Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He hadn’t even seen Stepanova come down the stairs. He rose up, rushing over and hesitating. He’d been about to put his hands on the cage wire, but now his hands hung at his sides and Jett stared at them, unable to explain the sense of loss and hurt that washed through him.

  ‘I’m not infected,’ he said wearily, aware they wouldn’t believe him.

  ‘Matti says you’re sick. That you were vomiting.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m concussed and my side is infected. Doesn’t mean I’m infected.’

  Stepanova frowned at that and Jett chose to ignore him. He pulled his shirt off and examined his injuries. Stepanova swore softly but Jett didn’t look his way. He definitely broke at least one rib, judging by the bruising, and his shoulder was a ghastly green. He unwound the bandage and the wet pad slipped off easily, revealing a yellow, oozing mess flowing from his wound. The glue had broken open, the pus escaping.

  The wound itself was through the soft tissue in his side, and since he was still alive he was almost certain it had done only minimal internal damage. But he’d been lying in dirty water for who knew how long and the stupid thing was definitely infected.

  It was a slow process cleaning it out, applying just enough pressure and then wiping the gunk away until he was left with a relatively clean-looking hole. He washed it out with alcohol one last time before once again packing it with saline and wrapping it in gauze. He didn’t bother with the glue, needing it to breathe.

  ‘Don’t suppose you have any antibiotics you’d be willing to give me?’ Because he was only going to get worse without them.

  ‘We’re not permitted to waste them on …’

  ‘Right,’ Jett cut him off. Waste them. On the sick. The irony wasn’t wasted on Jett. He turned his back on Stepanova and sat back down on the damp floor, struggling in vain to stay awake. Dreams stole him away between breaths.

  9

  CAC-MO-NREBUD666-21667439

  ‘I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘Don’t.’ What was the point? He wouldn’t be coming back. But she was stubborn, that was half the reason he loved her.

  ‘I will!’

  ‘Then what would be the point?’ If he wasn’t going for her, why go at all?

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Matti stared down at the madness below. Fires burned in gaping windows, the storm picked up pieces of trash and tossed them through the streets while people ran from building to building, shouting to one another and screaming at the Barricade. They sang, they threw things, and every now and then the familiar crack of gunfire split the air between bursts of thunder and lightning and for brief moments Matti’s heart stuttered while he checked to make sure Sasha and Enzo were still standing.

  ‘They’re rioting.’ Sasha was pressed hard against the wall, mostly sheltered from the rain, watching the madness below through squinted eyes.

  ‘Against what?’ A wall? That made zero sense, particularly since it was about a century too late in the game.

  ‘They’re celebrating,’ Enzo corrected. ‘They did the same thing when Ines …’ He made no effort to shield himself from the rain, drenched and oblivious to the cold. Furious, Matti knew, with the people below but also himself. He’d allowed Jett to be injured and was terrified of losing another man from their command. At least this one wouldn’t hurt as bad as Ines.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Sasha grumbled at both of them.

  ‘Yet.’

  ‘He’s not dying,’ Enzo snarled but his rage did nothing to mask his demons.

  They were silent, watching the chaos below, aware of the other towers, awake and watching but not sure if they should intervene. The storm kept it mostly contained and no-one was outright attacking the Barricade, but the occasional stray shot in their direction was disconcerting.

  ‘He’s sick. Vomiting has started, he’ll get the lesions soon.’ How many times had each of them watched someone die? How many questions had they asked in soft voices, begging for a straight answer only to hear nonsense in reply, accompanied by that sinking feeling in the gut? Matti was tired of watching strangers die, even more tired of losing friends. The Barricade had been quiet for so long, he’d almost forgotten death was a possibility. Ines had been a horrible reminder of their mortality.

  ‘Don’t let him die,’ Enzo spat, though it was hard to tell if he was pissed or drenched. He was wet through and didn’t seem to notice, or care. Matti was still dry under his waterproof outer layer and was still freezing, and he didn’t mind the cold. Enzo’s sudden lack of physical awareness concerned him, but he shelved his concerns for the moment.

  ‘If he’s infected, there’s not a whole lot I can do,’ he tried to reason, knowing it was a lost cause. Reason would never be Enzo’s strong suit. ‘There is no cure.’ Hence their presence there in the first place.

  ‘He’s not infected.’

  ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘Says you!’

  ‘Says our medical officer,’ Sasha intervened, pushing off the wall to stand between them. ‘If he’s infected there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.’

  ‘He’s just a fuckin’ kid!’ Enzo bellowed in Sasha’s face but he deflated just as quickly when neither Matti nor Sasha moved a muscle.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Sasha told him, voice firm. ‘It’s no one’s fault but the person who stabbed him. We’ll do what we can and if he’s not dead in the timeframe we’ll take him out of the cage, but until then I am not risking the whole tower for one man.’

  The fact was, he might have. Had it been Ines. Matti still wasn’t sure. Sasha had seemed almost superhuman in his efforts to drag Ines’ body back to the Barricade while Matti tried to stem the flow of blood but it had been for nought. Matti had known it would amount to a corpse the moment he felt Ines’ fingers go lax in his own. They’d shared a look and when Ines looked over at Enzo, struggling beside Sasha to get them home, he’d known it was too late. He’d watched that something that was consciousness and life wink out like a solitary star in the night and that was that. He’d still tried with everything he had to bring him back, but he’d known.

  Enzo had been blind in his rage, so much worse than the anger coming off him in waves now. But Sasha had been cold and determined. The perfect soldier, just like all the reports said, up until that moment when they were all in the cage and he reached for his helmet. He’d been going to remove it, to reach down and try to help bring Ines back from the other side. He’d been going to expose himself right up until Matti tackled him into the bars and forced him to see all that blood.

  Had it been Ines in that cage, alive, Matti didn’t think Sasha would have been able to resist taking him to the medical bay. He suspected Sasha knew he’d almost broken all of the rules, and that it was likely the only thing holding him back from making those same mistakes now. And it would be a mistake, to expose them. If Ioane was infected, he was already dead. If he wasn’t, well … he was a strong little shit and Matti doubted a fever would kill him.

  ‘You’ve both been on this fucking wall too long,’ Enzo snarled, storming off toward the lighthouse. Sasha let him go and turned to frown at Matti.

  ‘Stop being a dick about this.’

  ‘I’m not being a dick. I’m doing my job and you know it. I’m not kidding; if the time passes and he’s still alive then I’ll be the first to drag him to the infirmary but I’m not exposing us.’

  ‘I know.’ And it was clear from his expression that he did. ‘Just … give Enzo some space.’

  ‘He’ll do that himself.’ Matti waved a hand at the shadow disappearing into the pouring rain.

  The sky suddenly lit, streaking with white fire that slammed into the lighthouse at District Six-Six-Eight. Matti flinched as the echoing thunderous roar caught up with the light and cracked through the night like a whip, deafening all else for a brief moment before cheers erupted from the town below.

  ‘These assholes are pushing it,’ he grumbled, looking to Sasha to see what he wanted
to do. ‘You want me to go check on them? Or send Enzo?’

  ‘No. Vasiliev can handle himself and if they need help Kuznetsov and Nieminen are better placed to offer it.’ It was funny, the way he’d say the names of their nearby Sergeants as though they were all friends. They weren’t. Acquaintances, sure, but Matti knew Sasha had reservations about a lot of the men on the Barricade. The only person he really trusted was Dyogtin, the Sergeant at Six-Seven-Zero, and that all came down to the old man saving their asses when they found themselves in a pickle down by the river in their first year.

  ‘Go get the infirmary ready.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘He’s not infected until he drops dead,’ Sasha declared. ‘So until he stops breathing in that fucking cage you will be ready to have him in the damned infirmary.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He didn’t wait for further orders, mostly because he didn’t mind these ones. Enzo and Sasha were perfectly capable of standing watch in the raging storm without him. If Sasha wanted him clean and dry inside he was not going to argue.

  Anna was hiding under the kitchen table. Matti patted her head and then pointed to the stairs.

  ‘Go check on Jett, sweetheart. He needs a friend too. Apparently he’s not going to die, but I think he’s still feeling pretty sorry for himself right about now.’

  Сверхсекретный

  Report: 21741104-DS-NREBUD666

  Officer: C-SGT-21651666

  Informative: Incident in town, eastern segment. Mass insurgency, numbers estimated up to 100 persons. Weaponised—guns, ammunitions, grenades. 1 injury— APC-ESSI-NREBUD666-21740021— placed in cage isolation for 48 hrs, clear of infection. Removing from quarantine for treatment.

  Required action: NIL

  RECEIVED

  Сверхсекретный

  Report: 217412864-NRE-UD-Barrikada

  Asset: APC-ESSI-21740021

  Assessor: Barrikada-UD666

  Diagnosis: Incident resulting in injury not resulting in death. Infection not present. Asset deterioration consistent with established timeline.

  Action: Not required

  CONFIRMED

  10

  C-SGT-NSEBUD666-21651666

  ‘What are you running from, anyway?’ Matti didn’t bother getting up from the couch where he sprawled. He’d probably fallen asleep reading another textbook by the fire.

  ‘Not running from anything,’ Sasha said between hurried gulps of water. ‘Just like the stretch.’

  He didn’t look at Matti again, rushing up top and pushing the door open, bursting into the cool outside. On top of the Barricade, lost above the morning fog and frost, he could pretend just for a moment that there were no walls.

  Ioane looked like death, but it wasn’t the sort of death that Sasha was expecting, nor Matti by the looks of it.

  ‘I don’t see any lesions, but he’s mostly covered,’ Matti observed. ‘He’s got a fever but it’s debilitating. He’s not trying to wander like the infected do. And he slips in and out … the infected don’t usually sleep.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s just hurt,’ Enzo growled from where he stood further up the stairs, Anna at his side, licking his fingers. He was still furious with them for leaving Ioane in the cage, arms crossed as he glared at them. In the end, once the storm settled and there was nowhere else to direct his rage, Matti had had to sedate Enzo to calm him down, which hadn’t put him in a better mood upon waking and had left them down a man when people started throwing home-made bombs at the Barricade in the middle of the night.

  ‘Are you upset he’s hurt?’ Sasha asked, incredulous. That was not like Enzo at all, and apparently was the wrong assumption because Enzo turned the glare on him.

  ‘I’m upset that apparently he was right all along and he’s not fucking infected and we’ve had him dying in a fucking cage for two days! He’s sick and you’re fucking letting him die!’ He waved a hand at the cage and the huddled figure wrapped in a blanket, unconscious. Anna whined in protest and he gave his fingers back to her.

  ‘We couldn’t know he wasn’t,’ Sasha argued, but mostly because it was the rules and as the leader he had to enforce the rules even when he didn’t agree with them. It was a new thing for him, discovering he didn’t really like rules.

  He definitely hadn’t agreed with this. He hadn’t thought Ioane was infected, and now it seemed he was right. The people they’d encountered weren’t sick, and they hadn’t given anything to Jett besides a hole in the side, a lot of bruises and a headache.

  ‘It’s forty-eight hours. Do we all agree he’s clean?’ Sasha looked between them and waited until both nodded then unlocked the cage. Jett stirred, rolling from his blanket to his knees and blearily watching him open the door.

  ‘What …’ His voice was rough and scratchy. It sounded painful. He looked frightfully small all of a sudden and Sasha was wary of hurting him further.

  ‘You’re fine,’ Sasha reassured him, moving to his side and wincing at the heat under his hand when he pressed it to Jett’s forehead. He was burning.

  ‘Told you,’ Jett grumbled as he jerkily stood and went to walk past him but stumbled instead. He would have face planted, but Sasha easily tugged him back and Jett fell into the curve of his arm. His eyes closed and he mumbled something unintelligible, limp and unconscious in Sasha’s embrace.

  ‘Definitely not infected,’ Matti admitted, eyes sharp as he took in the signs of illness.

  Scooping him up, Sasha went immediately to the stairs, Matti striding ahead of him, Enzo cleaning up the mess they were leaving behind, bellowing up the stairs at them that if he died it was on them. Sasha couldn’t deny it, and wasn’t sure Enzo would survive it if that happened. It was too familiar, watching his partner stabbed. Seeing them in the cage.

  Anna found a muddy puddle and rolled around happily, staying to ‘help’ Enzo.

  They took him to the bathroom first. Jett woke briefly when they were struggling to get him out of his soiled clothes, but passed out again not long after Sasha put him under the hot water. With the dirt washed away his bruises stood out in stark relief against his sick pallor and they rushed to get him cleaned and dry.

  Wrapped in a towel, Sasha carried Jett to the infirmary and lay him on the bed, helping Matti cut off the old bandage and once again clean out the infected wound. Matti checked for other injuries but found nothing significant.

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘He’s sick,’ Matti muttered, getting an antibiotic and fluids from the cupboard and hooking up an IV line. ‘But he’ll be fine.’

  They dressed him in a simple black singlet and underwear, wrapped him in blankets and turned the lights off, leaving only a lamp by the desk on.

  ‘I’m going to need you to ask Moscow for more medical supplies … not that they’ll send any, but no harm in asking.’

  Since Enzo was cleaning up downstairs and Matti went to pace out his frustrations on the top of the wall with a packet of cigarettes, Sasha went to his room and raided his bookshelf for Russian classics. He settled on Dead Souls and headed back to the infirmary.

  Pulling a chair over to the bedside, Sasha settled in, checked the door was closed and started to read. He had no idea why. Reading was another of those activities that allowed him to escape his own thoughts, much like drawing or running. On some level he hoped Jett could hear him and find the low mumble of his words soothing even if he didn’t understand them at all.

  At some point in the afternoon, while he had his head resting on his palm and his elbow firmly planted on the side of the bed, he peeked around his arm and realised Jett was staring at him.

  ‘Hey,’ he put the book down on the bed and smiled, reaching out to brush the damp strands from Jett’s forehead. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Hot,’ Jett mumbled. ‘Why’d you stop?’

  ‘It’s a little embarrassing when you’re awake,’ Sasha admitted.

  ‘I like it,’ Jett whispered, his voice crackling and breathing strained. ‘Like y
our voice.’

  Sasha grabbed a towel from the cupboard and used it to wipe the sweat from Jett’s face and chest, amused when Jett feebly tried to slap his hands away and pull the blanket back up. Giving in, Sasha tucked him back into his cocoon and quietly picked the book up and resumed reading. Jett’s eyes fluttered closed and his breathing evened out again. It was impossible to say when he fell asleep so Sasha continued reading.

  Matti came to get him for dinner and Sasha gratefully ate and took first watch, since they were down to a three man team again. The longer shifts weren’t terrible and he spent his in the lighthouse while it rained, watching the town below for signs of life. It was disconcerting that he saw nothing, knowing now that there were people moving below and he had no idea what they were up to.

  ‘What do you think they’re doing?’

  Enzo was in the lighthouse. Sasha almost choked on the air he inhaled too quickly. Enzo stood there staring at him, coffee in hand, offering him a second cup. Sasha took it gratefully and looked hard at the town, trying not to let it show that he was excited to see Enzo there. It was a small sign of recovery and he clung to it.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t seen that many people in a long time. Certainly not armed.’

  ‘I can’t believe they had grenades. Guns, yeah, but where’d they get their arsenal?’

  It certainly hadn’t been from the Barricade, or nearby towns. They had to have come from the south, but where remained as much a mystery as their purpose.

  ‘We’re going to have to find out,’ Sasha remarked. He’d already sent a report to Moscow but was yet to hear back. If they’d intended to take action he suspected they would have responded already, which meant they were on their own unless things escalated dramatically. It was unlikely they would risk sending a helicopter once winter set in.