Barricade

by Lindsey Black

  ‘But you need to talk to them, right?’ Jett shifted his pack on his shoulders and gripped the straps just above his lean waist. He didn’t seem at all hindered by the wound in his side, nor by the amount of blood Matti had taken.

  ‘I do, I just …’ Feel lost. For the first time in his life, Sasha wasn’t sure what he was doing. The right thing had always been what was best for Russia, but the world had changed, suddenly and irrevocably.

  He had changed.

  Jett’s hand slid into his and squeezed his fingers, pulling them to a stop. He was patient, waiting until Sasha looked down at him and relaxed because it was impossible to stay tense when someone was looking at you like that. As if you were the world instead of a grain of sand buried in a beach.

  ‘It’s okay to not know what to do.’

  ‘I think it’s kind of my job, actually.’ But somehow it was funny and Jett smiled when he laughed, which felt amazing and went a long way toward helping him stop grinding his teeth with frustration.

  ‘It’s better to be unhappy,’ Jett told him sternly. Sasha blinked at him, dumbfounded.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not.’ Was he unhappy? Was he dumping him? What the hell was going on and why was Jett smiling about it?

  ‘It’s better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise,’ Jett told him in Russian and Sasha could only marvel that the man was there, and real, and cared enough that he’d learnt Russian so he could read Sasha’s favourite book and quote it to him in times of mental breakdown.

  ‘The Idiot,’ Sasha exhaled all of his uncertainty and laughed.

  ‘It’s a very good book,’ Jett assured him. ‘A bit weird and morbid, sort of like you.’

  Sasha squinted at him, certain he had just been insulted but finding he didn’t care. He loved the book. He loved Jett. He loved that Jett saw echoes of themselves in the words.

  ‘The idiot devil, hmmm?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Jett agreed, laughing outright now, loud and filled with delight. The sound echoed off the stone and slid across the snow and in the distance Anna howled in response.

  ‘Your pronunciation is terrible,’ Sasha assured him and Jett only laughed harder as he started walking again, quickly falling into the rhythm together.

  They reached District Six-Six-Seven and Nieminen was waiting at the door.

  ‘This can’t be good. Two visits in as many days, you taking people into your tower, and now all that movement going on down below.’

  ‘Movement?’ Sasha glanced down but couldn’t see anything. ‘How much?’

  ‘A very abnormal amount,’ Nieminen said plainly. Sasha noticed he had his armour on. Either they’d been in town to check it out for themselves or they already understood the threat was real.

  ‘Let’s go inside, I need to show you something.’

  It was easier than he had expected, to explain everything that had happened. Nieminen looked at the slide Matti had given of Jett’s blood and its effect on infected blood. He understood the implications of the revelation of immune people, and the fact Jett was not the first. He listened and let the information sink in and when Sasha was done he just stood there, arms crossed, contemplating.

  ‘They’re not going to accept our help.’

  ‘I don’t believe so, no,’ Sasha agreed. ‘There’s too much blind hate involved.’

  ‘But you’ve done nothing to them,’ Jett grumbled. Sasha suspected he was angry his father wasn’t taking his side in the way he wanted. That his father apparently cared more about Jett’s blood than his son. No one would fault him for his anger.

  ‘People aren’t rational,’ Nieminen explained. ‘Not when they’ve lost everything. It’s all very black and white to them. Russia is evil, everything else is good. To them we’re just part of the regime, all working for the devil here.’ He waved a hand at Sasha.

  ‘Wait, you knew they call me that? Seriously, how am I the only one who didn’t know?’

  ‘Seriously, how didn’t you know?’ Nieminen countered. ‘You’re District Six-Six-Six, it was always going to happen. Get going, I’ll tell the guys everything and wait until you’ve seen Dyogtin. We’re already in lockdown. The guys from Six-Six-Eight had another run in with the locals on their way back and we didn’t want to take any chances. I think they’ve had a few injuries so they’re not likely to play nice with the locals anytime soon, Vasiliev’s not the forgiving type.’

  ‘Are they okay?’ Sasha’s gaze immediately went to Jett’s side, but he didn’t appear to be favouring it all. It really did seem to be healing much faster than was humanly possible. Not that he was complaining, it was just weird.

  ‘Pretty sure someone got seriously hurt, but no one’s come crying for help,’ Nieminen admitted in a hushed tone. Which meant someone might be dead but they hadn’t gone to check yet.

  ‘We’ll find out if they need anything and let you know,’ Sasha reached out to clasp hands and headed back to the top floor, hoisting his pack back on and eyeing Jett dubiously.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Jett promised him. ‘My side? It’s fine, it’s healing really well. Should scab over in a day or two, you don’t need to worry about it.’

  ‘How about I decide what I’m going to worry about?’ Sasha grumbled. ‘Which will always be you, by the way. Idiot.’

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ Jett assured him. He was grinning. Sasha looked down at him and realised Jett didn’t even know that half the things that came out of his mouth were the insults five year olds would throw at you because they didn’t know any better.

  ‘I thought my life was weird,’ he grumbled, picking up the pace and shaking his head.

  ‘Huh?’ Jett was still standing there, looking up at the sky like it had answers. ‘Did I say something weird? I did, right? I mean, you said your life was weird, but you said it because you’re making fun of my life? Have I got that right?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Enzo’s been trying to teach me …’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ They were all doomed if Enzo was being deemed an educator.

  The walk was refreshing. It allowed Sasha to mull over events and his own feelings about them. He was devastated to discover Russia was the evil dictatorship Matti was always hinting at. He was crushed to know he’d had any part in it. But he was proud of the work he’d done on the Barricade. No matter who he had been working for he knew he’d kept people safe. He’d fought a war not against a country but against a virus that threatened innocent people. Poor people, living on Russia’s fringe who would never be deemed important enough for vaccination and were instead pawns used to instil fear in the population. He couldn’t resent the series of events that had perched him on the wall to watch over the small segment of land he considered home. It gave him his brothers, and recently a lover. He had friends there—family.

  He knew the things that mattered, and the things that did not. Russia had moved columns and the more steps he took along the Barricade wall the further he drew away from their tally.

  By the time they reached the next tower he felt comfortable in his skin once again. He wasn’t a puppet, Russia had never held his strings, and that hadn’t changed.

  No one greeted them at the door, but the heat was still on when they got inside. They left their packs upstairs and wandered down through the levels, finding the inhabitants of Six-Six-Eight gathered in the infirmary. It was a relief to find them all breathing, though one man was pale where he lay on the bed, the others sitting around the room. They all fell silent and turned to stare as they entered.

  ‘Stepanova,’ Vasiliev acknowledged from where he was lounging in the desk chair, halting the lazy circle he’d been spinning. He was Russian, sort of. He’d always reminded Sasha of one of those strange exotic cats with no hair and a bunch of wrinkles. Hailing from the Siberian tundra, Vasiliev was tall and lanky with a visible hunch high on his back that made his arms look like they’d been attached after the rest of him was made. His head was too small
for his wide shoulders and looked ready to topple off his long neck. His skin was loose and wrinkled despite him only being in his late thirties. A thick scar from a polar bear attack when he was a child ran from his forehead to his jaw on one side of his face. Of all the Barricade leaders, Vasiliev looked the weakest, but his strength was in his mind, evident in the eerie pale grey, milky eyes that watched him hover in their doorway.

  ‘Vasiliev. We have a lot to discuss.’

  ‘Thank you for putting the heat back on for us,’ Aibokov, one of the younger men on the Barricade cut in. ‘I’m going to go make coffee for everyone, Vasi can let me know what you all talk about. I’m guessing you’re hoping to push on from here. It’s almost dark but the storm won’t hit for a few hours, you should make it through pretty easy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sasha agreed, letting him slip by them and then going in to take his chair. It was amusing that Jett went straight to the bench to sit.

  And so he told his story again, letting them look at the slides Matti had prepared though they were more interested in what Jett had to say, asking him questions about the facility and how he knew he was immune.

  ‘We’ve already locked the tower,’ Vasiliev assured them. ‘But I’m afraid we will not aid the townspeople, if they choose to accept your help, which they won’t. We’ve been trying to help them for weeks and they’ve done nothing but hinder us. They broke the water treatment facility by the dam, so we fixed it as well as some other things and they almost killed Nurzhanov for our trouble,’ he motioned to the man on the bed who had several heavy bandages on his chest and arm and looked feverish.

  ‘An eye for an eye is not our way,’ Sasha reminded him softly, even if he understood the desire.

  ‘No, and we’re not seeking revenge,’ Vasiliev promised. ‘But we won’t offer aid either. We’ll just let them be, unless they choose to do something stupid.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sasha couldn’t expect anything more than that. He couldn’t say they’d been any different, after Ines. They’d locked the doors and ignored almost everything until the supply truck and Jett had shown up.

  They packed up the slides and got up to go.

  ‘Let me know what Kuznetsov thinks of everything. He knows how to send me a sign if he needs a hand,’ Vasiliev said quietly and Sasha nodded in agreement. He understood the need to hear others’ thoughts before making decisions. It was difficult enough to be in charge without realising everyone else was doing something different. On the Barricade they agreed on most things and when they didn’t they could usually be convinced to see other points of view. But it was Dyogtin’s opinion they all valued, and Sasha doubted Vasiliev would agree to anything unless Dyogtin agreed first.

  They were well past the lighthouse when Jett grabbed his arm, startling him, looking back at the tower with wide eyes.

  ‘What happened to his face?’

  ‘A polar bear.’ Sasha found himself laughing at the inappropriateness of it, and the horror in Jett’s expression.

  ‘He’s so … so …’

  ‘Not pretty,’ Sasha agreed, snickering. ‘But he’s a good leader, and his men respect him. He’ll do the right thing by them, always.’

  ‘It was like his skin was melting off his bones,’ Jett mumbled to himself, picking up the pace again.

  Sasha couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he followed, hurrying to fall into step at Jett’s side. He understood Vasiliev, and that was new. A few months ago he would have demanded Vasiliev follow the mandate and do what had to be done to help the people. Before Ines, he’d been much more by the book. After Ines all he could think of was what it would do to him to lose anyone else.

  ‘Kiss me.’

  Jett didn’t even ask why, just did.

  21

  C-SGTM-NREBUD670-21320043

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Sergei stood on the stairs, frozen, staring at the man sprawled out in his living room, white dog lazing all over his favourite cushions.

  ‘Sitting on your couch?’

  ‘You’re a good forty k’s from home, Montegro! Get your mutt off my chair!’ He sat heavily on the other couch and toed Anna with his boot but the beast didn’t move, just stared at him with her tongue lolling out of her gaping mouth. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Escaping the tyrant! Can you believe he expected me to …’

  Sergei just sighed and tried to be patient. Ines was getting the hang of his new Sergeant, but the transition had been hard. Ines didn’t like change. Most on the Barricade didn’t. And Sasha had come in as a bit of a hard-arse, but he was mellowing.

  There had to be something intangible that controlled the world. Fate or a higher power, or just irony as a sentient monster with a terrible sense of humour. Sergei didn’t know, or care really, but there had to be something. Because the storm rolling in blackened the sky, the pregnant clouds hung low enough to graze the parapet and steamy fog rolled off the earth below in folding banks that slunk their way higher and higher up the sides of the Barricade. The tower sat, isolated and frigid in the dark, the lights from the other towers muted against the harsh glare of the forked lightning that shattered the night in wild lances of electricity.

  And then the rain hit and visibility went the way of the southern end of the world. Sergei sat in the lighthouse and used the scope of his sniper’s rifle to observe the people in the town trying to move about in the growing tempest. They were using the storm as coverage, shifting things from one warehouse to another, and then another, ferrying.

  Nikotaev always slammed the lighthouse door when he came through; it was how Dyogtin could tell who came in. Lebedev was near silent, and Saami was a normal human being and made enough noise to know he was there but didn’t break it from its hinges.

  ‘This storm is brutal!’ Nikotaev grumbled, squeezing through the hatch and sitting beside Sergei on the bench between the lights. With two of them the place felt small and cramped, but the warmth was welcome.

  ‘They’re using it to their advantage.’ Sergei pointed to the flickering lights of the warehouses over to their right and let Nikotaev take a closer look through the scope. The grunt echoed his own sentiments exactly.

  ‘So many years now, it has to be several generations and they still think they’ll be the ones to change something. Make it through, or break the Barricade or hell, I don’t even know what.’

  ‘Everyone needs a purpose.’ Wasn’t that why they were there? Even being assigned to the Barricade was something, a reason to get up in the morning and follow a routine. At the end of the day at least they lay down and could say they’d done something, even if that something was the same thing as every day before. There was a reason to their madness.

  ‘Yeah, but their purpose is suicide. It’ll never happen.’

  ‘Said everyone right before something happened.’ Which it was going to, obviously.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s going to end badly for them. Russia always wins. That’s not going to change. We’re on the Barricade. They’re on the ground. There’s just no way.’

  ‘But they don’t believe that,’ Sergei argued, mostly because he agreed with Nikotaev. It was suicide. All the people in that town were going to die. Only, Sergei didn’t believe it because they were on the Barricade, even though that made it a certainty. He believed it because he’d sat in the showers a decade ago and watched a river of blood run down the drains, worried Stepanova was seriously hurt. But in the end there wasn’t a scratch on the man, his Q-hab suit had never been breached, and Sergei had helped burn the dead the next day.

  He’d never seen so much death, and afterward he’d stopped worrying about Stepanova.

  The Barricade wasn’t what would kill the people below, their own stupidity would. Had already, the moment they didn’t listen to the stories about the devil. No one survived these districts, no-one passed through the Ukraine border. The people down there were just dead men walking, too blinded by dreams that the world could change just because they wanted it to.<
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  As if people changed the world. Ideas changed things, and the soldiers on the Barricade had nothing better to do all day than think of very strange ideas.

  ‘Did you find what we needed?’

  ‘Of course.’ Nikoteav nudged him and Sergei had to admit it was a stupid question. Nikotaev wouldn’t be there if they weren’t finished with the job. He never left a thing undone.

  ‘No-one saw you?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Lebedev led, and he borrowed Blanter. That kid is sneaky as fuck. I like him. Lebedev wants to keep him.’

  Of course he did. Sergei chuckled as he checked the goings on below, watching them ferret across the fields as if the rain would hide them, disappearing into abandoned mine shafts like rats.

  ‘Only four men to a team, you know that.’

  ‘Yeah, but we could just tell Moscow he died and set him up on a couch or something.’

  That won a laugh from him and it took minutes for the bellows to die down. His eyes were still watering when he dared look at Nikotaev’s hopeful expression.

  ‘I’m sure his family would love that.’

  ‘He’s Russian, he hasn’t got any family.’

  That was sadly true. But still, reporting people as dead wasn’t really a road Sergei wanted to travel. He was old though, so getting into trouble didn’t really bother him. Maybe if they kept pushing him he’d consider it.

  ‘He lives in the next tower. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to work together.’ He rolled his eyes because really, old men were stupid. And they were all getting old.

  ‘What if Anishin gets him killed?’

  ‘Anishin’ll get himself killed.’ But Sergei was laughing again and it felt good. Movement caught his eye and when he looked past their tower to the stretch of Barricade beyond he saw someone sprinting across the top.

  ‘Who the hell’s out in this weather?’

  ‘They’re fast …’ Sergei didn’t think anyone from Six-Eight could run that fast, and the first figure was too small to be one of them. Another, taller figure wasn’t far behind the first, though they kept slipping in and out of sight as the rain came in waves.