infirmary’s small on-call room he’d made into his bedroom.

  Matt was lying on his bed.

  MATT SAT UP as Peter stopped in the doorway. His heart started to thump, and his mouth dried up. Here goes. Don’t screw this up, Warner. He sat all the way up, put his feet on the floor. Peter hesitated for another moment and then came in, closing the door behind him.

  “What are you doing in here, Matt?”

  “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

  Peter frowned. Understandably—there was only one bed, after all. And Matt was sitting on it.

  “I’ll grab a mattress or something,” Matt said, standing up as fast as if the mattress had burst into flames. “Sleep on the floor. I’m not asking—”

  “Brooks won’t be in the bunk room tonight,” Peter said. “He’ll be lucky if he’s not sleeping in the boiler room by the time R.J. has done talking to him.”

  Matt almost smiled at the thought. “That’s good. But could I? Just for tonight?”

  Peter sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. He came over to the bed and sat down. “Let’s talk for a while.”

  Matt would take that if he could get it, though he’d prefer to talk lying down with Peter in his arms. He sat down on the bed.

  “Thanks for standing up for me in the meeting,” Matt said.

  “I don’t think I did especially. I tried to be fair, that’s all.”

  “You believed me.”

  “They all believed you, Matt. That black eye Brooks has kind of backed up your story. And certainly nobody thinks that you tried to jump him.”

  “Well, I felt like I had your backing.” Mostly. Maybe. He sensed Peter didn’t approve of the fact he’d had sex with Brooks and Stav. “We gay guys have to stick together, right?” He gave a weak smile. Peter didn’t return it.

  “Yes.” He said it flatly, like he didn’t agree. Humoring Matt. “But don’t turn this into a them-and-us situation. If we start to turn on one another, we’ll be in big trouble. We have to cooperate and get along, with everyone here. Everyone.”

  Matt grimaced. “Even Rich?”

  “Even him. You’re mad right now, so stay away from him for a few days until you feel calmer. Then talk to the man. Settle your differences.”

  “He attacked me!”

  “And he’s going nowhere. You may not be sharing a bunk room with him, but you’ll see him at every meal. Every evening in the rec room. You’ll do chores and other work alongside him. You have to work this out.”

  “What if he tries it on again?”

  “Tell me. I’ll deal with him.”

  “What?” Matt looked at him, startled by the scowl on his face in the dim light of the lamp by the bed. “What will you do?”

  “A doctor has ways.” He gave an evil smile, and Matt couldn’t decide if he was kidding or not. “But I don’t think he’ll bother you again.”

  “I’m not so sure. I know R.J. is giving him a talking-to, and he’ll probably be smarting from that for a few days. But he’ll get over it.” He looked down at his hands, entwined the fingers, tension thrumming through him as he prepared to ask what he’d come here to ask. “There is a way to make him back off, I think.”

  “What way?”

  “Louise said he stopped bothering her when she started seeing Edvin. And as far as I know, he’s never bothered Vicky, and she’s got Kasper.”

  “Matt, I see where you’re going with this—”

  “He respects the prior claim of another man. Maybe he’d do that in my case if you…had a claim on me.”

  “Matt, we’ve been through this. I’m married. I can’t get involved with you.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking for. If you…if you can’t… But let him think we’re together that way. That I belong to you.”

  Peter sprang to his feet and stood looking down at Matt. Matt felt the urge to rise too, be head-to-head with him. But he stayed on the bed, looked up, worked on appearing as vulnerable as he could manage while still being six feet tall and more muscular than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Please, Peter.”

  “You’re asking me to claim you, as if this is prison. You want to be my bitch?”

  Heat swept over Matt’s face. “No. It wouldn’t be like that.”

  “That’s exactly what it would be like.” He sighed and deflated, sat on the bed again. “We may be prisoners, but this is not a literal prison. I will not behave as if it is. We’re better than that here. I won’t even pretend. I’m sorry.”

  “Then don’t pretend.” Matt slid off the bed onto his knees. He captured both of Peter’s hands in his, clasped them, bent and kissed them. “Tell everyone I’m yours, because I am yours. I love you, Peter. I’ve loved you for a long time.” He kissed the hands again. “I love you.” His voice caught as his breath sobbed out of him. He’d said it at last. He’d said it! He looked up into Peter’s face, and his soul shrank inside him. He saw nothing but sadness, edged with pity.

  “Matt, you have a crush on me. It’s understandable, us stuck here like this, spending so much time together.”

  “It’s not a crush. I love you. You’re amazing. You’re beautiful. It’s nothing to do with being stuck here. I’d fall in love with you in a crowd of a million other men.”

  “I’m sorry.” Peter extracted one hand from Matt’s hold and reached up to stroke his hair. Matt felt a surge of hope. But it was an affectionate touch. Almost a pet. He’d seen Peter stroke the fine hair on Hope’s head in the same way. Affectionate. Caring. Patronizing.

  Matt pulled away, fell back on his ass on the floor. His throat closed up in a choke, and he couldn’t trust himself to speak. He rested his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands.

  Fuck! He’d blown it. He’d fucking blown it.

  “Don’t sit on the floor,” Peter said. “It’s cold.”

  Fuck cold. He might as well strip to his shorts and walk out into the night. Just going outside. May be some time. Bitterness surged through him. He took his hands away from his face, looked at Peter.

  “Believe me or don’t. It’s up to you. I love you, and I think you feel something for me. But more important, I’m here. I’m alive and willing to share your bed, even if you don’t love me back. Harrison…” He glanced at the picture of Peter and his husband on a shelf over the bed. “Is thousands of miles away. If he’s even alive. You know you’ll never see him again. I’ll never see my family again. All we have is each other. Why, in the face of all that, do you still push me away?”

  “Because if I don’t, then I’m giving up,” Peter said quietly, eyes downcast. “Losing hope.”

  “Sometimes giving up on the past is the only way to find your future.” He climbed to his feet. He wasn’t staying here tonight, that was for sure. “I’m not giving up, Peter. Not on you. Not on us. So if you can ever stop clinging to the past, you know where to find me.”

  He left the room without looking back, trying to hold on to what dignity remained to him after groveling on the floor at the feet of a man who didn’t want him.

  In the bunk room he found Stav and Chandra, rather than Edvin, sitting on Ed’s bunk.

  “Ah, hi,” he said. It was a bit tricky to meet her eye, now she knew he and Stav had done stuff together. “What’s going on?”

  “Louise and Edvin are talking,” Chandra said. “I think they might talk all night. I’m not sure where else to go.”

  “Feel free to stay here,” Matt said. It wasn’t like anyone walked around naked. Not unless they wanted to die of exposure. “You know you’re safe as houses with me.”

  She glanced at Stav, who looked awkward and embarrassed. Matt sighed. Okay, it was time to sort this one out too. He was not going to get any sleep tonight.

  “Chandra,” he said, “let me explain a few things about what Brooks said about me and Stav.”

  Chapter Five

  Matt was glad to get out of the base for a few hours. It had been a tense couple of weeks since the incident with Brooks. They’d built the dividing screen the next day, to split up the bunk room. But if Matt didn’t have to see him in there, then, like Peter said, he saw him everywhere else. They both did their best to stay away from each other. On top of that, Peter would barely meet Matt’s eyes and took pains not to be alone with him.

  So with all that tension, Matt had been the first to volunteer when R.J. proposed a wood-gathering trip, and now he was driving one of the ATVs, with Stav behind him. R.J. drove the other, Jay as his passenger. They’d added trailers to drag their spoils back.

  It was a near two-hour trip to a point on the west coast of the island, to the station Kasper and Edvin had occupied. A lot smaller than the one the larger group lived in, but made entirely of wood and divided into several rooms inside, all with wooden partitions. It, the Inuit village, and a couple of other even smaller stations dotted around the island had been providing the furnace with wood to keep everyone warm enough to stay alive.

  Since there were no trees on the island, then once the group had reduced all these other stations and observation posts to ashes, they’d have to start dismantling what they could in their base. They’d already started drying caribou dung ahead of the day it would be all they had to burn. At least it was one source that wouldn’t run out. R.J. swore you got used to the smell.

  The bikes and sleds bumped over the rough ground up to the already half-dismantled station. It stood close to a beach, and pounding waves muffled other sounds. Everyone climbed off the bikes. R.J. handed out axes to the two boys and hefted one himself. Jay took out a rifle from the rack on the bike. She was here for polar bear watch, to make sure neither bear snuck up on the ax party. A couple of shots into the air generally scared them off.

  “Stav, we’ll take down the last of these walls,” R.J. said, pointing at the two walls still standing at the south end of the building. The roof was long gone. “Matt, you start inside and chop up what furniture is still in there, then take out interior doors.”

  “Got it.” Matt went inside the door, which hung open. He carefully avoided the nails, points out, that stuck out of boards surrounding the door. Those kept the bears from pawing at the doors and window shutters, especially when the place was unoccupied.

  It was dark inside, and he used a flashlight to find the shutters and open them to give himself enough light to work. He started on four chairs and a square table. The base had once had a capacity of four. The furniture was almost the only thing in the place. After Kasper and Edvin came to join them, the newly enlarged group had stripped almost everything else out to take back to the large base.

  He started swinging the ax and quickly reduced the table and chair to kindling. He didn’t mind the burn in his shoulders or arms. He enjoyed the chance to smash stuff up and work off his nervous tension about Brooks, about Peter and the total cock-up he’d made of that situation.

  He stopped to wipe this brow, amazed at how much he could sweat when it was still below zero outside. Movement made him look up to see a figure emerging from the shadows of the next room. It was a man and not R.J. or Stav. A…stranger. Walking oddly.

  “Who are you?” Matt asked stupidly, his brain not clicking into place. Then the smell hit him. The stink of decay. Death.

  A zombie.

  Everything slowed down. In a split second he considered the ax in his hands. Considered the close quarters of the room.

  No fucking way.

  Matt yelled. Screamed, maybe. Nothing coherent. He ran. He burst from the door to the outside, still yelling, still incoherent. The light outside dazzled him. He put his foot down, and the ground gave way under his boot, pitching him forward.

  Jay ran toward him, raising the rifle, maybe thinking a bear had got inside. She stopped, aimed. The zombie appeared in the doorway, and she hesitated. It began to step out. It would be on Matt in a second. But a shot took it in the face, and it fell backward, head shattering into bone and brains. R.J. dropped out of military firing stance with his handgun and ran toward Matt.

  “Stay down!” Jay yelled as a second one appeared in the door, stumbling over the fallen one. Matt hadn’t seen it. It must have been hard on the heels of the first. This time Jay didn’t hesitate. She fired. A head shot. None of them might have seen a zombie before today, but they’d been in touch on the radio with a couple of other groups in Canada and the United States. Everyone they’d spoken to said you had to go for a head shot.

  The zombie fell forward. Matt, still on the ground, shouted with renewed horror at the thought of even a destroyed monster landing on him. But R.J. thrust an arm out, blocking it and pushing it hard. It collapsed back inside. Stav ran up and slammed the door, leaned on it. Were there more? What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

  Matt tried to rise, but R.J. shoved him back down and started running his hands over Matt. He grabbed each wrist in turn and examined his arms.

  “Are you bit?” he demanded. “Did it bite you? Answer me.”

  “No,” Matt panted out. “No, it never touched me. Knock it off.” He tried to pull his arm away from R.J.’s hold and failed. The guy was strong.

  “What’s this?” R.J. demanded of a tear in the sleeve of Matt’s coat. Matt almost panicked. But it hadn’t touched him, he was sure.

  “I think I caught it on a nail,” Matt said. R.J. probed, but the tear was only in the coat and not the clothes underneath. The skin was undamaged. He let go and dropped back on his heels. Matt sat up, carefully pulling his foot out of the frost boil he’d stood in. An accumulation of soft mud with a deceptive surface of grass and sedge just like the solid ground. Worse than damn rabbit burrows. You didn’t get rabbits here. They’d need tiny pneumatic drills to break up the soil. He winced when he moved his leg.

  “Are you hurt?” R.J. asked. “Think you broke your ankle?”

  Matt moved it experimentally. It hurt, but not the make-you-throw-up-then-black-out pain of a break, of which he’d had a couple. “No. Not broken. Sprained, I think.”

  “Okay. Stay down. Jay, stand guard. Stav, you’re with me. Get the other rifle. We need to check the whole site.”

  Stav nodded silently, face grayish, eyes huge. He straightened up from the door warily, as if expecting a zombie horde to tumble out. None did. Matt scooted back a bit, away from the door. Jay stood over him, rifle ready, while the other two went inside the building.

  “Matt,” Jay said after a couple of minutes, sounding pained, her voice quieter than usual, almost whipped away in the wind, or silenced by the endless crash of the waves. “I…froze. I’m sorry. I should have fired faster.”

  He looked up at her in surprise. Not like their unflappable bush pilot to admit any kind of weakness. He smiled at her.

  “Please, I asked him who he was. None of us expected to see that.”

  “If it had been a bear, I’d have shot it in a heartbeat. But I saw a man. I’m not a soldier like R.J. was. I’ve had some adventures in my life. I’ve pointed a gun at a fella a couple of times. But I’ve never shot at a man.”

  “It would have helped if I’d shouted something useful,” Matt said, grimacing to recall his incoherent yells. “Like It’s a zombie, shoot the bastard. You nailed that second one, though. Great shot.”

  They were talking to avoid worrying about R.J. and Stav inside that dark building, Matt knew. He dreaded the sound of screams or gunshots. But a moment later, they emerged.

  “No more,” R.J. said. That was the only place for them to be hidden on the site. What little snow remained wasn’t deep enough for any to be buried and suddenly emerge. Matt shivered at that thought, imagining walking through the snow only to have one erupt from a snowbank in front of him, or grab his ankle.

  “How the hell did they get here?” Jay asked.

  “We’ll figure that out,” R.J. said. “Meanwhile…” He looked around. “We have to finished collecting what we came for and get back to base. Matt, can you stand?”

  Matt struggled up with help from Stav. “I can’t put much weight on my foot.”

  “Okay. Let’s set you on one of the bikes. Your ankle is probably bound up pretty well in your boot, so no sense in taking that off. You’ll just end up with frostbite. Then Stav and me will get rid of those bastards.”

  Getting rid of the dead zombies was easier said than done. R.J. and Stav dragged them out of the building to lie on the ground and the group stared down at them. They were wearing some cold-weather gear, though not parkas and hats. Not enough to stave off hypothermia—in a live human. The bodies looked reasonably fresh. As if they hadn’t been walking corpses for long. But they were rather bloated.

  “Maybe they were in the water?” Stav said. “Floated here. They look like drowned men. My home was near the sea, and I saw a drowned man on the beach once, when I was a boy. He was…” He pantomimed a bloated belly with his hands and puffed his cheeks out.

  “Whether they drowned, I don’t know,” R.J. said. “But they could have been in the water, yes.”

  “Maybe on a boat,” Jay said. “When they were infected or turned, they were thrown overboard?”

  “Why do that rather than kill them, though?”

  “They must have arrived recently,” Jay said. “No way have they been roaming about for long. We’d have spotted them.” Everyone agreed with that.

  “Let’s talk about it back at base,” R.J. said. “We’re losing daylight in three hours, and it’s a two-hour trip home. As for these fuckers…”

  He took up the ax and, in a few brutal strokes, took the heads off both zombies. Stav looked like he was going to hurl, and he walked away quickly. Matt would have done the same if he’d been more mobile. He closed his eyes instead. They didn’t have any fuel to spare to burn the bodies. They needed every drop of diesel they had left and every piece of wood. Hard to bury them in the still nearly frozen soil. In the end R.J. found a natural depression in the ground, tossed them in, and covered them with a large sheet of metal that had once been part of the roof. He weighted it down with the largest rocks he and Stav could carry.