Previously In Fanning The Flames: Cato, upon seeing a threat to Glimmer, refuses to fight Gale and Katniss. The four make clear gestures of rebellion and join together against arena hazards. They and their families are evacuated by rebel hovercraft to the still existent District Thirteen. They share a wedding date with fellow two-victor couple Finnick and Annie. Rebel forces save most of District Twelve's population, and the evacuees begin a new life. District Ten is the next to be liberated.
A/N
I revised the Chapter 6 scenes of District Three evacuation and preparation for the attack on Ten.
Chapter
The Capitol was caught between a hammer and an anvil, and it was time to strike while the iron was hot. We had just hit the Capitol hard in District Ten, and the District Eleven riots were getting even further out of control, so it was time to press on towards Eleven. Thirteen's native reserves and Ten's local rebels would hold the livestock district while the bulk of rebel forces, including Victor Squad, would head into the agriculture district.
We now had District Four surrounded – its only land border was with District Ten. We obviously couldn't secure its massive coastline, but the boats in the District Four fleet were designed for transporting small amounts of seafood, not massive amounts of people. Besides, while some other districts had coastlines, they didn't have ports – the Capitol usually took District Four's catch away by rail, and we had blocked that off. Our forces would watch the skies for any attempts to relieve District Four by hovercraft.
Peacekeepers had poured into Ten from other districts in an unsuccessful attempt to repel our attack. District Twelve's ex-Peacekeepers had captured many empty transports during their raid on the train station. We'd fill them with rebels and reroute them to District Eleven. This would free rebel hovercraft for other uses, and would add to our element of surprise.
These trains were simple mass transit to freedom instead of luxury personal transportation to prison. Those differences were lost on none of us, whether we had escaped that prison just over a month ago or 34 years ago.
Chaff was too wrecked for the battlefield, Seeder too old. Many of their comrades were either or both – some victory! The real triumph would be the end of the Games and the Capitol's other cruelty, and I gladly stood with the other young and healthy victors to lead the charge.
They were the only living District Eleven victors, so there would be no reprise of evacuating the District Ten Annie. Annie Hickok was relatively safe hidden in a train compartment. She stayed silent of her own accord, but the District Ten mayor and the family thereof had to be restrained.
The 12th Peacekeepers still could fool Capitol forces before being specifically identified as The Rebel Unit. Purnia explained our presence as loyalists retreating from the 'disaster' in Ten. The guards opened the gates and our train cars came pouring through. We could have rammed the gate, but the lead train and its occupants might not have taken that well and that would have made it harder to get more trains through. It would have cut into the element of surprise, announcing our presence once the train sped up outside the district rather than once we arrived at the train station inside the district. Besides, the Capitol had probably fortified the gates against very much that.
These fences were much taller than ours, presumably always electrified, and they were topped with vicious razor wire interspersed with machine gun nests. We had tricked our way in, and immediately blew our cover. Lyme, Brutus, Finnick and myself stuck rifles out of hatches in the top of the train car. This gave us a good angle to shoot at the sentries on top of the nearby section of fence. Katniss, Wiress and a few others leaned out the windows to throw explosives at the gatehouse. Hopefully we took them out before they could sound the alarm.
District Eleven was so large the Capitol had divided it into sub-districts called zones. They were north-south thirds of the district. Zone A was in the west, closer to the Capitol. Also, reading left to right, it made sense to have A on the left. Zone B was in the center, Zone C to the right and east.
The 11th Peacekeepers were notoriously strict, and the zone borders were certainly part of their brutal control of the territory. People of different zones were kept as thoroughly separate as people of different districts. Even for the Games. Each zone held its own reaping, and the mayor picked A, B or C at random to determine which zone's tributes would actually suffer for the resistance decades ago.
Each zone had a third of the district's Peacekeeper force. Capitol military units, not to mention ours, were usually built out of three subunits anyway. Even with reinforcements, each portion of the force had only a couple thousand soldiers to deal with tens of thousands of people who were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. So the locals had most of the warmakers pinned down as we sped through the district.
Throughout most of Zone A, we just shot at Peacekeepers from the train windows, using the body of the train for cover. The Capitol was finally being outmatched by the masses of unarmed people; its forces were falling apart in the face of equally-armed opposition.
The wall between Zones A and B was almost as imposing as the outer border of the district. The guards were gone – perhaps killed, perhaps transferred to the futile lead-based crowd control efforts. Well, if the populace had to be met with a hail of live ammunition, the shooters' cause was already futile. However, the gate still stood. The victor squad was amongst those in the lead car, with the converted District Twelve Peacekeepers right behind us. Purnia came racing towards the front of the transport. The train screeched to a halt, and she grabbed for the top of a seat to steady herself. "Perhaps even us ex-Peacekeepers can still figure out the security system," she explained.
"May the odds be ever in your favor, Lieutenant Artemis," Lyme responded. My commanding officer's language was deliberately ironic – we had just passed a large gray building, and the wall facing the tracks bore the graffito 'The odds are never in our favor'. Those red letters, bold as the person who wrote them, spoke the truth. There were no Capitol soldiers in sight, but the victor squad looked at Purnia to provide cover fire if necessary. She jumped off the steps between the lead car and the locomotive; she rolled to a stop in the bare dirt that surrounded the tracks. We watched anxiously as she fidgeted with the gate controls. Every second is another second for the Capitol to catch up with us. The gate soon slid open.
Purnia jumped back on the train and it took off while she was still on the platform between our car and the engine. We started celebrating once she made it back into the car. "Yeah, it hasn't changed too much in the last two weeks," she explained.
Now we were in Zone B, about the same population as A and C, but with many of the central buildings and personnel. Also, this year's tributes happened to be from B. As with Ten, we couldn't do a mass evacuation of civilians like in Twelve, but we could at least get the Mackeys and Claytons. Katniss was the person they'd most want to see, but Cato was someone they'd obviously want to avoid. We'd at least keep that confrontation until after the battle. Regina wouldn't cause any ill will, but she didn't have much combat experience yet. She had done well firing from the train and would continue doing so. Finnick and Wiress were detailed to my unit. Lyme was purposely keeping the force small.
The train came to a more gradual stop at the station in the middle of Zone B – close to the buildings we were trying to secure and the people we would help liberate, away from the border fences. Shooting from the train had cleared the station and its immediate vicinity. My unit had its own separate mission, but most of the rebels disembarked from the train along with us.
Many broken windows, overturned objects, charred buildings and even dead bodies remained from previous rioting.
The ex-Peacekeepers headed to the main government buildings, wearing standard District Thirteen uniforms. The only physical distinction was the slightly different design of their old Peacekeeper service rifles; fortunately, those weapons took the same ammunition. Brutus led Cato, Hook and Emerald into the field; Lyme, Gloss, Cashmere, and Regina were the only victor soldiers left aboard.
We headed out to patrol the residential areas looking for Thresh and Rue's relatives. Katniss and I moved as two parts of one being, in this urban hellscape as well as in our wooded paradise, while Finnick and Wiress followed. These dwellings made our shacks look good by comparison, and I yet again found myself even more disgusted at the Capitol. Some contained the very young and very old hiding from the riots, but none of them were Thresh and Rue's relatives, so the occupants cheered our presence and waved us on.
Then I saw a mob on a street corner surrounding a squad of Peacekeepers. The citizens were armed with tools they had turned into improvised weapons – shovels and rakes and implements of destruction like iron rods and scrap lumber with nails still in it. I saw a short bald man with very dark skin, apparently very strong judging by the way he was grappling with a Peacekeeper. As soon as I had a clear shot, I took it. How do you like facing equals instead of beating down civilians? Several of his squadmates wheeled towards the noise and we ducked. A bullet skipped off of Wiress' circuit-board bracelet. However, the Capitol enforcers could now be caught off-guard by the citizens. A stocky young woman slammed a piece of scrap metal into a Peacekeeper's visor. Serves you right, all the nightsticks you've probably swung at her or people like her.
Those two people had special reason to detest the Capitol – they were Rue's father and Thresh's sister. Excellent, we found both families at once. Once the Peacekeepers were killed or subdued, Katniss took off her helmet, swished her long dark braid and whistled – Rue's four-note tune from the arena. As the crowd whistled back, even some of the hardened resisters broke down and cried. The sentiment only intensified as Katniss was the first to raise a District Twelve respect sign, familiar to District Eleven and the rest of Panem thanks to Katniss' funeral for Rue.
"Seems y'all were doin' a nice job of liberatin' yourselves but could use some help," I drawled. "Rock Clayton? Raspberry Mackey?" I called out.
"Yes?" they answered in unison.
"We're here to rescue you and your families," I said to explain our orders. "Unfortunately, we don't have room for everyone," I added apologetically. There was no time for the dead to get a decent burial either. The rest of the crowd peeled off, perhaps emboldened to seek out other targets. A few took handguns from the dead Peacekeepers, which would help with those targets. Raspberry took another and finished off a wounded Peacekeeper at point-blank range. Ms. Mackey stood by Katniss' side with it as Mr. Clayton stood by my side with another.
There was no time to talk as we ran to the Clayton residence. "Willow!" Rock shouted to his wife. "The Mockingjay lives, and she's helping us get out of here!" Three boys were out the door first, one about Vick's age and two about Posy's age. The twin girls, of an in-between age, were hiding behind their mother.
Willow looked at Katniss and choked out a few words. "You showed my daughter love when she was surrounded by hate. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Mrs. Clayton," Catnip answered.
"Her district partner and your husband too," Rue's mother added.
"You four meant a helluva lot to the whole zone, the whole district, the whole country," Rock said aggressively. "Finally, a critical mass of people realized enough was enough!"
"Exactly!" I said to agree in a tone of voice that matched his. "Capitol oppression had been setting up a fire, and we were the spark."
"Now the whole country is burning," Raspberry realized. "And I have someone to drag from the flames."
Raspberry led the way to her family's house, only a few blocks further away from the train station. Katniss and I were behind her. Finnick, Wiress and Rock were in the rear with Rue's mother and siblings in the middle of the formation. The house contained only an old lady. "Thresh's grandmother, I presume?" I asked of Raspberry.
The hunchbacked old woman spoke up for her. "Pear Mackey indeed."
"Now where are the father and mother?" I wondered.
"In the ground," Pear croaked back in a voice full of rage. "My daughter-in-law Diane died birthing that wonderful boy and girl, my son Flail died in the fields a year later. So when you said your father and hers had died in the mines, you had me."
"Too many people have felt too much pain because of the Capitol, so of course they would understand. Now we need to get out of here and fast," I replied.
"These old legs don't work too well no more," she explained.
"I'll carry you, ma'am," Rock offered, handing Katniss his pistol. Katniss shook out the magazine and cleared the chamber, pocketing the now clearly unloaded firearm. She showed Raspberry how to load the model, using the cartridges that had been unloaded from Rock's gun.
We headed back the way we came. We had cleared the area, and no Peacekeepers had reoccupied it, so we indeed didn't have to fight our way out. Our train was still waiting on the tracks, and one of the soldiers still aboard flashed us a safe sign. We all stepped up and walked into the train car; I noticed Lyme sitting on the first seat clearing a jammed gun. "Lieutenant Colonel," I said and she looked up. "Corporal Hawthorne reporting with all three of his soldiers and all nine of the high-value civilian targets."
"Good shooting, soldiers. Show them to Annie's compartment," she complimented and ordered.
"Rue's father and Thresh's sister were found in a rioting crowd. We finished off a squad of Peacekeepers and captured two handguns. No other disturbances." Katniss reported. She and Raspberry presented the weapons.
"Good. And I could use those. This rifle's fucked up good, I'll need to have one of the gunsmiths back in Thirteen take a look at it."
Another crew stepped aboard the train. "Lieutenant Colonel Walter Cray reporting with prisoners."
"Traitor!" the lead captive muttered. He was a middle-aged man, and from the looks of him, we had captured another mayor. "Peacekeeper acting against mayoral office without warrant," Mayor Harvest Blade continued.
"Gag them and put them with the others," Lyme ordered. Cray dragged the man towards the improvised cell for the similar people we had captured from District Ten. He had a wife Orchard about the same age, who was being more cooperative with Purnia.
Their one child, a son Harvest II, was taking after his father. "Shame such a pretty girl like you is such an ugly traitor," he spat at Lustre. Lustre Shinesmith certainly wasn't bulky enough to restrain a hostage, even one her own age. That duty fell to her squadmate Alexander Weaver, Cecelia's husband.
"They answered our call for reinforcements. We sustained heavy losses storming Peacekeeper headquarters," Purnia explained. "Soldier Darius King was among the fallen. I know y'all liked him. We all did. At least he died on the right side, he said," she said, passing along what may have been the spirited young redhead's last words. "General Claudius Domitian and his adjutants were wanted dead or alive. They're all dead" she said to explain the fate of Cray's District Eleven counterpart.
It was uneventful ride to the fence between Zone B and Zone C. The train slowed down to blast the gate and its guards and then rolled along into Zone C. The plow on the front of the locomotive pushed away some of the scrap metal from the gate.
Here, there were still riots going on near the tracks. Most of the people here had olive skin and black hair that made them look similar to us Seam folks. This was no surprise considering that Zone C was right on the border with District Twelve. Come to think of it, Seeder shared the look, and had also been from Zone C. However, the important buildings in Zone B included Victors Village. We took clear shots on the surrounded and outnumbered Peacekeepers when we could.
We were on 11's southern rail line, which connected it to 4, 10 and 12. However, another set of tracks in the north of the district connected it to the rest of the country, and each Zone had secondary lines connecting the two out-of-district ones. Capitol reinforcements came from that direction with a twisted imitation of our train-tank tactic, mowing down rioters even more 'efficiently' than the forces on the ground could. Our train abruptly stopped before the intersection so we couldn't be sideswiped.
We exchanged some shots but neither side could do any serious damage to the windows or metal walls of the other. Grenades rolled under the cars and locomotives weren't powerful enough to do much damage either. Those explosions likely would limit the trains' ability to move at high speed but they didn't do much to interfere with the stationary and slow-motion form this battle was taking.
However, we all had to crack windows to get weapons out. A stray bullet came in through one of our car's firing slits and felled Jackson. Her blood began slicking up the metal floor of the train car. One of our soldiers from the relatively inactive other side of the train immediately crossed the aisle to take her place in the firing line. Katniss and Cato were the only soldiers on any side having any luck making a habit of it. That took some pressure off the rebels; myself and some other soldiers were able to unleash a grenade barrage on the wheels of the side of the enemy car closest to us. The train car slumped as the bogies fell apart from the force of the explosions.
Our train moved forward into the intersection, giving us an excellent angle to shoot at them with as many guns as possible while they were stuck at a poor angle with few guns in range. They would be even more thoroughly defeated if they got off the train, but we eventually subdued them as they stayed aboard. When their guns fell silent, we confirmed it by throwing grenades through what remained of their windows. I didn't want to see the bodies – I had seen more than enough today, scattered all over the ground of this district. Essentially none of them were from the Capitol, mostly young men from District Two who believed the propaganda and folks from District Eleven who couldn't avoid the ugly truth. Killing people was more different from killing animals than I thought, but it was becoming all too easy, with Snow at the end to be the easiest.
Our train limped westward and the few surviving rioters waved us on with the gesture that Katniss had made famous for Rue. As many of us as possible pressed to the windows to return it. At the border, the populace had already knocked the gate down for us.
District Twelve was a no man's land. After the evacuation, the Capitol left it alone because there were no people to subjugate under Peacekeeper boot, no products of slave labor to loot. Perhaps they wanted to use it after the war – I know the rebels did. I know we didn't have the heart to destroy the home that some evacuees wanted to return to.
As the train passed through the territory, I gazed out at the abandoned buildings. I had no fondness for the shacks we were forced to live in. I still felt contempt for the relatively nice houses in town and the people who had lived in them; I had to tell myself to direct that anger entirely at the Capitol where it belongs.
We finally had a chance to talk without having to scream over explosions. "Love is all we had out here, and it's what we used to strike back at them," Rock observed. "Even them relatively rich white kids from out west figured it out."
"Even I'm glad they did," I replied.
"Shit, even though they were the ones to kill my girl and Pear's boy, I know it's really the Capitol's fault. And hell, it usually takes folks much longer than 17 or 18 to realize the error of their ways and do something about it," Rock admitted.
"I'm not sure what him and Glim would have done if they won alone, but if it was just me and Katniss, I would've raised the same hell for Thresh, Rue and all the others, past, present and future," I declared.
"I initially was just thinking about Prim," Katniss admitted. "I was struggling to get food, clothes and shelter for us in that hellhole; Gale's dreams of freedom were beyond the scope of my thought process. Then I decided to stay here and cause all sorts of trouble. I finally wanted to do something about our prison, free all our people from it, shoot the bastards that kept us there, and make them burn with us."
"That's the spirit!" I shouted to cheer her on before launching into my own monologue. "There was no way to work within their system. They taught us to see each other different, the slightly less poor folks in another district or elsewhere in the same district. Those aren't our real enemies – even I had to learn that. Our real enemies are the folks we couldn't see because they were hiding in the Capitol, a handful of high officers, not the average brainwashed soldiers who number in the thousands. 77 token victors didn't change the fundamental reality, not to mention the 1723 slaughtered in the arena and the tens of thousands who fell to the Capitol's other abuse."
Raspberry caught the spirit too. "And if only one came back like usual, even if it was my brother, the same intolerable things may have kept happening. Now, it seems that the few of us here happen to prefer lovers about as dark as ourselves. Katniss' momma and daddy felt different and that's fine. Anyway, I can still recognize Glimmer and Cato make a wonderful couple. If I had that kind of life waiting for me, I would have done it too. That's the sad thing about all this, the Capitol monsters turned all of us into monsters."
Hell, the whole damn car was cheering us on. "Sounds like one hell of a rebel propaganda broadcast," Lyme said to congratulate us on our little conversation. "Because it was. I put you on the radio feed back to Thirteen, and they sent it out live."
After the Capitol's surface-level destruction of District Thirteen, they hadn't torn up the railroad leading there. Maybe this was intentional in case they had felt the need to facilitate a ground attack on the district. However, they obviously hadn't maintained the tracks, and the survivors of Thirteen hadn't either. It was part of their deal with the Capitol to appear silent, and they hadn't had the manpower for it anyway. That quickly changed as the cold war became hot. We were greeted at the border by freshly repaired tracks; District Thirteen mechanics had been involved in a flurry of activity. The train could still travel over them, although even slower than we had been going. Some of the hangar had been converted into a train station and it was full of people cheering the return of us bedraggled survivors.