24: Shooting
Gale POV
I glance at the screen for one last second. After a flash of light filled it a few minutes ago, nothing else has been seen. It isn't coming back on. I place my hand on the gun at my waist. Harriet should give the signal soon. My hand clenches around the handle. Once the peacekeepers are dead, I'll be on my way back to see Katniss.
"Go!" Harriet whispers.
Faster than my eye can track, her gun is out of its holster and pointed upwards- so is Boson's. I pull mine out and creep towards the door. Six peacekeepers outside the door, her words come back to me. Twelve bullets. Shoot in the face, shoot to kill. Don't make enough noise for someone else to come.
Harriet fires the first shot. The peacekeeper didn't even have time to draw his gun. The second one has his hand on his, but I rush in front of him and shoot less than a foot from his face. The plastic breaks cleanly and there is a single red hole next to his nose, barely bleeding. He falls backwards and slumps on the ground.
First kill done. Harriet gets another in the face and Boson kills another. There is a loud gunshot- louder than we have because of the suppressors. Last peacekeeper. My vision swims around me. I have to kill him. My finger twitches near the trigger. It's either him or me. He has more bullets.
And then he slumps to the floor, dead. Harriet and Boson are both close to him. I stare down at his corpse. This one has a lot more blood. Oh yes, that's a hole in his wrist as well. One of the must have shot him in the wrist to get him to drop the gun and another in the head. Good aim.
I glance over to Harriet, Boson and Annie. Annie has a look of horror on her face, her eyes wide and filled with tears. I hope it isn't another one of her fits. We can't afford this now. We need to get out, the others might have heard the gunshot. We can't fight against many peacekeepers, even if we had more ammo.
I grab Annie's arm and pull her after Harriet and Boson. Damn. Why did Annie have to be Finnick's mentor? I'm pretty sure there are many more capable victors in District Four who would have actually been decent mentors and not had mental breakdowns every time there was a kill or a cannon or mutts.
By the time I catch up, the peacekeeper at the top of the stairs is already dead. I let go of Annie's arm. We proceed slowly down the stairs. My finger is just outside the trigger guard. The next peacekeeper will be my kill. I'm in front of the others- it's Harriet's turn to drag Annie.
How many bullets do I have left? Five in right now? Or is it four? Enough, probably. The peacekeeper downstairs hasn't heard I don't think. I hope not. I make my steps as fast as I can whilst still keeping them quiet. Still too slow. I want out of here. I need to get to the hovercraft and get back to Katniss and see if she's OK after getting her arm torn apart. She won't easily forgive Finnick for that.
Ah, now I see the peacekeeper. He's still here; I don't think that he's called for help. If he had, he wouldn't be standing so still, with his back to us- almost asking me to put a bullet through his head. He's a Capitolite, I remind myself. He deserves this. He's probably made avoxes and whipped people to death.
My finger tightens around the trigger. He seems to sense that there's someone behind him and turns around. Just as he sees me, the trigger clicks and send a bullet propelling through the mask into his eye. Left eye. Some goo mixes with the blood oozing out. He stands balanced for a moment, then falls forward into me.
I catch him with my arms under his armpits and lower him slowly to the ground. He hits with a small thump and I step around the still figure. Boson, Harriet and Annie wait for me at the top of the stairs. How many floors are left now? How many other peacekeepers have to die?
Six will probably be dead outside the building right now. There are four floors left I think. Maybe three. Quite a few peacekeepers. As long as they don't call for help though, it should be easy. Just bullets in the backs of their heads. Only the peacekeepers at the top put up a fight because there were six.
My mind flashes back to the huge bang that the peacekeeper's gun gave off on the top floor. Where did the bullet go then? It could have easily hit me. It could have killed me and then everything that Katniss and I have worked for would be ruined. Katniss. I can almost see her dark plait and grey eyes now. Soon I'll see her. Just a few hours.
Boson gets the next peacekeeper. The hole is in the back of his mask, not the front. Boson can kill cleanly, unlike me. How many people has he killed before, I wonder. How many hours has he trained with the rebellion? Enough that I feel safe with him. If he's willing to kill for our cause, I doubt that he'll betray us.
Harriet kills the next one. My hand tightens around the handle of the gun. I glance back at Annie. She's stopped whimpering now. Boson has his hand clenched tightly around her arm. Tears stream down her face. I'm not sure if it's because his grip hurts or because of the peacekeepers.
Annie hates the Capitol, I would think. She probably hates these men. Would she really cry for them? Maybe she is crying because she's in pain. Or maybe Annie just doesn't want to see any more death. The rebellion base probably won't be the best place for her then. I'm not sure where it is, but I know that it'll soon our base for a war.
She said that Finnick helped her with the flashbacks. Maybe when he's there, she won't cry over the deaths of Capitolites or go into flashbacks about her own Games all the time. That was probably worse in the mentor room though- too much to remind her of the Games. I'm glad that I don't have proper flashbacks. Nightmares are nothing compared to what she has.
As we turn the corner, my gun twitches. I catch sight of the pure white uniform of the peacekeepers and prowl up behind him. He's the last one. My finger clenches down on the trigger. The gun pushes back slightly and I steady it. This is my first clean kill. Straight through the back of his skull. I could get used to using a gun, I suppose.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I step past his body. He won't be the last Capitolite that I have to kill who'll just be doing his job. He isn't the first death that I've caused. That was the boy in the bloodbath in the seventy fourth. I can't even remember which District he was from now.
I remember what he looked like though. Short red hair, pale skin. Around fourteen years old. I remember the shocked expression that he wore when I stuck the sword through his lungs, how he gasped for breath and I just turned away from him. Moved onto my next kill.
It was worth it though. Killing him was to save my life, to save Katniss's life. I would kill him again tomorrow to save her, and the day after that, and every day until I die. I won't leave Katniss behind. I won't let Katniss die before me. Even if it means that I have to jump in front of a bullet for her, I would do it gladly.
Harriet swings open the doors. Just as she said, the two peacekeepers outside the door are dead. Six men dressed in grey approach us. These must be the rebellion men.
"Follow us," one orders.
He steps away and the others walk behind him, fanning out in a cone. I walk after them. The hovercraft must be somewhere around here. We don't have to walk far, only a few minutes. Harriet was right, the hovercraft is small. Nothing compared to the huge machines that sometimes fly over the forest in Twelve, taking avoxes. Not like the ones that took Catnip and I to the arena.
He pulls open the door. The men enter first, then Harriet and Boson. Boson drags Annie up with him. Then I climb in. Who are these men, I wonder. How has the rebellion been going on for so long? Do they have more hovercrafts like this one? What about spies in the Capitol and weapons? I know that they can supply guns.
The hovercraft is very plain inside. All silver metal. At one end is a door to the cockpit, at the other end there is another door. Probably leads to a mini-hospital like the Capitol had when we got out of the Games. Otherwise, there are seats fixed to the sides of the hovercraft, six in each row.
"Sit," one of the men commands. "Wear seat belts, this flight might be bumpy." We all takes our seats, the metal feeling cold on my arms. I plug in the seatbelt. "I am Officer Jackson. We will arrive at District Thirteen in a few hours. Gale, I trust that Harriet has filled you in on our plan."
"Wait.. Wait. District Thirteen? I thought that they didn't exist anymore. That's what we were taught at school- the Capitol bombed them in the dark days. Is our base in the ruins?"
"No. District Thirteen was never destroyed. I suppose you were taught that we produced graphite as well, weren't you?" I nod, dumbfounded. Has everything that I learned about Panem been wrong all this time? "We did, but only small amounts. No, our main purpose was nuclear research. Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons."
"You could have won the war for the Districts and you pretended to be destroyed and let them win?" I ask angrily. "Why are you even in the rebellion? It sounds pretty much like you betrayed the Districts to the Capitol to me."
"Just listen. The Capitol also had nuclear weapons? Do you know what would have happened if there was nuclear war?"
"We would have had a much better chance at winning because it would be balanced?"
"No. Nobody would have won. Panem would have been destroyed, completely destroyed. The country would have been made uninhabitable, and more than that, we couldn't just rebuild. No one would be able to live here for decades afterwards, maybe centuries because of the radiation. Do you understand why we did what we did now?"
"What did you even do?" Nuclear war. I don't know much about nuclear weapons, nothing at all really apart from the fact that they are incredibly destructive. Could they really make it impossible for anybody to live here? And the Capitol still have these? Please tell me they don't, I pray.
"We made an agreement. They pretended to bomb us, and we went underground to rule ourselves. We were independent from the rest of Panem. That doesn't mean that we haven't been waiting for our opportunity to take down the Capitol though. They haven't produced nuclear weapons for almost fifty years now and the Districts were rising, so this is the perfect time for a revolution."
"Oh. Do the Capitol know that you exist anymore?"
"Some do. President Snow, I'm sure does. Probably some other high-ranking people in the army. Your head gamemaker, Seneca Crane found out about us through his contacts among the Capitolites. But the average person, no, they have no idea that District Thirteen was never destroyed."
The mention of the gamemakers reminds me of Katniss. I saw the screen flash as Beetee fired the arrow at the force field and nothing after that. She's probably on a hovercraft like this now.
"Where's Katniss?" I ask. "How is she? Her arm isn't too bad, is it?" The man looks away for a second and gulps. Bad sign. "She is OK, isn't she?" I press. "Please tell me she is."
"I'm sorry. Katniss Everdeen was taken by the Capitol before our hovercrafts reached her, along with Beetee Wright, Finnick Odair and Haymitch Abernathy."
For a moment, his words don't register with me. Then I replay them in my head. Katniss is gone. Katniss has been taken to the Capitol. Katniss will be tortured for information she doesn't have. And then she'll be killed to crush our spirits. I'll never see her again. When we said goodbye before the Games.. That was the last time that I saw her in person.
I wrench out the seatbelt. My hands close around his shoulders. "You have to get her out. You have to. She risked everything for you, please.. Please."
"I'm sorry. We have no idea where she is.. Even if we did she would be too heavily guarded.. Maybe if we win.."
"No," I growl. "That's not good enough." My hands tighten around his throat. "You will get her out." Squeeze. "I need her." He gasps. "You need her." Men are coming up behind me. I don't care. Katniss is gone. They don't matter. "Please get her out for me. She'll be tortured in there, Snow will kill her once he's done.."
The men grab me and push me back down again. One of them holds me down against the chair. As I try to push back, the other pulls the seatbelt across and presses a button to lock into in place. They let go and step back. I look around the hovercraft. Harriet, Annie and Boson are staring.
Two people I barely know and one crazy girl. Some soldiers. A completely plain hovercraft. This is what I traded Katniss for? Snow will pay for this. He won't have Katniss for long, even if it means that I have to sneak into the Capitol myself to get her out of there. I will get her out.
I can't have Katniss right now, but I can help District Thirteen make the Capitol burn.