Chapter Text
Earlier—that morning
At the same time that Finnick Odair was boarding a train for the Capitol in District Four, Peacekeeper Senior-Lieutenant Palinurus Asher was putting the key in the ignition of a Peacekeeper truck in District Eight.
Minutes later, at the edge of District Eight, Asher drove his Peacekeeper truck through the open “District Twelve” gate and onto the Peacekeeper Road that ran from District Eight to District Twelve. As Asher drove through the gate, the District Eight Peacekeeper just outside the guardhouse saluted him.
Asher returned the salute, drove five meters beyond the gate—then he turned the truck left 90 degrees, set the parking brake, and stepped out of the truck. Asher closely watched the Peacekeeper at the guardhouse close the gate, reconnect the copper band across both halves of the gate, then call Head Peacekeeper Thread to re-electrify the fence. Only when Asher heard the hum of electricity return to the gate and fence did he walk back to the truck and drive away on the Peacekeeper Road.
A little over three hundred kilometers separated the fenced boundary of District Eight and the fenced boundary of District Twelve, which was northeast of Eight. While it was expected that if Peacekeepers needed to go from one district to the other (to put down a riot, say), then the Peacekeepers would be transported by hovercraft, troop movement over the Peacekeeper Road was always a workable backup plan.
District Six maintained all of the Peacekeeper Roads, and cleared away trees and shrubs for forty meters on either side of each road. The idea behind clearing away all this vegetation was that if Rebel hovercraft bombed the road, “the barrens” were wide enough that Peacekeeper vehicles had plenty of room to maneuver between the road and the tree line.
If a Head Peacekeeper reported a flaw in a Peacekeeper Road (a pothole, cracked pavement, saplings growing in the barrens, etc.), crews from Six were supposed to make the repairs immediately. But they didn’t; Asher had often heard about Head Peacekeeper Thread making an inspection drive, reporting a flaw in the road, and a week later “those morphling-heads” still had not fixed it.
Yet now, for the first hour-plus after Asher had left District Eight, the Peacekeeper Road was not in bad shape (except for snow on the road), and uncut grass was the tallest thing growing in the barrens.
Then Asher drove past a sign that showed two horizontal red stripes. (Two red stripes also were painted across the pavement, Asher knew, but these red stripes were covered by snow.) Northeast of these two red stripes, reporting on road conditions was not Thread’s responsibility anymore, it was now Head Peacekeeper Cray’s.
Now the Peacekeeper Road became a mess. Asher learned the hard way that the snow on the road covered up potholes and cracked pavement, and the barrens were worse than on Eight’s side of the red stripes. Asher saw not only saplings growing in the barrens, but thin-trunked trees.
Asher thought, It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s been ten years since Cray picked up the telephone and called District Six Road Maintenance. Fifteen years would not surprise me either. What a slacker!
It had taken Asher less than an hour and a half to drive from District Eight’s boundary to the two red stripes; but it took Asher another three hours to go from the red stripes to District Twelve’s quote-unquote electrified gate.
****
At the District Eight gate in District Twelve’s fence
Asher honked the truck’s horn and waited for the District Twelve Peacekeeper to walk out of the guardhouse.
Nobody came out.
Asher honked again.
Still nobody came out.
Asher shut off the truck’s ignition, pocketed the keys, then picked up rocks from the ground. His plan was to stand just outside the electrified fence and to throw rocks between the fence’s wires, with those rocks hitting the guardhouse’s windows.
But when Asher and his handful of rocks got near to the “electrified” fence, Asher noticed two things—
One, the copper band that was supposed to go across the shut gate, to keep the gate and fence electrified, was instead leaning against the guardhouse.
Two, the sound of high-voltage hum was completely missing.
Asher picked up a stick and threw it such that it hit two different fence-wires. What Asher should have seen were sparks and maybe flame; what he should have heard was crackling. Instead, the stick hit the wires and bounced off, with no drama at all.
The truck had some basic road-emergency supplies in it. Asher was able to open the gate by himself, using a 30-centimeter crescent wrench that he had wrapped in a plastic rain poncho.
Now thoroughly pissed, Asher stomped from the open gate to the (very empty) guardhouse and yanked the telephone handset up from its cradle.
The telephone rang seven times before it was answered.
A male voice said, “Hey, fucker, whoever you are, get out of my guardhouse! The guardhouse is for Peacekeepers only.”
Asher said, “You must be Cray, right? Well, I am a Peacekeeper—Senior-Lieutenant Palinurus Asher from District Eight—and just now I had to break in like a burglar because nobody is at the guardhouse! As it seems you know.”
“Shit, Lieutenant, what did you have to break in for? Now you’ve made me look bad. If you’d just waited an hour or two, Peacekeeper MacGregor”—Darius—“would’ve been by on his patrol and would’ve unlocked the gate.”
Asher bit his tongue on the first seventeen things he wanted to say. (Starting with Wait an hour or two? Do you realize it’s below freezing out here?) Instead, Asher said to Cray, “I shall drive my truck inside the gate, then I shall drive around till I find your office. It’s not my job to open the gate, so I’m not going to shut the gate, either. If you want it shut, sir, talk to your Peacekeeper MacGregor.”
Asher slammed down the handset of the guardhouse’s telephone.
****
Minutes later, in Cray’s office
Asher was talking to Cray and two other Peacekeeper officers—all three of whom could stand to lose a few kilograms. Asher began to lay down his line of bullshit—
“I’m searching for bandits in the inter-district areas that surround District Eight. Most of the bandits, we think, are between us and you—between Eight and Twelve.”
Cray nodded. “What do you need from us?”
Asher faked a laugh. “Well, not to shoot at me if you see me beyond your fence, for one thing!” Then Asher put on his most serious face. “I’d like to see a detailed map of Twelve and the inter-district lands around it. Eight’s maps stop at the red stripes.”
Asher gambled correctly that a map of Twelve that was complete enough to show detail outside District Twelve, would give plenty of detail of what was within District Twelve. Without trying hard, Asher learned where Mellark’s Bakery was. Off to the northwest were twelve big buildings that were collectively labeled “Victors’ Village.” Four of the big buildings had penciled-in labels saying “Bitumena,” “Haymitch,” “Katniss,” and “Peeta.” Asher memorized where Katniss’s and Peeta’s mansions were.
But Asher said nothing to Cray or to his minions about Katniss or her mansion. Instead, Asher pointed to just east of the train station on the map, which had the expected teardrop-shaped track, so that a train arriving from the Capitol could turn around to go back to the Capitol. The surprise for Asher was that both of District Twelve’s railroad tracks, the from-Capitol track and the to-Capitol track, continued to run east from Twelve’s train station, out to and past the teardrop-track, then both tracks turned northeast. “Where do these tracks go?”
Cray laughed. “To District Thirteen—long, long ago. Those tracks are still there only because nobody wants to do the work to rip them up.”
Asher lowered his voice. “Aren’t you worried about a horde of Thirteens arriving here by train?”
“Nope,” said Cray said, grinning. He tapped a place on the table where the tracks would be if the map were 5 centimeters taller. “A bridge collapsed sometime in the HG Thirties. Nobody’s fixed the bridge since. If Pierre Leeg’s crew comes to Twelve, it won’t be by train.”
“What about Thirteens driving here?” Asher asked. He tapped the Twelve-Thirteen Peacekeeper Road on the map.
Cray laughed. “Sometime around HG 5, we built a bad-ass wall over the red stripes. This wall is as wide as the road and both barrens—tree line to tree line. If the Thirteens want to show up here with tanks, they’ll need to chop down trees first, or blow up our wall—either of which we will hear.”
“So you’re not worried about Thirteen causing you any problems, even though you’re the easiest district for them to reach?”
Cray’s grin was smug. “We’re not worried at all.”
Asher spent several minutes making notes about the topography of the inter-district lands around District Twelve—this was supposedly what he was here in Twelve for.
Asher closed his notebook, then he asked with faked casualness, “So how does Katniss get outside the fence? Does she show up at a gate and ask a Peacekeeper to let her out?”
“Nah,” Cray said. His chubby finger tapped the map-fence’s west side, near a big building labeled “Coal Warehouse Two” (with the penciled-in additional label, “The Hob”). Cray said, “There’s a spot where the dirt has been dug out to make a trough under the fence. Even when the wires are hot, she can slip in and out.”
“And you don’t arrest her for poaching?” Asher asked, his disapproval clear.
An overweight Senior-Lieutenant shrugged. “Why? It just creates paperwork.”
Cray added, “Besides, have you checked the price of Dee-Ten-raised turkeys lately? It’s robbery.”
Asher thought, What a group of slackers, with Cray the worst. This guy deserves to be framed for Katniss’s murder.
****
One second later
Asher looked at the clock in Cray’s office. “There is no way I can drive back to Eight by sundown, especially with half the road as bad as it is.” Asher glared at Cray, who shrugged. “So it looks like I’ll be staying here tonight, then start back in the morning.”
Cray nodded. “If you need to call Thread and let him know you’ll be late, there’s the telephone.”
Asher was mildly surprised that Cray knew the name of District Eight’s Head Peacekeeper, but gave the matter no more thought.
The telephone call between Asher and Thread took less than a minute—neither Peacekeeper officer was the gabby type.
As soon as Asher hung up, Cray told him, “Park your truck in our motor pool, then give me the keys.” The storage box for motor-pool keys was in Cray’s office. Cray continued, “After you hand over your keys, Junior-Lieutenant Barkley will get you settled into the officer’s floor of the Peacekeeper Barracks. Dismissed.”
****
One second later
Asher came to attention, saluted, turned an about-face, and marched out of Cray’s office. Three minutes later, after more by-the book military courtesy, Asher laid a District Eight-marked key ring on Cray’s desk, did more parade-ground military courtesies, then left with Junior-Lieutenant Barkley. Barkley, when Asher could not see him, was making faces at Asher.
Cray did not immediately put Asher’s truck keys into the motor-pool storage box. Instead, Cray sat at his desk and thought hard.
Cray did not believe for one second that Asher was here merely to gain information about how to catch inter-district bandits. For one thing, inter-district bandits, at least bandits surrounding District Twelve, were not a problem. But more importantly, Asher was lying.
Cray was flabby, lazy, a whoremonger, a glutton, and in other ways a disgrace to the Peacekeeper Corps—but he was also an investigator with solid hunches. This was how he had been promoted to District Head Peacekeeper (albeit of Panem’s tiniest district).
Cray the investigator decided that Asher had come here for one of three purposes—none of which involved catching bandits.
Maybe Leonardus Chadwick, the Minister of Peace, had sent Asher to Twelve to nose around, to observe how Cray ran things, then to report back to the Minister of Peace. Well, if this was what was going on, then Cray was already fucked, and there was nothing he could do now to fix things.
Or Asher might be here for something related to District Thirteen. Asher’s two questions about travel between District Thirteen and District Twelve had surprised Cray; Cray now wondered if Thirteen was about to make trouble. Cray promptly dismissed the thought—if Thirteen had risen from the dead, how could it be that District Eight knew this, but District Twelve did not know? Besides, if Thirteen was strong again and did decide to make trouble, no way would Thirteen announce its return by invading Twelve.
Asher’s third possible reason for being in Twelve, Cray thought, was something related to Katniss Everdeen—correction, Katniss Mellark. Hadn’t Asher asked where and how Katniss went outside the fence?
At this moment, realization hit Cray—he growled in anger. Cray was used to thinking of Katniss as the Seam girl who sold him poached turkeys—but Katniss was also the reason that Asher and Thread had both been demoted, and she was the named next president of Panem. Asher planned to kill Katniss!
With this realization, Cray rushed out of his office and ran straight to the motor pool. He searched Asher’s truck from front to back. Cray hoped to find written plans how Katniss was to be assassinated, or to find a sniper rifle and ammunition, but he was disappointed. The only thing in the District Eight Peacekeeper truck, besides road-emergency miscellany, was a satchel that contained thermal-imaging goggles. Cray took the satchel and goggles.
****
The next morning, at dawn
It had been years since Cray had been at work as the sun was rising. But Asher wanted his truck early in the morning, supposedly because Thread wanted Asher back in District Eight as soon as possible.
Both Cray and Asher were wearing Peacekeeper-issue white wool coats and white wool hats.
Cray unlocked his office door. Playing dumb, he said to Asher, “You want coffee? Be just a few minutes.”
Asher said, “If I could get the keys to my truck, Captain Cray, I would very much appreciate it.”
Cray was walking toward the coffee-maker behind his desk. He stopped, turned, pulled a key ring from his pocket, and tossed it to Asher. “The key to the motor-pool keys’ storage box is the blue key. You sure you don’t want some coffee?”
“I have orders to get going, sir.”
Cray looked busy loading up the coffee-maker—but a keen observer would notice that Cray did not actually turn the machine on. Behind him, Cray heard the tinkling of keys, the slamming of the storage-box lid, then Asher said, “At your convenience, sir.”
A minute later, Cray had his key ring back in his pocket, and Asher was gone. As soon as Asher shut the office’s outer door, Cray was unlocking the motor-pool keys’ storage box for the second time in three minutes.
When Cray looked at all the key rings hanging on hooks in the storage box, something was off. When he figured out what was wrong with what he was seeing, he swore.
The key ring for the District Eight truck, which had a tag that said “D08-1” in big blue text, still hung on its hook. But the keys for a District Twelve-assigned Peacekeeper truck were gone.
“He’ll kill Katniss in a truck assigned to me!” Cray yelled in the empty office. “That son of a bitch.”
****
Meanwhile, in the motor pool
Yesterday, Asher had left unlocked the passenger-side door to the District Eight truck. So now, even though Asher had keys to a different truck than the District Eight truck, Asher was able to open the Eight truck’s passenger door and could slide his hand under the Eight truck’s passenger seat. Asher was feeling around for the satchel under the passenger seat that contained the thermal-imaging goggles.
With Asher wearing thermal-imaging goggles in the woods, the Mellark woman would be as easy to see as if she were wearing head-to-toe red. She could not hide from him!
This was why Asher now was angry when he realized that the satchel and its precious goggles were gone, gone, gone. Cray and his Peacekeepers are all crooks! Asher thought. I leave the door unlocked and they steal right out of the truck. Disgraceful!
With a muffled curse, Asher quietly shut the passenger door of the Eight truck, and unlocked the driver-side door of the Twelve truck whose keys he had stolen. As Asher slid behind the steering wheel, he thought, Even with no thermal-imaging goggles, I still have a huge advantage over Katniss Mellark in the woods: She doesn’t know anyone is hunting her.
****
Seconds later
As Cray was locking the front door to his office, he heard a Peacekeeper truck start up and drive away. Cray thought, I can’t let Asher get out of sight. Hurry, hurry!
Cray rushed to the motor pool and quickly found the District Eight truck. He had the satchel for the thermal-imaging goggles in one hand, and the District Eight truck’s key ring in his other hand. Cray, the satchel, and the keys all were thrown into the District Eight truck.
Hurry up! Get this truck rolling!
Once Cray drove the Eight truck outside, he noticed that everything was covered with clean whiteness—new snow had fallen during the night.
****
Minutes later
Cray went no farther than the District Eight gate, which was on the southwest side of District Twelve. Alternating between binoculars and his “borrowed” thermal-imaging goggles, Cray watched as Asher drove southwest on the Peacekeeper Road outside the gate, just as he was supposed to do.
Correction: Asher drove southwest on the Peacekeeper Road at first.
When Asher was a hundred or a hundred and fifty meters outside the gate, he turned right. Slowly he drove across the snow-whitened barrens toward the tree line.
When Asher reached the tree line, he turned right again, driving with the tree line close on his left.
Asher was about seventy meters diagonally left of where Katniss would go under the fence when he turned left and drove a short distance into the forest. Then Asher stopped the truck and turned off its engine. Cray could see only little bits of the truck with binoculars; but when he switched to the thermal-imaging goggles, he watched the thermal glow of the truck engine fade away till it was as dark as the surrounding trees and ground. The only thermal glow came from Asher, who sat inside the truck.
But while the District Twelve-assigned truck that Asher was driving had its engine off and its heater off, one part of the truck was still drawing current from the battery, Cray knew. Every five minutes, the truck’s location-beacon was sending out a low-power signal that was saying “I’m stopped in the woods! I’m stopped in the woods!” Which would be the “evidence” to “prove” that Cray or one of his people, not Asher, had killed Katniss.
Asher, you turkey-fucker! Cray thought.
****
About an hour after sunrise
A little after 9 a.m., District Twelve time
Cray saw black-braided Katniss walk toward the woods from the trough in the fence that was near the Hob. Katniss never looked in the direction where Asher had hidden the white truck.
At the tree line, where a fallen log lay next to an upright tree, Cray saw Katniss bend down. When she straightened again, Katniss was holding her bow and a quiver of arrows. Katniss pulled the quiver onto her left shoulder (over the strap of her game bag that was already on her left shoulder), she shifted her bow into her right hand, then she walked into the forest.
Fifteen seconds later, Asher reappeared at the tree line, near where his stolen truck was parked. He walked quickly toward the spot where Katniss had entered the forest.
Cray was trying to decide how best to handle this whole clusterfuck when his pocket-picturephone chimed.
“Fuck a dog!” Cray swore, when he saw who was calling him.