Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  Angelo tucked his arm under Jett’s and hauled him out of the room, back into the alley which felt bright after the darker enclosure. He shook Angelo off, their heights so incompatible his assistance was only pulling on his wound. Jett glanced down and winced at what he saw.

  He’d been stabbed, not fatally but still frustrating. His suit was compromised. He was in so much shit.

  Stepanova and Angelo took front and rear while Raikkinen helped as much as he could to push Jett back toward the Barricade. They didn’t appear to be taking the most direct route, instead heading for the closest section of the wall and when they drew closer Jett understood why.

  The explosions had caught the attention of the other districts, and they were manning the top of the wall, providing cover. It was a relief to reach the shadow of the Barricade. Jett put one hand against it and used it as a guide home, head pounding.

  No one said anything until they finally, blissfully, reached the safety of the gates and stumbled inside. Angelo slammed the gates shut and then they were pulling open the cage, slipping out in a hurry and slamming the cage gate behind them.

  Jett stared at them through the wire, confused for a moment, before he looked down at the hole in his suit and groaned, stumbling back against the locked Barricade doors and sliding down them to sit in a heap on the floor.

  He was exhausted, in pain, and he was losing blood. This was ridiculous.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he grumbled, hitting the lock mechanisms on his helmet and fumbling it off his head, tossing it aside.

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Angelo scowled, already half stripped from his Q-hab, eyeing Jett dubiously. He was pale and shaking, far more upset than Jett had expected.

  ‘No, but I’m serious. I’m fine!’ They were never going to understand.

  ‘It’s okay, just give us a minute,’ Stepanova was kicking off his boots and snatched up the hose. To Jett’s horror he turned it on him.

  The water was freezing and hard. Jett almost bit his tongue when it slammed into him and then closed his eyes against the icy tendrils that sank down into his clothes under the suit. Needing it off before it filled with water, he started pulling open the various clips and buckles, wrenching open Velcro and zips until he managed to get it off his chest and arms. Stepanova hit him again with the hose.

  ‘Fucking, stop it!’ He bellowed at them, but they ignored him, continuing the hosing. He understood it was procedure, and he knew there was an element of fear attached to the routine, but he was also aware they had nothing to worry about. He was suffering for nothing but the illusion of their nightmares.

  ‘I’m not infected!’ He yelled at them. They just looked worried and continued his drowning.

  In frustration he kicked the suit off his legs, heaving for breath and grateful that the water had at least numbed him to a point that the pain was barely noticeable. The hose stopped and they seemed to be putting it away, so Jett peeled up the bottom of his thermal shirt and examined the wound, watching the blood pool at the entry point and then billow out in clumping waves.

  ‘We can’t leave him in there!’ Angelo was stalking in front of the cage. He didn’t look well.

  ‘You need to stop the bleeding,’ Raikkinen came to the side of the cage where there was a small chute to pass things through. He placed a handful of things in and then shoved it through to Jett.

  He wasn’t infected, but he could still die from the stab wound, so Jett forced himself to shuffle over to the chute and collected the supplies Matti had passed through. A small bottle of alcohol, gauze, absorption pads, tape and saline. Great. He hands shook and his teeth chattered, but he forced himself to pick up the supplies.

  ‘We can’t leave him in there!’ Angelo wouldn’t stop pacing. There was something wrong with him, but Jett had other concerns.

  Sitting heavily in the corner, Jett once again shifted until he could roll his shirt up around his arm pits and studied the wound. It was hard to concentrate with the pounding in his head and his hands shaking and cramping in the cold but he refused to die because he couldn’t manage to clean out a dirty knife wound.

  There was no point cleaning the wound while it was still bleeding, so he grabbed an absorption pad and pushed it tight against his side, wincing at the pain that lanced through his guts.

  Stepanova put a blanket in the chute and Jett glared.

  ‘You can’t leave him in there!’ Angelo made to intervene but Stepanova slapped his hands away and the glare he turned on him was withering. Angelo bit his tongue and took a step back, but he was so pale Jett worried he was going to pass out.

  Was this how Ines died? Sitting, ice cold in a cage while they waited?

  ‘How long do you expect me to stay in here?’

  ‘Procedure is forty-eight hours,’ Stepanova replied calmly, nodding to the blanket. He had a point; if he was staying caged that long then he needed the blanket.

  ‘I’m not sick,’ he tried to tell them again, but he was getting weaker. He could see white lights behind his lids now and the world was beginning to grow fuzzy. He lay down on his side, making sure the stab wound was higher than his heart, and he pulled the blanket down on top of him from the chute.

  ‘Pavlova?’ Angelo crouched down a metre from the cage. He actually looked worried, which was weird. Worse than worried, he was panicked. In shock. Matti needed to help him, seriously. ‘Don’t fall asleep, kid.’

  ‘Sorry. My head hurts.’

  ‘Your head?’ Stepanova was frowning at him, his fingers twitching, but no-one made a move toward the cage. They were moving back, not coming to help and it was exhausting just watching them and realising this was all he was to them. A liability to be locked up until time proved otherwise.

  ‘Some guy slammed him in the head with a rock,’ Angelo explained, hitting the ground with a heavy fist. It drummed faintly in Jett’s ear but the crashing in his head drowned it out.

  ‘He’s probably concussed,’ Raikkinen grabbed a stick and poked him through the wire mesh. ‘Don’t fall asleep, Pavlova!’

  Furious, Jett grabbed his end of the stick and hauled it into the cage, then tossed it aside.

  ‘Go away. I’m fine, and I don’t want you here!’ He snapped at them, amused when they froze, looking simultaneously shocked by his outburst and concerned.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ he repeated more calmly, running out of energy. He curled in on himself, putting as much pressure on the wound as he could and trying to use the curve of his body to apply a little more. He could preserve energy better if he was alone. It was what he was used to.

  ‘You’re injured,’ Raikkinen pointed out. ‘I need to make sure you’re okay.’

  ‘Sure. In two days, when you realise I’m right and I’m not sick. Come back and check then,’ Jett shifted away from the cage wall, and tucked the blanket over his head, plunging himself into darkness.

  ‘Ioane, don’t be a dick!’ Angelo growled, sounding ready to pass out, but Jett ignored them. Not because he was trying to be an arsehole but because his head thundered at him and all at once he gave in to the swelling darkness and heard nothing at all.

  When he woke he was freezing, so cold his body had given up shivering but everything still hurt. He shifted just far enough to peel back the edges of the pad on his stab wound and sighed in relief to see it had clotted and was only oozing.

  ‘Try not to dislodge it too much.’

  Tilting his head back, he found Stepanova sitting on the bottom step, watching him. He’d showered and his hair was still wet. He’d obviously been quick about it and hurried back to watch Jett sleep. Creepy, but not unexpected considering he was in command and one of his men was injured. Anna sat on the step beside him, head tilted to one side as if confused by the sight of Jett in the cage.

  ‘I’m not a moron,’ Jett grumbled, shifting just enough to be semi-upright with the medical supplies in reach. He pulled the gloves on first, then used an alcohol rub to wet the dried blood enough to peel the old pad away and then
braced himself as he poured alcohol into the wound to clean it out. It stung and burned but he closed his eyes while he waited for it to ease, and then made it worse by pouring more inside, ensuring it trickled all the way into the wound. When he was satisfied it was clean he packed the wound with saline and sealed it with skin glue, relieved by the numbing properties of the cool gel. He taped a new pad over it to absorb any fluid that escaped and wrapped the gauze around his middle several times, mostly to keep the pad in place, then he rolled his damp shirt back down over it.

  ‘Good work,’ Stepanova acknowledged. ‘You’ve done that before.’ He was stroking Anna’s head. Jett didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it, but Anna looked to be enjoying it, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.

  ‘Once or twice,’ Jett agreed. A few too many times, if he was honest. He hated stab wounds. Cuts he could deal with but stab wounds took so long to heal and irritated him the whole time. He didn’t like being incapacitated in any way, but stab wounds seemed the stupidest of injuries. Such small holes to cause so much pain and damage. It seemed unreasonable.

  He rolled onto his back and took deep breaths, waiting for the nausea to fade but with his head still pounding he didn’t like his chances.

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ If fine meant an army of gremlins had taken up residence in his skull and decided to have a drinking game of some kind. But there was nothing to be done. If he was bleeding internally he would likely die before the forty-eight hour deadline he’d been given for his release. If he wasn’t then he would get better and there really was nothing to worry about.

  ‘Are there any more blankets?’

  ‘Yes.’ Except Stepanova hesitated before moving to the steps where he had another blanket. He brought it to the chute and put it in. Anna came with him and started sniffing around the edge of the cage.

  ‘It’s not a spare, is it? It’s one of yours.’ He had no idea why he thought that.

  ‘Yes.’ That wry grin did strange things to his stomach, and Jett was of the opinion his guts had had enough entertainment for the day. Sasha Stepanova had no right to stand around looking like a wet dream while he was flopping around like a dying fish in the mud.

  ‘It’s okay, I don’t need it,’ Jett lied. He was probably going to die of hypothermia, which all things considered seemed the stupidest part of recent events. Other than rejecting a blanket he desperately needed.

  ‘Jett, take the blanket,’ Stepanova ordered, and then he surprised him by shoving his whole arm through the chute and dropping the blanket closer to where Jett was sprawled on the floor. Anna mewled at the cage and bowed down, as if urging him to take it before trotting off to find more interesting things to sniff.

  ‘I thought you were all terrified I’m going to murder you all through infection?’ Jett teased, snatching at the blanket and pulling it over his chest. It was heavier than the ratty thing they’d given him, and provided immediate warmth. He sighed in pleasure.

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t infected.’ Stepanova arched one thick brow at him.

  ‘Don’t we all say that?’

  ‘Define we.’ Stepanova grabbed a crate from the storage shelves and pulled it closer to the cage so he could sit and peer down at Jett where he was making a small bed with the ratty blanket as a base and the new blanket on top. He grabbed his torn Q-hab suit and balled it up to make a pillow, happy once his head was off the ground and given some padding.

  ‘Whoever the hell you’ve had stuck in this cage,’ Jett reasoned. He had no idea, because he didn’t even know the procedure for keeping someone in quarantine. He’d had no clue he was going to the Barricade until a few weeks before he was sent, and there certainly hadn’t been a manual. He’d tried to learn about the people he would work with rather than the Barricade itself.

  ‘You’re only the third I’ve seen,’ Stepanova admitted, voice hushed. Jett shifted so he could be comfortable and still see Stepanova’s face. He looked haunted by a memory.

  ‘Who were they?’ This mysterious other person who’d shared his fate.

  ‘When I first came to the wall, there was a man in that cage,’ Stepanova admitted. ‘I took his spot here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jett pondered that. Sasha had been sent the moment someone had been exposed, and had arrived within the seventy-two hour window. All infected died in three days. All infected showed signs by twenty-four hours, and were nonsensical by forty-eight.

  ‘Have you called for my replacement?’ That was a creepy thought.

  ‘No,’ Stepanova shook his head. He looked pale and he worried his bottom lip between his teeth, the only sign he was concerned.

  ‘You worried about winter supplies?’ It was a bad joke, but Jett still thought it was funny. ‘Three mouths are easier to feed.’

  ‘You don’t eat that much,’ Stepanova argued, scowling at him. ‘And I thought you were the one who said you weren’t infected?’

  ‘I’m not gonna die from the Infection,’ Jett sneered. ‘I’m gonna freeze to death!’

  They stared at each other awhile, something Jett was definitely unaccustomed to. If he’d stared at someone that long at the facility he would have had his face beaten in and someone would have spooned out his eyes to make sure it never happened again. But he didn’t feel uncomfortable, and that surprised him. Watching Stepanova was somehow soothing. He felt like he could do it all day. It wasn’t like he was going to be doing anything else.

  ‘Who was the second one?’ Jett asked. Stepanova had said two. He’d only replaced one soldier.

  The gutted expression on Stepanova’s face made him regret asking and he realised too late. It was why Angelo had freaked out, seeing him in the cage after being stabbed.

  ‘Ines,’ he cursed himself for his insensitivity.

  ‘He wasn’t infected,’ Stepanova told him softly. Jett was horrified to see tears in the man’s eyes as he stared at his hands, remembering. ‘He was just dead. Bled out before we even got him back here. Some kid stabbed him, nicked an artery in his thigh. Stupid thing, really. Just a scared kid.’

  Fuck. There was nothing he could say to that, so Jett stared at the cage mesh and let the memories build a silent wall between them.

  The ground was freezing and he shivered under the blanket, pulling it tighter around his shaking limbs. His teeth were chattering, an annoying clatter in the quiet.

  ‘I could get you another blanket,’ Stepanova offered, though he hesitated again.

  ‘Then what are you gonna sleep on?’ Jett knew he was offering his own blankets and that rankled. Why hadn’t the man grabbed the blanket from Jett’s room? That would’ve been the smart thing to do. ‘It doesn’t work if we both freeze to death.’

  ‘What doesn’t work?’

  ‘Uh … surviving? I don’t know.’ And he didn’t, really. He was just talking, which was weird as well. He wasn’t the talkative type but somehow being alone with Stepanova loosened his tongue. And maybe hitting his head had rattled his brain to mush.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ Jett lied, because there was no point at all to the truth. His head was raging, he felt dizzy and queasy, his side throbbed, he wondered if maybe he’d broken a rib or two by the odd pinch in his chest and he was achingly cold. But he wasn’t sick.

  Stepanova didn’t seem convinced either, but Jett closed his eyes against the expression on his face and as soon as the darkness had him his consciousness was stolen away again.

  A howling woke him, shaking the Barricade doors so they groaned and squealed as rain poured against the walls and pooled into the cage. The blanket he lay on was wet and the water was sinking into his clothes.

  Footsteps echoed on the stairs, coming down fast and Raikkinen appeared, looking dishevelled and sleep deprived. Anna was on his heels and excitedly leapt into the water flooding the floors.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Raikkinen stumbled to a halt at the bottom step and looked him over, relief on his face th
at turned to horror when Jett turned to the side and vomited into the puddle he was lying in. ‘Shit.’

  ‘I’m not infected,’ Jett moaned, and he wasn’t. His head was worse, and he could feel his stab wound hot and burning in his side. That was infected, it just wasn’t the Infection.

  ‘Vomiting is one of the first signs …’

  ‘It’s the first damn sign of everything!’ Jett argued, and vomited again. He grabbed the dry blanket and bundled it up, putting it in the chute so it wouldn’t get wet on the floor. ‘Don’t take that!’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Raikkinen agreed and Jett realised he really thought he was Infected, and that he didn’t want to touch the blanket because he thought he could catch it. He would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so pitiful.

  Anna took a drink from one of the puddles and Raikkinen swatted at her to try and make her stop but she dodged him and proceeded to splash in the icy liquid, delighted by the puddles. She enjoyed making a mess, and was oblivious to the threat of illness Jett apparently posed.

  ‘I told you, I’m not infected!’ He looked about his flooding cell and realised there was nowhere to sit that was dry. Giving up, he sat in the least inundated area and watched the wind shake the gates.

  ‘Do you have lesions yet?’

  ‘No, because I’m not infected,’ Jett grumbled. His butt was freezing. Anna tried to catch her tail, turning in crazed spirals until she fell sideways into a puddle, her white fur speckled with dirt.

  ‘You didn’t even look.’ Raikkinen drew his attention back to the conversation.

  ‘Because I know I don’t!’ Something crashed into the doors, startling them both, not because they thought they would open but because it was deafening and unexpected.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jett demanded, but Raikkinen was already running back up the stairs and never replied. Anna barked once and ran after him, clearly of the opinion Jett didn’t matter.

  Jett fell asleep in the sludge, listening to the storm rage against his prison.

  When he woke, the water had drained but his clothes were still wet. He had no idea how much time had passed. His headache was no longer blinding but the pain in his side was burning. He forced himself up and walked to the chute, rummaging through the blanket for the medical supplies.