Oh God.
And then I gasp and choke back tears, because I can’t believe how stupid I am not to have seen this all along. Because this is where he found them. This is where they came from. Not some war-torn nation in Eastern Europe or the Balkans, shoved in a boat and swaddled in desperate blankets and left to drift to safety. But here, on a field of trembling ice, in a pod that pushed its way up through the ground. This is where they were born. This is where the sky turned purple and this lightning smell scarred my father and stayed with him forever. Here. Right here. Of course this is where Dad found them. The sky is just like he said, and this smell in the air, like it’s electrified, like it’s charged with something so of the earth that it’s alien, and if this quaking, trembling ground isn’t basically the definition of strange seismic and meteorological activity, then I don’t know what is.
This is where they came from. This is where and how they were born. And then I almost have to laugh because my sister is a plant person.
And then I don’t laugh, of course, not at all, because if she’s a plant person and this, right in front of me, is how she was born, then what’s happening here is that she and her Iceling siblings, they’re here to welcome the next generation.
The pods are opening more and more, and I try to speak, to tell Stan that this is it. This is what happened to them, this is where they were found. It wasn’t a boat, but the most I can get out is a whisper that I’m not sure he even hears, because like everyone else he’s just standing there, staring.
And then I hear him whisper, “This is where they came from,” and I know that he knows and everyone around us knows, even though none of us understand any of it.
We just keep staring at the field, at the pod plants rising up all shriveled and choked. I notice a few kids have their eyes trained on the sky, and then I notice one guy a few people back who’s just shaking and peeing himself. Some people are fainting, either again or for the first time. Five people turned and ran but couldn’t make it back up the hill the way they came and just sort of slid back down and slumped themselves in balls on the ground. But I’m done with that now, I think. The worst thing that can happen here is Callie dies and so do I. And at least we’ll be together.
The pods are almost all the way open now, and as they gape into a field of horrible yawns, a new ripple of fear passes through our group, and the ground, and then the ice, is finally still. They’re fully open now, and the Icelings are all closing their eyes, turning their heads away. I try to get closer to see what’s happening. I brace myself for the image I’ve been dreading ever since these pods started opening: a field of perfect, sleeping infants cradled in the maws of these weird blossoms, a flashback to what my sister must have looked like when she was born. But that’s not what I see. Not at all.
At first, I don’t see anything inside those pods. But then I squint and look closer, and what I see is dust and some gray and clingy substance that looks like mold, and then my view of them is all swallowed up by the icy air whipped up by helicopters and drones. And the Icelings . . . the Icelings are . . .
Some of them, including Callie, fall down to their knees, their mouths open in soundless howls, weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping, their tears hitting the ice and just turning to more ice. The others who aren’t wailing like this look just wrathful as hell, their faces and bodies snapping toward the ridge, where the soldiers are, like they’d like to uproot their lives. This was supposed to be the birth of a new generation, I think. They were coming here to welcome the next generation of Icelings into this world, and instead they found a hostile army and a field of dead babies. The leader closes his eyes. His whole body goes limp. Then his head snaps up, and his eyes look for someone on the ridge I can’t see. I’m holding on to Stan’s hand again, and I squeeze it, and he squeezes harder, and that’s when I see Ted.