The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Page 11

  A young man in a lab coat intercepted them and led them to a section of reptile cases. Here they found Dr. Gaul, peering into a large terrarium filled with hundreds of snakes. They were artificially bright, their skins almost glowing in shades of neon pink, yellow, and blue. No longer than a ruler and not much thicker than a pencil, they twisted into a psychedelic carpet that covered the bottom of the case.

  “Ah, here you are,” Dr. Gaul said with a grin. “Say hello to my new babies.”

  “Hello there,” said Coriolanus, putting his face close to the glass to see the writhing mess. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

  “Is there a point to the color?” asked Clemensia.

  “There is a point to everything or nothing at all, depending on your worldview,” said Dr. Gaul. “Which brings me to your proposal. I liked it. Who wrote it? Just you two? Or did your brassy friend weigh in before her throat was cut?”

  Clemensia pressed her lips together, upset, but then Coriolanus saw her face tighten. She was not going to be intimidated. “The whole class discussed it as a group.”

  “And Arachne was planning to help write it up last night, but then . . . as you said,” he added.

  “But you two forged ahead, is that it?” asked Dr. Gaul.

  “That’s right,” said Clemensia. “We wrote it up at the library, and I printed it out at my apartment last night. Then I gave it to Coriolanus so he could drop it off this morning. As assigned.”

  Dr. Gaul addressed Coriolanus. “Is that how it happened?”

  Coriolanus felt put on the spot. “I did drop it off this morning, yes. Well, just to the Peacekeepers on guard; I wasn’t allowed in,” he said evasively. Something was strange about this line of questioning. “Was that a problem?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you’d both had your hands on it,” said Dr. Gaul.

  “I can show you the parts the group discussed and how they were developed in the proposal,” he offered.

  “Yes. Do that. Did you bring a copy?” she asked.

  Clemensia looked at Coriolanus expectantly. “No, I didn’t,” he said. He wasn’t thrilled with Clemensia laying it at his door, when she’d been too shaky to even help write the thing. Especially since she was one of his most formidable competitors for the Academy prizes. “Did you?”

  “They took our book bags.” Clemensia turned to Dr. Gaul. “Perhaps we could use the copy we gave you?”

  “Well, we could. But my assistant lined this very case with it while I was having my lunch,” she said with a laugh.

  Coriolanus stared down into the mass of wriggling snakes, with their flicking tongues. Sure enough, he could catch phrases of his proposal between the coils.

  “Suppose you two retrieve it?” Dr. Gaul suggested.

  It felt like a test. A weird Dr. Gaul test, but still. And somehow planned, but he couldn’t begin to guess to what end. He glanced at Clemensia and tried to remember if she was afraid of snakes, but he scarcely knew if he was himself. They didn’t have snakes in the lab at school.

  She gave Dr. Gaul a clenched smile. “Of course. Do we just reach in through the trapdoor on the top?”

  Dr. Gaul removed the entire cover. “Oh, no, let’s give you some room. Mr. Snow? Why don’t you start?”

  Coriolanus reached in slowly, feeling the warmth of the heated air.

  “That’s right. Move gently. Don’t disrupt them,” Dr. Gaul instructed.

  He scooped his fingers under the edge of a sheet of his proposal and slowly slid it out from under the snakes. They slumped down into a heap but didn’t seem to mind much. “I don’t think they even noticed me,” he said to Clemensia, who looked a little green.

  “Here I go, then.” She reached into the tank.

  “They can’t see too well, and they hear even less,” said Dr. Gaul. “But they know you’re there. Snakes can smell you using their tongues, these mutts here more than others.”

  Clemensia hooked a sheet with her fingernail and lifted it up. The snakes stirred.

  “If you’re familiar, if they have pleasant associations with your scent — a warm tank, for instance — they’ll ignore you. A new scent, something foreign, that would be a threat,” said Dr. Gaul. “You’d be on your own, little girl.”

  Coriolanus had just begun to put two and two together when he saw the look of alarm on Clemensia’s face. She yanked her hand from the tank, but not before a half dozen neon snakes sank their fangs into her flesh.

  Clemensia gave a bloodcurdling scream, shaking her hand madly to rid it of the vipers. The tiny puncture wounds left by their fangs oozed the neon colors of their skins. Pus dyed bright pink, yellow, and blue dripped down her fingers.

  Lab assistants in white jackets materialized. Two pinned Clemensia to the floor while a third injected her with a scary-looking hypodermic needle filled with black fluid. Her lips turned purple and then bloodless before she passed out. The assistants dropped her onto a stretcher and whisked her away.

  Coriolanus began to follow them, but Dr. Gaul stopped him with her voice. “Not you, Mr. Snow. You stay here.”

  “But I — She —” he stammered. “Will she die?”

  “Anyone’s guess,” said Dr. Gaul. She had dipped a hand back into the tank and was lightly trailing her gnarled fingers over her pets. “Clearly, her scent was not on the paper. So, you wrote the proposal alone?”

  “I did.” There was no point in lying. Lying had probably killed Clemensia. Obviously, he was dealing with a lunatic who should be handled with extreme care.

  “Good. The truth, finally. I’ve no use for liars. What are lies but attempts to conceal some sort of weakness? If I see that side of you again, I’ll cut you off. If Dean Highbottom punishes you for it, I won’t stand in his way. Are we clear?” She wrapped one of the pink snakes around her wrist like a bracelet and seemed to be admiring it.

  “Very clear,” said Coriolanus.

  “It’s good, your proposal,” she said. “Well thought out and simple to execute. I’m going to recommend my team review it and implement a version of the first stage.”

  “All right,” said Coriolanus, afraid to make more than the blandest of responses, surrounded as he was by lethal creatures that did her bidding.

  Dr. Gaul laughed. “Oh, go home. Or go see your friend if she’s still there to see. It’s time for my crackers and milk.”

  Coriolanus hurried off, bumping into a lizard tank and sending its inhabitants into a frenzy. He made a wrong turn, then another, and found himself in a ghoulish section of the lab where the glass cases housed humans with animal parts grafted to their bodies. Tiny feathered ruffs around their necks; talons, or even tentacles, in place of fingers; and something — perhaps gills? — embedded in their chests. His appearance startled them, and when a few opened their mouths to plead with him, he realized they were Avoxes. Their cries reverberated and he caught a glimpse of small black birds perched above them. The name jabberjay popped into his mind. A brief chapter in his genetics class. The failed experiment, the bird that could repeat human speech, that had been a tool for espionage until the rebels had figured out its abilities and sent it back carrying false information. Now the useless creatures were creating an echo chamber filled with the Avoxes’ pitiful wails.

  Finally, a woman in a lab coat and oversized pink bifocals intercepted him, scolded him for disturbing the birds, and escorted him back to the elevator. As he waited, a security camera blinked down at him and he compulsively tried to smooth out the lone, crumpled page of his proposal he’d crushed in his hand. Peacekeepers met him above, returned both his and Clemensia’s book bags, and marched him out of the Citadel.

  Coriolanus made it down the street and around the corner before his legs gave way and he dropped onto the curb. The sun hurt his eyes, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He was exhausted, having not slept the night be
fore, but hyper with adrenaline. What had just happened? Was Clemensia dead? He had not begun to come to terms with Arachne’s violent end, and now this. It was like the Hunger Games. Only they weren’t district kids. The Capitol was supposed to protect them. He thought of Sejanus telling Dr. Gaul it was the government’s job to protect everybody, even the people in the districts, but he still wasn’t sure how to square that with the fact that they’d been such recent enemies. But certainly the child of a Snow should be a top priority. He could be dead if Clemensia had written the proposal instead of him. He buried his head in his hands, confused, angry, and most of all afraid. Afraid of Dr. Gaul. Afraid of the Capitol. Afraid of everything. If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life . . . then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that was for sure. And if you couldn’t trust them, who could you trust? All bets were off.

  Coriolanus knotted up at the memory of the snake fangs sinking into flesh. Poor Clemmie, could she really be dead? And in that nightmarish way. If she was, was it his fault? For not calling her out for lying? It seemed such a minor infraction, but would Dr. Gaul place blame on him for covering for her? If she died, he could be in all kinds of trouble.

  He guessed that in an emergency, a person would be taken to the nearby Capitol Hospital, so he found himself running in its direction. Once inside the cool entrance hall, he followed the signs to the emergency room. As soon as the automated door slid open, he could hear Clemensia screaming, just as she had when the snakes bit her. At least she was still alive. He babbled something to the nurse at the counter, and she made enough sense of it to have him take a seat just as a wave of dizziness hit him. He must have looked terrible, because she brought him two packets of nutritional crackers and a glass of sweet, fizzy lemon drink, which he tried to sip and ended up gulping down, longing for a refill. The sugar made him feel a bit better, although not enough to try the crackers, which he pocketed. By the time the attending doctor emerged from the back, he was almost in control of himself. The doctor reassured him. They’d treated the victims of mishaps at the lab before. Since the antidote had been swiftly administered, there was every reason to believe Clemensia would survive, although there might be some neurological damage. She’d be hospitalized until they were sure she was stable. If he checked back in a few days, she might be ready for visitors.

  Coriolanus thanked the doctor, handed over her book bag, and agreed when he suggested that the best thing would be to return home. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he spotted Clemensia’s parents rushing in his direction and managed to conceal himself in a doorway. He didn’t know what the Dovecotes had been told, but he had no interest in talking to them, especially before he’d worked out his story.

  The lack of a plausible story, preferably one that absolved him of being an accessory to her condition, made his return to school or even home impossible.

  Tigris would not be home until supper at the earliest, and the Grandma’am would be horrified by his situation. Strangely, he found the only person he wanted to talk to was Lucy Gray, who was both clever and unlikely to repeat his words.

  His feet carried him to the zoo before he had really considered the difficulties he would encounter there. A pair of impressively armed Peacekeepers were on guard at the main entrance, with several more milling around behind them. At first they waved him away; instructions were to allow no visitors to the zoo. But Coriolanus played the mentor card, and at this point some of them recognized him as the boy who’d tried to save Arachne. His celebrity was enough to convince them to call in a request for an exception. The Peacekeeper spoke to Dr. Gaul directly, and Coriolanus could hear her distinctive cackle shooting out of the phone, even though he stood several yards away. He was allowed in with a Peacekeeper, but only for a short time.

  Trash from the fleeing crowd was still strewn along the path to the monkey house. Dozens of rats darted about, gnawing on leftovers, from bits of rotting food to shoes lost in the panic. Although the sun was high, several raccoons foraged, scooping up tidbits in their clever little hands. One chewed on a dead rat, warning the others to give it a wide berth.

  “Not the zoo I remember,” said the Peacekeeper. “Nothing but kids in cages and vermin running loose.”

  At points along the path, Coriolanus could see small containers of white powder tucked under boulders or against walls. He remembered the poison used by the Capitol during the siege — a time with little food but plenty of rats. Humans, particularly dead ones, had become their daily fare. During the worst of it, of course, humans had eaten humans as well. There was no point in feeling superior to the rats.

  “Is that rat poison?” he asked the Peacekeeper.

  “Yeah, some new stuff they’re trying out today. But the rats are so smart, they won’t go near it.” He shrugged. “It’s what they gave us to work with.”

  Inside the cage, the tributes, shackled again, pressed against the back wall or positioned themselves behind the rock formations, as if trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible.

  “You have to keep your distance,” said the Peacekeeper. “Your girl isn’t likely a threat, but who knows? Another might attack you. You have to stay back where they can’t touch you.”

  Coriolanus nodded and went to his usual rock but remained standing behind it. He didn’t feel threatened by the tributes — they were the least of his problems — but he didn’t want to give Dean Highbottom any other excuse to punish him.

  At first he couldn’t locate Lucy Gray. Then he made eye contact with Jessup, who sat propped against the back wall, holding what appeared to be the Snows’ handkerchief to his neck. Jessup gave something beside him a shake, and Lucy Gray sat straight up with a start.

  For a moment she seemed disoriented. When she spotted Coriolanus, she wiped the sleep from her eyes and combed her loose hair back with her fingers. She lost her balance as she rose, and reached out to catch herself on Jessup’s arm. Still unsteady, she began to make her way across the cage to him, dragging the chains with her. Was it the heat? The trauma of the killing? Hunger? Since the Capitol wasn’t feeding the tributes, she’d had nothing since Arachne’s murder, when she’d vomited up the precious food from the crowd, and probably his bread pudding and the apple from the morning as well. So she’d gone almost five days on a meat loaf sandwich and a plum. He was going to have to find a way to get her more to eat, even if it was cabbage soup.

  When she’d crossed the waterless moat, he held up a cautionary hand. “I’m sorry, we can’t get close.”

  Lucy Gray stopped a few feet from the bars. “Surprised you got in at all.” Her throat, her skin, her hair — everything seemed parched in the hot afternoon sun. A bad bruise on her arm had not been there the previous night. Who had hit her? Another tribute, or a guard?

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

  She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Jessup and I take turns sleeping. Capitol rats have a taste for people.”

  “The rats are trying to eat you?” Coriolanus asked, revolted at the thought.

  “Well, something bit Jessup’s neck the first night we were here. Too dark to see what, but he mentioned fur. And last night, something crawled over my leg.” She indicated a container of white powder by the bars. “That stuff doesn’t do a lick of good.”

  Coriolanus had a terrible image of her lying dead under a swarm of rats. It wiped away the last few shreds of resistance he had, and despair engulfed him. For her. For himself. For the both of them. “Oh, Lucy Gray, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about all of this.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  “You must hate me. You should. I would hate me,” he said.

  “I don’t hate you. The Hunger Games weren’t your idea,” she replied.

  “But I’m participating in them. I’m helping them happen!” His head dropped in shame. “I should be like Sejanus and at least try t
o quit.”

  “No, don’t! Please don’t. Don’t leave me to go through this alone!” She took a step toward him and almost fainted. Her hands caught the bars, and she slid down to the ground.

  Ignoring the guard’s warning, he impulsively stepped over the rock and crouched down across the bars from her. “Are you all right?” She nodded, but she didn’t look all right. He’d wanted to tell her about the scare with the snakes and Clemensia’s brush with death. He’d hoped to ask her advice, but it all paled in comparison to her situation. He remembered the crackers the nurse had given him and fumbled for the crumpled packets in his pocket. “I brought you these. They’re not big, but they’re very nutritious.”

  That sounded stupid. How could their nutritional value matter to her? He realized he was just parroting what his teachers had said during the war, when one of the incentives for going to school had been the free snack provided by the government. The scratchy, tasteless things washed down with water were all some of the kids had to eat for the day. He remembered their little clawlike hands tearing into the wrapping and the desperate crunching that followed.

  Lucy Gray immediately ripped open a packet and stuffed one of the two crackers into her mouth, chewing and swallowing the dry thing with difficulty. She pressed a hand against her stomach, sighed, and ate the second more slowly. The food seemed to focus her, and her voice sounded calmer.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That’s better.”

  “Eat the others,” he urged, nodding to the second packet.

  She shook her head. “No. I’ll save these for Jessup. He’s my ally now.”

  “Your ally?” Coriolanus was perplexed. How could one have an ally in the Games?

  “Uh-huh. The tributes from District Twelve are going down together,” said Lucy Gray. “He’s not the brightest star in the Dipper, but he’s strong as an ox.”