Bobby tackles the soldier who threw the flamethrower. He punches him in the mouth, repeatedly telling him to “Stand down!”
Some of the soldiers stop now that Bobby has shown he’s serious and now that the soldier beneath him has stopped struggling back. The ones who are paying attention reach into their uniforms and put something into their ears.
“Is that why they weren’t listening?” Stan says. “They had their earpieces out?” And then I swear I hear a familiar voice coming through the earpieces of the dead soldiers I’m digging through to get to Callie, blood all over my hands and arms, screaming, “Stop that!”
And then Stan grabs me. He points. Ted’s stopped fighting. He’s got Callie behind him. And she’s got Greta and Tara. My sister is alive, and I take the biggest breath I’ve ever taken, and I let it out real slow.
The air smells like burning leaves so much it’s choking out the lightning smell. I look around and see Icelings burning, the pods burning, the things that should have been babies in them burning.
“There’s someone up there,” Emily says, pointing to the top of the hill, where that van from earlier is now parked. I look up. My whole body goes fiery hot and then freezing again, because up on that hill, standing under a military tent, wearing a fur-hooded parka and ski goggles that do nothing to hide the look in her eyes, is Jane.
She’s screaming into a walkie-talkie that she holds in one hand, and she clutches a laptop or tablet underneath her other arm. She’s stomping around and waving wildly. We’re near a valley we hadn’t noticed before, lined with trees, leading out somewhere. The hill’s maybe as high as a row house, and roughly a half block to our left. Jane’s body language tells us she is furious.
“I once had this horrible gymnastics coach,” says Emily, and I look at her like she’s just had a stroke, “who, whenever we’d go off-routine, would just pace and scream and pace and fume.”
“Uh, cool, Emily, what the hell does that have to do with us dying out here?” Stan says, the meanest I’ve ever heard him sound.
“That lady up there looks exactly like that gymnastics coach. Like everyone down there did the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in lockstep.”
“She’s right, Stan,” I say.
“Fine,” Stan says after a sulky pause. “But what the hell do we do with that? And who the hell is Jane really?” says Stan.
I’m shaking. Of course it was Jane. Of course she’s been orchestrating all of this, a puppeteer from above. Whether or not she’s trying, like Bobby, to put a Band-Aid over this atrocity, I know she doesn’t care about what happened, because at the end of the day she came here to kill all of us. She’s the villain, she’s been the monster all along. Oh my God, do I hate her right now. It’s burning white-hot in me. She’s studied Callie her whole life just to figure out the best ways to murder her. The government paid her well to do this, and it’s obvious to anyone she loves her job, which is to be a complete and utter monster. That’s Jane. Heels clicking down a hallway toward a door marked: THE BRUTAL AND INEVITABLE DEATH OF YOUR BELOVED SISTER. Her coat is zipped up over her mouth, but as I look up at her, I swear I see her eyes lock with mine, and though I know it’s not true—I know she’s up there trying to do what Bobby is doing, only from on high and with a walkie-talkie instead of her fists—it makes me feel better, more fueled with rage, to picture her smiling.
But of course she’s not. That’s just the easiest thing to think, and it’s all wasted because it doesn’t even make me feel better.
Most of the troops have stopped firing and are slowly backing away. Bobby’s fighting anyone who gets near him. Ted’s whole gang is dead except for the ones who, like Ted, ran to stand in front of other Icelings. Icelings are throwing themselves on the burning pods, as if they can put out the fires or save what was inside. Or as if they’ve given up. But as I’ve spent my life constantly re-realizing, constantly catching and correcting myself about: I have absolutely no idea what they’re feeling. Their actions, their facial expressions, the depths of their gazes—they don’t mean for them what they mean for me. Hell, that rule is true even when you speak the same language as the person you’re attempting to judge, let alone for an Iceling from an entirely different world. All I can do is guess. All I can do is ascribe the intentions and emotions within my limits of experience to their actions, which, if you think about it long and hard enough, is meaningless. It’s an exercise. And it doesn’t make anyone feel better—or feel anything—except for me.
My eyes drift to the one lone soldier left who is still shooting at Icelings. His eyes are glazed over, his jaw is slack.
Bobby walks up to him and says, “I SAID, STAND DOWN, SOLDIER.”
The soldier doesn’t stand down. Bobby shoots him in the head. He falls.