Iceling Read online

  “Don’t talk about Greta, Stan. Or Alex. You wouldn’t dare talk about either of them or make presumptions about my love for my family if you’d seen her that day, lying next to his body, his nose and fingers and toes black, his skin way too pale, and Greta staring at him, and Alex staring at nothing at all because he was dead. She didn’t kill him. She had nothing to do with him dying. It was a stupid accident—he was walking to a friend’s house in the middle of a snowstorm, and he got lost. He didn’t tell my parents he was going. But Greta found him. She found him and tried to save him. She gave him all her warm clothes, her coat. But he was already gone. He was eleven.”

  The way he says all of this, it makes me think he means it. But even if he doesn’t, even if this is a lie like everything else anyone claiming any authority has ever told us, I can’t help but think about being eight and wanting to Rollerblade like my babysitter, and going to the garage and illegally strapping on my dad’s pair, which were way too big, and falling as soon as I hit the driveway, skinning my knee, and Callie running up to me and holding me and trying to grab the hose, and me getting it together enough to stop crying, to wash it with the hose. I think about Callie tugging me out of the bathroom when I slipped in the tub, about Callie holding me at night when we were four and five and eight and ten. And I think about losing her, or her losing me, what that would be like for either of us. And I look over at Bobby, and a part of my heart just breaks.

  “So don’t talk to me about Alex, Stan,” says Bobby. “You wanna hit me? Fine. But remember that one of us knows where and how to hit a bone so that it breaks in an instant, and the other one is just seventeen and righteously pissed off.”

  I can tell Stan was moved by Bobby’s story, which is why I feel so ashamed of him and his stubbornness when he actually responds.

  “Back at that rest stop,” he says, arching his shoulders up like he’s trying to shrug off Bobby’s story and everything he felt about it, “you were trying to take Callie and Ted. Weren’t you? When you kept talking about how your shitty car had so much room? You were hoping we’d be stupid, that we’d either leave you alone with them or fall for your nice-guy act and let them ride with you.”

  The look in Bobby’s eyes says yes, and now Stan’s the one who looks like he has the right to feel right about everything.

  “What?” Emily says, standing up and inserting herself into the argument. “What the hell? Is that true?”

  Bobby sighs. “I thought maybe I could do something so that you guys wouldn’t have to see this. I thought maybe I could help. I’d been sharing the road with you guys since you left Pennsylvania; you were the first ones I saw. I thought . . . I just wanted to help. I thought I could help, honestly. But that doesn’t matter now. And just . . . this is currently the second-worst-case-possible scenario, and you need to leave. Now. You need to take Greta and leave the island. Listen. There’s a boat docked out there. It’s got sails and a motor and gas. I left it there during recon. As far as I know, nobody’s thought twice about it.”

  “Why?” I say. “Why do we need to go right now? What will happen if we don’t? You said it might get worse. What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  But he just says it again. “You need to leave the island. Please. I need you to trust me. Please, take Greta and leave the island.” And how he says it, the pleading in his eyes, how he’s trying so hard not to answer me . . . I get a shudder all over.

  “Bobby,” I say. “You need to tell us. If you really want us to leave, we need to understand why it’s so important.”

  “Bobby, what is the worst-case scenario?” Stan asks.

  “The worst-case scenario is a full-measure attack to ensure that no AROs ever leave this island.”

  “What are you saying?” Stan asks. “They’re going to pick them off one-by-one? Isn’t that what they were doing just before you and Jane called them off?”

  “It’ll be worse than that,” Bobby says, looking down at his boots now.

  “Worse?” I say. “Worse how?”

  “If Jane gives the okay, if she thinks it’s necessary . . .” he starts, then lets out a heavy sigh before bracing himself to go on. “If she thinks it’s necessary, she’ll press a button that will blow up the entire island. I don’t mean an explosion like the one you saw during the drone attack. That was nothing. I mean a catastrophic measure that would neutralize all biological entities on and beneath the surface.”

  Emily’s face goes slack. Stan just stares out at the ice field, at the rows of destroyed stalks and their ashes.

  “But why would Jane need to do that?” I ask. “All those pods came up dead and empty, and even if they hadn’t, they’re blown to bits now. Why would she risk all the bad press, all the questions back home, just to kill our Icelings, who have been living with us pretty peacefully for the last sixteen years? Why would she risk all of that to kill us?”

  “It’s not the pods, or your Icelings, or you they’re worried about.”

  “Then what?” I shout at him, clutching Callie’s hand tight.

  “You saw him,” Bobby says quietly. “The one that was here already, the one they came to meet.” The Iceling leader. The one the drone was aiming at. But the drone missed, because . . . “He went back. Under the ice. He’s down there, and he’s still alive. And he’s—they think he’s the one who makes it happen. The pods. He’s the original Iceling.”

  “Oh my God,” I say, and then a starker realization hits me. “And we . . . we saw it all.” Bobby nods. “The Icelings can’t say anything about it, but we’re witnesses.”

  “Yeah,” says Bobby. “So do you get it now? Do you see why you need to go?”

  “Where in the hell are we supposed to go from here?”

  “You know where to go, Lorna.”

  What the hell? Why do I know where to go? Why does he keep looking at me like I know what’s going on?

  “You’ve got no reason to trust me, I know,” he says, speaking now to my expression of incredulity and confusion. “But I just told you that the goal is to kill you and everyone else on this island. I’m the one person here who has not shot at you, or at anyone other than soldiers who risked and took lives because they were too stupid and too scared to follow orders. I’m trying to save your lives. I’m trying to save my sister’s life. And if you have trouble believing that, then just think about what you would do to save Callie, and then put yourself in my shoes.” He looks up, and we follow his gaze, and we see drones circling overhead. “You need to go now, and I need to get back to Jane. Stan, I need you to do me a favor before you go.”

  “Are you serious right now?” Stan says, looking from Bobby to the drones to Ted to all of us and then back to Bobby.

  “I think you’ll be okay helping me out with this one,” Bobby says, then asks Stan to punch him as hard as he can, to make him look injured so he has an explanation for where he’s been and why he’s late, and I can tell Stan is happier than he should be to help him out with this one.

  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 pull
ed 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.”

  “What?”

  “Look,” he says, kicking the demolished dock, grabbing a plank with his hand and trying to tear it up. “This wood isn’t rotten, not quite yet, so it’ll float a bit. Long enough. And if that is a boat over there, we’ll need fuel.” And all I can do is stand there, staring at him, staring at Callie, who looks so empty and in that way so heartbroken.

  “Are you saying,” Emily says, “that we’re going to use that old wood as a raft? To take us over there, where there may or may not be a boat?”

  “It’s either that,” Stan says, “or we just stay here and admit we’re going to die. And I, for one, am not really good with that option.”

  SO EMILY AND I go to the shed.

  On the way there I look up to the sky. The clouds are swirling again.

  But in the eye of it all there isn’t sunlight. There are drones. The ones with the missiles. They’re rising up and spreading out, and I can see how they’ll bank around and settle in. There’s just two of them. The smaller one that fired the first shot—I can’t see it anywhere. But it was pulled back as soon as the missile was fired. And as much as I hate it, this means we need to hurry.

  I nudge Emily and point to the drones. “We need to—”

  And Emily says, “Hurry, yeah, I see. Jesus.”

  So we run to the terrifying shed.

  There it is, right where I hoped we’d left it, as in behind us, as in for good. There’s that roof, still completely bare, as though even the snow won’t touch it. I don’t want to go in, but I have to.

  So I close my eyes, and we duck down and make ourselves as small as possible so we can fit through that makeshift entryway. It doesn’t take much maneuvering before we’re inside, and I’m somehow further unsettled by how surprisingly easy it was to get in. I open my eyes, and Emily reaches out for my hand.

  We scan the space frantically, our eyes lingering and then passing over a bunk bed, a desk with three surge protectors and a mini fridge under it. There’s an axe and a cabinet mounted on the wall. How so much stuff fits in this space I don’t understand, but it’s almost like it’s just slightly bigger on the inside than out.

  “There,” Emily says as she ducks down and dives for the corner, where there are a bunch of red plastic jugs with capped yellow spouts—what anyone in any country would recognize as fuel containers.

  “Emily, you’re a genius,” I say, and I duck down to help her.

  There are six containers, which is probably as many as we can carry between the two of us. They’re empty, so now there has to be fuel left in those old gas pumps, or we’re screwed. We gather them all up, and then Emily grabs the axe on the wall to take with her. She winks at me as she does, and I do something I never imagined myself doing inside this little shed of horrors: I laugh.

  But the joy is short-lived, because as we scan the room one last time to make sure we have everything we need, I notice something weird with the floorboards that the containers had been sitting on.

  It’s a trapdoor.

  I set the containers down and crouch before the door.

  “Lorna!” shouts Emily. “What are you doing? We have to go. I can hear the drones from in here!”

  “Just one second!” I say. “Do you see this? Emily, we have to open it. We can’t just leave without seeing what’s in—”

  A crack, like a gunshot, rings out. I can tell it’s not right outside the shed—we’re probably not even in target range—but it brings me back to earth all the same. I can hear the drones hovering, and so I stand back up, pick up the containers, and let Emily drag me out of there.

  We move fast, Emily just in front of me. The drones are nearly in a firing position right above the shed, but once we’ve run a bit, we can see that the drones don’t seem to be following us. Maybe they’re keeping their
distance, sure, but maybe they also aren’t after us. Maybe they’re after the shed and whatever was under that door in the floor.

  Stan and the Icelings are in sight, so I just dig in and keep going. We’re hurtling toward the docks, and when Stan sees us and what we’re carrying, he smiles for the first time in a while.

  “Hurry!” he shouts, but we’re going as fast as we can. As we approach I see that another pair of drones is hovering and shining some kind of spotlight over what was once the trembling field, where everyone else left on the island still is.

  “How do we know if there’s still gas in that pump?” I ask, forcing the drones out of my head so that I can keep moving forward.

  “I already got what we need out of it,” Stan says, pointing to four red fuel containers at his feet, identical to the ones we brought from the shed.

  “What the hell?” I say. “Why did you make us go over to that creepy shed then?”