a/n: written for Irma as part of the caesar's palace secret santa and the caesar's palace monthly oneshot challenge.
triggers: child warfare, war content
prompt: "if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones; 'cause the rest of us are heaving through corrupted lungs" from "youth" by /daughter/
recipient: impossible, cardioids, cumulative
|abovehead, the angels spoke of damnation|
He was there when the first bombs fell. They whistled through the sky, hissing like the escape of steam from a teakettle, than gradually rose in volume until they split the air with the force of a thunderclap. Children gaped at the star-trails their shells traced, and mothers saw the rattling of windowpanes, and fathers saw the fire before they felt it, and the elderly clasped wrinkled hands to wrinkled chests and lay still. The bombs hushed the world for a brief second before they shattered, their molten cargo spilling out from every crook and cranny and painting the cities orange-red-gold.
It was painfully beautiful, in the way that only death could be. He had been young, then, in his Sunday best, gazing at the explosions from the sheltered view of a squat little house miles and miles away. Brilliant flowers of dancing flame bloomed in the bombs' wake, igniting the oxygen around them and setting the winds to dancing. His grandmother screamed. Glasses tumbled and broke. The deaths were an artistry in themselves, and he folded his hands, drew a wooden chair to the window, and watched the world burn. He was simply admiring the pictures, wretched as they were; it was only in his human nature to do so.
"We must go," he insisted, even though Maeva refused, resolutely folding her freckled arms and glowering at him. "It's going to be too late, otherwise."
"I'm not leaving this house," she snapped, and it was typical Maeva: cramped, stubborn, narrow-minded and foolish; two years his senior, as well. "Didn't you hear about the attacks? Those were atomic bombs; the entire state must be filled with radiation by now."
"And what will we do in the meantime? Sit here and starve?"
"We have enough food," she stated bluntly, flatly, arms still interlocked in that passive-aggressive stance. "We don't need to go out and get killed, like you'd have us do. Honestly, Harrison, don't you ever think?"
"Don't you? Do you think we'll have enough food to last us forever? Do you think we'll have enough food to keep Gran-" and here he gestured to thin, bony Gran, sleeping on the spotted loveseat "-alive, and well, and not rotting away like the rest of everything with each passing second?"
"The government, Harrison," Maeva gritted out through clenched teeth, "will fix it. They promised us. They're flying in shipments of food already and we'll go then, when it's safe."
"The government let this war happen," he spat. "Flying in more shipments of food? Flying in more bombs is probably what they're doing."
"Don't you say that!" Maeva shoved one sharp finger into his chest, pressing him up against the wall, her fury palpable. "Don't you dare say that, you little-"
"Sticking up for dad again?" He barked a bitter laugh as her fingernail dug deeper into the space beneath his collarbone. "I don't even know why you do it; has he screwed you over enough times that you've quite possibly gone delusional?"
Her hand flew, palm out, and struck him flat cross the face. A red mark, hot like the pain of touching the still-warm stovetop, splayed itself across the wounded cheek. Gran stirred briefly in her drug-addled sleep, and Maeva panted, fast and furious and stung by the words. He gave a mocking little smile.
"It's true, though, isn't it? Never spared a thought for us; he only left us in this shithole of a house, way too close to the bombings for comfort."
"Harrison," she said, voice quivering, "shut the hell up."
Gently, he pushed himself away from her, rubbing the handprint a bit carelessly as he shrugged on a heavy winter coat.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Outside. To have a look."
"Get back in here," hissed Maeva, "you have no idea what you're doing."
"Maybe you're content with letting the politicians and the lawmakers carry you away on their amendments and clauses, and being trampled by them, but I'm not. It's just a look, that's all."
He paused, then added, "Dad's not here anymore. You've got no say in what I do, or what I speak."
"Goddammit Harrison, I'm the oldest." Her face was getting blotchy now, full of indignation and irritation at her younger brother. "You can't just walk out whenever you feel like it."
"There is no god," he replied, voice quiet as the drop of a feather. "Not anymore."
Post-bombing was a silent thing. The streets hung heavy with chemical fumes, with the bitter blanket field of radiation, with choking last words and burnt flesh and upheaval. It was a revolutionary thing, the eye set before the encroaching storm.
He meandered through the ash-clogged streets, skirting the metal husks of burnt-out cars and treading almost religiously around the stretched out arms and legs, the glazed unseeing eyes and the grimy teeth and the peeling onion skin. All this, and he still held his grandfather's hunting rifle high, kept a watch out for the living. The quiet was uneasy and troubling; it clung to him, thick as the smoke and the weeping black rain that followed. Gingerly, he drew his raincoat over his skin, gloved fingers around the trigger ready to pull and shoot.
Out of the dark came a trembling, shrill form, and instinctively, he drew the rifle level to his chest and aimed. Stumbling through the haze was a woman, badly wounded, her flesh rippling and bubbling and raw, and her clothes sloughing off in dry tatters as her twisted, pustule-covered feet shambled towards him. A hideous ululation burst from her scorched throat like a wolf's howl, and he screamed, "Stay away! Get away from me, now!"
His cries were little-boy pleas made to nightmarish phantasms as he huddled in bed. She was the hunter, now; he was her prey, he could sense it as keenly as he could see the woman in all her twisted glory. His pupils dilated like the shock of a small animal before the harsh glare of a pair of headlights, his fingers slipped around the trigger and the polished wood. Grandfather's rifle felt more cumbersome than useful, a burdening staff rather than a sleek weapon of defense. Stuttering, he called out again, "Leave me!"
The woman persisted in her walk. He caught her stench, a foul miasma akin to char and rot, and gagged, clapping a hand to his mouth to stifle the heaving gasps. Teeth chattering, he steadied himself, pulled the rifle back up, and fired.
Smoke issued from the muzzle, accompanied by a sound like a thunderclap as the bullet flew free and hit true. Dancing wildly like a puppet with cut strings, his female assailant fell back, arms and legs jittering wildly as a spray of red droplets burst from her chest and arced through the air. It was a merciless death, elegant in its haphazard single shot, and the cruel planes of the gun were reflected in the pools of scummy rainwater her corpse fell into. The pale limbs jerked, and were still.
He stood there a bit longer, savoring the aftermath, the gunsmoke and the piercing recoil and the pollution coursing down the colorful red jacket, streaking it all shades of filth. The wind was tender on his face, and the raindrops said, as each of them died, "You lovely boy; killer boy."
It was a cold, wet caress, in the lonely city with the lonely gun for company, and he shivered as he dragged the woman away, wiped his eyes carefully, and left.
They ate canned foods in the weeks and weeks after. Beans slathered on white bread, salty ravioli and flaky anchovies, old olives and pickles from musty mason jars.
Gran muttered absently as they ate, staring at the flickering television screen. He looked at Maeva, his sister, her brown hair tied back in pragmatic ponytails now as opposed to the glamorous ringlets and waves of before-the-bombs, and tried to empathize. She was surly, whether preparing their meals or washing dishes or doing the laundry in a tub with hot water and soap (their washing machines had broken down), pulling away at the lightest touch like it hurt.
"Maeva," he began once, and she wheeled on him, shrieking all sorts of terrible things that made Gran raise her voice for quite possibly the first time since the city burned, and Maeva had rushed from the room looking stunned. Gran submerged quickly back under the somnolent undertow of sleep, as she always did, and he was left alone on the kitchen tiles, musing over the messy soap bubbles and the scalding bath with all their shirts and pants tucked neatly into the water floating tiredly as bodies.
He could not understand his sister; Maeva, resolutely clinging to their father's love despite each prolonged absence and his pejorative attitude. Father had been the type of man who was stern beyond fairness, using his power as a cudgel, his seniority as a battering ram; his presence itself could displace the gravity of a room, draw it all towards himself as he drank in the attentions of the reporters and the lesser senators, his venerated position as viciously sentient as one of the Great Old Ones of R'lyeh. He was a hungry one, and what he desired would eventually gravitate towards him, as natural as the luxury that came with a government job. For this, he despised Father, the ease with which he acquired and yet the shrewdness with which he dispensed his gains.
"Greed is the secret to survival," Father liked to preach. "If you cannot be selfish, there is little chance you will succeed. It is the way our world works," he would respond to his son's retorts, "and if you are unable to scheme, to use cunning and intellect, well..." Here, his mouth would adopt an arrogant smile. "I do pity you."
"He cares, doesn't he?" his sister protested. "He sent us here to live when the war started. He does love us, no matter what you think."
To this, he merely reacted with an angry exhalation and a disjointed jumble of words that might have been insulting had they been coherent. Nontheless, Maeva turned away with an irritated huff, and that was when the power came on and the static resolved into an image.
On December 4, the world changed with a single broadcast. The TV became a god.
The planes flew war-battered across the Atlantic, looped, and dove in towards the rapidly receding shores of California, where the people welcomed them with open arms. Their metal wings gleamed, torn steel strips fluttering against the breeze like silver feathers, and the pilots became operators of mechanical angels, transcendental and horrific entities of immeasurable beauty. They pinwheeled carelessly, belching out fuel and fire, and still, those crying zealots charged forth for the embrace; the unholy tide swept into desperate, vain motion.
Those little paper humans, so reliant on the pen of the upper echelons to define their paper lives, soon crumpled against the onslaught. A nation noticed and lost its voice. Champagne flutes clinked together in finely furnished bunkers at its inception and execution. San Diego wept against the breast of its mother, even as she kissed it coldly with a hailstorm of missiles, waxing and waning with each glorious spin, each violent rose that bloomed before them.
A confined incident transformed into poetry, and all the educated read it and sobbed wealthy tears, and the illiterate gaped hollowly and asked, Why?
His fingers scraped along stone, dislodging dusty ruins of once-proud architecture. A fallen billboard gleamed burnished gold in the evening sunset. A black Strauss-13 handgun, salvaged from a dead pedestrian days before, was gripped tightly by mittened fingers. His breath puffed out in front of his face, white and downy, and he beheld the things below. All the twisted highways, the fallen structures, stunk of father's indomitable condescension.
Grant Beauford Heathcliffe's forces had come here a week before, bearing with them soldiers toting guns and artillery. He imagined the fleeing civilians, fat little mice screeching as the claws of a larger cat bore down upon them, and tore away with fleshy noodles stripped from weak fur like the snipping of fabric.
They came now. The leering government drones, in their finest military regalia: black clothing, leather boots scuffed and muddied from middle-class blood, bulletproof vests, communicators clipped to their ears that could transmit even thoughts as easily as the snap of a finger. They brought semiautomatics, tiny skittering Observers piloted by technicians from some faraway facility. The money of the taxpayers went here, to the advancement of war.
Impotence at their audacity, marching through these broken American streets with such sacrilegious intent, drew up in him all the rage a boy of his youth could muster. He felt like God, then, full of fury and anger and his father's breeding - attack with caution and reason.
Mounting Gramp's rifle, he perched on the roof of a former motel, glaring at the soldiers' heads through the telescope. His finger pulled, delicately but precisely like the press of a piano key.
A head snapped, a bone-shattering twitch and a spurt of rose-petal droplets. The others followed the direction from which the bullet that had taken their comrade had been shot from, and discerned his location with a glance. He fired again, clipping another in the shoulder. His blood felt gold with the serendipity of his aim; it was a divine sensation, euphoric and maddening as he finished off the one he had injured and then hit another faceless man.
At first blood, they crept from their hiding places, the grotesque sewer rats of the city, the dirty neighborhood children and their dirty neighborhood parents. They carried arms; nowhere near as glamorous as those of Father's legions, but effective and powerful as they revealed their hidden armories, and stood bravely, and opposed the ravens and the funeral-bearers and order.
"Cease fire immediately!" roared one of the funeral-men, and he was shot down immediately by a quivering woman, bony and blonde and clutching a similarly-shaped daughter to her ratty sweater-clad chest. Smoke leaked from a slim Makarov, a cigarette breath, a stutter. The man who had spoken was broad in jaw and body, and yet, that bullethole grew in size, spilling across the surface of his tanned Arizona skin like a flood. Gradually, he shrank before them until he collapsed, his chest thudding against the ash-dusted concrete with a muffled report, and the woman stood longer, her lips shuddering, her daughter crying.
All was still in the wasteland battlefield. The birds cawed raucously, and he waited, muscles tense, for the next strike.
Inexplicably, it came from the daughter, the blonde girl. He would never forget the bulge in her torn dress, the drawing of the Nikolov-M40 like a sword from a sheath, and the melting away of the presumably fabricated mousy demeanor into something harder, something furious and sharp and coolly indifferent as she shot a soldier, a female, all glinting teeth and the gray metal and the cardioid that formed over that victim's heart as her lungs imploded from that whiplash gunfire, her own Weiss-issued pistol sending out a spray of wild bullets.
They all shook themselves after the mother and the girl, both sides opening fire on each other, a rage kindled. There were few screams, only relentless footfalls and soft, meaty thuds. The girl saw him, and she waved, her gun tucked under her armpit, fingers outstretched and flecked with precious crimson droplets.
Her name was Alma Coin.
"They call me Snow," said the old man, arthritic fingers holding a shaking teacup as he eyed the boy thoughtfully. "Simply Snow. I have no other name. I abandoned the folly of titles and denominations when the war broke out between us and them. We have only basic identities now, means by which we can recognize each other. That is all." He set the teacup aside, dabbed at his lips lightly with a dusty napkin, and smiled. "What might we call you, boy?"
"Harrison," he answered.
The elder's bushy white eyebrows rose imperceptibly. "No surname?"
"As you said, it's unnecessary."
"Harrison shall suffice, then," Snow murmured. "Are you the only one?"
"I had a sister. My grandma took care of us both, before she got sick. She only slept after the first of the bombs dropped." He traced the patterns on the worn couch, the swirling Arabic designs and signatures against the cloths burgundy and gold. "Gran died of whatever it was that was troubling her, and old age, I guess. My sister, Maeva-" He coughed loudly, looking away from Snow's fierce brow. "She was caught up in the Minneapolis sweep. The shelters failed, and the refugees kept coming. We were one of them, but I broke off. Got lost. She went on ahead, and that's when the Heathcliffe administration chose to cull them by spraying them with Agent Indigo."
"Did you love them very much?"
"They were the only family I had." He gave Snow a long, hard look, as if that was all the explanation required. Seeing the fire in his eyes, Snow chuckled, then broke off as a series of wracking coughs shook the elder's body. The old man cleared his throat, pressing his hands into steeples.
"This war has been happening for quite some time," Snow remarked, as though it were some trivial thing. "Almost two years already; a blink in time, compared to the World Wars of the past, but long nontheless. Long enough for children to become young men and women, and for adults to grow old and tired.
"I shall be frank with you, Harrison. I am but the small leader of an ever-growing rebellion. The people have grown impatient in this modern era. There have been too many lies, too much deception for their stomachs to handle. A fire is spreading. When it reaches D.C. at last, the chaos will be impossible to control. Even I cannot command the respect of a nation; it is a fallacy that those officials in the White House have labored over for decades."
Snow reached out, abruptly, and gripped his arm in a vise-like hold, with more strength than any old man should be able to draw upon. "There must be a leader then who can bear my burden. Someone who will be a face for them to rally around, a figure from which they can call inspiration."
"You want me to play that role?" The words sounded absurd, bitter and metallic. The proposition was ridiculous; the two of them were practically strangers, barely knowing each other for more than a week, and he voiced his concerns out loud. Insufferably, Snow only gave the cunning old smile he was starting to become acquainted with, mirth shining on his wrinkled lips.
"I want you to become the role. I want you to take over when I have grown ill and senile, unable to command anymore. I shall bequeath all my resources, all the manpower and weaponry I have collected, to you. it shall be your hands that take the reins and lead this movement, wherever it may go, to our ultimate goal."
His listener pauses. Questions, "Why me? They called you the Winter, the Oncoming Storm. The voice of the proletariat and the reckoning of the corrupt legislature. The Black King. There are more men and women at your disposal, people who have weathered the war far better than I have. I'm still a boy."
"It is not age now that will light the way into a newer age," replied Snow, "but the audacity and innovation of youth. Consider those words, if you will, or perhaps consider this."
He drew his wheelchair closer to Harrison's seat, bent forward, and whispered, "Even we old men have games to play."
And he knew.
Occasionally, he saw the girl. She was only a few years younger than him, but she was less vulnerable. The war had solidified her will, compressed her resolve into something sturdier, something that could pop the pin of a grenade and toss it into a teeming human mass or pour steady machine gun fire into the bodies of a dozen Capitol sentries, the holes in their armor cumulative and growing steadily with each cartridge that was loaded.
He gazed at her from afar, at the malnourished fingers that could still assemble a gun faster than he could, at the ruthless intelligence behind her stare. It was a survival instinct, a hastening of evolution. She had adapted better than he; simple as that.
On December 24, they reached the gates of D.C., which had since been referred to as 'the Capitol' on maps and strategical outlines. The metal fences were tipped with barbed wire and charged with electricity, and mounted towers filled with gunners looked down upon their troops, impassive as the face of God. She was with them then, at the first siege. A patchwork shawl draped her shoulders, a relic of her mother, who had passed away before from an infected cut sterilized too late to be of any use. She gripped his bandaged right hand, and he smiled thinly.
"Kill a lot of them, Harrison," she told him. "Don't die."
"You too, Alma."
That was all the pep-talk they provided each other, and it was all it needed.
It was Christmas Eve, and it was snowing. Pale flakes danced from ashen clouds, coagulating into muddy clumps as the members of both sides swarmed towards the barriers. He heard hissing as pressurized jets of freezing water shot into the fray, aimed towards Snow's fighters. Tilting his head upward, he glimpsed Snow himself, astride a hijacked green tank hastily decorated with three white lines - the insignia of the Winter Movement, Snow's insurgency. A Surtr prototype from a Pennsylvania assembly line rested on the tank's rooftop, manipulated by Snow through a series of buttons and dials. Jets of flame blasted from the small cannon's mouth, heating the steel walls red and lighting the turret operators on fire. Beside the leering metal monstrosity, three women gathered, all toting classic AK-47s and descending upon the first wave of sweepers with admirable contempt. Valkyries, every one of them, full of pride and hatred, and with refinement in the crouched, shoulders-tucked stances they took up.
The sounds, the sights, the rampant fear and hostility - all of it was War in its naked glory, and he was among the rebels.
From all sides came a blizzard, and with them, the poor, the strife-ridden borgeoisie, the crippled, the broken, over the walls in a hellfire tide of vengeance.
"Hello, son."
President Heathcliffe met their party inside the former Oval Office, his cabinet members clustered in a corner while the Presidential Guard stood ever vigilant, guns drawn. Snow stepped forward, bowing.
"President."
"Coriolanus." The president's voice dripped with loathing. "So nice to see you again."
"Do not speak to me in that tone, boy," Snow shot back. "You shall respect your elders, and you shall respect me."
Both groups drew back collectively, and he felt something stir in the pit of his belly, cold and spiteful. Son. Boy. They rang like accusations in that tight, terribly cramped room, full of ancient enmity. His hands groped for the Strauss-13 hidden beneath his woolen jacket, and immediately, five members of the ten-person Guard pointed their weapons at his head. The other five remained fixated on the rest of Snow's militia.
"Leave us," Heathcliffe barked, and the Guards raised a protest before he silenced them with an imperious glare.
"Be quiet and do as I say. Take my cabinet outside as well."
The men were hesitant to obey, but they did so in the end. Once they were outside, Snow's group moved forward, but he halted them with a raised hand.
"Withdraw," he ordered calmly but severely, and they did so without question. The door closed behind them and locked with a tiny click.
"Come to kill me, then?" inquired Heathcliffe pleasantly. "Tear down the old system and re-instate democracy? You should know that that's no longer an option."
"It's only no longer an option because of your spectacularly disastrous way of handling the first stage of the Crisis. When the Arab League turned down your requests, you persisted. You dug a trench between ourselves and all the Eastern powers so deep that even Europe, traditionally an ally, turned away. You brought down war on this country, subverted every article and clause placed to check your power, and extended your emergency powers as you saw fit."
"I did what I had to do to preserve our national integrity. They would have struck first, amassed all the weapons they had and launched an allied assault." The president looked almost smug. "I did what lesser men could not, what my predecessors could not. I took the initiative."
"You did what would benefit you, in the end."
"It's what I was taught." Heathcliffe's grin was frigid, a bleak display of teeth like tidy gravestones and nothing more.
Snow stiffened, irritated. Harrison turned to him, asking, "What's he talking about? Why did he call you father?"
"Have you taken him under your wing as well, just as you did with me? Indoctrinated him into anarchy? Made him your protege?" He chuckled. "How absolutely paternal."
"You were not there, after all," Snow retorted. "I am more his father than you, Grant, will ever be."
His mind whirled at this casual exchange of names. They knew each other, that much was clear. What made him curious, fearful in the sense that one fears the unknown, was the familiarity both men held.
"Get away from my son, if you will," Grant Heathcliffe directed, pulling a revolver from his pocket and cocking his head at Snow. "Now, please."
"My people would have you down on the ground, bleeding in fifty places within a second of pulling that trigger," responded his enemy. "I'm not inclined to take orders, either, from a man who values his own child as much as he values the dirt under his feet."
"Away. That's an order from your President."
"No." Snow's refusal was like a slap in the face, and Heathcliffe's eyes drew into angry slants, his mouth peeling back into a scowl.
"You will. Or I will activate the bombs planted directly under this room, and we will all burn."
The threat was considered.
"Alright."
Acquiescing, Snow rolled his wheelchair away from Harrison, and the boy backed away of his own accord, grasping for the Strauss as Heathcliffe swiveled the gun towards him.
"Don't get tricky with me. I'll know."
He glowered. The president laughed amiably, then leveled the barrel at Snow.
"As for you, you will order your troops to vacate this area. You will have them march out of this building, out of the presidential city, and far, far away. You will send them back to their little ratholes, their dirty little sewer pits, and then you with remove yourself." He flicked the safety off, drumming the leather handgrip. "If you don't, I'll shoot you."
"The Winter Movement will not cimply stop because of my death. I am but one component of a vast body; killing me will serve nothing."
"It's not just your death you should be worried about." He gestured towards the window, at the white fields blanketing the torn tarp and canvas bags, the deserted humvees and spent jets and the armies in their full gear, braving out the frost.
"Look at them all. A nation dwindled down to these numbers, enough to fit in a single city." Heathcliffe's lips quirked up, tongue gliding eagerly over canines and incisors. "Rats in a cage. I could wipe them all out if I wanted, with just a whisper. The many merits of voice-activated signals, these days."
"You're bluffing."
"Do you even want to take that risk?" Heathcliffe knelt down, pressed the barrel to Snow's infirm, wheezing chest. "I've learned how to be pragmatic. Your lessons taught me all about preparation beforehand, how a good plan is what leads to achievement. Do you doubt the permanence of your own philosophies, how effective they've taken to a boy's mind? Are you reneging on your promises?" The gun came closer.
"What do you want, Grant?" Snow sounded weary now, short of breath. "An apology? I am weak and old now, and I am sorry. I was a young man then, Grant, easily shaped. Easily molded. Getting out of that mold, that influence, took time, and I am all the better for it." His eyes shone, with tears or some darker emotion, Harrison could not tell. "I am sorry for you, too; that you are this way, this selfish, that is my fault."
"I don't want pity. I want a surrender from your side." The gun barrel was digging into Snow's shirt, squeezing painfully into the flesh underneath. "Do it."
He wanted to shriek No! even as Snow's liverspotted palms reached for something, as Heathcliffe's finger wound firmly around the trigger and tugged, as blue gunsmoke flashed and a bullet tore through the short distance, ripped through his mentor's skin, and came out the other side, lodged firmly into wood paneling. His head slumping, Snow slackened and fell, a slip of paper grasped between dying fingers. Instinctually, he drew the Strauss, shooting at the president. His shots veered off, deflected by anxious marksmanship. Heathcliffe ducked and clipped him on the arm, causing him to tumble, clutching at the tear.
"He never told you, did he? He lied! He always lied, to both of us, to everyone he knew! That bastard!" Strong arms snatched him up and shoved him against the paper-strewn desk, veins bulging in his neck like a bull, his eyes maddened. "You never knew the truth, did you? That he was your grandfather? My father? We were going to die, you stupid-"
He roared, his cries full of unadulterated anguish and rage, and shoved the president away, raising the Strauss-13, pulling, and instead of a thunderclap there came instead the shuttering of the empty chamber.
Oh.
Heathcliffe teetered drunkenly, arms stretched out vainly as the door behind him burst and the braying bullets tore through the wood, striking the president multiple times. Carmine blossoms bloomed all over the front of his white shirt, seeping into his cashmere coat. A teardrop line of blood snaked its way down the corner of his mouth and onto his throat, glistening like a worm.
He dropped, arms and legs spread like the wings and tail feathers of a bird, while Winter troops stormed in. The Presidential Guard did not react. They knelt down next to Snow, examined him for a pulse, and one yelled, "He's still alive!"
Harrison rushed towards the fallen rebel, holding the old man's outstretched hand. Snow wheezed, beckoned for him to crouch down. He accepted the note proferred to him, and then, giving one last breath and coughing up bloody sputum, Snow died.
"What does it say?" Alma asked him later, in the confines out a vacated communications office. They were sitting on their cots, numerous wires and coils still laying around them, and looking up at the ceiling. He fingered the paper slip, wrinkling the edges.
"Nothing."
Turning over on the mattress, he lay in thought, wondering at the words. So you were my grandfather, he mused. I held your rifle, and I killed with it. You were the one Gran loved.
How very fitting.
"He turned over full control of his armies to you, prior to the invasion," said Colonel Winchester, a heavy, florrid man in stolen army fatigues. "It was in his will."
Looking up at his newly appointed advisors, he expected to see hate, resignation, bitter envy for an usurper. Instead, he saw peace. Solemnity. They still wanted guidance, still had been bred to view a leader as a deity, to be revered and followed. A face to call inspiration from? They referred to him, like a tiny joke of sorts, as the Boy King. The transferral of power from the previous ruler to himself was almost complete; the burden of ordering, leading all these people, would now be his to carry. Snow had been just an identity, an icon that could be donned and removed as easily as pulling on a mask. He wore his grandfather's face today, and got up. "I'm ready to go," he announced.
They took him to the Oval Office, where the windows had been shattered and a balcony erected. A crowd teemed below, a ragged assembly of civilian fighters awaiting his first address. Alma was sitting on a couch inside, and she nodded to him as he passed.
"Go on," Winchester urged. "It won't be so bad."
He gulped, then stepped out into the frigid January air. He held up his hands, palms out, for silence.
Voice amplified by a microphone, he boomed, "My name is Coriolanus Snow, and the first thing I will tell you is that I am your new president. The second is that you, all of you, no longer live in the United States of America. America was a land of tyrants, of disaster, of relentless devastation."
An exhalation. "As of today, this land shall be known forevermore as the country of Panem, and this city, D.C., shall be its Capitol. We, its people, shall never bow, shall never waver like our predecessors."
He raised a fist to the sky even as the people shouted in triumph. "The horn of plenty overflows for us! We shall not want! We shall not submit! We are a people united!"
The crown was placed, and a nation cheered.