Stan is sitting, stick straight and rigid, staring straight ahead with his mouth half-open and his eyes peeled in shock.
“Stan?” I say, and he doesn’t answer, and then my heart starts to flutter, and then, slowly, I brace myself and turn to face whatever horror he’s seeing.
But then my jaw goes slack and my eyes go wide, because the thing that Stan sees is what I’m looking at now too.
A floating dock. And tied up at the side: the boat.
THERE IT IS, a real boat, and it’s right in front of us, and it’s not made from old planks and empty plastic containers, and it’s going to save our lives. And it has a ladder on the side.
And even though it only takes a few more minutes of paddling and Iceling life support to get to it, it takes forever to get to it.
But then we do. We’re all paddling, stupidly, our hands in the freezing cold water, the Icelings slapping them away even though we keep putting them back in, and now we’re here. The dock is square-shaped, and like the boat, it also has a ladder, which we grab on to one after the other. The boat is bigger than an SUV—definitely big enough for all of us—and I guess Stan can predict from the model that it’ll have bunks inside. It has a motor and sails, just like Bobby said. And if there’s fuel on board, we can get somewhere on that combined with the fuel we brought and the sails.
“So . . . does anyone know how to drive a boat?” asks Emily.
“Stan does,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Stan. “I can pilot this. I can get us where we need to go. Assuming Lorna knows.”
“I’m really sorry, you guys. I could name a place, I could think of somewhere that might make sense. But I have no idea what the hell Bobby was talking about.”
“Think, Lorna!” cries Emily. Like that’ll help.
“Trust me, I have been. In between worrying whether or not we’d make it to the boat alive, and about what’s going on with Callie, or about how the hell she and the others kept us alive, or anything that’s happened since yesterday—which is a hell of a lot—I’ve been thinking about where we need to go next. I don’t know. Maybe once we’re on the boat, when I’m freaking out a little bit less, maybe I’ll figure it out then. For now, we can go south. Somewhere that’s the opposite of here. That’s the only thing I know for sure—that I want to get away from here.”
“South sounds good,” says Stan.
Almost as if he understands us, Ted starts climbing up the ladder on the boat. We follow his lead, and he’s helping the rest of us up, which is when I notice that Stan needs the most help. Emily and I trade a look that lets me know she has noticed too.
“He dove for us,” whispers Emily to me. “After the first blast.”
Oh, God. That’s when he must have gotten hurt, saving us all again, and because it’s all I can do right now, I just send her a look that I hope says, We’ll keep an eye on him together.
It’s not until we’re all in the boat that I realize how freaking weird this is, this boat that fits seven people comfortably, tied to a floating dock in the middle of an Arctic sea, like it’s been waiting here for us. Sure, Bobby said he left it here, that he did it on purpose during recon, but for what purpose? And why didn’t anyone from his team pay it any mind? It seems like a pretty big thing to overlook—especially when it’s tied to an area they didn’t want anyone coming out of alive. I understand what a terrifying thought this is and acknowledge it completely, but right now my body won’t let me be terrified. Maybe I already used up my daily allotment of terror, or maybe my body just knows that right now it needs to be solely focused on staying alive and getting the hell out of here and its survival instincts are completely blocking out all of its fear instincts.
Stan takes the fuel containers and goes to explore the inner workings of the boat so that we can get going right away, while Emily and I explore every other aspect of the craft to determine what kinds of supplies our guardian angels or demons have left for us here. In a trunk down in the lower level we find a whole bunch of towels and blankets and dry clothes—sweatpants and sweaters and fresh woolen socks. In an unlocked metal locker we find a whole bunch of food—ready-made emergency meal type things, packed in tins and foil bags.
“Jackpot,” Emily says.
“Stan!” I shout. “You have to come see this!”
Stan limps over, and his eyes go wide and he smiles, and then he practically collapses on the floor beside us. We sit there on the floor of the boat and we eat like we’ll never eat again. It tastes awful—like budget prepackaged health food meals, but drier and staler than usual. But it’s filling, and it’s warming me up, and some part of my brain is saying, Hey, all right, things are gonna be okay, and I’m actually listening to it.