Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  ‘Stepanova! Run it again!’

  He burst from his chrysalis. Again.

  ‘How did he drag it back here?’ Sasha did a circle around the dead deer, arms crossed over his chest, rubbing his upper arms to keep them warm since he’d left his coat upstairs to dry and come down in only his thermals and cams.

  ‘I have no idea. I only helped drag it that last bit and I’m not sure I’ll be walking tomorrow. My legs are killing me!’ Matti rubbed his thighs and winced as he pushed himself up from where he had been rummaging through the freezer for a block of mince. Now they had the deer they had decided to treat themselves with spaghetti. Usually meat was a once a week treat, if you only had the supplies from the allocated rations. They tried to supplement as often as they could.

  ‘You need help up the stairs?’ Sasha smirked and offered a hand that Matti slapped away with a growl.

  ‘How was the town?’ He watched Matti stand, groaning and rubbing his thighs to get the blood flowing, and then stretching his arms high over his head.

  ‘Not as quiet as I would like,’ Matti admitted. ‘There’s a lot of evidence of people being there recently. We only saw the one sick person, but there were warm coals in a few of the houses and some of the boards we’d put up on doors had been taken down. The clinic, the supermarket—obvious places where people would look for supplies.’

  ‘How many do you think?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, but several groups at least. Maybe ten, could be less, could be a lot more, depending on where they’re holed up.’

  Sasha nodded and strode upstairs to the first floor armoury, putting his weapons away and placing his unused bullets into the cabinet. Matti reached over his shoulders to dump his bullets in before he closed the door.

  ‘It’s early, maybe they’re making a last ditch effort before the snow?’

  ‘It’s been years since we’ve seen that many at once,’ Matti argued, shaking his head. ‘And the snow’s gonna come early, any day now maybe. I think we have a few weeks yet, but weather’s not predictable these days.’

  ‘So what then?’ Matti was right, the weather was worse each year. The winter’s longer.

  ‘I think the infection has pushed people out of the eastern and southern countries. They’re heading west.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’ve always been doing that.’

  ‘True, but for years there was this idea that someone would find a cure, right? And then everything would go back to normal and they could burn all the bodies and everything would be fine. No different to the Black Plague, or the Spanish influenza, or Swine Flu, or Bird Flu outbreaks…’

  ‘It’s been obvious for years now that that wasn’t going to happen,’ Sasha took his coat off and shook the rain off as best he could, not wanting to drip excess water on the way to the bathroom if he could avoid it.

  ‘We know that, because we’re up here on the Barricade, on the safe side of it all. But normal everyday people watching their friends and family die don’t have that perspective. I’d say some of the last governments have finally fallen. Key areas like Germany and Britain. People are realising no one’s coming to save them, that this is a mass extinction event.’

  ‘I don’t think you can call it an extinction if we survive.’

  ‘If everything south of the Barricade dies?’ Matti shrugged. ‘They’ll stop fleeing south. They know the only thing left is north. And it’s looking to be a bad winter. The cold makes people desperate, and then they do stupid shit that we have to deal with.’ Matti headed up the stairs with him to the bathroom where they hung their coats on the drying pegs beside Angelo’s and Ioane’s.

  ‘Fuck me, it’s like having a dwarf living here. Without the gold.’ Matti eyed the small coat, eyes wide. Sasha had to admit the size difference between Matti’s extra, extra large coat and the extra small hanging beside it was ludicrous.

  He refused to admit it was also somehow hot. He’d spent most of the morning trying not to imagine how it would feel to pin that small body under his own and staring at the hanging clothes, knowing the man wasn’t wearing them, wasn’t helping.

  ‘You really think it’s going to be a mass extinction?’ Sasha asked quietly, not sure why he felt uneasy staring at the small coat dripping its teardrops on the stone floor.

  ‘Step … it was a mass extinction decades ago. I don’t think there’ll be anything south of the Barricade in another fifty years.’ Matti’s hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed. They went downstairs to their rooms, Matti peeling off into his and Sasha to his own.

  He sat down heavily at his desk and grabbed one of his sketchbooks and a pencil. Touching lead to paper always helped him unwind. Angelo was up top keeping an eye on things and Sasha knew better than to doubt the capabilities of his friends. Ioane was another story, but he would learn. Everyone learned fast on the Barricade.

  His hand moved with precision, always, even when doodling. He sighed heavily when he looked carefully at what was emerging and tossed his pencil. Even with only the barest lines he could see Jett Ioane’s face coming into being, chin tucked down into his jacket as he braced himself against the wind above. He’d been warm and reticent and somehow wormed his way far enough under Sasha’s skin to take up residence in his subconscious.

  He lifted the sketchbook and stared at the gentle slope of his cheek and jaw, and the line of his brow. Accurate. But something about the sketch nagged at him. More than the fact he’d drawn it at all.

  He slammed the book shut and pushed it aside, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. He knew it like he knew his own hands, and stared at both as often. Maybe that was where the apparent fascination with Ioane stemmed; he was new and unknown. Sasha wanted to peel him open, onion-style, strip him back one layer at a time until …

  ‘Bloody hell, I need off this fucking wall. I’m losing my mind.’

  He stood and checked his boots were still tightly tied, because the last thing he needed was to fall down the stairs tripping over his own feet looking for a distraction. They were fine and he grabbed the woollen jumper he liked to wear inside and went up to the living space to find Anna. Maybe she’d like a run along the top.

  He wasn’t expecting to find Ioane curled up in one corner of the couch, Anna sprawled across his lap. He had a book in one hand and was squinting at the open pages.

  ‘Do you need glasses?’ Sasha frowned at the way a little line appeared between his brows when he concentrated, pulling his nose down a little. It should not have been cute.

  ‘What?’ Ioane stared up at him, startled. His damp hair was flopping over his forehead artfully, somehow making his eyes seem bigger. He was painfully attractive, damp and comfortable, ensconced on the couch. ‘No?’

  ‘You were squinting,’ Sasha waved a hand at the book. He didn’t want to stare, but he also couldn’t help it.

  ‘Oh. I …’ Ioane looked from Sasha to the book and then back again, a faint blush colouring his cheeks. ‘I don’t read Russian.’

  ‘Uh …’ Sasha looked from Ioane to the book and back again, incredulous. ‘It’s in Russian?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Okay.’ The kid was clearly insane. What he thought he was doing, Sasha had no idea and he didn’t want to stick around to find out. His head felt muddled enough and all he could think of when he looked down at the man on the couch was how certain he was that he would taste amazing. He looked out the small north-facing kitchen window to check it wasn’t raining, pleased to see a faint wash of light across the clouds. Somewhere, the sun was out, just not anywhere they could see it.

  ‘Anna. Want a run?’ Her ears perked up at her name and at the word ‘run’ she leapt over the back of the couch and sat obediently at his side while he took off his jumper and folded it neatly on the table to grab when he came back in.

  ‘Run?’ Ioane was looking at them both over the back of the couch. Innocent, and curious. Far too tempting.

  ‘Yeah. It’s always between five and ten kilometres from a to
wer to the next district. Here to Six-Six-Seven is six k’s. If you get bored, feel free to go for a jog. Just keep in mind the weather can change real fast.’

  Ioane was nodding but made no move to follow, for which Sasha was grateful. He valued his alone time and suspected Ioane did as well. Anyone assigned to the Barricade did, but also craved contact. For the most part you rarely saw anyone outside your four man team and half the time anyone you did see you had to kill. They ran between towers sometimes, to play cards or trade supplies, or simply say hi but for the most part life on the Barricade was lonely and monotonous. Everyone dealt with that their own way. Sasha liked to run.

  Enzo was sitting on the north wall, looking out at a low bank of dark cloud rolling over the forest, toying with a Rubik’s cube.

  ‘Hey, I’m going to run across to the next tower and back. I’m taking Anna with me. You good ’til I get back?’

  ‘Of course.’ If he wasn’t, he’d get Matti to take over, so Sasha left him and led Anna over to the lighthouse in a slow jog.

  The lighthouses were not like the towers; they were built on top of the Barricade instead of into it and only had two floors. The first floor was on the top of the Barricade, equal with the tower and containing a small window outlay that could be set up as a sniper’s station when needed. The spotlights were on the upper level, accessed through a small hatch to avoid wind funnelling through from the lower level and blowing the lights. They ran on nanowire batteries and hadn’t needed to be recharged in all the years Sasha had been there. As far as he knew they’d never been recharged.

  He closed the first door and did some stretches inside the lighthouse before opening the opposite door and watching Anna take off across the wall. She looked like a giant loofah, but she could outrun any of the team and it was hard to wear her out.

  He ran after her, jogging at first to make sure he was warm and then stretching his legs out, letting his body fall into the familiar rhythm. His breathing evened out and his nostrils flared, soaking up the cold air and expelling it in gentle puffs that ghosted through his wake.

  While six kilometres was no great distance and the Barricade was mostly flat, it wasn’t an easy run. The stone was slippery from the rain and uneven and you had to be careful with every footfall. Concentrating on not breaking an ankle focused the mind on a task and helped him clear his head.

  Still, a half hour later the tower of District Six-Six-Seven rose in front of him and he slowed to a jog. Anna was nowhere to be seen so he let himself into the armoury and then wandered down into the kitchen.

  Anna was sprawled in front of the open fire, which was roaring, three men playing cards at the kitchen table.

  ‘Step,’ Nieminen nodded to him but the others kept playing. Sasha wandered over to the couch and sat down heavily, chuckling when Anna immediately leapt into his lap and licked his face.

  ‘Heard you guys had a bit of trouble with the supply truck?’ Nieminen asked while he played through his hand.

  ‘Nah, was Six-Six-Five. Something about the gate sticking. Seems like the truck had some trouble with scavengers though?’

  ‘Yeah, that new guy Kirkov was saying.’ The card game stopped and all three faces looked over at him on the couch. ‘Heard you got your new recruit, too.’

  ‘Had to happen eventually,’ Sasha acknowledged. ‘He’s not too bad. Think once he settles in he’ll be fine.’ He was also weirdly attractive, but he didn’t think anyone would appreciate that perspective. He wasn’t sure he appreciated it himself.

  ‘You sure about that?’ Nowak rested his elbow on the table and toyed with the edge of one of his cards.

  ‘Enzo will be fine,’ Sasha murmured, aware they were all worried Enzo would lose the plot. Not surprising, since the man had gone on a rampage through the town for days after Ines’s death. It had been Nowak who helped Matti convince Enzo to return home.

  ‘Not what I meant,’ Nowak said gravely. ‘I’ve heard stories about Ioane.’

  ‘Seriously?’ That was new. The guy didn’t seem old enough to have stories rotating about him.

  ‘Huge fellow. Islander. Did a rampage all up and down the Barricade decades ago, searching for his wife. They caught him, of course, not before he’d killed at least fifty soldiers along the wall. Heard they shipped him off to some facility over near Germany.’

  Sasha couldn’t help it, the laughter erupted out of him, startling Anna and leaving the men dumbstruck. He couldn’t have described anyone more different.

  ‘I’m serious, the man’s a monster!’

  ‘Huge Islander fellow?’ Sasha almost choked on his tongue trying to talk and cackle at the same time. He remembered Ioane’s little coat hanging beside Matti’s and only laughed harder.

  ‘That’s what they said,’ Nowak ground out, looking furious.

  ‘Sorry, I’m just …’ He couldn’t get himself under control. Sasha took deep, gulping breaths and buried his face in his hands so their expressions wouldn’t set him off and when he finally dared to look again they were staring at him, clearly put out. ‘Sorry. Really. It’s just Ioane is like five-foot-five … maybe, and might weigh sixty kilos, and he’s Korean best I can tell. And he’s early twenties, if he’s lucky, so unless he was running around in diapers a few decades ago I think you got the wrong guy.’

  They were all frozen, waiting for the punch line of a joke and then deflating, sharing confused looks when it never came.

  ‘Not the same Ioane then,’ Nowak sighed. ‘Damn. Was hoping he’d go crazy or something and we’d get to do something exciting.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Sasha was still struggling to control himself.

  ‘How’s Enzo dealing with a little Asian kid replacing Ines?’ Gleba finally spoke up, looking concerned. He was a resourceful man, and had grown up north of Kiev so he knew the area well and spoke the local dialect. He had a way of knowing what people were thinking, and what they were going to do that had helped them out of a few tough situations over the years.

  ‘Honestly, I think it kind of helps. If he’d been anything like Ines, Enzo would have refused to accept him no matter what. But the kid’s so not what any of us expected that even Enzo’s not sure what to do about it. Stuck somewhere between indifference and big brother mode, I think.’

  ‘Christ,’ Nowak muttered.

  ‘Poor Ioane,’ Nieminen agreed.

  They returned to their game and Sasha closed his eyes, letting their banter wash over him and waiting for that moment when he tired of them and wanted to go back to his own people. That feeling of wanting to go home always kept him warm.

  The door opened on the top floor, cold air gusting down and the fourth man in their team, Paraklov, appeared on the stairs.

  ‘You might want to head, Step. That storm’s building. Looks like it’s gonna be pretty nasty.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Sasha pushed himself up off the couch, dislodging Anna. She knelt obediently at his feet and then followed him to the door. ‘Enjoy the cards, guys.’

  ‘Enjoy training your new pet,’ Nieminen smirked and Sasha stuck his middle finger up at him before running upstairs and heading back outside.

  Paraklov wasn’t kidding; the northern horizon was lost in a rich black cloud, only the front line of the forest still visible. Sasha fell into an easy run while Anna streaked ahead toward the lighthouse. A heavy fog rolled in and bumped against the northern side of the Barricade, filling the stone valley until Sasha was struggling to see ahead, only the slow turning of the spotlights keeping him on target.

  Ahead of him rose the lighthouse door and he shoved it open and hurried in, waiting for Anna to slip in behind him and then slamming it closed. Enclosed in the stone walls he could hear the howling wind picking up, whistling through every crack in the old stone and wood.

  ‘Come on girl, nearly there,’ he promised, opening the opposite door and letting Anna run ahead, making sure the doors were firmly closed behind him and wouldn’t be dislodged by an overnight storm.

  Enzo wa
s waiting at the door in his weather jacket, having already let Anna inside. They tumbled in and slammed the door closed right as the rain started to trickle against the roof.

  ‘Timing,’ Enzo dryly noted, shaking out the spare jacket he’d had on and leaving it on a hook by the weapons in case anyone needed to go out in the night. ‘Wasn’t sure you were going to make it, took you long enough.’

  ‘Anna stole a respite by their fire, it was roaring.’

  ‘Bit early for that, isn’t it? Did they hit the jackpot with some wood?’

  ‘Who knows,’ Sasha shrugged, not caring. Wood was a luxury and it didn’t warm anything much more than the heating coils already did. He enjoyed sitting by the fire for ambience, especially in the dead of winter, but it wasn’t something he sought as a luxury.

  They hurried down into the living area as the rain started to hit hard outside. Matti was cooking, the whole room smelling of bolognese.

  ‘That smells amazing. I’m assuming Enzo helped you.’ Because Matti was a useless cook. ‘I’m just gonna go shower. I’ll be right back!’

  Matti shouted something about no hurry but Sasha was already taking the stairs three at a time, keeping moving so the sweat didn’t have time to cool on his skin.

  The showers were already warm with steam. Since Enzo and Matti being upstairs it had to be Ioane washing up. Sasha hesitated, wondered if he should ask if it was alright to share, then chastised himself because he’d never asked permission to use a bathroom in his life.

  He hurriedly stripped out of his damp clothes and tossed them over the drying racks and rushed into the open showers, turning on the taps and sighing in pleasure when hot water washed over him. He planted his hands against the wall and let his head hang forward as the heat splashed down his back and rinsed the chill away.

  When he finally stood up and grabbed the soap he found Ioane standing under the other shower, staring at him with wide brown eyes, lips pressed together in a tight line, cheeks flushed.