Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  ‘All the more reason to give it a go, right? Maybe they think we’ve stopped looking. Maybe they think we’ve grown old and lazy. Maybe they think we’re dead. Hell, maybe they’re too young to have heard stories about what used to happen when people tried to cross in the Ukraine.’

  ‘Young and stupid,’ Anatoly grumbled, handing the binoculars back and waving a hand at the lighthouse to indicate Kollig should come down and talk to them.

  ‘I’ll meet you downstairs. We’ll pack for a week, see what we can find.’ Moscow was just going to have to wait until he was ready to slow down.

  He had a tunnel to find.

  6

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  The familiar snick of the Ssangdo slipping passed the guard stilled the adrenaline thumping through his veins. His hands were steady as he drew, but his stomach was empty and his eyes prickled with fatigue. The horizon stretched like a string from one side of the world to the other, unchanging. A desolate canvas.

  If he could kill the bear, he’d eat for weeks. Hell, he could share.

  The spaghetti was the best meal Jett had ever had. Meat had been a rare commodity his whole life, but the splash of flavours and spices that hit his tongue were something else entirely. Jett stared over at Raikkinen with wide eyes and shovelled more into his mouth, chewing and spreading the tomato-based goodness around his mouth. There was oregano and basil and garlic and some kind of chilli. And it was hot. He was in heaven.

  ‘I’m going to assume, based on the look on your face and the sounds you’re making, that you approve?’ Raikkinen observed dryly and Jett nodded frantically, unwilling to take the time to say anything when he could be shovelling more of the amazingness into his mouth.

  He was aware of Stepanova staring at him but he didn’t dare look over, still jolted by that stupid touch in his bedroom. He had no explanation whatsoever for the fact that the man had barely grazed his leg by accident and Jett’s cock had decided to wake up.

  The last thing he needed was to get a boner in front of the Sergeant in charge of his district. So he was trying to forget about it in the vain hope that it might never happen again, but that was difficult when the man insisted on staring at him. Jett was obsessed with Stepanova’s face and had trouble not staring. He needed a prop, but he’d left his book downstairs, so he was making do with his fork.

  Silence settled over the table while they ate, each engrossed in the small luxury. Angelo finished first and went back for seconds, checking there was enough for everyone to have more and taking only his fair share. Anna mewled at his feet and he put a small amount more in her bowl.

  ‘No more than that, brat, or you’ll get fat and lazy.’ She howled at him, but then ate the little morsel in one gulp, sucking it up like it was water and licking her canines.

  Anna was one of the most ridiculous things Jett had ever seen. He’d seen a few dogs before, but they were malnourished, short-furred ugly things that snapped and snarled and for the most part were to be avoided. Anna was the first pet dog he’d seen that wasn’t a guard dog or trained to kill in some way. She seemed content to simply laze around the tower and sprawl over whatever unsuspecting human was stupid enough to sit down.

  Jett was enthralled and would have been perfectly happy to have her sleep in his room and follow him everywhere, but he thought that was probably outrageous. He didn’t want them thinking he needed a dog to feel safe or anything equally weird, when in reality he just liked watching her. She was so superfluous, observing her shenanigans simply made him happy and joy was a rare thing.

  Finishing his meal, he sat back and rubbed his belly, completely satisfied. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed food like that. Probably never. Certainly no one had ever cooked like that for him but he thought it would be weird to say so. Instead, he went and washed up his bowl and put it away.

  ‘You can have more,’ Raikkinen pointed out.

  ‘I really can’t. I’m so full I’m gonna explode.’ He wasn’t as big as them to begin with, and he was so accustomed to eating rations he suspected his stomach had shrunk. Or never grown.

  They were looking between them, and then at him expectantly.

  ‘What?’ It was disconcerting to have them all staring. Meat standing before wolves.

  ‘Which one of us can have your share?’ Angelo demanded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your share of the extras, who can have it?’ Angelo clarified. They were completely serious, unmoving as they waited for his response.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ But they weren’t. He sighed and waved to Raikkinen. ‘He cooked, so he should get it.’ That was fair, right? Besides, it kept him from giving it to Stepanova for no better reason than Jett liked how long his eyelashes were.

  ‘I had to tell him how, but sure. He cooked,’ Angelo grumbled.

  Yet they seemed pleased by the answer, so Jett hurried out of the room before they could decide he needed to make any other stupid decisions. He rushed to the bathroom, since he would have it to himself while they were eating.

  The bathroom had preposterously been featuring in his thoughts lately. It was part of the reason he’d decided to go pick up a book and try to learn something. Forcing himself to focus on one thing made it impossible to daydream about something else. Not that it was the bathroom he found engrossing. It was the mostly naked image of Sasha Stepanova now seared into his retina.

  Shaking himself out of his stupor, Jett undressed and tossed his clothes on the bench. He ran for the shower, shivering in the cold while he waited for the water to heat. Hot showers were an inconceivable luxury, and one he hadn’t expected. Heat in general had surprised him. His training barracks had neither. They’d showered hurriedly and huddled under blankets and layers of heavy clothing trying to warm up afterward, nibbling on stale bread or cold porridge.

  The Barricade was laced with nanowire technology that had been discovered a few decades before construction had begun. Pipes ran through the stone structure, filled with an electrolyte gel that the nanowires were suspended in. The pipes ran the heating and electronics for the whole wall. A separate circuit using the same premise ran the lighthouses, each individual so one couldn’t affect the others if it went down for any reason. A brain-mimicking network of nerves and arteries.

  The Barricade was an incredible feat of engineering, not only because of its size but also its durability. As far as Jett knew nothing on the Barricade had needed replacing that hadn’t been broken during fighting. Most notably, several German districts had to be entirely rebuilt after they were intensely bombed in the early days of the Infection. Since then, nothing. It ran itself.

  He still washed hurriedly, the habit too engrained despite the luxury of the hot water. Besides, he didn’t want to have company. It wasn’t that he felt uncomfortable, exactly. He’d certainly enjoyed the view when Stepanova had decided to shower naked next to him, there was no denying that. But it had driven home a fact Jett had been ignoring.

  He was by far the smallest person on the team. Even Angelo was more than a head taller than him. He was faster, he had no doubt about that, but his speed was likely evened out by longer strides, lessening that advantage. He was stronger, yes, but what he made up for in strength and willpower they took easily in sheer size.

  He felt inadequate, and he had no idea how to prove himself to them without giving away what he was. Since he didn’t particularly like what he was, and he was certain they would toss him from the top of the Barricade if they knew, he wasn’t inclined to tell them. Which meant doing it the hard way and proving himself over time.

  Usually that would be fine, but he found himself impatient, which was entirely out of character. He put it down to the fact that his body was reacting like he’d had a lobotomy every time Stepanova was in the room.

  Jett turned off the hot water and let the brisk air cool his heated skin before grabbing a towel and drying off. He snatched up his dry clothes and took them back to his room, sniffing the
m as he walked. They weren’t too bad, considering. While he found he was sweating more in the warmth, the cold air and rain was doing a good job of keeping his clothes cleaner than usual. He was used to sleeping in a muddy concrete room, so that was certainly helping as well. He estimated he’d only need to wash his clothes twice a week, maybe less. He’d been watching the others but so far hadn’t seen any of them wash anything, but just because he hadn’t seen them didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. There was a washing machine in the bathroom near the drying racks, but if there were rules for its use no one had told him.

  He felt a surge of relief when he closed his bedroom door on the world. He finished towelling dry and then pulled his clothes back on, making sure his boots were on tight this time because he had to go on watch soon.

  Towers alternated when they ate to ensure nearby districts were observing from the wall at all times. Six-Six-Six always ate at six, morning and night. Lunch was usually grabbed whenever each team member wanted, but breakfast and dinner were always a group affair. He didn’t mind; meals had always been a group affair at the testing facility and they certainly hadn’t been the pleasant sit down events he’d witnessed so far at the tower.

  He went to his closet and took out his Ssangdo, unsurprised by the settling relief that flooded him to have it in his hands again. It was one of an identical pair of straight swords crafted from folded, clay forged steel, custom made to be ninety centimetres in length instead of the traditional metre. He’d owned the set since birth, one of the few possessions he had inherited from his family, anything else about whom he couldn’t recall. The blade sat in a brass-lined steel hilt wrapped in bamboo with a leather lining. There was no guard. It had a brass dragon guard when he was younger, but he found it got in the way rather than protecting his hands, so he had removed it. The sheath was made of the same bamboo and leather as the hilt wrap, stained a rich, matte ebony. It was beyond being something he loved; the sword was a part of him, an extension of himself. He couldn’t imagine fighting without it, which he supposed had been the point of his training with it.

  It was useless on the Barricade, but he was having a hard time leaving it in the closet. That wasn’t the only thing he was struggling to leave in there.

  Jett strapped it to his back in a sling he had made himself so that he could slide the chest strap in different directions to enable the blade to be drawn in different ways. A flick of the wrist could shift the hilt from shoulder to hip, giving him more freedom than the fixed belts he’d encountered in the past. It too was made of ebony-stained leather, so worn now it felt like butter in his hands.

  The small clock on his desk told him there was still a half hour until his shift officially started, but he didn’t mind going early. Shifts were three hours long, so that all team members could have nine hours rest. First and last shifts were most coveted, so you could have uninterrupted sleep, but as each shift rotated no one fought over it. Jett didn’t care anyway. Nine hours was the most luxurious sleep he could imagine. At training four had been the norm, testing how well they could function at half capacity, forcing them to push new limits every time. Jett didn’t miss training.

  Upstairs, the others were cleaning their bowls but they all turned to stare at him as he meandered toward the roof.

  ‘Please tell me that is a sword,’ Angelo reverently pleaded.

  ‘It’s a Ssangdo,’ Jett agreed. Half of one, anyway.

  ‘He’s a fuckin’ Ninja!’ Angelo exploded, throwing his hands in the air as if he’d won the lottery and running toward him. Startled, Jett held his hands up to ward him off and bolted up the stairs.

  ‘No, don’t run away! Disappear, in a little cloud of Ninja-smoke! Come on, man!’ Angelo called after him but didn’t follow, just yelled up the stairs.

  ‘Ninja’s are Japanese you arsehole!’

  ‘And what are you?’ Raikkinen called after him. He should have just stayed down there and let them tease him, but they still made him uneasy. Jett wasn’t used to living with people who wanted to be friends instead of competition, and he couldn’t make sense of the way his body kept having a meltdown as soon as Stepanova glanced in his direction.

  ‘I’m Korean, you dumbasses!’

  They were laughing. Jett thought that was probably a good thing. He hoped it was a good thing. He grabbed the heavy winter coat off the rack and put it on and then sighed glumly, shoulders slumping as he looked at the stairs, realising he was going to have to go back down. The jacket provided for the over watch was more a tent.

  He was about to head down when Stepanova came sprinting up the stairs, Jett’s coat clutched tight in one hand. He paused on the top step, looked Jett up and down and then barely restrained his grin, covering it with his other hand as he held the coat out.

  ‘I suspected you might be needing this,’ he noted softly.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jett mumbled, taking the coat and quickly changing into it, sighing in relief as he zipped it closed and the heat blossomed inside. He hung up the communal coat and went to go to the door, but Stepanova was still standing in front of it. Jett didn’t think it was normal for men to look that carelessly flawless, lounging against the doorway and watching him with the sexiest smirk Jett had ever seen. His stomach was trying to tie itself in knots just staring at the man.

  ‘Korean, huh?’

  ‘Yeah …’ Jett shifted closer to the door, hoping Stepanova would get the idea and move out of the way so he could go out but he just stood there, looming over him.

  ‘North or South?’

  ‘North.’

  ‘Wow, that’s … rare.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ Jett rolled his eyes.

  North Korea had been in trouble long before Russia even contemplated the Barricade. Russia had invaded and half the Korean population had been lost in the fighting, already half-starved from the great famine, matched in numbers but out-gunned. With the fall of their dictator, Russia had taken full control and for a while nothing much had changed. They swapped one tyrant for another, but they still lived under a communist regime. But when the Empire formed and pushed to take South Korea their southern neighbours hadn’t cared who was attacking; they retaliated with everything they had, knowing failure meant the annihilation of their way of life.

  Little had survived the bombing of North Korea. Russia had won a wasteland. And then the Barricade went up, and the Infection broke out. Korea was on the northern side but it had still reached them, wiping out whoever remained in the villages, leaving only a staggered few in the ruins of its cities.

  All of it before Jett’s time, but he’d heard stories and read reports. He’d wanted to understand how he ended up where he was, but there were few answers to be found and in the end he’d given it up. He was what he was, and who he was, and that was all that mattered.

  ‘You were born there?’ Stepanova was frowning, brows drawn down, casting a dark shadow over his eyes.

  ‘No, I was born in a camp. Up north, near Siberia.’

  ‘But your sword is from there?’ He pointed to it, his frown fading. He was trying not to ask questions, Jett could tell. Trying to form a friendship instead of hinder one. It was weirdly kind, and not at all what he’d expected. The rumours of Stepanova cast him as a terrifying shadow capable of annihilating towns. Jett couldn’t reconcile the reputation with the man, but there was time for that.

  ‘Yeah … it was inherited.’ He pulled it from its sheath and lay it across his palm, letting it catch the light and smiling at the faint hint of a rainbow in the folds.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Stepanova admired but didn’t attempt to touch it, for which Jett was grateful. He didn’t let anyone near it, usually. Stepanova was the first person to see it unsheathed and live in almost a decade.

  ‘Thank you,’ he slid it home and then stood there, awkwardly waiting for the Sergeant to get out of the way and let him do his job.

  ‘Uh … well.’ Stepanova was frowning again, staring down at him as if not knowing what to make of him. T
hen he ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in different directions that amused Jett before he turned and jogged down the stairs. Jett stared down after him, completely stumped.

  When he heaved the door open he immediately regretted it. Rain poured in and the wind slammed the door into the Barricade wall. He had to lean his whole weight against it just to get it shut.

  It was darker than he’d been expecting, the only light the slow swirl of the spotlights from the lighthouse. The clouds were black and hanging low, the rain deafening as it crashed against the stones. Thunder roared and lightning crackled in bright flashes that split the night for only a moment before plunging it back into darkness.

  It became immediately apparent that he would not be practising his sword tonight. Jett hurried across the wall, careful to stay low so the wind didn’t toss him into the wire. He had to use all his body weight again to open the lighthouse door and squeezed in through the gap, sighing as the wind slammed it shut behind him. He didn’t take the coat off despite it being soaked because the heating in the lighthouse was minimal and he didn’t want to freeze.

  He climbed up through the hatch to the room that housed the spotlights and settled in the nest between all the light fixtures, amused to find someone had put a pile of cushions and a blanket there for those nights when patrolling the wall was pure stupidity but keeping watch was still a necessity. As the lights were all facing away it was easy to observe below and Jett looked down at the town in wonder, figuring this was as close to being a bird as he was likely to get.

  Everything looked so tiny, even the houses, as if doll-sized and he could just reach out and pluck out the pieces he wanted to play with.