AND THEN EVERYTHING starts to come apart.
When the missile hit, we flinched and took cover, only peeking out from the shields we created with our arms or by curling completely into ourselves when the world-shattering noise from the first missile started to quiet down. It’s good the Icelings were in a kind of horseshoe around their leader, because it’s only the specific place where he was standing that’s completely gone now. In its stead is a smoking craterlike hole. The ice is holding, but who knows for how long.
For a moment, I let myself pretend I live in a world where I get to interpret the lack of an immediate follow-up missile as a sign that the soldiers have decided to lay down their arms and acknowledge the limits of violence to solve anything. But then one of the soldiers shatters that illusion by hollering something I can’t make out from here, but by its tone and cadence I can tell it’s an order, and my stomach goes sour and drops. I can’t make out what the commanding officer said, but immediately after it's said, the troops scatter and fall back into a new line. It’s increasingly obvious that everything they’re doing is going according to a plan we’ll never be a part of, and they file back into the jeeps and start the engines.
The jeeps full of soldiers turn their noses straight for the field, for us and our brothers and sisters, and they drive as a fleet down the hill. Callie, Greta, Tara, and a whole bunch of other Icelings are running to the pods to try to shield them. I want to shout out that they’re dead, that there’s nothing they can do, but of course I can’t, for too many reasons than there’s time to explain. Besides, this isn’t my world anymore. It’s Callie’s.
The jeeps go slowly down the hill. All the Icelings who aren’t guarding pods are standing defiantly in front of the ones who are.
The jeeps brake and park in much the same formation they had at the top of the hill, and the soldiers, rifles ready, file out of them in less time than it takes to draw breath. They’re standing in small groups, their guns trained on whatever they can see. They’re moving out, I guess to maximize the area they’re covering, to maximize the number of things they can kill.
We have no idea what’s coming, but we can guess. I flash back to all the conversations Mimi and I have had while marathoning movies about the end of the world, the conversations about how stupid it is that, when people think about the end of the world, they imagine themselves in the shoes of these characters who are surviving despite all the plagues and zombies trying to wipe them off the face of the earth. When in reality, it’s so unlikely that the people who are sitting around in the suburbs watching end-of-the-world explosion-death dramas are the same ones who would have what it takes to fight through an actual disaster. So Mimi and I made a pact that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, we’d just do each other in, because there’s no way in hell we’d make it past the first wave. But now that I’m here, staring at what looks very much like the opening of the gateway to hell, there’s no part of me that thinks anything other than surviving—for my sister, for myself—is an option. And I know that if I give in to the terror being forced upon us, if I end up like that guy wetting himself and going into shock, then I’m done. Callie’s done. It’s over. So I push all that fear to the deepest part of my soul, and I clear my head and let go of Stan’s hand, because it’s time to think our way out of this. I know that I might die. That this sad little act of bravery might be my last sad little act ever. I’m not okay with that, not at all, but at least I know I’ve tried hard to be a good sister to Callie, to this plant person whom I love more than I really know how to say.
But none of this—not my love for Callie, who might not love me back, nor my proving that love by driving all the way up here to face this awful massacre—matters to anyone but me, because to the rest of the world, Callie isn’t a person. Any love anyone has for her or anyone like her is rendered invisible, misplaced, insane. And that thought has never been clearer than now, as this wing of the U.S. military calmly walks past us with their assault rifles raised. They make their way through us, shoving us aside and ignoring our cries of surrender. They are, essentially, ignoring us.
“Stay back,” one of them says, shoving at us. Nobody does anything about it. You want to think you’d fight back, but they’ve got assault rifles and U.S. flags on their arms, with the letters E.T.R. stitched underneath. They march onto the ice field and start firing, small mechanical bursts aimed toward the ground, at what remains of the pods.
The drones are backing off, maybe because the soldiers are down here. And it actually seems like maybe someone made a mistake, which is the only reason the soldiers are down here now. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking. The soldiers are unloading what I recognize as flamethrowers. They’re tossing them on like they’re backpacks or some kind of trendy vest. Through the smoke and the chaos I can see some of the Icelings wringing their hands as they watch, tears streaming down their faces and turning to ice before hitting their mouths. Stan taps my shoulder and points. I follow his hand, and my eyes find Ted again. He’s still fighting back, and now he’s got a gang of likeminded Icelings with him, all lined up with their fists clenched, running at those troops like they’re about to tear their heads off.
Because I guess what happened here is that the Icelings were coming home to greet the new generation. To welcome them into this world like no one else was able to welcome them. And they got here, and they were ready. They knew, their bodies knew, what they needed to do. And they got here, and all the babies were dead dust.
And now there are soldiers marching among the corpses of the next generation and shooting them and burning them. Ted and his gang are hitting these soldiers in the faces. I don’t know whether the soldiers were prepared for what happened here today or for the strength of these Icelings who are pissed about what didn’t happen here today. The first wave catches the troops by surprise, but then, once the surprise is over, they start firing. Ted’s gang starts picking up the fallen bodies, soldier and Iceling both, and hurling them at the troops, trying to knock them down.
Stan can’t tear his eyes away, but I feel like I have to, I have to see what else is going on, so I look to the sky—the drone that fired the missile is long gone, and so are its companions. Hovering in their places are several more drones, smaller than the first ones, that look like roving eyeballs with helicopter blades.
Think, Lorna! Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. There has to be some sort of Wi-Fi or cell network or something going on here that the army is using. How else could these drones work, transmit images? I pull out my phone, and, lo and behold, there is a signal. I open up Twitter and hit record, and all I can do is hope this signal holds long enough for me to broadcast this. Unless this is some secret territory under some secret governance, we’re in Canada. And the soldiers have U.S. flags on their shoulders, they’re obviously American, and so are we. Someone’s watching with those drones. There’s no way off this island, or if there is, they’re there waiting for us, and we can’t hide, because they’ll find us. It’s not that big of an island. And the Iceling leader came from below the surface, but there’s no way we’ll figure out how to go down there like he did before they capture or shoot us.
So we need to run right up to the soldiers. We need to tell them we’re Americans—not for them, not because they don’t know it. But for our phones and whoever might end up seeing this.
I grab Stan and Emily and Jayson and everyone else around and tell them what to do.
“What?” someone says. “Are you kidding? That’s the plan?”
Stan stares down the girl who said it, and then another girl opens up Snapchat, and a guy opens up Periscope, and down the line they go, with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.
And right when we rush out, phones in front of our faces to try to save our siblings’ lives like we’re all in some ridiculous ad about how my generation is selfish and ruining everything, someone nearby calls out.
“Stop firing!” He’s talking to the soldiers, not us, but we all stop anyway. “That is a fucking order!”
Something about that voice makes me stop and put my ear to the air, and I know Stan hears it too, because he’s also frozen in place and searching my face for an answer. I turn around, and then I see him.
Bobby. Bobby from the road trip, Bobby with an Iceling sister. Only he’s swapped out his fashionable clothes for a uniform and a baseball cap with E.T.R. on it, the same three initials on the helmets and under the flags of the people who are attacking us. He’s running into the middle of all this, elbowing soldiers out of the way, and Icelings too. He’s barking cease and desist orders through a bullhorn, and he’s just about the only thing we can hear over the bullets, and the drones, and the jeeps, and the flamethrowers.
“What. The. Hell,” says Stan. “So Bobby’s . . .”
“He’s with them,” I say.
The guy who bought us dinner yesterday, who kept everyone calm, who kept me calm, who claimed to have devoted his life to studying the roots of language so he could find a way to say something to his sister, who lost his brother, this guy, Bobby, if that’s even his goddamn name, is one of them. He was with us, getting us here.
“He was the shepherd,” says Stan.
“And this was the slaughter,” I say.
Bobby’s still screaming, “CEASE FIRE!” at the top of his lungs, but the soldiers don’t listen. They just keep firing on the already dead pods until they’re more bullets than bulbs and ashes, the desiccated bits just floating off into nothing.
We stop in our tracks when the guns keep firing. At no point did I think they’d just fire at or around us when we started running. We’re just kids. We’re American kids!
“What the hell were they shooting for?” says Emily, quietly, to no one. “Whatever’s in there was already dead.”
Bobby’s ditched the bullhorn and is knocking the muzzles of rifles to the ground around him and screaming, “CEASE YOUR GODDAMN FIRING!” over and over until his voice starts to give, only just barely. The guy can shout, I’ll give him that.
And that’s all I’ll give him.
The shots keep ringing out, and I can’t look away, because I need to keep my eyes on Callie, I need to make sure they’re still only shooting at the ground and not at people. I hear a scream so loud I feel it might shatter the freezing cold air before making its way to my eardrums, and then I realize the scream is coming from me, because in the middle of the field, about a dozen Icelings throw themselves down on top of the remains of the pods, where the soldiers are still shooting. And the soldiers keep shooting, and now instead of just ripping apart the pods, they’re ripping apart our brothers and sisters, and I myself feel ripped apart as I watch them get hit by bullet after bullet after bullet. I don’t see Callie, and I run out toward Bobby, and I’ll kill him if she’s dead. I swear to God, I’ll kill him. Iceling and soldier blood stains the snow and ice and all that I can see, and then a soldier hurls something at the Icelings, and then they’re gone, replaced by a burst of fire.
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.
There’s no more gunfire now.
In the absence of gunshots, all around us kids are running to their dead brothers and sisters, maybe even feeling betrayed by or scared of their siblings now that they know what they really are, which is something decidedly Other, something maybe not even hu man, but it doesn’t matter, because they still care, and they care that they’re dead. This is the central truth of their lives right now. That girl’s brother is dead. That boy’s sister is dead. One of them got shot in the head by a soldier and then set on fire. Another threw her body on a burning pod to try to save it, and then she died because she tried to save a life that wasn’t going to make it anyhow.
I see a giant bug hovering and buzzing in the peripheral of my vision, and I swat at it. I miss and swat again, this time making contact, only what I hit isn’t a bug at all. It’s heavy and manmade, and I go at it again with both hands, and when I smack it down to the ground, I see that it’s a drone. I take a step back and start to run, but then the drone rises up again, this time very wobbly, one of its rotors coughing and spitting, and because it doesn’t look equipped with weapons or like it was sent to hurt me, I decide to stop and wait it out. It floats itself up to eye level and then a little bit above, and that’s when I see it. A smartphone, adhered to the undercarriage of the drone. And staring at me, from the screen of the smartphone, is Jane.
I try to take the phone off the drone, but at the slightest tug, the drone flinches and pulls back, does a little topsy-turvy circle in the air like a bothered wasp, then hovers again with the phone at my eye level, this time just a little bit out of my reach. I look at the live feed of her image on the phone, but either the sound is broken or I can’t hear anything in the midst of this military chaos, and all I can see is Jane mouthing something that I can’t make out. She goes on like this for a while, and I just shake my head and grit my teeth and keep turning to look for Callie, and I want to just grab the drone and throw it into the middle of the fray so at least some part of Jane can get blown up by her own firepower, but then I see something new flash on the screen. Behind Jane, a young officer holds up a sign that says: I’M SORRY.
“You’re SORRY?” I scream into the phone, which Jane must take to mean that her message was received, because then she gestures to another officer who then ducks down behind some little device, and then all of a sudden a stream of text pops up on the screen beneath Jane’s face.
LORNA. THIS WAS A MISTAKE. THIS WASNT SUPPOSED TO HAPPN. WE WERE JUST HERE 2 CONTAIN + MONITOR. I AM SO SORRY BUT
The words are going blurry from the tears in my eyes. My stupid mind goes numb, and against my will, I start to remember this one time at the hospital. I was waiting for Callie in the front when I heard this noise, like a little crash or an office object being slammed against a desk. And then there was a voice, one I didn’t recognize at the time but which I now know belonged to Jane—the real Jane, the monster Jane up on the hill. In the scariest whisper I’ve ever heard, Jane said, “I swear to God, if you don’t fix this, I’ll wear your useless balls as earrings, and your brother will fail out of college, and your wife will leave you, and your student loans will never get paid, and your whole life will be repossessed by the U.S. government, which owns you, you sloppy, useless, inefficient peon in a clip-on necktie.” Part of me, I admit, wanted to find the owner of the voice and shake her hand for being a good role model for girls who need to see examples of women taking charge in the workplace. But that part of me was quickly and easily trampled by a more immediate, cell-level part of me that was completely chilled and terrified. I had no idea what she was talking about or whom she was talking to or what the consequences were, but it didn’t matter. I was overcome with a need to see my sister and get her home, and I pleaded with the front-desk lady for forty-five minutes until finally they relented and released my sister early and with a rescheduled appointment.
This is who has been in charge of Callie’s whole life. And right now, in the middle of hell swallowing us up—a hell that she ordered—she’s trying to apologize.
I shake the tears out of my eyes, and the words on the screen blink back into view. THE ICELINGS R A DANGER. LORNA. PLZ LEAVE. PLZ GET 2 SAFETY, IT IS SO V IMPOR—
But I don’t want to read the rest. I spit at the phone, and the drone pulls back a bit, flutters around in the air again, then steadies itself and hovers once again so I can see the phone. The camera refocuses on me, and I give it the finger.
Jane gives me a look like she’s sighing, but then her face jumps with fear and her eyes go cold, and just as that’s happening I feel Stan start beside me.
“Shit,” he says. I turn from burning Iceling corpses, whose bodies smell more like burning leaves than meat, and I see the soldiers clearing a path, saying, “Come with us, we’ll get you home.”
Home? To our parents who lied to us? Who let this kind of slaughter happen? Home with the people who just killed—or tried to kill—the kids we spent our whole lives as brothers and sisters to?
“We’re not going, Stan,” I say.
“Not even a little bit,” says Emily.
And then my body jerks, wrestling between the idea of running and falling to my knees, because before me I see Callie, the one thing that could ever make me think I had any business being a survivor at the end of the world, felled and fallen on the ground. Oh God, please let her be breathing, oh God oh God oh God, and then Ted leaps over and crouches down in front of her. And then I wind up and start to run right over to her, but Stan holds me back and then Emily helps him, and I’m caught in a net of their arms as I watch Ted stand up and break into a full run at a soldier with his weapon ready. Bobby’s yelling at the solider, telling him not to shoot, and now Stan’s no longer holding me back, because Stan is the one who is running. I’m about to bolt from Emily’s grasp when a round goes off, and my heart flutters everywhere, and I cower and crouch down with Emily. I look up and see Stan and Ted, both of them on the ground. Stan is holding his head, covering it with his arms. Bobby’s yelling.
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he shouts again and again while standing over a soldier he has just thrown to the ground. “DO I NEED TO SHOOT YOU TOO? YOU HAD ORDERS! You had orders. Observe and contain. Contain doesn’t mean shoot, it doesn’t mean burn, it doesn’t mean kill. It means restrain. You opened fire on American citizens, buddy.” He kicks him. “Do you understand how much shit you’re in? Surrender your weapon and get back to the jeep. Now, soldier.”
And he does.
And I’m walking toward Bobby with what feels like death in my eyes.