Mockingjay(44)

“If Peeta’s right, these didn’t stand a chance,” he says.

Peeta. Blood like raindrops on the window. Like wet mud on boots.

“Thanks for…everything.” I take our stuff. “What were you doing up in our rooms?”

“Just double-checking,” he says. “We’re in Forty-Seven if you need me.”

Practically everyone withdrew to their spaces when the doors shut, so I get to cross to our new home with at least five hundred people watching me. I try to appear extra calm to make up for my frantic crashing through the crowd. Like that’s fooling anyone. So much for setting an example. Oh, who cares? They all think I’m nuts anyway. One man, who I think I knocked to the floor, catches my eye and rubs his elbow resentfully. I almost hiss at him, too.

Prim has Buttercup installed on the lower bunk, draped in a blanket so that only his face pokes out. This is how he likes to be when there’s thunder, the one thing that actually frightens him. My mother puts her box carefully in the cube. I crouch, my back supported by the wall, to check what Gale managed to rescue in my hunting bag. The plant book, the hunting jacket, my parents’ wedding photo, and the personal contents of my drawer. My mockingjay pin now lives with Cinna’s outfit, but there’s the gold locket and the silver parachute with the spile and Peeta’s pearl. I knot the pearl into the corner of the parachute, bury it deep in the recesses of the bag, as if it’s Peeta’s life and no one can take it away as long as I guard it.

The faint sound of the sirens cuts off sharply. Coin’s voice comes over the district audio system, thanking us all for an exemplary evacuation of the upper levels. She stresses that this is not a drill, as Peeta Mellark, the District 12 victor, has possibly made a televised reference to an attack on 13 tonight.

That’s when the first bomb hits. There’s an initial sense of impact followed by an explosion that resonates in my innermost parts, the lining of my intestines, the marrow of my bones, the roots of my teeth. We’re all going to die, I think. My eyes turn upward, expecting to see giant cracks race across the ceiling, massive chunks of stone raining down on us, but the bunker itself gives only a slight shudder. The lights go out and I experience the disorientation of total darkness. Speechless human sounds—spontaneous shrieks, ragged breaths, baby whimpers, one musical bit of insane laughter—dance around in the charged air. Then there’s a hum of a generator, and a dim wavering glow replaces the stark lighting that is the norm in 13. It’s closer to what we had in our homes in 12, when the candles and fire burned low on a winter’s night.

I reach for Prim in the twilight, clamp my hand on her leg, and pull myself over to her. Her voice remains steady as she croons to Buttercup. “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. We’ll be okay down here.”

My mother wraps her arms around us. I allow myself to feel young for a moment and rest my head on her shoulder. “That was nothing like the bombs in Eight,” I say.

“Probably a bunker missile,” says Prim, keeping her voice soothing for the cat’s sake. “We learned about them during the orientation for new citizens. They’re designed to penetrate deep in the ground before they go off. Because there’s no point in bombing Thirteen on the surface anymore.”

“Nuclear?” I ask, feeling a chill run through me.

“Not necessarily,” says Prim. “Some just have a lot of explosives in them. But…it could be either kind, I guess.”

The gloom makes it hard to see the heavy metal doors at the end of the bunker. Would they be any protection against a nuclear attack? And even if they were one hundred percent effective at sealing out the radiation, which is really unlikely, would we ever be able to leave this place? The thought of spending whatever remains of my life in this stone vault horrifies me. I want to run madly for the door and demand to be released into whatever lies above. It’s pointless. They would never let me out, and I might start some kind of stampede.

“We’re so far down, I’m sure we’re safe,” says my mother wanly. Is she thinking of my father’s being blown to nothingness in the mines? “It was a close call, though. Thank goodness Peeta had the wherewithal to warn us.”

The wherewithal. A general term that somehow includes everything that was needed for him to sound the alarm. The knowledge, the opportunity, the courage. And something else I can’t define. Peeta seemed to have been waging a sort of battle in his mind, fighting to get the message out. Why? The ease with which he manipulates words is his greatest talent. Was his difficulty a result of his torture? Something more? Like madness?