The Icelings are long gone, and some of us are rushing after them, while some are lingering, moving real slow, as though they don’t want to stray too far from the vessel that might be the only thing that can take us back to anything resembling what we used to think of so fondly as “home.” Stan and Emily and I shove our way through, leaving the stragglers behind without a second look. Not because we pity or disdain them, but because we’re afraid that if we pay them too much attention we might start to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and start to do it too. At least that’s what I’m worried about, so I keep my head down and push forward.
Cursing myself for all the times I felt scared on this trip, because apparently I had no idea what “scared” meant back then, I look back at the boat so I can memorize exactly where it is, exactly where it’ll be waiting for us. I see the captain walking around the second level, scanning the craft for stragglers. He wanders the deck, checking behind benches, and then he ducks down into the stairwell and repeats the process on the first level before heading back toward the gangplank. And then he raises the gangplank and then the anchor. The Icelings are running around and pairing up. They’re moving their arms and then standing very still.
“Oh my god, Stan!” I shout, pointing to the ferry, my head swimming with lightning and feeling like I might throw up.
“Hey!” shouts Stan. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t leave!”
We’re screaming at him, pleading until our throats are raw, but the captain only works to abandon us faster. Some Icelings run through and around us, and we jump back and stumble, startled. The anchor is up, and the captain begins to pull away as the Icelings assemble up ahead, and they stand still, and they sway. People are calling out to their siblings, and some are trying to grab hold of them, but nobody can keep any hands on them; they’re in the wind. They’re up ahead.
And I’m just staring at the ferry, only registering this in the back of my mind, because what used to be in the back of my mind has now crawled its way to the front. It’s the only thought I can hold right now. In that it’s gripped me, completely.
“Stan,” I say. “They probably knew about the boat. Or even arranged it.”
“Who knew about it?” Emily says. “Who arranged it?”
“The government,” Stan says, his voice flat and dead.
“What? What are you talking about? What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?” Emily’s eyes go wild.
“What I mean is that if we made it this far, it’s probably because the government—whoever in the government believes our brothers and sisters are monsters—wants us to have made it this far. If we weren’t supposed to be on that boat, we wouldn’t have been on it. If that guy hadn’t been instructed otherwise, he’d be waiting right there for us, to take us safely back to shore, just like we paid him to. And if for some reason we had decided not to get on that boat, I’m pretty sure something really terrible, maybe involving bullets, would have happened to us.”
Meanwhile, everyone else has just noticed that the ferry’s gone.
“Hey!” they shout.
“Hey, come back!” they shout.
“Are you SERIOUS, man? You can’t do that! COME BACK!” they shout, they plead.
“We’ll die here! You can’t leave us here! It’s freezing!” they scream.
“Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God, we’re gonna die,” they cry. They fall down around each other. Four people have fallen into the sea and are trying to get out. I can’t imagine they won’t freeze. Did they think they could swim to the freighter that ferried us over as it sails itself away?
“Jesus, people,” says a voice of reason. “Get it together. What’d you think would happen? We came out here for them. We came to help them.”
“What about us?” comes another voice, and I know I need to calm and quiet that voice right away or else everything will fall apart in a way that’s worse than I’ve yet to imagine.
“Hey!” I shout. “HEY. Look at them. They’ve spent their whole lives quiet, locked up inside themselves, away from home! We get to live in the world. We know our parents are our parents and our friends are our friends.”
Emily, standing next to me, takes a step forward. “We get to make out and drive cars, and when people say things to us, we know what they’re talking about!” she shouts. “The least we can do is finish what we started.”
We’re answered with nothing but grumblings and panicked whines.
“THE WAY I see it,” shouts Bobby to anyone who’s calm enough to listen, “all we need to do is get enough people to start moving after the Icelings, and everyone else will follow. The longer we stand around, the more time people will have to freak out and worry and come up with reasons to just stand around here and freeze to death.”
He’s right, I think. I make to turn to the Icelings, to spot them so we can follow them, but they’re all gone. While we were all yelling, they lit out for parts unknown that were calling to them like home.
“Damn it,” says Stan, seeing what I’m seeing, which is everything but our siblings. “Let’s do it. Now. They can follow us, or they can stay here and freeze, but we need to go now.”