After a brief breakfast, we headed back to the barricade to defend the evacuation.
I met up with Jacobine, and learned that it was exactly like it looked. Though he would not admit it, and did not really bring it up, his mood hinted that he did not have to sleep outside.
From talking with others during breakfast, I learned that the District 4 evacuation is in full swing. Every single train or hovercraft, without exception, that leaves this district carries with it as many refugees as can be carried. Trains loaded to the brim with the loyalist civilians of District 4 run day and night. The same can be said for transportation and cargo hovercrafts.
The nonstop transportation of District 4 loyalists to District 2 is necessitated by the fact that the Rebs get more aggressive each day. I heard picked up from other peacekeepers that the burning of District 12 did not result from a hovercraft crashing during a dogfight with the rebels as the initial reports claimed, but in fact was purposely bombed by District 13 to preemptively remove a possible launching point for a peacekeeper counter assault. The fact that anyone would want to exterminate an entire district really shows what lows humanity can plunge to. The fact that Katniss herself went on air and tried to scapegoat blame on the Capitol for her rebellions genocide is a hypocritically low blow. The fact that anyone could believe her lies would be laughable in better circumstances.
This kind of savage barbarism is exactly what I am fighting against, it is the enemy of the peacekeepers. That is why I must buy time for the innocents to escape, and must fight so they may someday return.
Once we are at the barricade, we fight off screaming hoards of traitors as well as District 13 infantry. They replenish their numbers as fast as we mow them down, trampling over the corpses of their comrades. I have to duck and weave periodically to avoid getting shot of impaled. The Rebs attack with not only guns, but also flagpoles, spears, swords, oars, whaling harpoons, and various crude bludgeons. The more zealous charge with kitchen knives or suicide vests. Some of the assaulters are gut-wrenchingly young, I think I saw one that was seven years old.
One rebel crawled on his stomach the distance, remaining hidden below his fellow traitors feet. I only notice him when he jumped up onto the barricade, and with only a pocket knife, tried to stab me. I swung the butt of my gun to the right, sending the knife out of his hand. With the swing back, I use the butt of my gun to crack his skull wide open. He fell to the side and rolled back down, a bile oozing from his cracked skull and turning red.
Around mid day, the first wave of assault stops. We wait, expecting them to return at any moment. Rebel corpses lay sprawled across the street in front of us, post-mortally twisted into hideous forms. No doubt some of them were felled by my bullets, but I can not let that get to me; this war is between us or them. And I would prefer if the winner was us.
After about forty minutes, a group of nine civilians slowly climb out from behind various hiding places. They have their hands behind their heads when they approach us, so I assume they are not rebels. Their leader looks like a man in his eighties, but the group also has young men and women, children, and one crippled man who makes up for his lack of legs by pushing himself along with his hands.
Commander Barca addresses the civilians with a voice that carries professionalism. "Keep your hands behind your head, and approach the left side of the barricade slowly. From there, you will be questioned and checked until deemed safe, then you will be taken to the area designated for exaucation."
They do as ordered, and begin to approach with painstakingly slow caution. It air has an uneasy stillness about it, as though in anticipation. We were not able to see the lurkers in time.
"Down with the Capitol!"
From behind dark shadows and window sills, several rebel sharpshooters pop out at once. Before any of us can react, their bullets already are buried into the flesh of most of the civilians. Most of the peacekeepers managed to duck under in time, but not all.
Those killed fall like marionettes that have been dropped, those not yet dead are different. Some stand in a hesitated dazed for moments, some instinctively throw themselves onto the ground for cover, some feint and collapse beneath their weight.
Once we have our seances back, we look up and see that our own snipers are currently picking off the Reb sharpshooters. Right now they are in a stalemate, as the Rebs know giving their position us will cost them their life. We cautiously lifted our heads up so scan the situation; since my gun was not equipped for sniper shooting, I had no choice but to watch.
The few that survived the Rebel onslaught were on the ground, hugging the earth for protection from rebel bullets. The old man is dead, the cripple is dead, two young women and one young man are dead.
Next to one young women is a toddler. Not yet bipedal, he is barely above a crawl. His curly tuft of bronze hair covers his sea blue eyes and his red cheeks.
He is shaking the cold dead shoulder of the young woman.
"Mama ..."
When his mother does not respond, he repeats as though she might wake up. "Mama ..."
Not a single person here, neither peacekeeper nor loyalist militiamen, expected what we saw next.
Instantly, before anyone could react, before anyone's brain could even process what we saw, a rebel from somewhere lined up his crosshairs.
With a guns bang, the child's life is no more.