Happy birthday, Zero!
The cannon boomed far above him, and Woof winced. Poor bugger. He didn't want to know which of his friends had perished in this horrible Arena. It was bad enough at seventeen. At seventy-eight, it's pure hell.
Needless to say, he was rather surprised when the claw appendage to one of the Capitol hovercrafts began to lower itself towards him. Perhaps one of the other Victors had been nearby when they met their end? No, apparently not. That thing was definitely aiming for him. "I'm not dead!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
The claw stilled, and he heard a booming voice echo across the Arena. "What?"
"I'm not dead," he shouted again. The other tributes almost certainly knew where he was now, so it seemed unlikely that he'd maintain that state for very long, but, for now, he was undeniably alive.
"Yes, you are." The claw lowered another few feet.
Woof checked his own pulse, just to be sure. He was a bit relieved when he found that it was still beating. "No, I'm not. I'm just old and lying down."
Finally, he recognized the voice of Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker and his supposed ally. Though considering recent events, Woof felt he should re-evaluate the whole 'ally' bit. "You're not fooling anyone, you know."
"I feel fine."
"You'll be stone dead in a moment." The entire Arena went silent. Even the insects he had heard buzzing somewhere nearby for the last hour stilled, waiting for Woof's response.
It only seemed reasonable to give Heavensbee the benefit of the doubt. He counted under his breath to a hundred before shrugging. "I'm still not dead. I think I'll go for a walk."
"You're not going anywhere." Before he could react, the claw had been wrapped around him and had begun pulling him up towards the hovercraft. Woof had to admit that the ride was a rather pleasant experience, all things considered. Maybe he really was dead. Woof found himself warming to the idea.
He sat in the mortuary for almost two days. The nurses there said they hadn't had a request for food or water from one of the patients in this ward before, and he prided himself on being the first. Being dead, he discovered, was rather nice. It seemed to involve a lot of sitting on cool, metal tables, being quiet, and eating ice cream every once in a while. Overall, he had a lovely time.
That is, he was having a lovely time until, due to a broken force field, a thirteenth district, a now-absent Head Gamemaker, and a variety of other circumstances that dead people didn't seem to need to understand, the president himself came down to the mortuary to congratulate him on his victory. Woof never thought he'd live to see the day. Well, he reasoned later, he hadn't.
A/N: I owe the great majority of the dialogue in this chapter to the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.