This chapter brings Snow back in the mix, and he's going to be in place for the duration. I don't recall how he was portrayed in the movie, but when I write for him, I picture George Sanders (the voice of Shere Kahn in The Jungle Book): Aristocratic, cruel and bored.
Johanna wrapped a sheet around herself as she rolled out of bed. "You know," she said, struggling to think past a cloud of messages that pressed in within her mind, "I think you're the only man I've ever covered up for."
"I think," Gale said groggily, "you're the only woman I've ever taken everything off for." He took out a pair of shorts from a dresser within arm's reach of the bed, and put them on before rising. They were in a 12-by-12 concrete room, with a 7-by-5 bed in the middle. The functional metal dresser and a desk were literally wedged in at the corners, made in the shape of right triangles to fit better in their niches. What looked like a corner closet was actually a lavatory.
Johanna went into the lavatory to shower. Gale threw the metal shutters of the single window and looked out. He beheld a gray landscape in a gray haze, ending in the near distance at a forest of skeletal trees on some kind of steep slope. Already, his mind was telling him the story. The Rebels had swept to the streets of the Capitol, capturing President Snow alive. But Snow had left a final plan in place. Automated systems beneath the Capitol had launched hundreds of nuclear missiles at every District, and 13 had retaliated in vain. Only a handful had managed to escape to a secret shelter in the wilderness outside of Twelve, where they awaited any sign that the Earth had or ever would become habitable again. It was him and Johanna, with their comrades Haymitch, Peeta and young Prim, plus Peeta's daughter Rosanna, a District 13 mole woman named Victoria, and their prisoners.
Johanna emerged from the lavatory, and Gale showered while she dressed. The lavatory was essentially a very modest shower stall, with a toilet and shower that folded back into the walls when the shower was in use. As he emerged, a chime sounded, and a screen on the wall beside the door came to life. "Good morning, Mr. Hawthorne," said President Snow. "How are the two of you enjoying the Presidential Bedroom?"
"Go to hell," Gale said.
Snow chuckled. "I believe the evidence would favor the interpretation that we are already there. And you could be nicer to me. It wouldn't do if I became despondent and started flipping switches."
"Right," said Gale.
"I suppose you'd feel better if this room was wired for video."
"Oh, I'm quite above anything so tawdry," Snow said. "Though, I found the audio from last night perfectly intriguing. If you like, I could play it back for you and the lady privately."
Gale laughed openly. "Thanks, but I don't think so," he said.
"It wasn't like this," Johanna said. "It's not supposed to be like this... But it's harder to remember."
There was a banging at the door. "Eat and suit up, Hawthorne!" called out the voice of Romulus Thread. "We must search for the Mutt!"
The floor plan of the shelter was a T shape, with the Presidential Bedroom and the main control room at either end of the upper corridor. Snow was locked in the control room, and he had made it clear that he had no intention of coming out under any foreseeable circumstance. Fortunately, he could do nothing from there but annoy his fellow survivors, unless it was by shutting down the life support systems. Since the control room was as dependent on said systems as the rest of the shelter, his trump card was largely an idle threat. Romulus waited for Gale with a noticeably battered entrenching shovel he carried for no apparent reason. Gale followed him twelve feet to the main corridor.
The main corridor went for fifty feet, with four doors on either side. Four were bedrooms, with bunks for six people each, and the others were the library, dining area, and storage and utility rooms. Gale found the dining area occupied by Haymitch and Victoria, who greeted him with only sad and vaguely resentful glances. He took his morning meal from the vending machine in the corner and an extra ration to take with him, quickly ate his food, and then went with Thread to the end of the hall, the decontamination room.
Romulus and Gale emerged from the far side of the decontamination room into the gray lanscape, dressed in radiation suits. The Peacekeeper wielded a shovel, and Gale carried a gun. Gale looked back to see the door close, leaving no trace of itself in the face of a cliff. He went forward a few paces and looked back again. The cliff went off to the left, where it graded into the slope with the dead trees, and stretched upward for at least thirty feet, where it disappeared into something like a white blanket of cloud.
Thread was already marching to the right, to the edge of the cliff. This proved to mark the edge of a wider, deeper basin, filled with the dead trees. "What are we doing?" he said to Thread.
"Hunting the Mutt," Thread answered.
They spent all day tramping through the waste. Every fifteen minutes or so, Thread would jab with the shovel and shout "Mutt!", then run after some noise or point to an equivocal broken branch or trace in the dust. Meanwhile, Gale kept looking at the contours of the slope. He was sure they were in a dry lake bed, and he kept getting pictures of a lake shore.
After a while, he lost sight of Romulus, but continued to follow the sound of his feet, until the sound stopped. "Romulus?" he called out, moving toward where he had last heard the steps. There was no sign of the other man. There was no sign of anything. Then he heard a sound. Then, a voice, calling his name. It was Katniss.
"Katniss, is that you?" he called out.
"Yes, it's me," came the reply. Then he could see her, and he ran to her. "Katniss, I thought you were dead! You married Peeta and had Rosanna, but then- You didn't make it here."
"Of course I'm alive," she said as she approached. "I'm yours..."
"Katniss... I need to tell you something..." He froze. Another figure was approaching.
"What's wrong?" Katniss said. "I said I'm ready for you. It doesn't matter that I was with Peeta. It doesn't matter if you are with someone else. We can work it out." But Gale only stared as an identical figure approached behind her, smiling and changing. The first Katniss looked back, just as the Ophidian shed its clothes. She only stood, not fighting or even screaming as she was torn apart piece by piece, while blood spattered his suit.
The ophidian smiled as Katniss's head slid slowly down its throat. "Gale," it said in Katniss's voice, and then it was Katniss. "We should have been together, Gale. If we had helped each other when we needed it, we would be together now. But it's not too late, Gale. Come back to me, Gale, because I need you. I need your help."
"No," he said. "I can't go back. I've lost too much. I have to stay away."
"Come with me, Gale," Katniss said. "We can be together. We can all be together. You and me and Prim..." She began to sing, "`We will all be together at the Hanging Tree."
"No!" Gale shouted, and for a moment, he was aware of nothing but the roar of his gun on continuous cyclic fire. When he came back to awareness, Thread was crashing to him through the bushes. He looked down, expecting to see a bullet-riddled corpse at his feet. Nothing was there, except a slight disturbance of a hole filling in the dust.