Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  ‘We’ll never find the northern entrance,’ Jett agreed. ‘But someone has to have an idea of where the southern entry is.’

  Warm lips pressed against his temple and when Jett turned he found Sasha nose to nose with him, eyes impossibly blue. His own eyes slid closed as Sasha’s mouth closed over his and for a brief moment the whole world seemed to fall completely silent. The cold disappeared, replaced with warmth breath and wet tongues. His fingers tangled in the soft material of Sasha’s thermal top in his efforts to push the cloth aside and then he stroked warm skin. Palms flat against hard abdominals, Jett slid his hand over foreign flesh in a daze, pulling back when Sasha gasped and squirmed at his touch.

  ‘Your hands are freezing,’ Sasha gasped, his hands covering Jett’s through his shirt and holding them in place to warm them up.

  ‘Well, it’s freezing,’ Jett reasoned, and when he opened his eyes and looked around them he realised why that was. ‘Quite literally.’

  The lighthouse was shrouded in grey, the world gone. As the lights spun their lazy circles they lit up only dark cloud. The windows were frosted in the corners and when he leaned closer to get a better look Jett could make out the small splatter of snowflakes colliding with the glass.

  ‘It’s snowing,’ he smiled, thrilled. He loved the snow, much preferring it to rain. Rain was wet and killed you faster. At the training facility more recruits had died in autumn than all the other seasons combined. It hadn’t been the cold that killed, but the inability to escape it. Once you were wet, if you couldn’t get dry you were going to get sick and once you were sick it was game over.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Sasha noted, but when he turned to look Sasha wasn’t watching the snow. His gaze was fixed on Jett and his expression was different. He looked softer than usual, and his hands were gentle as they ran down Jett’s sides and settled on his thighs.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Sasha mumbled, leaning in to kiss him, his tongue demanding entry. Just touching the man made him desperate for more.

  ‘I can have you. Right? You said yes?’ It was cute that he was checking. It was also entirely unnecessary.

  Jett kicked the maps aside and climbed into Sasha’s lap, suddenly wanting him closer, desperate to taste him and feel his skin against his own. The cold made him recall endless winters and nights spent freezing alone, but Sasha was warm and smothering and Jett was filled with an intense longing that demanded immediate fulfilment.

  ‘Please,’ he groaned into Sasha’s mouth, not even sure what he was asking for, rubbing his suddenly aching erection against hard abs and wishing there was no cloth between them.

  ‘Shh,’ Sasha soothed, stroking the roof of Jett’s mouth with his tongue and toppling him back into the blankets. He flicked open the button on Jett’s cams with the ease of someone who wore them every day and a solid tug had them down around Jett’s calves in a tangled mess with his boots.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes from Sasha’s hands as he undid his cargos and shoved them down his thighs, freeing his erection. Jett reached out and wrapped his fingers through Sasha’s, pumping his cock, entranced as Sasha thrust his hips into their joined fists.

  ‘Jett,’ Sasha pleaded and the sound of his name in that gravelly voice made Jett’s cock twitch in response. He tried to fist them together but the cold was unkind and his hands were too rough and calloused.

  Sasha rummaged through the blankets under one of the spotlights and pulled out a small bottle of lubricant. Jett stared at it in disbelief.

  ‘What? We’re stuck up here alone for hours in the middle of the night, what do you think we all do?’

  Not that, but now that he knew Jett wasn’t going to be able to think about much else besides Sasha masturbating whenever he had watch in the lighthouse. The thought only made him hotter and he desperately grabbed the lube and wet his fingers, smearing it over their cocks in sticky stripes.

  His fingers moved smoothly on sensitive flesh, the lube warming with the friction. Sasha closed his hands around Jett’s and increased the pressure.

  ‘Sasha!’

  Sasha took his time, like the process was as enjoyable as its finish and each slide through his fists drew new fiery sensations. Jett spiralled, skin so hot in the icy air he felt fevered, breath ghosting with each pant. Sasha’s heavy gaze, fixed on him alone was as intoxicating as the rhythm they built between them.

  The world was white. His mind empty.

  Sasha thrust his hips through his orgasm, hands gentle but touch forceful as they spilled in a sticky mess between them.

  Their heavy breathing fogged the glass, which glittered with the snow that stuck to the outside of the lighthouse. Jett groaned as he tried to shift to a position that didn’t pull on his wound and Sasha immediately tried to help, manhandling Jett onto the blankets, checking him over. He looked so distraught at the small patch of blood on Jett’s bandage that Jett laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Sasha grumbled, stroking the edge of the bandage. He looked completely wrecked in the best possible way, hair a mess, a faint sheen of sweat on his flushed skin and concern scrawled on his features.

  ‘I’m not sorry,’ Jett told him sternly. And he wasn’t. He hadn’t felt that good, ever. His skin tingled and his muscles felt loose. He wanted to do it again but pulled Sasha down beside him instead and waited for his heart-rate to return to something vaguely normal.

  ‘You seem awfully pleased with yourself,’ Sasha finally managed to smile when he’d convinced himself Jett was in fact fine.

  ‘That was so fucking good,’ Jett admitted. ‘I want to do it again.’

  ‘Later,’ Sasha laughed at him, but he kissed the corner of his mouth and nibbled his lower lip and Jett didn’t care that he had to wait because it was a promise that there would be a later.

  Sasha used one of the light cleaning rags to wipe them both clean and tossed it into a bucket in the corner to deal with later before pulling up his trousers. Jett struggled to do the same, mostly because his legs still felt like jelly, but he managed.

  ‘Can’t we just stay here?’ He moaned when Sasha got up and made to leave.

  ‘Come on, before the snow gets too heavy,’ Sasha laughed at him and tugged at his arm, gentle, aware of his injury. Jett followed him down out of the lighthouse, grateful when Sasha kept the pace slow though he thought that might have had as much to do with them barely being able to see a metre in front of them than it did with Jett’s inability to go much faster. Coming down off his high, his side was really starting to hurt.

  The heat was, as ever, a shock. They hung their coats on the racks and Sasha led the way to the living room, taking the maps with him.

  ‘How’s your side?’ Raikkinen asked as soon as he spotted Jett, rising from the couch and then freezing. ‘Is that snow in your hair?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Jett waved at him but he didn’t sit down, coming to the table instead and looking at the maps Sasha laid out. He was struggling not to blush, wondering if Angelo and Raikkinen suspected what they had done in the lighthouse.

  ‘It’s snowing?’ Raikkinen asked Sasha, since Jett hadn’t answered his question.

  ‘Yeah, it’s snowing. Clouds are pretty intense, could be a pretty heavy fall overnight.’ He pointed to the map of District Six-Six-Nine where it bordered Six-Seven-Zero.

  Angelo was at the stove, stirring something that smelt suspiciously like stew, but he too leaned in closer to the table to look at the maps. Jett assumed he’d hacked off some of the deer for dinner.

  ‘You think the tunnel’s in Six-Six-Nine? Or Seventy?’

  ‘You think it’s a tunnel, too?’ Jett was startled but then sighed when they all looked at him like maybe he was a little daft.

  ‘We’ve been here a little longer than you, Pavlova,’ Raikkinen noted sardonically. ‘Why there?’

  Jett was quiet as Sasha reiterated what they had discussed, pointing out the airfield, the diversion dam and the mining areas. They each had their own speculations about the location
, but all agreed a tunnel was the only logical explanation for such an influx of people right before winter.

  ‘The attacks on the supply trucks suggest they’re not moving on,’ Raikkinen mused. ‘It’s likely we’ll have to deal with them through the winter. If they run low on food or supplies they’ll likely make an attempt on a district tower.’

  ‘No one’s getting into the Barricade,’ Angelo snorted, moving back to the stove to stir their dinner. His certainty was strangely reassuring.

  ‘If their goal is to go north, why wouldn’t they move on?’ Jett posed the question.

  ‘It’s close to winter and the nearest city is several hundred kilometres. They would also be illegals, and likely be caught and sent to a camp. That might not be terrible in summer but I doubt anyone wants to be dumped there with the first snow.’ Raikkinen sat down at the table, toying idly with the edge of the map between his long fingers.

  ‘Even so, for so many to be in town they have to have known about it for some time. Word has to have leaked out and they’ve clearly been using it if attacks are taking place on both sides of the wall.’ Sasha mulled over the idea, sitting across from Raikkinen and tugging Jett down to sit in the chair at his side. Jett didn’t miss the amused look Angelo cast their way and was silently delighted when he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Months, at least,’ Raikkinen agreed. ‘Which would suggest fleeing north is not the point of their endeavour.’

  ‘Or they were waiting for family?’ Angelo suggested, but even he didn’t seem to think that was what was going on, and he was an immigrant. His family had likely considered such options themselves, and then gone the legal route, knowing it would mean a lifetime of service for him. That had been preferable to whatever else they had considered, and Jett thought that probably said a great deal about life south of the Barricade.

  ‘If you had a tunnel under the Barricade, what would you want to do with it?’ Sasha mused, tracing a line back and forth across the heavy stripe of the wall on the map, as if he could skip backward and forward across it with a mere flick of his knuckle.

  ‘None of the interactions have been attacks, really,’ Angelo took the pot off the stove and fetched their bowls, pushing the maps aside so he could lay out cutlery. ‘They’ve either defended themselves when they thought we were too close, been trying to get supplies, or they were exploring something and ran into us, like today.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’ Jett had no idea what had happened, he’d been too busy staring at maps and trying not to tear open his wound.

  ‘Supposedly,’ Raikkinen agreed, though he didn’t sound agreeable. ‘Six-Six-Seven was running a final patrol on the district, just checking for any infected they might have missed, since the disease tends to spread during summer, and if we can eradicate it before the start of winter we can usually keep it out of the town until spring, or whenever stragglers arrive.’ Jett appreciated the attempt at catching him up, but he still didn’t ‘get it’. ‘Also, we freaked them out with our run-in, so they wanted to do a sweep. They said they ran into a woman under the overpass heading into the business district. She refused to say what she was doing there, and when the team approached her she shot at them and led them on a wild goose chase to some friends. That’s when the guys sent up the flare.’

  ‘So she definitely wasn’t infected,’ Jett clarified, because that had to be ruled out.

  ‘Infected can’t make rational decisions. They barely give coherent answers and can’t set a trap like that,’ Sasha confirmed.

  ‘You think it was a trap?’

  ‘No, not a trap, just … She knew she was in trouble and she went for help, led them straight to people who would intervene, and had the power and resources to do so.’ Sasha lay out a heat protecting pad for Angelo to put the pot of steaming stew on in the centre of the table and grabbed the ladle.

  As if summoned by the sound of ladle hitting pot, Anna came bounding up the stairs and sat at Angelo’s feet, licking her lips and whining.

  They filled their bowls, each contemplating what they knew and what they suspected, trying to figure out what could be going on. When their bowls were full, Angelo filled Anna’s as well and left her to slurp up her dinner.

  Jett found the goings on strangely personal, since they had stabbed him, and suspected the attackers felt the same since he was certain he’d killed one of them in his escape. Such things were a natural part of war, but he didn’t think they were at war. No-one had declared any such thing, and this was more guerrilla tactics for self-defence.

  ‘This is really good,’ Jett noted around a mouthful of stew, startled by the mixture of herbs on his tongue.

  ‘No shit,’ Angelo growled at him, reaching over to smack Jett on the head with his spoon. ‘I can cook, moron. I’m Italian, remember?’

  Jett did not understand what that meant, but nodded because Angelo had no idea how hard he hit, even with a spoon. His forehead was ringing. His head was still recovering from the hit it had taken in the attack.

  ‘What do humans want, other than the ability to flee north to avoid Infection?’ Angelo posed the deceptively simple question.

  Weirdly, they couldn’t say. None of them had grown up south of the Barricade, despite each of them having very different childhoods. Jett had been born in a POW camp, and then conscripted. Sasha was the epitome of the child of the revolution, a dedicated son of President and country. Raikkinen was a free man of the arctic, conscripted. Angelo the son of an immigrant willing to sell their child’s future to ensure they had one at all. It was strange, really, that four such different lives had collided in such a generic way.

  None of them could say what fuelled the thoughts of those to the south, as their nations collapsed and the populace perished.

  ‘Human necessities are food, water and shelter,’ Raikkinen reasoned. ‘All three are available here. The river is clean, or was the last I tested it a few weeks ago. The fields still grow wild potatoes to the west, and the buildings are empty by sustainable.’

  ‘Yeah, but if you could go north and have all those same things, why would you stay here, with the possibility of being infected? We’ve seen sick people here this week, so we know they haven’t been successful in keeping it out, so it’s not really safe, right?’ Angelo liked to blow on his spoon repeatedly before sucking the stew off his spoon, slurping it into his mouth and washing it around to taste before swallowing. Jett thought it was one of the most disgusting eating processes he had ever seen.

  ‘Are you eating or drinking?’ Jett really couldn’t tell.

  ‘Eat your food, Pavlova.’

  ‘I will if you will,’ Jett countered, feeling queasy just watching the man eat, if eating was even what he was doing. Jett was not convinced.

  ‘Children,’ Raikkinen scolded, clearly annoyed with them, and yet somehow also amused. The combination of emotions on his face made him look constipated but Jett was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Did the supply truck have anything of particular value on it?’ Sasha was watching him curiously and Jett paused with his spoon lifted halfway to his mouth. It was awkward, so he slowly lowered it back into the bowl while he thought about it.

  ‘I don’t know what’s normal, but I don’t think so? Most boxes looked the same; medical supplies, food, ammunition. Some of the boxes had items to replace things like blankets or equipment. There was a new radio for one district, but as far as I know the old one had its circuits fried in a storm. There was nothing that stood out as unusual.’

  ‘Except you,’ Angelo added.

  ‘Ha,’ Jett sneered, but he was pleased by the teasing. He wanted Angelo to joke with him. He needed his new partner to feel comfortable with him, to know he had his back when they went beyond the walls of the Barricade.

  ‘I think tomorrow we should take a walk and try and visit the other districts, find out what they’ve seen,’ Sasha decided.

  ‘Someone needs to stay here,’ Angelo reasoned. ‘I’d prefer it was me, and
Pav can’t walk that far yet anyway. Not unless you want to be gone a week. You guys can go and we’ll hold the fort.’

  Jett resented the assumption he couldn’t make it the distance. He could, but Angelo was right and it would take a while unless he was willing to further injure himself, which he wasn’t. If he rested he would be fully healed in a week, if he didn’t it could be months, depending on how stupid he decided to be. He didn’t bother replying though because Sasha was already nodding, acknowledging it was the best course of action.

  ‘Matti and I will go,’ Sasha agreed. ‘I’m not sure how bad this snow’s going to be. We’ll take snow shoes just in case, but if it slows us down a lot we might have to do an overnighter at one of the other towers.’

  ‘I’m sure I can survive one night without killing Pavlova,’ Angelo rolled his eyes and picked up his bowl to drink the leftover broth.

  ‘The deer needs to be cut up and put in the cellar,’ Raikkinen reminded him.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Angelo assured him. ‘I’ve already skinned and gutted and cleaned it all out, so I’ll do the cuts and wrap them in cloth tomorrow in the cellar. The snow will keep the freezer just fine.’ He got up and dumped his bowl in the sink, since he’d cooked, and abandoned the table to go play with Anna where she was sprawled on the couch looking fat and satisfied.

  ‘I’ll do the dishes,’ Raikkinen offered with a smile. ‘You should rest,’ he pointed his spoon at Jett.

  ‘I’m fine.’ He was. He was so fine he’d had sex, but he couldn’t say that. Hand sex, sure, but he still thought that counted.

  ‘You were stabbed.’

  ‘It didn’t hit anything vital, and I heal fast,’ he shrugged, not seeing what the big deal was. In a week or two it would be like it had never happened.

  ‘It got infected,’ Raikkinen reminded him, as if he had once again said something exceptionally stupid.

  ‘Because you locked me in a cage full of dirty water with no antiseptic,’ Jett reminded him, still annoyed by the whole thing. He understood why that was the protocol, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating to him when he’d been sitting in a puddle, bleeding out.