Stan rears up in front of Bobby and swings at him, landing right in the eye with a punch that draws blood. “Thanks,” Bobby says, clutching his face. “Now get out of here.” Bobby turns to Greta. He doesn’t have time to hug her, but you can see in his eyes he wants to. He holds up his hand and brings it down. Greta does the same.
She stands there like that, staring at Bobby as we try to drag her away, and she’s smiling and then frowning furiously, like she’s trying to get her face into a shape that means what she wants it to. It’s Callie and Tara who get her to move, finally, once Bobby is out of sight.
And then we run, as fast as we can, through the trees and up a path to the top of the hill. Maybe ten or fifteen people went with the soldiers. There are maybe five kids shot dead and fifteen or twenty collapsed over their dead Iceling brothers and sisters. The rest are holding on to their Icelings, and their Icelings are holding on to them. The drones have pulled way back, and the jeeps are making their way back up the opposite hill.
We look around in every direction, no one sure of which way to go. I take off my gloves and reach for my phone, braving the frigid air as I flip backward through my photos. I find the one I was looking for and call out “Left!” and we head left. “Past the low trees!” All is still around us, same lack of animal life we found on the way over to the ice field, which strikes me as odd, since I would have thought the guns and explosions would have set off some kind of shakedown in the trees and shrubs and rocks, would have sent some animals running. But there’s nothing.
Nothing except us, and now we’re running back through those trees. The giant leaves are still holding the snow just so, and it’s barely moved at all in spite of the missiles and the bullets and the ground shaking and then going still. The wind is whipping all around us, we can feel it on our skin, but it’s completely silent. Completely terrifying. And though we know it’s there because of the way it chills our bones, there’s no other evidence of it. No rustling of branches or leaves, no whistling. No howling, no roaring, no nothing. All we can hear are bullets and fire. We can hear screams, but they don’t sound human. All I can think is that it’s the Icelings, mourning. It feels strange and cruel not to stop and turn around, to find the sources of the screaming and see how we can help, but we all heard what Bobby said, and we know we can’t.
Finally, we’re out of the trees and into the clearing.
“There are the docks!” shouts Stan, and here we are, at that newish-looking set of docks with the fuel pump.
And there aren’t any boats.
TWENTY-FOUR
The drones loom overhead, heavy with missiles, and probably with cameras too. Callie’s slowly coming back into herself after everything that just happened, but slowly is the primary way to characterize this evolution. She and Tara lean on each other, physically support one another, and in that way they’re able to keep moving. And they seem to know how important it is to keep moving. Ted and Greta are with Stan, and Emily and I are up in front, trying hard not to look at our respective sisters becoming more like sisters for each other than we could probably ever be for them. But now I know that whenever this is over—in whatever form being over takes—I’ll have done right by her. I brought her home. I found her sister. She can be understood and maybe at peace. Even if it’s not with me.
I look up to the sky, and darkness creeps in from all around, and it feels like all I can see now are bombs and missiles growing larger and larger as they circle us like birds of prey.
“No boat,” says Emily, and I shake my head and come back down to earth.
Nobody says anything, because what is there to say? There is no boat here, no way to get off the island like Bobby said we need to do, no way to get to the place Bobby said I would know about but don’t, and in a few minutes this island is going to get blown to hell.
“Shit” is all Stan says. He looks around, his face contorting in angles that tell me he’s trying to hatch a plan and having a panic attack all at once. “Ted,” he says after many moments of this. Emily and I just stare at him until he repeats, “TED!” again and then grabs his brother.
“Wait,” Emily says.
“What?” I say.
But Stan doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks to Ted and starts tearing up the docks. He starts at the furthest edge and works his way back in, getting a handhold and levering each board up with his whole body, kicking whatever he has to whenever he has to. After several minutes of Stan going at this alone, Ted joins in, making better and faster work of it than Stan, kicking at the planks and supports.
Callie and Tara stop and look at Ted, but they don’t do much else. Greta gets up, maybe to help, but whatever she does doesn’t help much. But still, she got up.
“Over there,” Stan says, grunting and pointing to a distant spot in the water, “I saw a boat. Lorna, do you remember that weird shed we saw on the way out?”
“Yes,” I say, shuddering to remember it.
“Good. See if there are any fuel containers inside it.”