He shrugs. He says, “It is what it is, Lorna.”
And I don’t have anything to say to that, because take one look around us. Look at Callie and Ted in the backseat, asleep. Look at the Icelings in the cars moving alongside us, some of them reaching out from their backseat perches, hands pawing at their windows toward the windows of other cars that probably contain their brothers and sisters, whom they haven’t seen since my father found them and ripped them apart in the name of rescuing them. I turn and look back to the cop cars behind us, to where we saw the family way back when, a couple of centuries ago, it seems, but it’s really only been, like, thirty minutes. The way time passes out here, the way time seems to keep expanding and contracting in alternating fits of bad dreams and sparks of hope . . .
Just take one look around us. He’s right.
MY SHIFT IS up, so we pull over at a gas station because finally Bobby needs fuel. We pull up at opposite pumps, and the three of us—Stan, Bobby, and I—get out of the cars while our Icelings stay inside, looking longingly at the road leading back up to the on-ramp.
“Can I tell him what you said?” I ask Stan, and Bobby shoots us a questioning look.
“I don’t see why not,” Stan says.
“After we passed the checkpoint,” I start, “Stan said that we were like . . . sheep. You know. Sheep heading to the slaughter.” The gas pump makes a struggling sound and then clicks off, so I remove the nozzle and secure the gas cap. When I turn back to Bobby, he’s looking at me like I just slaughtered his favorite sheep right in front of him. “What?” I say. “He has a point. That was way too easy.”
“I mean,” Bobby starts, then stops. “Listen,” he starts again. “They know what we’re up to. Stan’s right, we’d be stupid to think they don’t know what we’re up to with all these Icelings. They know more than we do, I’m sure. They know that we’re taking them somewhere, and they also know exactly where they’re taking us. They—the government—they’re letting this happen. They’re letting us do this.”
“So . . . how is that not something to completely lose our minds over?” Stan says.
“I don’t know,” Bobby says. “But we’re still standing here, right? We’re still okay. They had a wide-open shot at us—a shot to wipe all of them out—and they didn’t take it. But you—we—need to be cautious. Those cops were going out of their way not to do anything to us. You saw that guy who collapsed when they went up to him after he hesitated at the off-ramp? I kept expecting them to just start pulling people out of cars and stomp their faces in. That would have made sense to me. But what they were doing while we drove by, pulling grown men and women from their cars and intimidating them into slumped nothings in front of their children? I mean, in a way that’s almost scarier than pistol-whipping them or beating them with their flashlights, you know? That one guy . . . he looked scared. But when you and I went through? They just stood there. Smiling hard. And moving us all along.”
“Man, Bobby,” says Stan. “Somehow you’ve managed to make everything sound even more terrifying.”
“God, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to. But regardless of how terrifying this all is, the most important thing is that they know, the government, about what’s happening here. They know where we’re headed, precisely where we’re headed, even if we don’t. That’s a fact. And it doesn’t seem like they want to harm us . . . at least not yet.”
I widen my eyes as menacingly as I can at Bobby’s last statement. “Not yet? When, pray tell, are they planning to strike, Bob?”
“I’m not trying to play mind games here, Lorna. And I don’t have, like, a cheat code for the future, or copies of any battle plans. I’m just trying to think about this as clearly as possible, from every angle I can. Even if they mean to harm us or our siblings at some point down the road, that doesn’t change anything. We have to go there anyway. Wherever we’re going, that’s where our siblings want to be, where they need to be. And now we know we won’t be alone in this—there are at least a hundred other people taking the exact same chance we are! So we know we need to be cautious and wary. But we also know we have strength in numbers and a prize to keep our eyes on. Okay? We’re here, and we’re not alone. None of us. Not now.”