Assumed Dead, page 16
“What are you working on?” Matt asked.
“Some preliminary ideas for a medical kit, for traveling. If we go.”
“Right. So…you think we will?”
“We will one day anyway. I might as well make some contingency plans.”
It was an evasive answer, and a prevarication. If they didn’t go now, but in the spring instead, he’d have to draw up new plans based on what he had left in stock then. Plans he was making today were for an imminent departure.
Matt looked like he was bursting to ask more. But he’d brought up the secret ballot, and Peter knew that with his youthful and sometimes naive idealist principles, he’d be determined to stick to the rules.
“Right,” Matt said. “Right.”
“Matt…don’t ask me how I’m voting.”
“Of course not! R.J. would kick my ass.”
“You can ask later. I’ll tell you the truth. And we’ll deal with whatever the result is then. Deal?”
“Deal,” Matt said, sighing with relief. He dropped into the chair opposite Peter and started to play with a paperweight—a geode, no bigger than a tomato, that a geologist had chiseled out of a rock here five years ago. She’d had kind of a thing for Peter and gave him the rock as a gift at the end of the expedition. Seeing it in Matt’s hands was interesting. Matt also had a thing for Peter, but this time Peter had developed a thing for him too, that he never could have for that long-ago geologist. Who was probably dead. Maybe shambling around somewhere, her mind gone, her body a shell. But he remembered what Matt had said during the firearms training. About a spark of the person existing inside the zombie brain. Like the sparkling crystals of the geode, hidden in their prison of rock.
If that was true, if there were millions out there like that, prisoners in their own corpses, then every person surely had a duty to put as many of them down as possible. The time to hide here in their island was gone. They could get the vaccine and move about in safety. Wasn’t it his fundamental duty as a doctor to ease the pain of the dying? The zombies stretched the definition of dying. Or rather, stretched the duration.
He went back to working while Matt fidgeted with the geode. Outside the open door, other voices drifted in. Hope cried briefly, then quieted. Matt smiled.
“Does Hope get a vote?” he asked.
“Hope, the baby, doesn’t,” Peter said. “Hope the concept. Yes. That definitely gets a vote.”
* * * *
Showtime.
The group came back into the rec room in ones and two, faces grim. In the tiny bar Louise had set up a polling booth. She apparently took this all very seriously, like Matt. A plastic crate with a cardboard lid taped to it sat on a table beside the bar.
“Okay,” she said. “One at a time, we go in there and cast our ballots.” She held up a piece of paper. Two squares drawn on what looked like a page torn from a book. One square had LEAVE above it, the other STAY. “Cross in the box, fold the paper once, put the paper in the ballot box. Who wants to be first?”
Matt jumped up. “Since it was my idea, I’ll be first,” he said. He picked a ballot paper from the stack. He grabbed one from the middle, to keep things random. Louise nodded at him. He went into the bar, his back to the others. He looked at his ballot paper. It was that rough paper you got in old cheap paperback books, yellow with age—and probably cigarette smoke from the days people were allowed to smoke here. On the other side of it was the title page of Dune by Frank Herbert. God, she’d torn a page out of Dune? Sacrilege. It was one of his favorite books, and he’d been glad to find a copy on the shelves of the rec room. It was a popular book with ecologists and climate scientists.
He decided this was a good omen, turned it back over, and picked up the stubby pencil on the bar. He made a large, clear cross in the LEAVE box. His breath sighed out of him. Leaving could mean so many things. It could mean the end for him and Peter once they were back in the same country as Peter’s husband. But he had to think of more than himself. They couldn’t stay here forever. This base was death’s waiting room.
He folded his paper. In full view of the others, keeping his fingers over the words on the back of his paper, he dropped it into the thin slot of the lid of the ballot box. Everyone was watching him like they’d never seen such an activity before. How strange it was, the normality of it. They all came from countries where people got to vote. Matt had voted in one general election and various local ones. None of those would make as big a difference to his life as this vote among twelve people.
He went and sat back down beside Peter, who smiled at him and put an arm around his waist.
The ice broken, the voting proceeded rapidly. In a few minutes they were all done. Louise brought the box over to Dr. Crawford, who they’d all agreed should count the ballots. Louise tore the cardboard lid off and put it in front of Crawford.
One by one Crawford took out the ballot papers. She said “leave” or “stay” accordingly, held the paper up so everyone could see it, then put it on a stack, leave or stay. This probably wasn’t going to require a recount. What if it was six-all? Would they toss a coin? Vote again tomorrow? Get Hope to break the deadlock? Matt resisted the urge to laugh hysterically at the solemn formality of it. It was faintly ridiculous, all this ceremony. Yet it was the most important vote any of them might ever cast.
They didn’t have to wait until the last vote was counted. When the LEAVE stack hit seven, the group stirred. Matt and Louise grinned widely at each other. She gripped Edvin’s hand. Matt followed her example and gripped Peter’s. He turned to see a serious look on Peter’s face. No celebrating there. Had he voted to stay? Matt found that hard to believe.
“Nine in favor of leaving, three in favor of staying,” Crawford summed up when the last ballot was checked.
R.J. looked around. “Nobody can force anyone else to do anything,” he said. “If you want to stay, then you stay. If you’re leaving, then you attend all of my training sessions. No excuses.”
A few people had slacked off them as the days went on. This would concentrate their minds. Matt looked around, trying to work out who had voted to stay. Brooks, maybe. He’d preached caution before, urged waiting until next spring. From the looks on their faces, he suspected Kasper and Vicky were the other two.
“So we contact Moosonee,” R.J. said. He glanced at the clock. “The electricity goes back on in an hour to prepare dinner. I’ll use the radio then. Anyone wants to listen, come and join me. Jay, you’ll want to be there to ask about their planes.”
The group scattered. Matt followed Peter out of the room, expecting him to head back to the infirmary. But instead he looked back at Matt and nodded toward the bedrooms. Matt trailed him in there and closed the door behind him.
“So we’re leaving,” Matt said.
“So it seems,” Peter said, sitting on his bunk. “Assuming the Moosonee group will come get us.”
“They’ll come,” Matt said. “Once they know about the vaccine, and that we have a pilot who can get them to the vaccine, why would anyone not want that?”
“Three people here apparently didn’t.”
Matt nodded. He came and sat beside Peter. “Who do you think they were? I’m guessing at Brooks, Kasper, and Vicky.”
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “But Kasper and Vicky are a good guess. They’re not cowards, but they have Hope to think about. Maybe they want to stay here until it’s safer out there. Until someone can come to us with the vaccine, maybe.”
“But if the rest of us leave, and if all the people from Moosonee come with us to find the vaccine guys, then they can’t be sure anyone is ever going to come back here.”
“True. I guess they’re ready to take that risk. They’d have the radio.”
“Once there’s no more diesel, then they may never get enough power to use it.” He snorted. “Why the hell did nobody have the brains to build a wind turbine on this place? The damn wind never stops.”
Peter put his arm around Matt. “No use talking about what might have been. We have to look to the future. Some or all of us are going to leave, soon.” He pulled Matt against his side. Matt rested his head on Peter’s shoulder, contented. The decision made. Only the plans to make.
“Matt,” Peter said after a while. “I have to say this. About…when we get to the US. When we find these people with the vaccine…assuming we do, but let’s assume that. They want to be found.”
Fear stirred in Matt’s belly. “We’ll find them,” he said. “We’ll get the vaccine.”
“And after that…”
“After that, we go to their base,” Matt said firmly. “Their Vaccine City, or whatever they call it, wherever it is, and we become part of the new world.”
“No.” Peter spoke softly. Matt looked up at him, pulling away from him a little. “I mean, yes, eventually. But I have to go and look for Harrison before I go to this Vaccine City. I have to go home. I’m sorry, Matt. I know this isn’t what you want to hear.”
“You think he’ll be there, at your home?”
“Probably not. But he might have left me a message to say where he’s gone. That’s what I’d do. If he has, then I’ll follow his trail until…until I know one way or the other.”
“Peter, it might be impossible to find out! What if there is no clue, no message, no trail to follow?”
“Then I have no choice but to give up. Matt, I…know he’s probably dead. I know it. Or he’s somewhere with a group in hiding, with no chance we’ll ever meet again. But he’s my husband. I have to try. I have to.”
Matt looked down at his hands. “I understand,” he said, voice cracking. “I think…if it was New Zealand we were going to, I’d have to go home too. See if my parents are alive.” But there was a difference. Parents, not husband. He considered jumping Peter right this minute and making love to him until he forgot Harrison’s name. But the despair and fear lying like a bowling ball in his stomach meant he wasn’t in the mood. He tried to cheer himself with the prospect that Harrison was almost certainly dead, and Peter would never find him. Once he got searching for him out of his system, he and Matt could finally truly be together. But…there was a chance. A tiny chance.
“What if you do find him?” Matt asked. “What then? What then for us?”
Peter looked at him. Matt blinked away the tears prickling his eyes when he saw the look of deep sadness on Peter’s face. Sadness, almost pity. Sorrow for the fact he’d probably break Matt’s heart. Everything had changed.
“I don’t know, Matt. I just don’t know.”
It was a lie. He knew. And Matt had to leave, ignoring Peter calling him to come back. He went into the storeroom, found the darkest corner, sat there with his knees drawn up, arms and head resting on them, and wept.
Chapter Twenty-One
The last night. The boat from Moosonee was on its way. So for a change, they kept the electricity on all evening. The furnace got fed more wood than usual, and people sat around in a mere two layers of clothing in a rec room that could almost be called “warm.”
There was a lot of talk. Excitement buzzed in the air. Matt didn’t much feel like joining in, though. On the one hand, he wanted to leave. Get out there in the world and start living again. Rebuilding. But when they left, he lost Peter. Peter had already chosen Harrison over Matt. Even if he never found Harrison, that would always come between the two of them.
“Okay, folks,” Louise said, entering the room with a sheet over one arm and a wash bag in the other. “I, for one, will feel ashamed to meet our liberators tomorrow looking like such a shaggy crew.” She grabbed a straight-backed chair and pulled it to the middle of the floor. “Haircuts. Form an orderly queue.”
There was some laughter and a few groans. But Lou had become the group’s hairdresser—based on nothing more than having had a Saturday job in a hair salon back in London when she was still at school. Since she’d never done more than sweep up hair and man the reception desk, it was a spurious connection. But she’d become pretty good at it over the time they’d spent here. Matt volunteered first. She dampened his hair down a bit with a spray bottle and snipped away. The hair dropped onto the sheet she’d put around him. He kept his eyes closed. Chatter still went on all around, but he knew some people were watching. He half opened his eyes and saw that Peter was one of them. Not talking to anyone. Just sitting forward in his seat, watching. Matt smiled and closed his eyes again.
When she was finished, Louise rubbed Matt’s hair dry with a towel. He stood, discarding the sheet, looking right at Peter, running a hand through his fluffed-up hair. Peter stirred and sat back in the seat but never took his eyes from Matt. Matt didn’t go back and sit beside him. He went to a bookcase and ran a finger along the spines. As if he were about to start reading a book!
Stav came up next, and Louise cooed over his luxuriant shiny black hair and said it was a crime to cut it. But he asked her to take it pretty short.
“Where we’re going,” he said. “I don’t want it to be easy to grab.” That made a few people look thoughtful, Matt observed as he turned back around, a book in his hand. He stayed leaning against the shelf, ignoring Peter’s gaze on him, as one after another, the others got a trim.
“You’re next, Doc,” she called after trimming R.J.’s high and tight crew cut, interrupting Peter from watching Matt. With scissors and clippers, Louise took Peter’s hair down to a neat number-two all over. Matt would miss running his hands through it. He’d miss that whether Peter had his hair cut or not. Peter stood, rubbing a palm over his head to dislodge any stray hairs, and sat, gaze locking on Matt’s again.
One more client for Louise. Chandra sat down. Her thick black hair was past the middle of her back. So far she’d only had the ends trimmed when Louise did the group’s regular haircuts.
“Cut it short,” she said. Suddenly all eyes in the room were on her, and everyone was silent.
“Um, short?” Louise said as she wrapped the sheet around Chandra. “Really?”
“Really. It will grow back. For now, it needs to be short.” She looked at Stav. “So it can’t be grabbed.”
“Okay.” Louise gathered the hair into a ponytail. She paused with the scissors. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Louise did it. It took several cuts—the hair was thick and plentiful. But in only a few seconds, she was holding up the long tail of hair, and Chandra’s remaining hair fell around her face. She could probably have styled it into a nice bob at this point, but she glanced over her shoulder at Louise.
“Shorter. Finish the job, please.”
Louise looked helplessly at the skein of hair in her hand. Matt shivered. What had been beautiful when attached to Chandra took on a creepy quality once cut off. Crawford held out a waste bin, and Louise dropped it in. She went to work on the rest of the hair.
“You don’t want me to take the clippers to it, do you?” she asked.
“No need to go that far.”
“A nice Audrey Hepburn crop then,” Louise said, though Matt doubted she had the skills to pull that off. The group started to relax and sit back and chat again, seeming embarrassed. Why make such a fuss? It was only hair. It would indeed grow back. Chandra was still herself with shorter hair. It quite suited her, bringing out her looks in a different way. When she was done, she went and sat beside Stav, who smiled at her and tentatively stroked the new do. Only R.J. wasn’t chatting, just watching Chandra with an impassive expression.
“Aw hell,” Louise said, sitting down in the chair herself. “Okay, someone scalp me too.”
* * * *
The sense of excitement and anticipation would have kept them up half the night, but they agreed they needed sleep to be ready for the anticipated departure tomorrow. Matt and Peter got into their beds without much conversation. The rooms were still warm enough to let them strip down to underwear for the night.
“Our last night here,” Matt said as he turned out the light. And maybe their last night sleeping in the same room, never mind sleeping together.
“Yes.”
Matt waited for more from Peter. But perhaps he had nothing more to say to Matt, now he’d told him what he intended to do once they got that vaccine. He’d been distant in every way the past couple of days. Pulling away physically and emotionally. Matt snuggled into his blankets.
Screw Peter. Screw him. This was probably only a crush anyway. Peter was the only one here Matt could be with, so that and the enforced proximity had fooled Matt into thinking he was in love with Peter. But it would fade away quickly once they left. He’d meet someone else. Someone not hung up on a surely dead man.
It would hurt, getting past this…crush. But it had to be done. Like cropping off Chandra’s long hair. That would grow back, like Matt would get over Peter and fall in love again.
“Matt.” Peter’s whispered voice came out of the darkness. The springs of his mattress creaked, and the battery lantern by Peter’s bed came on. Peter turned from it, looking over at him.
“Can I…” He stopped. He looked bleak. Utterly heartbroken. Matt knew what he was asking and pulled the covers up to invite Peter to move closer.
So much for getting over him. Peter moved, lay half on Matt’s mattress, half on his own, over the top of the gap between the two.
For a long moment they held each other, before Peter spoke.
“I’m scared, Matt. Of everything. Of what we’ll find out there. The horrors. All the time we’re here, I can pretend it’s not so bad there. After tomorrow, I won’t be able to anymore.”
“If it’s bad, you can take comfort in the fact you’re there to make things better. You’re a doctor. You’ll make things better for people even if it’s only in one corner of the world, the way you have for us. Do you think Vicky would have dared to bring Hope into the world if we didn’t have you here to keep them both safe? And Hope isn’t only good for Vicky and Kasper. She’s good for all of us. Her name tells you what she means for us all. And you delivered her. You make our lives better every day here.”
