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?”

“These are for fuel,” Stan says, pointing at the cans at his feet. Then he looks up at us and nods at the extraneous empties in our arms. “Those are for the raft.”

“What?” Emily says. “You mean we’re not going to use these to carry fuel over to the other boat?”

“No,” he says. “We’re going to use them to float the raft.”

Emily and I look at each other as if in agreement that this is it, this life is over, our death warrant has just been signed by this one massively terrible idea.

“Just trust me,” says Stan.

We take the containers and screw the caps on tight, and Stan and I fasten them to the bottom of the raft, while Emily works on calming the Icelings and keeping them together so we can get them on the raft when it’s time.

Stan ties off the last knot, and together we glide the structure into the water, tying it to the dock first, to test it. It’s all the way in, and I’m holding my breath, and then my heart both soars and sinks to see that it works, it floats. Stan smiles and leaps up onto the shore, where he takes the containers filled with fuel and piles them onto the raft one at a time, securing each of them to the dock wood with the rope that had been used to lash the tires hanging off the docks as bumpers.

We can hear gunfire.

“Ready?” says Stan.

I nod, and he holds the raft steady as Emily and I coax Ted, Callie, Greta, and Tara onto the raft. But Greta won’t leave. Callie and Tara take her hands and sort of tug her along. All I can guess is that she doesn’t want to leave Bobby. Then there’s another round of gunfire, loud and cracking, and Greta jumps, first up, then out onto the raft. When it doesn’t shatter and capsize, I give Stan a thumbs-up.

Callie was never super big on baths at home, so I’m a bit surprised she’s not kicking up more of a fuss about the raft, which is just planks tied together on top of tires, with the empty fuel jugs acting as buoys. Stan’s gripping a makeshift paddle, which is just a jagged plank.

Now, finally, we’re all on the raft, every last limb just barely fitting within the perimeter of our close quarters. Stan pushes us off. The water around us is perfectly still, weirdly still, save for the modest wake our craft makes. Callie and Tara lean over the side and touch the water, and I flinch even though I know they can’t feel how freezing cold it is, that what is freezing cold to me is something else entirely to them. I can’t read their faces. Can’t read their bodies. But I try, because I can’t not. Here is what they say to me:

Greta hates leaving Bobby. Ted hates leaving the island. Callie and Tara are still, I think, too stunned by all the death to really process this. They finally got home, and then everything around them died. What would that feel like? To have spent your life wanting to go back to the place you were born, and from where you were stolen, and then finally you get there! And you’re there for the most wonderful reason: to meet the next generation! And then the big event happens, and they’re all stillborn. And then come the people with guns, who don’t understand you, and they burn all the babies’ bodies, and they shoot your family. And this person pretending to be your sister drags you away from it to save your life, but for what?

Callie, kid sister, I wish I knew. But there’s a chance we might still find out.

IF IT WAS freezing before, it’s now the kind of cold that there isn’t a sufficient word for. Out here on the water, with not a single buffer between the icy air and the frigid water, it’s scary-cold, and I think but I don’t say it: We’ll freeze to death before we make it. But Stan knew exactly where he saw that dot of color. And it’s right up ahead. We’re getting closer now, close enough to see that it’s really more shaped like a boat and not a dot, and though the cold is closing in on me and my eyes are getting tired and my head is feeling so light that it’s heavy, the closer we get the more sure I am that the dot is indeed turning into something that can only be a boat. Emily says she can see it too, and I force myself to believe her. We have to see it. That has to be what we see. Because if it isn’t, then it’s just us, on this raft, in this freezing cold water, which is perfectly still.

In the distance, we see the beginning of a sunset. But then, in an instant, that light turns from pale to angry orange, and for a second I wonder if Arctic sunsets are somehow sped up, if the sun works differently way up here on the top of the world. But then I watch the looks on Stan’s and Emily’s faces as they watch too, and then I look again and realize it isn’t the sunset. It’s fire. And then there’s this hiss in the air and a loud, low, ominous whistle, and then at least a dozen more, and the whole world howls and shakes, and the raft breaks, and we’re thrown headlong into the sea.

WE COME TO after who knows how much time has passed, and the pain is piercing hot and striking me at every angle. At first I think I must have washed ashore, that my body is frozen stiff and the piercing pain is actually just the process of my body freezing over. But then I force my eyes open, and the first thing I see is water, and then I take a weak look around to see more of the same, and then I realize that this is still happening. It’s not over yet. We still have to keep going. Our raft is smashed to pieces, and we’re still hanging on to planks, bobbing up and down. At first I think I am alone, but then Emily bobs into view and then Stan. But I still don’t see Callie or the other Icelings, and if my heart could beat any faster—assuming it can even keep beating after this beating we’re taking—it would be pounding out of my chest.

Just about the only thing I can reason out right now is that this should have killed us. We should be dead. But we’re not. Why aren’t we dead? And then I see a flutter on the surface of the water, and that flutter turns into Tara, and she’s swimming from Emily toward me. And then I see a second flutter, and it’s Callie, swimming from Stan to Emily. And then Greta, and Ted, swimming all around from one of us to the other. Tara closes in on me, and I try to move but can’t, and then she makes contact, and all at once I’m hit with a very faint sensation of warmth.

The Icelings go on like this, taking turns wrapping themselves around us, kicking and pushing their way toward us and then away and away and away. This makes no sense, I know it makes no sense, but somehow . . . they’re keeping us warm. They’re keeping us warm, and I can tell by the way they kick and breathe that they’re not at all cold. It makes sense how Greta could go out after Alex like that. Could try to keep him warm and save him. It’s what they’re doing right now.

I’m feeling warmer by the second, slowly regaining my ability to take in the world around me and try to make meaning out of it. The sea is no longer calm. My ears are roaring. I open my mouth and try to say something, a test to see if my ears still work, but then a little wave bobs up and my mouth is full of water, cold and salty and I’m almost choking on it, so I start spitting it out. I have no idea why I had to think about it in order to do it, or why my eyes and brain and muscles couldn’t work together to see the wave and react by closing my mouth so my lungs didn’t fill with water, and then I try to close my eyes against all these thoughts, because if my brain and body aren’t really working right now, then I don’t want to waste what energy I have worrying about why and how my brain and body don’t work. I’m worried that if I worry anymore, then I’ll lose my grip on this plank and plummet to the bottom of the sea, because it’s just too overwhelming for my broken brain, the sheer amount of things there are to worry about right now—like drowning, or hypothermia, or death by bullets or fire or U.S. military missiles, which we might have avoided but which might still be seeking us out right now, there’s no way to tell because I can’t hear anything except my own thoughts, which are screaming, screaming about things like how many people and Icelings Jane’s team just murdered, or why we didn’t just stay home, why we thought this was even a good idea to begin with. Why did we think this was a good idea?

And then there is a splash and another swirl of movement and motion around me, and I can feel more of it this time, because I just keep getting warmer. I look over, and there’s Callie, leaving Emily’s side and making her way over to me, and then she reaches me, and then she’s embracing me, and the warmth increases tenfold. And now I remember: That’s why. Callie is why. We did this because of Callie, and Ted, and all the other Icelings, because it was the only thing that could be done. They needed to come here. We didn’t know this—any of this—would happen. I try to smile at her, but her face is not at an angle where she can see mine, and anyway I can’t hold my face like that for too long, and then a new wave of cold settles in and I start shivering and shaking.

And then the roaring in my ears dies down a little, and I can hear something, a calm sound, soft and low, and I try to stretch my neck up as far as I can to see if I can make it out any better. I follow the faint sound and find Emily again. She’s awake, and right next to me, closer than I would have thought, and the sound is coming from her. It’s louder now, and I make out that she’s urging Stan to kick. I realize I can hardly feel my toes, an improvement from when I first woke up and couldn’t feel anything but pain, and I start trying to kick too. Emily sees me and gives me as much of a smile as our bodies will allow right now, and then we kick together, trying to move toward Stan, the Icelings still clinging to us and moving along with us. We close in on Stan and Greta, who is wrapped around him, and we nudge him with our legs as best we can until he starts to kick too.

Our world’s on fire, or maybe it’s drowning. We’re on fire, and we’re drowning. And because we don’t know which disaster is the right one, we stay like this for a long while, silent and treading water, half-conscious and drifting in and out of it all, blinking back and forth between flashes of the dock wreckage, the island, what we thought of as our lives until now. Our Icelings and Bobby’s Iceling continue to take turns keeping us alive until we’re warm enough to look around and think about what to do next. My periphery’s on fire. Flames lick at the fuel depot by the docks, all lit up and spitting sparks and burning bits of metal and wood and gas all over the sea. My ears are still roaring, though thankfully it’s quieted down quite a bit, and now I can hear the splashes our own bodies make in the water.

When my vision starts to come back and I no longer have to blink and squint to tell the difference between Emily and Stan, I begin to take stock of our surroundings. We can see the boat. We know we can make it now. Emily’s the only one with a backpack. I’m sure we’ll regret it later, but our parkas were weighing us down. Thank God for layers, but still. Floating on a plank that Ted’s holding on to are two of the five containers of fuel we brought. I twirl around to see if the others might be near, and I see a flash of red bobbing up and down a little ways off. I try to swim to it but can barely make it a foot under my own strength. Then Ted grabs me, not ungently. I start to point to the big red-and-yellow container, but before I can he’s already gone, swimming out to the bobbing beacon, and Callie’s got one arm wrapped around me and the other holding on to the plank that’s holding the other two tanks. Ted comes back and plops the third container on the plank with the rest of them, and Callie lets go and brings her other arm around me again. I look over to the island. And every inch of it that I can see is on fire.

And I guess that was all too much, because I’m exhausted again. Emily was apparently on the swim team and the gymnastics team, because she’s looking strong against all the struggling. Stan’s beat but mostly breathing, and me, I’m in shock and shocked that I’m still breathing. And so we’re quiet again for a while, and we all just let ourselves drift, let ourselves be held by the Icelings and the freezing water, clinging to whatever’s left to cling to, while the home our siblings have been dreaming of their whole lives burns to the ground.

When I’m warm enough to cry, I cry. My tears mingle with the water. But I didn’t have to tell you that.