Assumed Dead, page 18
“And then…” R.J. looked at Henry. “Then anyone who wants to leave flies out of here.”
Things went a bit quiet around the table. No doubt there’d been as much discussion here about leaving as there had back on the island. It was a hard choice. They had a pretty decent setup here. Power. Food. They lacked medical staff, but Matt could understand why some of them might want to stay here rather than go and face the unknown. Maybe some of them should stay where it was safe, and have others bring the vaccine back to them.
“These people with the vaccine,” Henry said. “We’ve spoken to various contacts about them. Including that air force base. Last we heard, they were in a town in North Dakota.”
“We’ll find them,” R.J. said.
“Where would we fly to?” Matt asked Jay. “If you get the plane working?”
“I think our best bet is Duluth, Minnesota,” Jay said. “For one thing, I can find it using landmarks—like the railway line out of here, then the roads and then the shorelines of Lake Superior. For another, I think we can make it there in a day, as long as we leave at first light. With no help from the ground and no GPS, navigating in the dark could take us a long way off course.”
“I like Duluth too, because it’s outside of the town itself,” R.J. said, “so there’s a good chance of fewer hostiles around.”
Hostiles. Ho boy, R.J. was going to be in his element once they got there.
“We either refuel and fly on from there,” Jay went on, “or take some vehicles and go over land. Hey, are those potatoes?” She scooped several roast potatoes onto her plate, and that was it from her about the plane. Right now—dinner.
The others took their cue from her. Matt still saw dubious and worried faces around the table, though. Including from members of their group.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Wow, we’re going to spend the night in an actual house.” Matt stood gazing up at it as Peter came around the car. Henry pulled away, taking Louise and Edvin on to the next house. Peter came and stood at Matt’s side, looking up at the house. It was nothing spectacular, just an ordinary house. But for the night, it was theirs. The normality struck Peter. They were about to sleep in a house instead of the base. In a proper bed—albeit someone else’s bed. It was seductive. It made him want to stay here for more than a night. Matt took his hand, and Peter looked at his smiling face in the moonlight. It was late—talk had gone on a long time after dinner.
Matt produced the key for the house. There was no burglary problem here, but locked doors kept out animals and any zombies that wandered this far north. Or landed in a shipwreck on the shore. Inside he turned on the light and laughed. Light. There for the turning on. He started to walk through the ground floor of the house, turning on all the lights.
“There’s no sense in wasting electricity,” Peter said, following him and turning them off after him. They found the kitchen, which was somewhat sterile. The cupboards were empty of food. It had all been collected for storage in the communal kitchen, or disposed of to discourage vermin. The refrigerator was turned off and stood open, empty and dark. But some fixings for instant coffee and a wrapped packet that turned out to be homemade cookies stood on the counter beside a teakettle. They’d have to go to the dining hall for breakfast in the morning.
They left the kitchen—Peter turning out the lights—and came to the living room. It quieted even Matt’s enthusiasm. The door between it and the kitchen had been removed, and the door frame and surrounding wall were damaged by what looked like the effects of a shotgun blast. The damage had been covered over—very recently. The faint smell of paint lingered, and the new paint didn’t quite match the old. Did it only cover the holes made by shotgun pellets, or also bloodstains?
Matt turned away from it, his smile coming back as he looked around the room, apparently putting the alarming sight out of his mind, determined to stay cheerful. He wandered over and looked at framed family photographs on the wall and sideboard. Peter kept away from them. The people in them must be dead. He didn’t want to think about it. He went instead to close the drapes.
“We should go to bed,” he said. “It’s late.”
“We won’t have much to do tomorrow,” Matt said, turning from the photographs. “Jay will be busy testing the plane. We can’t do much until she’s finished there.”
“We can be planning and helping people pack,” Peter said. He wasn’t used to being idle. Back at the base he’d always found some way to keep busy, even when he wasn’t rostered to perform kitchen duties or laundry or any of the other tasks. “Anyway, aren’t you looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed?”
Matt grinned at him. “Sleeping and other things. You’re right. Let’s go. Race you!” He ran for the stairs. Peter laughed and hurried after him, though not racing. In fact he quite enjoyed seeing Matt ahead of him on the stairs, his ass looking mighty fine in his jeans.
The master bedroom at the front of the house had a bare mattress on a double bed, with a stack of bed linens and blankets on it. Everything smelled fresh. The house and the bedclothes had been aired for their arrival.
“A double bed!” Matt threw himself on the mattress, knocking the bedclothes to the floor. He flung his arms and legs out like a starfish, laughing. “Where are you gonna sleep?” he asked Peter. Peter chuckled, picked up the linens, and threw them at Matt.
“For that, you make the bed.” Meanwhile, Peter closed the drapes. He went exploring and found the bathroom, tried the water. It was on. Henry had said they’d have hot water in the morning for showers. There were half-used bottles of shower gel and shampoo on rusted chrome racks in the shower. A couple of toothbrushes still in their wrappers waited in a glass in a shelf, beside a tube of toothpaste. A bar of soap, dry as bone and with large cracks in it, sat on the edge of the sink. Peter put it in some warm water to soak for a while. He went back into the bedroom. Matt was dutifully making the bed.
Peter noticed some more family photographs on a shelf in there. He picked them up, took them out onto the landing, and placed them carefully on a chest of drawers out there. The smiling faces of dead strangers, whose house he was in, whose bed he was about to sleep in, looked out at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, before going back into the bedroom. Matt was spreading the blankets on top of the sheets, and Peter went to help, tucking them in. Matt smiled at him and spoke in a gentle voice.
“They look like nice people. I’ll bet if they were here, they’d be happy to put up a couple of fellas lost in the storm.”
“Right.”
“It’s warm enough in here to sleep naked,” Matt said when the bed was made. He started to undress. “This place is pretty much paradise.” He stripped down to his underwear and strode out for the bathroom. When Peter joined him a few minutes later, also stripped to his shorts, Matt was frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.
“How much toothpaste did you use?” Peter asked. He got the soap out of the water it had soaked in and made a decent lather from it to wash his face.
“Lots! I think I’m gonna die of mint overdose.” Matt rinsed his mouth and wiped his face. And his chest. “I swear, my teeth feel properly clean for the first time in a year.” Toothpaste had been at a premium at the base like everything else. You got a mere scrape of it, and that only once a day. Matt tossed the other toothbrush, still in its wrapper, to Peter. “Get minty fresh and come to bed, lover.”
He passed Peter and slapped him on the ass as he left. Good grief, but he was frisky tonight. Seduced by the luxury of the normal. Peter returned to the bedroom to find Matt already in bed, with a lamp by the bed on, so Peter turned off the overhead light, took off his shorts, and climbed under the covers. Matt welcomed him with a hug and a kiss but didn’t do more yet.
The normality seduced Peter too. He might have been at home. Walking around in a warm home, carpets under his bare feet. Climbing into a double bed with his man—he and Harrison had owned a superking, but the principle was the thing. And the privacy. No worry that others were a short way off with only thin walls separating them from one another. No drone of nearby voices. For tonight, maybe for a couple of nights as they made their preparations, this was their home. A house belonging to dead strangers, but theirs for a while.
“We should have come here sooner,” Peter said. Matthew stirred and moved so he could look at Peter.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It would have been more comfortable than the base. I expect we’d soon find things to complain about. But God, a house, all the power we need, a bigger variety of food. I could definitely live with that.”
“I don’t only mean the better living conditions,” Peter said. “We should have…helped. I should have. I’m a doctor. While I was hiding away on the island, Henry’s grandson was dying.”
Matt frowned. “The one who died of diabetes? Could you have done anything for him, once the insulin was gone?”
“I couldn’t have saved him in the end, but I could have prolonged his life or at least eased his suffering. I could have done something.”
Matt didn’t argue. He snuggled in closer to Peter and stroked his back soothingly. After a while he talked softly. “You helped us on the island. You brought Hope into the world. You took care of her and Vicky and all of us. You’re a good man, Peter.”
Peter wished he believed it. It had seemed like good sense at the time, to stay on the island, safe from the horrors out in the world. Waiting for something approaching normality to return. Now it felt like cowardice. Like abdicating his duty as a doctor, when there were so many more people who could have used his help. Not only here in Moosonee, but beyond.
“How many people have died out there?” he asked. “Not from the zombie virus, or even from diabetes—which, you’re right, in the end, I couldn’t save anyone from—but from ruptured appendixes, from septicemia, from hemorrhaging in childbirth? Every doctor was needed. Every one. And I sat it out. I just…sat it out.”
* * * *
Jay had already gone to the airport along with her assistants by the time Matt and Peter went to get breakfast in the morning.
“Sleep well, fellas?” Bud asked as he dished up scrambled eggs. He must know they’d stayed together. Gossip would spread like wildfire in the tiny community, and everyone must know which of the guests had shacked up together.
“Like a dream,” Matt said, picking up a couple of pieces of toast. “A real bed after all this time! It was amazing.”
“Best enjoy it while you can. Things are gonna be rougher once we leave.”
“I almost wish we didn’t have to,” Matt said. “I feel like I’m at a vacation resort.” This made Bud laugh.
“No, we have to leave,” Peter said. Serious and grim. He looked tired. Hard for others to tell, maybe, no visible dark circles under his eyes. But Matt knew Peter’s face nearly as well as his own.
“Coffee in that urn over there,” Bud said. “Enjoy your breakfast, fellas.”
If he had any issues with them being together, he didn’t show it. It would be pretty stupid to hang on to old prejudices in this situation. Every warm body was an asset.
Peter ate quickly, unusual for him, and was finished before Matt was halfway through. He poured himself another mug of coffee. Real coffee! Freeze-dried, presumably, and decent-tasting.
“I’m going to the clinic,” Peter said. “See what they have there.”
“I’ll come with you,” Matt said, but Peter waved the offer away.
“The two nurses will help me out.” He stood and raised his voice across the dining room. “I’m going to be in the clinic all day. Anyone who wants a medical examination, or has anything they need to see me about, pop in anytime.”
He strode off, taking his coffee mug with him. Matt watched him go and only turned back when Louise, Edvin, and Chandra sat down at the table with him.
The four of them lingered a good long while over their coffee, drinking the urn dry, then stayed on to help Bud and others clean up the dining room and wash the dishes.
“We’ll be setting up for lunch in a couple of hours,” Bud said as they left. “Any of you want to give a hand there, you’ll be welcome. You kids do whatever you want to do until then. I think I’ll go see your doctor friend. Got a knee been troubling me for a while.”
“So…” Louise said when he left. “I suppose we don’t have anything to do.”
A sense of limbo hung over them. The island group already had their things packed. The Moosonee group didn’t want to do so until they knew they’d definitely be leaving. Matt considered going to the clinic to help Peter out. He hadn’t trained as a nurse for two years to be pushed aside for people who, well, happened to have actual nursing qualifications. But in the end he didn’t. The four of them and, after a while, an entourage of the kids from the town went exploring. The kids showed them the school, and the one classroom in use.
“The world ends, and you still have to go to school?” Matt asked. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, it sucks!” one cheeky lad echoed. The other kids giggled.
“Don’t be such a bad influence,” Louise said.
“Education is even more important than before,” Chandra said. “We don’t have so many other people to rely on anymore. Each of us needs to know as much as possible, for our own sake and the sake of the groups we live in.”
Her voice was quiet and serious and sobered the group. She had a point. A girl raised her hand as if this was a lesson. “Are you Cree, Miss Chandra?” she asked.
“No, I’m from a country called India. Can any of you point to India on a map?”
There was a general stampede of feet to the map of the world pinned to the wall and some very far-out guesses as which was India. Chandra pointed to it, then to New Zealand, Britain, and Norway, for each of the island group here. Matt wandered outside after a while, as the impromptu geography lesson continued. He sat on the low wall outside the school, looking out to sea. It was a fine day, the storm of last night blown out, the sky blue with some sparse clouds drifting slowly across. Little breeze, so he felt the full heat of the sun. Amazing to feel that again. To sit here outside, the sun warm on his face, wearing only a couple of layers of clothes and seriously wondering if he needed the light jacket he wore. He closed his eyes and basked.
Clothes. They should go through the town and find a more suitable wardrobe for the island group. They’d brought clothes from the island, but a lot of them were threadbare. He’d have to ask the Moosonee folks if it was okay to go and find what they needed in the town’s stores and then from homes if required. It wasn’t looting if you had permission, right? But would clothes left in unheated homes for nearly three years still be usable?
His speculations were interrupted by the sound of footsteps. He opened his eyes to see Peter walking along the road. He smiled and waved. Peter returned both smile and wave and in a moment sat on the wall beside Matt. Matt leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, apparently startling him, as he jumped. But he returned that gesture too.
“Bud said you lot were exploring, and sent me to fetch you for lunch. This is the school?”
“Yeah. Got some spontaneous learning going on. Shall we go get them?”
“No rush.” He took Matt’s hand, and they sat for a while, enjoying the sun and watching the water. Not as turquoise blue as the clear seas around the island. This was the end of the Moose River, before it flowed out into James Bay, and it carried plenty of silt.
“Still wish we could stay?” Peter asked after a few minutes. “It is a bit like paradise here in comparison to Shriver Island.”
“Maybe,” Matt said. “But this is a dead end, like the island. We have to regroup. Humans, I mean. Little pockets of people like this have no real future.”
“I agree,” Peter said. “Even with the kids. Even with us, we only bring three extra women of childbearing age to the group. It’s a harsh way of looking at it, but with these numbers, this group might survive a couple of generations. But after that, there isn’t enough genetic diversity.”
Matt nodded gloomily. “So we have to go.” Go to America. Where Peter would start looking for Harrison. Unless his duty as a doctor overrode such personal considerations. Yes, Matt could try to keep him focused on that.
Behind them the kids in the classroom started singing. It was remarkably pleasant to hear that. He sat with his head on Peter’s shoulder, smiling goofily. Peter put an arm around him. They’d have to get up in a minute and head over for lunch, but in a minute, in a…
The noise of an engine broke him from his thoughts, and he sat up, expecting for a second to see a car or truck, but he realized it came from above. A single-engine plane passed over their heads a moment later, flying low.
“Jay!” Matt cried, delighted, jumping to his feet. Peter rose too.
He joined Matt in waving at the plane as it circled overhead. The kids, followed by Louise, Edvin, and Chandra came piling out of the school. The kids ran about, jumping, waving, and yelling at the plane. It dipped slightly, tipping its wings in salute, and flew off again back toward the airport.
“She must be testing the fuel in that small one,” Peter said as they all waved the plane off. “Making sure it’s still usable.”
“And it looks good to me,” Matt said. The spell of the town was broken. It was pleasant, but it was a brief respite. A vacation. The plane reminded him there was a whole continent out there to reclaim. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them.
“Time for lunch,” he said. “And then it’s time we got down to work.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
A school bus rolled up to the Moosonee airport, rattling and wheezing. It had seen better days before half the Shriver group had been born, never mind the Moosonee kids. But it was the best way to bring everyone to the airport. Bud was driving it, and he took it right out to the apron, where light poured from a hangar into the darkness. Dawn was due in an hour.
