Chapter 19: A Walk Among the Tombstones

We are grouped over our console in the Victor Control Room, Emilia sitting on my lap. As we watch, the screens go live, bringing the tributes up into a graveyard littered with tombstones and cloacked in darkness. Emrys, the pyrotechnic Victor from District 5, swears loudly, his choicest words drowned out by the booming voice of Claudius Templesmith:

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the 77th Annual Hunger Games begin!"

The hidden cameras are equipped with night vision, so we can still see the tributes' faces. Peeta and Haymitch quickly locate our two tributes, Chryssie and Lin, on pedestals to the left of the horn. Three tributes separate them from each other.

As the critical minute starts to count down, I see most of the tributes look at each other. They're actually... smiling.

And, suddenly, before I fully realize what is happening, twenty tributes all step off their pedestals and blow themselves up sky-high.

The only tributes not to move from their plates are the four Careers, but even they are not spared as the sensation of twenty pedestals combusting at once sets off a chain reaction that soon blows up the remaining four.

Total silence in the Control Room. Jaws are unhinged in disbelief. The holographic square is still ticking down past 35 seconds remaining, but we don't notice it.

The 77th Hunger Games are over - with no Victor - half a minute before the Games are even supposed to begin.

With the act of mass suicide that I have just witnessed, I come to understand just what I was observing in the Training Center a handful of days ago. The tributes were unusually friendly with each other, talking, laughing. Groups breaking off in twos and threes to chat and discuss alliances before mixing it up and branching out to new people again.

I hadn't approved of so much discussion between the tributes, especially since Chryssie and Lin were actively partaking, but now I understand. Almost the entire field had decided to rebel the only way they could. Sacrifice themselves all at once and take the Careers with them, leaving no Victor. No Victor, and also no Games in order to crown one.

It seems that almost all the field this year took a page out of Selena Dogwood's playbook from two years ago.

My ears are ringing. From somewhere far away, I think I hear Snow back on the catwalk, screaming how it isn't possible. When my hearing comes back, I feel tremors reverberating through my feet as I hear boots approaching.

"Incoming!" Nolan de Naro, a Victor from 9, hollers. "Victors: arm yourselves!" He turns to his pupil, Abram. "You know what to do."

The door to the Control Room bursts open and Peacekeepers pour in, guns blazing. Victors scream as they hit the deck, even as others are gunned down.

I duck under the table, shielding Emilia with my body, even as Peeta tries to tug me along. In the confusion, Abram Mills has flung open a side door. "Come on!"

Keeping our heads low, Peeta, Haymitch and I dodge bullet spray as we hustle to the side door and then dive through it. Abram manages to windmill forward a few others - Johanna Mason, Connor Murphy, Emrys Avery, an older lady from District 10 named Bovina Martinez, before bullet spray forces him and Cotton Rivers from 8 to leap in behind us and slam the door.

"This way!" Johanna leads the way, and we pelt through the underbelly of the Games Control Center itself. Blasting out onto a loading dock, Johanna ushers us through a dark alley and out into a busy Capitol boulevard now consumed by chaos.

"Keep your heads down!" Abrams instructs us. Emilia whimpers against my chest, but I just clutch her all the tighter.

Single file, we weave in a line through the throngs of Capitolites shouting, crying, calling for help in bewilderment. Thunder rumbles overhead as Johanna points the way down a side street. Coming out the other end, we spy a landing platform in the distance, with a military transport already on the tarmac, its rotors whirring insistently. Through the open door into the belly of the plane, I can see four Victors shouting and beckoning us forward: Brutus Barsetti and Lupus Pagano from 2, Ody Wheeler from 4 and Cecelia Rheys from 8.

"Come on!" Cecelia screams.

"Come on, everybody onto the hovercraft!" Brutus bellows.

PING! PING! Blaster fire erupts a couple hundred paces to our left, and Emilia yelps.

"The Peacekeepers! They're coming!" Cotton cries. "Go, go!"

She and Abrams wave us on, Brutus grasping our hands and pulling us inside.

"Finnick, let me help Annie! Abernathy! Kids here? Got the little one, Girl on Fire? - good! Careful, Bovina!"

Glancing back, I can see the Peacekeepers closing in.

"Abrams! Cotton!"

"Go! Go! We'll hold them off!"

"Plutarch! Take off!" Haymitch yells to the cockpit.

"Hold onto your Capitol breakfast, ladies and gents - it's gonna be a bumpy ride!" and unfamiliar voice bellows.

The hovercraft takes off in a blaze of white energy from its thrusters. Down below, as the Peacekeepers close in, Cotton lets out a rebel yell with a wickedly triumphant smile. Seconds later, the entire landing platform goes up, the sound of the explosion drowning out my scream.

Muscles bulging, Brutus manages to drag the hovercraft doors closed with his bare hands, Cecelia watching him both anxiously and admiringly.

The hovercraft zooms away into the midday sky, heading for parts unknown.

The belly of the military transport remains stone silent, Victors wanting to but unable to look at each other. There are only about a dozen off us, but scores more of our brethren were left behind in the Command Center to likely be slaughtered and die, standing their ground to give us a chance to escape.

An exhuasted Emilia is soon fast asleep in my lap. I try to shift her so we're both comfortable, but her weight is crushing my thighs.

Across the plane from me, Cecelia beckons. "Here, here, give her to me."

I gratefully pass the little girl off to Cecelia, who cuddles her close. She doesn't seem to notice, but I do, how Brutus is watching the sight almost in wonder. Emilia stirs a little bit, and blinks blearily up at the young woman.

"Cecelia?"

"Ssssh... go back to sleep, sweetie."

Emilia smiles, snuggling down. "Thank you."

Cecelia just beams. "Of course. You remind me of my Cardella."

Quiet reigns again for a moment. "How... how old is Cardella?" I ask. I know that Cecelia is the mother of three young children, but I've never had a chance to ask her about them.

"She's 17." We all look over quizzically at the rumbling baritone. Cecelia purses her lips in a frown, her cheeks glowing pink, but Brutus continues to stare at his hands. He finally meets my eyes and jerks his head in Emilia's direction. "How is she?"

"She'll be fine... I hope."

He merely nods. "She's been through worse. We all have. I'm glad she's alive. Maybe Lupus was meant to misplace those shell casings, huh?"

Johanna squirms disquietedly. "Brutus... I stole the shell casings."

The stillness grows tense, all of us snapping our heads to Brutus nervously. But the Career Victor merely mumbles, "It doesn't matter now." I exhale a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

When we land in an underground hangar around evening fall, unfamilair officers surround us and begin shoving blankets and tea in our hands. Someone begins processing us and assigning us rooms in this underground hive, treating us like refugees.

Thoroughly drained, I can only listen in stunned shock as Haymitch introduces us to our pilot - Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee and explains how we are now in District 13, once thought exterminated. The tributes this year and most of their mentors were in on a plan to halt the Games before they began, by sacrificing their own lives. And once again, Haymitch knew, but left Peeta, Emilia and I out of the loop for our own safety.

If I wasn't so exhausted, I would yell and scream at my mentor, but instead can only nod heavily.

Johanna seems to be frantically searching for someone in the crowd. Apparently she finds him, for her eyes light up with mirth and relief.

"Jo!... You're all right!..." Gale Hawthorne, at the head of many of my District 12 neighbors, sweeps the District 7 Victor into a hug. And then, before I can process what is happening, Gale is cupping Johanna's face in his hands, titling her head back and kissing her passionately on the mouth.

After several moments, the couple breaks apart, Johanna for once too stunned to speak. She seizes Gale's jacket in her fists, scowling, but instead of decking him like I would expect, she smashes her lips against his in another hard kiss and closes her eyes passionately.

"Johanna and Gale..." Peeta leans over to me and whispers. "Who would have thought?" I nod absently, pelting through the crowd to throw my arms around my mother and sister with a cry. Apparently, Johanna had written Gale in code a warning about their plans for the Games; my hunting partner was ready to lead most of District 12 to the woods and safety when the Capitol started dropping firebombs. I see most of my loved ones: Madge Undersee and Darius. Delly Cartwright and Thom.

It is with great sadness, however, that Mother takes Peeta aside and tells him that his father and brothers didn't make it out.

War has a funny way of not wanting you to waste any more time. So when Gale impulsively asks Johanna to marry him, I am bowled over when the stubbornly proud and independent lumber mistress says Yes.

For their wedding, Gale and Johanna combine traditions from both District 12 and District 7. The ceremony begins with a group of men taking a steel beam and laying it down flat - the custom originally calls for a sapling being chopped down and laid flat, but as we're underground, man-made materials have to suffice. At Dalton, a preacher man from District 10's, prompting, Johanna and Gale both leap over the steel beam. Johanna is wearing one of the wedding dresses that didn't make the final cut in Cinna's design contest for Peeta's and my wedding. Then, Johanna and Gale perform the traditional Toasting over a small fire, burning some bread and feeding each other a piece. Gale finally sweeps his new bride into a dip and kisses her deeply. Johanna happily kisses him back as she casts her bouquet aside without another glance; Cecelia Rheys ends up catching it.

After the ceremony, I approach my best friend and fellow Victor to congratulate them. Johanna merely smirks. "Your cousin's not a bad kisser, Everdeen. Guess that makes you and me family by marriage now."

I don't have the heart to tell her that Gale was made my fake cousin by the Capitol. Besides, since Prim and Rory will probably end up getting married eventually, Johanna and I will be eventually be distantly related through marriage anyway.