Chapter 9- Oak Peacewood
I see Katya, standing with the gun, at the base of the mountain that leads up into the Capitol. "Mom, Mom, it's Katya! I see Katya!" I say, turning to look for my mother, but she's not there. She was right there; where did she go?
Running, I try to make my way to my sister, but every step I take sinks into the ground and I get nowhere. All around me are my fellow rebels, those who helped rise up against the Capitol, and together we're going to take it down. They can move, why can't I?
Motion comes from above; I only have time to scream once before the whole world ignites into a wall of flame, ash, and bullets.
"Katya!"
I jolt awake and bury my face in my quilt. My nightmare, it was too real; maybe I didn't sink into the ground when we stormed the Capitol, but everything else happened almost exactly like that.
We arrived, we went to fight, and everyone died around me.
Sitting up, I wince when the metal cuffs bite into my skin. These are going to have to go, absolutely. I just need something sharp to pick the locks on them with. The problem is, there's nothing sharp in here. I need to get out of here; need to escape before we reach the Capitol.
I rummage through my pockets and pull out the apple I stowed in there; I'm glad I did. I'm the best prepared of any of us in here, but nobody really knows it yet. Like they'd ask; the rest of them are treating me like I have a disease.
"Hey."
"What do you want?" I say, stuffing the apple back in my pocket before he sees it. As if I'd share my food with him.
"Can't we just talk?" Aldar asks, coming to sit down in front of me. "We're both tributes; we've got nothing to lose."
"You're a tribute; I'm here because they rigged the reaping. I'm not going to be a tribute," I say.
"We don't really have a choice, do we?"
"There's always a choice, Aldar. You made yours, I made mine."
"Let it go, Oak," Aldar says.
"You abandoned me. I asked you for help, and you just left me there," I say, sitting back against the wall.
"I didn't have a choice!" Aldar says, an edge to his voice. "It was keep the peace in 7 or follow you to who knows where. We both know that if I had come with you, I'd be dead."
"I would have died for you. I would have died for everyone who fought," I say. Don't cry Oak, don't cry. Not now.
"And yet you're the only one who lived."
"Not by my own hand. I didn't want saving, but I was saved anyway," I say.
"Because of the rebellion, we lost everything. You lost everything," Aldar says. "It was a bad idea, the whole three years of it."
"We wanted freedom."
"Did you get it?"
I think back to that first train ride, sitting alongside my mother while we rode to the Capitol. I felt free then; freer than I ever had before. I believed my mother's words that we would give freedom to all of Panem by going to take down the Capitol. I believed her.
"I did for a while," I say quietly.
"And now you're stuck on a train going into the Hunger Games. We're all tributes; just have to accept the fact and go with it."
"And that's why the rebellion never succeeded; there were too many people like you who were content to stay the slaves of the Capitol. If everyone had fought, we would all be free. But because you stayed, and everyone else who didn't come stayed, we're here on this train."
"What would your parents say if they saw you?" Aldar says.
"Don't you dare say anything about my parents!"
"Or Katya! They're gone, Oak. They're all gone."
"Katya isn't dead," I say angrily. "Katya was supposed to come back for me, and my mother told me to go home to wait for her."
"And has she?"
"Get away from me; I don't want to talk to you anymore," I say, turning away from Aldar. He opens his mouth to say something else, but thinks better of it and returns to the other side of the train, sitting down by the door again, on the opposite side of Cass.
I need to get out of here, need to get out of here now. Being on a train hurts too much; it reminds me so much of my mother, and of everything I've lost since the battle at the Capitol. I know my parents are dead; I saw them die, but what about Katya?
Where is my sister?
I remember when we all split up, over a year ago. Before we boarded that train to take down the Capitol.
My father left for District 1 when it became apparent that the Capitol wasn't giving up control of it easily, and that the majority of the people there were Capitol loyalists. Just like that idiot Silver, who's still asleep next to the blonde girl we took on board this morning.
He left, with a few other people, and he didn't come back. I saw footage later, mandatory viewing in the common, of all of them being shot in the woods. I don't know how they got the footage, but they did.
Katya left a few months later. She was working in the underground resistance, which meant she was more of a spy than a soldier. My beautiful, brave sister; she went with six other undergrounds on a mission to District 2, and from there she was supposed to infiltrate the Capitol. I don't know if she completed her mission or not; Mom and I came a few months after that and everything went to hell.
"We're slowing down again," Cass says loudly, back to looking out between the cracks in the boards. I don't mind her; she's quiet and seems nice. She's only fourteen, but fourteen is plenty old enough to fight. I was in the rebellion when I was fourteen; she's a tribute at the same age. I had a choice, she didn't.
"Where do you think we are?" Beade asks, sitting up. She still has that shellshocked look from getting on the train early this morning; it'll take time to fade. She can go to the Capitol; I'm not sticking around that long.
"We'll find out soon enough," Rigg says, running his hands through his hair. Nobody else talks while the train rolls to a stop, but Silver gets a drink out of the water bucket, spilling water all over the floor. I stay where I am, wrapping my quilt more tightly around me. There's a rip in it from where I caught it on the barbed wire, but it's better than what the others have. I have a blanket, they have nothing.
I can hear the padlock on the outside of the door get taken off; I could run now, but I'd still have these cuffs on. Better to wait to get these things off me before I escape.
"How about you let go of me and then we can talk?" a girl says outside the door.
"Like hell," a woman says, and the door flies open, revealing two women Peacekeepers, a tall, dark, and lanky boy with a scowl on his face, and a girl with light brown hair, who's currently fighting against the woman who's holding her arms. A girl after my own heart.
It takes both of the Peacekeepers to pick her up and toss her into the train; she lands with a crash, but she doesn't stay down for long. Almost as soon as she lands, she's back on her feet and rushing the door.
One of the Peacekeepers, a shorter woman with light hair, pulls out a white gun and aims it at the girl. "Sit down or you're dead." The girl looks from the Peacekeeper, to the train, to me; her eyes widen in recognition when she sees me, and the insane thing is that I know her too.
"Come here. There's no point running," I say, reaching out a hand to her. No point right now, that is. "Don't get shot." The girl looks back at the Peacekeepers once, then marches over where I'm sitting and plops herself down next to me.
"Do we need to throw you too?" the other woman, who has slightly darker hair than the first, says to the silent boy.
"Stuff it," he mumbles, but he gets in without much fight. The Peacekeepers both look in at us all, and a look of disgust crosses their faces.
"Hellions," the light haired one says, and slams the door, leaving us in an eternal twilight light.
"I know you," the girl says, turning to face me. "You were at the Capitol, weren't you?"
"Yeah." Now I know how I recognize her; I remember running when the Capitol started firing down. I lost sight of Katya, couldn't find my mother. The world was thrown into chaos, and I only saw bits and pieces of the scene around me. A man, bleeding out into the ground, a woman with her eyes staring, lying on pieces of rock. Bullets hitting the ground around me, and explosions behind me.
And to my right, I saw a girl, standing as though poised to fly, in a circle of flames. Looking as though the world was at once ending and beginning. I saw her, and she saw me, and then I ran.
"You were in the flames," I say. She nods. "How'd you get out?"
"Luck," she says with a small laugh. "Nothing short of luck. A rock fell down from above and knocked the flames back for a half second. All I needed to get out and run."
"Not everyone died at the Capitol then," I say. They made it seem like everyone was dead, that all the rebels were crushed that day. Katya could be alive then; if this girl made it out, and others made it out, then she could have survived too.
"No, a lot of us made it out. Not everyone from 6, mind you, but there was a big group from 10 that made it back to their district, I think. I hope they did anyway. I'm Tulsee, by the way."
"Oak," I say, and we shake hands the best we can. "Who's your quiet friend over there?"
"That's Jet. Don't be too hard on him; he's only twelve." You could have fooled me; he looks fourteen. Tulsee lowers her voice and leans in to me. "What's the deal with the rest of them?"
I whisper back, "The blondes are Capitol loyalists, and I don't know about the others. We haven't been on the best terms, if you know what I mean."
"I'm not planning to stick around long," Tulsee says.
"Me either. First we need to get these cuffs off, and then we need to get the door open." Tulsee grins a lopsided smile.
"That shouldn't be too hard. We've seen worse." I promised myself I wouldn't trust anyone after what happened, that I would keep to myself and get myself out alive. But Tulsee was there, she was at the Capitol when the world fell apart, and so I know I can trust her.
I watch the others as they start to properly wake up. Silver and Glow start playing some sort of guessing game, while Rigg and Aldar talk quietly together. Don't they realize that in a few short days they're going to be expected to kill each other?
"How'd you get back to your district?" Tulsee asks me quietly, watching the others too. Cass keeps her face pressed to the boards, like she's trying to see something outside. I press my lips together and look up over them all, looking up to the ceiling.
"The Capitol destroyed us," I whisper. "You were there. We tried to scale the mountain and they shot us down like we were animals." As I talk, I get lost in my memories again, until it's almost as if I'm there, back at the base of the Capitol, among the dead and dying.
"Mom! Mom!" I'm running, screaming for my mother, looking for someone, anyone that I know. I can't find Katya; I know she saw me, but I lost her, I lost Katya. The Capitol aircraft is circling above us, shooting at random; people are screaming and the world is on fire. I don't know where I'm supposed to go.
I stumble over a body of a boy; a cry chokes out of my burning throat. It's Finch. He was only seven years old, but he came along anyway, with a parent from another district. He came to help us, and now he's dead. I'm shaking all over, but I can't stop now. I need to find Mom.
A bolt of energy, shot by a hovercraft, hits next to me, blowing me off my feet and sending me flying into a heap, narrowly missing the fire that's burning a few feet away. My head hurts, my hands hurt, everything hurts. I'm covered in soot and dirt and blood. Whose blood is it? I don't know, don't know anything.
I'd like to curl up right where I am and embrace the flames. To stay and be warm and end it all. The world is falling apart, why shouldn't I?
"Katya! Oak!" Another bolt of energy lands ten feet away and I scramble to my feet. I heard my mother, but it's hard to see through the haze of smoke and fire. The world is half dark, half bright as the base of the mountain, the rebel camp, burns around me.
"Mom!" I scream, tears pouring out of my stinging eyes. "Mom!"
"Oak!" I stumble towards her voice, and then I've found her. My mother's face is smudged with soot, and there's a cut across one cheek. But she's beautiful, my mother.
"Mom, I'm scared," I say, holding onto her for dear life. "I'm scared."
My mother pulls back from me and grips my face in her hands. "Where is Katya?"
"I don't know! I lost track of her!" I gesture around us; the screaming is reaching a crescendo and it rings in my ears. Every few seconds another explosion goes off, rocking the ground I stand on. "What's the plan?"
Mom looks grim, her mouth set in a line. "There is no plan."
"Come on, you have to have had a backup plan."
"We weren't expecting this; I wasn't expecting the aircraft to come in. I don't know. I don't have a plan, Oak."
Through the haze I can see row upon row of Peacekeepers, marching in full armor and carrying guns. "It's over, Oak! You need to get out of here."
"I'm not going anywhere! We're fighting for Panem; I'm not leaving now!" I say, grabbing her arm.
"It's over! We lost," my mother says, tears running down her face. "That's it. We lost. Get out of here; get back to the trains. They're set to go any minute now, so get on and go home. Go back to District 7 and wait for Katya; she'll find you there."
"What about you?"
Mom smiles a humorless smile. "My place is with my people. I didn't lead them this far to abandon them."
"Mom!"
The Peacekeepers advance, walking straight over the bodies of the people I once knew; all around us the world burns on, the last bits of freedom and hope we had going up in smoke. "Oak, go!" my mother says urgently, holding my face tighter and kissing my forehead. "I love you! Go!"
I run and I don't look back.
"I got onto the train and it left. I left them behind," I say, my voice barely louder than a whisper. "When I arrived back in District 7, I was just in time to see the leaders at home get shot. A few days later, I watched on the screens in the common as they put a bullet through my mother's head in the Capitol. Wanted to make an example out of her I guess."
"Your mother? She was…?" Tulsee asks. She knows my mother; everyone knew my mother.
"Sky Peacewood."
"The leader of the District 7 rebellion," she says, almost awed.
I nod. "My mother."
My mother was the leader of a rebellion, and they killed her for it. I'm going to get out of here, out of this train, and I'm going to spark the rebellion again and again until the fire ignites and the districts rise up against the Capitol.
President Ravinstill said that the Capitol was a phoenix, rising from the ashes of the rebellion. What he doesn't realize is that even though the districts are ashes, ashes can be relit.
All it takes is one spark and the fire burns brighter than before.