‘Did I fix the … I am not your handyman.’ Matti sniffed, watching the lighthouse turn and scowling as if it had offended him. ‘Enzo fixed it. I suggested blowing a bigger hole in it, but he suggested you wouldn’t appreciate the solution.’
‘No kidding.’ Sasha rolled his eyes. Matti’s solution to almost everything involved explosives, but that was what made him useful. He’d built quite the small empire of mines on the southern side of the Barricade to ensure none of the infected could get close while they were sleeping. Nearby districts had borrowed him to install the same defences along their own southern sides. Having a chemist on the team came in handy.
The first sprinkle of something that might become rain misted against his face and Sasha pushed himself off the wall and forced himself to head for the door, aware of Matti putting out his cigarette and following.
‘We got any soup left?’
‘You cooked any soup yet?’ Matti countered and Sasha sighed. They were waiting for him to cook, which wasn’t a terrible thing considering nothing Matti made was usually edible but Enzo was the better cook. When he wasn’t drunk. And yeah okay, Sasha was cooking.
‘Fine,’ he grumbled, wanting to go curl up under his blankets and sleep, but if he took first watch and cooked he would get to sleep through the midnight shift and that wouldn’t be the worst thing that had happened that week by far.
‘You happy with potato and leek?’ He pulled the door open and sighed in pleasure at the wave of warmth that washed over him. The heaters were working, at least.
‘Have I ever complained about anything you make?’ Matti shuffled in behind him and pulled the door closed while Sasha brushed the water from his boots and hung his coat up on the hooks provided.
The tower was ten stories high with a large single room or two on each floor and a spiral stairway that led down through the levels. Made of stone, concrete, steel and nano-tech, the Barricade was nearly impenetrable. In the first years assaults had been made against it, primarily by the Germans and the Chinese, but breaches were largely unsuccessful. The Russians had laced the wall with a rare type of boron nitrite that had been found in Siberia. So far, nothing had broken it. After those first few years no one had time to try, their battles turned inwards in the global attempt to stop the spread of the Infection. Wholly unsuccessful.
The top floor was a war room, its shelves stocked with weapons to be easily accessible to the top of the Barricade. The first floor was similarly stocked. The ninth floor was the kitchen and living space and Sasha was not surprised to find the fire burning, Enzo sprawled out in front of it, appearing buried beneath a massive fluffy throw rug. Only said rug was breathing and lifted its head to stare at him with bright eyes when they entered the room, whining softly but not bothering to get up.
‘Hey, Anna,’ Sasha acknowledged the large white Samoyed and she huffed loudly and licked Enzo’s chin. Dogs were encouraged on the Barricade, especially if they could find their way around the mines outside, but they had to be fed from team rations, so larger dogs were rare. Sasha had no idea where Anna had come from; she’d been there when he arrived at District Six-Six-Six.
‘Get some sleep, I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready and it’s your shift,’ Sasha said softly to Enzo. The large man didn’t respond, his eyes remained closed and his chest settled into a familiar rhythm.
Matti sat at the table with one of the many books he’d scavenged from the town library while Sasha made a large pot of potato and leek soup, cutting the vegetables into small chunks and boiling them before mashing them and returning them to the stove to simmer into a soft, mushy mess. He tossed in some garlic at the last minute in the hope it might help ward off illness. The last thing they needed while they were down a man was the flu.
‘Wake him up, this is ready.’ Sasha started filling their bowls with the steaming soup while Matti went and kicked Enzo awake, watching him splutter and curse before grabbing a deer bone from the freezer to give Anna. Ines had spotted the deer while scavenging north a few months ago and it had fed them for weeks. They still had several bones left for Anna, which was helping stretch their supplies before the last shipment would arrive before winter. If they could manage to get another deer, they would be set.
‘Smells good,’ Enzo acknowledged, sitting heavily on one of the chairs at the table and inhaling deeply. He didn’t seem drunk anymore, which was good. He was a quirky looking man, with a head of out of control black curls, a nose that was far too crooked for him to have been born that way and a mouth that seemed too large for his face. But he was ruggedly handsome, according to the women who had fawned over him before his compulsory service. Sasha suspected that had more to do with his Italian charm and the fact he was built like a Mediterranean god, all thick corded muscle and naturally dark tan with a perpetual smirk to match his sense of humour. Women from the town sometimes approached them in the summer months, hoping to seduce their way into citizenship north of the Barricade, but they always wanted Enzo and he wasn’t to be fooled.
Enzo was usually the life of the team, but the loss of Ines had hit him hard. He would bounce back and Sasha was simply trying to give him the space to deal with the loss in his own way. In the meantime he was a pain in the arse.
The soup was good, better than Sasha had expected and he felt warmed and satisfied when he reached the bottom of his bowl. There was enough for seconds because he’d made enough for four out of habit, but Sasha let Matti and Enzo share it and left the dishes to Matti, who volunteered to take the first shift so Enzo could sleep the last of the alcohol off.
Sasha went downstairs to the third floor and checked the communication unit but there were no messages from Moscow. Only the sergeant had access to it, and he could only send a message to one place. Sasha thought that was stupid, but he wasn’t paid to design the Barricade or decide how things worked. He was only paid to check the small screen for any messages Moscow might choose to send. The last message he’d sent was to inform them that Ines was dead. He’d heard nothing since. Not even an acknowledgement of their loss. It hurt to understand how superfluous they were.
The fourth floor was an infirmary, but they’d taken Ines’ body from the freezer last week and finally buried him north of the Barricade and the room was sterile and abandoned, so Sasha left it that way, heading past the fifth floor storage units to the sixth floor where his room was. Floors six and eight held two living spaces each, while floor seven was a communal bathroom and laundry. Ines and Enzo had shared the eighth floor while Matti and Sasha shared the sixth, but Sasha wasn’t sure how Enzo would handle sharing with whoever was sent out to replace Ines. Time would tell.
His room was well lived in; the bed was old larch wood with a series of scratches along the base from Anna scrambling on and off over the years. He had a simple desk and chair and a large bookshelf that held a wide selection of books, and a pile of art books he liked to draw in when they had downtime. He was tempted to sketch something because the day had been boring and long, but he could draw on shift and knew he should sleep while he could.
He grabbed a spare blanket from the small corner closet and tossed it on the end of his bed, in case the temperature dropped dramatically in the night. The heat was on, but once the snow started it had a habit of freezing the lines.
Sleep came faster than he had expected.
‘You’re up?’ Matti called through the door, knocking heavily to make sure Sasha woke.
‘I’m up,’ Sasha agreed, voice sounding too loud in the dead of the night. He forced his legs over the side of the bed so he wouldn’t be tempted to flop back onto the pillow and right back to sleep. The floor was freezing and his toes curled in protest while he scrounged for his boots, shoving his double-sock clad feet into them hurriedly and moving for the door.
Matti’s door was already closed, the light off. Sasha stomped his way upstairs to the bathroom and washed his face with icy water to wake up, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His long lashes were casting dark sha
dows across the hollows of his face. He looked tired, not from lack of sleep but by time. Hardened by life on the Barricade under a communist regime that remained inescapable while the rest of the world stumbled under the grief of the loss of its plagued millions. His thoughts were morbid and reflected in his face. The loss of Ines had hit him harder than he liked to admit. He’d started to believe they really were invincible, that the team would survive and one day retire somewhere in the western fjords. He’d started to believe there were happy endings to be had.
He dried his face and hurried upstairs to the kitchen, putting on the kettle to make a cup of instant coffee to keep him awake, then went to the lighthouse to watch the spotlights turn in endless circles.
It was almost two in the morning when something caught his attention. It wasn’t in the lines of light swirling across the landscape, but in the shadows trailing behind, the barest flicker of something that niggled at his senses. He flicked the alarm, a quiet thing that would sound in their bedrooms and wake the others, but didn’t wait for them to arrive, heading to the Armoury. He pulled his armour on and grabbed his rifle, heading for the walkway along the Barricade to get a better look at what was going on below.
The lights were on at the District Six-Six-Five tower in the distance, but Sasha couldn’t see any movement. He turned his gaze toward the town and let his instincts take over, drawing his gaze into the shadows.
A loud scream split the stillness, filled with sorrow and longing. Desperation. Sasha drew his rifle up and stared down through the scope, letting his hearing track the sound to a small courtyard behind one of the houses. A lone figure knelt in the dirt, crying up at the lightning crackling through the clouds.
‘Shoot it,’ Enzo sneered, rifle hanging against his chest while he gripped the wire and stared down at the town, following Sasha’s line of sight.
‘It’s sick,’ Matti pointed out. It was an old argument. There was no cure, and it seemed kinder to put them out of their misery than to flail for a few more days in pain until the sickness ate their insides. That didn’t make it any easier and each kill weighed down Sasha’s soul. If he died tomorrow he knew the judges scales would slam down on one side and topple him into the abyss.
Sasha pulled the trigger and watched the woman fall face first into the dirt, the night returning to its stillness. For a few seconds.
A small group of scrambling, lost Infected scattered from the shadows, startled by the shot and ran at the Barricade, their pained screeches annihilating the quiet as they threw themselves at the heavy iron doors. An explosion rocked the hard dirt below when one wandered over one of Matti’s mines and the ill-fated group scattered momentarily, causing another to step on another mine … Such pointlessness left Sasha feeling drained.
Sometimes the sense of inevitability left him so lonely he wanted to step off the edge. Then he remembered Matti and Enzo and stepped back.
‘Well, that’s just great.’ Enzo shifted back and pulled up his rifle, moving closer to the tower for a cleaner line of sight and firing into the group.
‘What are they doing?’ Matti stepped away, looking over the northern side of the Barricade where a light was making its way along the base of the wall, coming across from District six-six-five.
‘It’s the resupply,’ Sasha cursed. They should have guessed as soon as they saw the lights on with no-one manning the top; they were downstairs unloading.
‘Enzo, take care of this lot,’ Sasha indicated the infected at the wall base and headed back to the tower, aware of Matti following. They kept their armour on, hurrying down through the levels to the ground floor, arriving before the truck and quickly clearing the north side gates before opening the heavy steel-plate doors. Aware of the screeching on the southern side growing fainter as their numbers dwindled.
They did a hurried sweep of the area surrounding the doors but found no signs of life besides the truck churning its way down the muddy road. It pulled up by the gates and two men climbed down and wandered into the night. The protection detail. Three others jumped off the truck, which was unusual; usually there were only two, but they were in need of extra hands so Sasha didn’t bother to ask about the oddity. He went to the back of the truck, grabbed the first box labelled six-six-six and took it inside.
‘Thanks,’ the truck leader called out, raising a hand before he too grabbed a box.
‘No problem.’ Sasha didn’t see how it required thanks. It was their supplies.
There were a lot of boxes, mostly food and ammunition. It was the last supply they would receive before winter. They hadn’t unloaded half of it when the rain came, heavy and freezing and blowing sideways. It sank into their clothes and left them frozen to the bone, shaking and shivering while they struggled to move it all inside.
‘Trouble on the south side?’ The truck leader asked when they put down boxes at the same time. Sasha looked at the opposite sealed gate and sighed, nodding as he listened to the steady shots coming down from the top of the wall. Enzo was consistent, as ever.
‘Guess they were drawn in by the lights.’
‘Yeah, the gate was frozen shut on Six-Five, took us a while to get it loose. I’m Kirkov, anyway. I’m new on this section.’
‘Welcome to the Ukraine.’ Sasha shook hands. ‘I’m Stepanova.’
‘I know,’ Kirkov grinned. ‘You guys are kind of famous. One of the lowest turnovers on the Barricade, highest number of kills … one of the lowest insurgency areas now. People are terrified of this section.’
‘Doesn’t stop people from trying,’ Sasha observed as a shout came from one of the sentries. Gunfire crackled through the thunder.
‘No, but we haven’t been mobbed on this trip yet. Just these small groups trying to get supplies off the truck.’
‘Any success?’ Sasha enquired, squinting through the rain as the gunfire got heavier. ‘Keep unloading!’ Sasha ordered Matti, grabbing his rifle and following Kirkov to the rear of the truck to take a guard position. The sentries were falling back toward the vehicle, still shooting into the rain, and through the haze Sasha could make out figures fanning out around them.
‘Ioane!’ Kirkov shouted to the other man unloading boxes and he immediately dropped what he was carrying and stepped up. He was small and moved smoothly, almost eerily quiet, though why it caught his attention Sasha couldn’t say. He slipped past them, unarmed, and rushed into the rain, becoming another shadow in the heavy sleet. Sasha couldn’t explain why a shiver went through him, or why he suddenly felt colder.
Screams came from the wet dark, but Kirkov seemed unperturbed. He moved to grab another box and took it into the loading area. Sasha looked from the rain to the truck and back and hesitantly followed suit, grabbing another box and continuing to unload the truck while the screams echoed from the surrounding fields.
‘This has happened before?’
‘This is the fourth time this trip,’ Kirkov acknowledged. ‘But we’ve been out here three weeks now, we don’t have many more districts. Just have to get to Six-Eighty and then we’re going back up the highway for a resupply before doing the last twenty.’
‘Have attacks on supplies been increasing?’ Sasha hefted a box of medical supplies, taking more care than he had with the boxes marked food. Spilled rice they could handle, unsterile equipment could mean death.
‘I suppose? There are more reports, but they always increase this time of year. Rumours are this winter will be worse than usual and it’s freaking people out. I guess the truck seems an easy target, worth the reward if you can manage it.’ Kirkov put his box down carefully and drew the collar of his coat up in a feeble attempt to stop the rain trickling down the back of his neck and into his clothes beneath. Sasha didn’t bother; being wet had never troubled him.
‘I thought the whole point of communism was everyone got the same things,’ Matti dryly observed when they got back to the truck. He’d climbed in and was checking the last few boxes, making sure they didn’t miss any.
‘It’s one
thing to assure people everyone’s allowed the same, it’s another to make it happen,’ Kirkov responded. ‘Especially in the isolated areas where the infrastructure’s not there, and what little there is, is getting old and needs repair. Down here, so close to the Barricade? People get forgotten.’
‘So give someone that job,’ Sasha grumbled, annoyed because he’d been assigned a military position that sent him to the Ukraine-Russian border to watch the same stretch of wall for seven years. He lived with the same three people and had no breaks from the monotony and he’d never complained. Surely someone who got to live in town and was assigned the job of making the heat work could do the same.
But it was far more complicated than that, they all knew. With the Infection, resources had been needed to keep people healthy and scientific efforts had been turned toward a cure or immunisation instead of forwarding technology. The crops were smaller each year, the weather grew worse and more extreme and desperation did strange things to the mind.
Sasha collected one of the last boxes and carried it inside, waiting at the gate for Matti to do the same while Kirkov did one last check of the truck before closing it up and coming to say farewell.
‘Good luck with the winter.’
‘Same to you,’ Sasha acknowledged, aware of Kirkov’s men returning to the truck and of a strange disquiet in the rain, the screams having stopped. Only the sound of the pelting sleet remained, no-one battering at the southern gate.
‘If you need assistance further down the wall just send up a flare. We’ll provide cover from the top,’ Sasha offered and Kirkov visibly relaxed.
‘That would be appreciated.’
‘They’re probably awake from all the ruckus anyhow. Paraklov will appreciate the shooting practice.’ Matti rummaged for a cigarette and Kirkov’s eyes lit up.
Barricade Page 3
