The first shots rang out just as my brother was putting our boat in the water. He grabbed the bowline in his fist and ran into the surf, tugging at the boat but it was stuck fast in the sand. I cried out his name and shouted at the Peacekeepers to stop shooting but their fire was relentless. One bullet hit my brother's forearm, smashing the bones and forcing him to drop the rope as he collapsed into the water. A wave crashed over him and he let the water pull him toward the sea. I could hear the unmistakable sound of a hovercraft coming in from the city.
The bullets hit the water around my brother. He stayed low, where the water would protect him somewhat, and kept pushing himself out toward the open waves. I shouted at him to swim, to keep going, that I loved him, anything I could think of that would encourage him. And then I heard the hollow thunk of a grenade being lobbed his way. The water where he was erupted in a bloody, chunky mass of flesh and bone. I shrieked his name again, fell on my knees and wept. A shadow came over me and I looked up. The hovercraft over me was lowering its claw toward me. I tried to scramble away from it but one of the Peacekeepers hit my head with the butt of his rifle. When my head finally cleared the metal talons of the claw were digging in to my arms and shoulders as it lifted me into the sky. I got one last look at the village, at the fishing boats laid up on the beach, and the pieces of body that used to be my brother floating in the waves.
I had gone to the beach to convince him not to run, not even saying good bye to mom and dad as I ran out the door. I spotted our house, hard to miss with its rusty metal roof next to the stream, and mom and dad were standing outside, looking up at me. Did they know it was me?
"I'm sorry!" I shouted. "I'm sorry! I love you!"
My mother's mouth dropped open and her hands flew to her cheeks. She could hear me, or she recognized me. My dad dropped to his knees, and I could hear him calling me. "Sarah! Oh my God!"
And I was pulled up into the belly of the hovercraft, and that was the last I ever saw of them.
Things had started changing about a month before, on the day that my brother and I saw our friend Tiana killed in the Games. She grew up next door to us and she and my brother were in love and had been since they were kids. Everyone knew it. When she was chosen in the Reaping my brother tried to keep a good face on it but couldn't . He didn't sleep at all until the night that she was killed.
She was 14, my age. My brother was a year older than us. She was small, not very strong, but wiry and sleek. She'd survived three days into the game by staying hidden. The few times that she was spotted she twisted and turned and got away, using her speed and small size to her advantage. It was torture for my brother, for all of us, hoping that she could make it to the end but then knowing that even if she got that far she'd be fighting the last person… and that looked like it would be the favored tribute from District 2 that would eventually overpower her and take her down.
But it wasn't. Three days into the game she allied with a boy from district 9. He was strong, probably twice her size. She'd had a few close calls and probably figured that he would be able to protect her. She took the first watch in their hiding spot while he slept. I remember watching him lay there with his eyes open just a little, watching her while her back was turned. After a couple of hours, she woke him up to watch while she slept. You could see in her eyes how tired she was and how quickly she fell asleep. He watched her instead of watching for other tributes.
He moved on her. When she opened her eyes, his face was inches from hers and his knife was across her throat. She whimpered, something happened and she screamed. His hand closed across her mouth. The camera cut away to a group of three tributes who were slowly moving through the woods nearby. In the background you could hear her screams, the repeated, "No! No! Stop it!" over and over and then suddenly a loud shriek that turned in to a gurgling sound. The group of three tributes, two girls and a boy, looked at each other and moved in the direction of the horrible sounds.
I remember the scene when they got there. The boy was kneeling on the ground by her feet, wiping blood off his knife blade. Tiana was on the ground, clothes cut off her, flayed and spread on either side of her like a fish dressed for eating. The two girls, both 16 or 17, looked at Tiana and then at the boy, and they fell upon him with more rage than I'd ever seen. They killed him brutally and without mercy. They cut his body apart. It was primeval. Killing was part of the game. Rape was not.
My brother stared at the screen, silently. His eyes were hard, his lips pressed tightly together. His whole body shook. My dad put his hand on his shoulder and he shook it off and stormed out of our house.
They don't talk much about the 56th Games any more. Tiana is one of the reasons why.
The claw dropped me and I fell to the metal deck. Two peacekeepers grabbed me and with a few quick cuts with their knives cut off my clothes. They threw me, naked, into a holding cell on the hovercraft. I screamed and kicked but they didn't even acknowledge that I was anything other than a farm animal. The cell floor was cold metal. My chin banged against it, jarring my teeth together. The door to the cell closed, solid metal, blocking out all light.
I scrambled around the dark room, looking for an exit or vent or anything. I panicked in the darkness. The room was small, barely long enough for me to sit with my back on one wall and my legs stretched out. I could flex my toes forward a little and touch the opposite wall. There was no toilet, no water, nothing – just a metal closet. I slammed on the walls, I shouted and screamed, but no help came.
I closed my eyes and pressed my fists hard against them. All I could see was my brother as he was a few months ago when he and Tiana realized that they were in love. And the sight of him, of everything he was and was going to be, disappearing in bloody foam as the grenade hit him. I saw his head flying through the air and landing in the water with a splash. His blond hair. His eyes that would never smile at me again.
After a few weels of mourning he started going back out with the fishing fleet. The boats from our village would go into the deeper water where the better fishing was. The Capital City boats and hovercraft always watched closely and if a boat strayed too far from the authorized fishing zone they'd be warned. If they ignored the warnings those boats and the people in them would never come back.
I was walking back from work one day when I saw him coming back in with his catch toward the cannery. I went down to help him tie to the dock.
"Good fishing?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Not too bad. What's going on?"
"I came to help," I said. "Start tossing the fish up here and I'll –"
"Just go home, " he interrupted. "I can handle it."
I shook my head. "No, I'm helping." He looked at me for a long moment, then shrugged.
"Suit yourself," he said.
We unloaded the boat and I was reaching for his bait and tackle when he shook his head. "I'm leaving that in the boat," he said. He wasn't supposed to do that, but that was between him and dad.
We walked home together. I got him to laugh and smile a little. It was a warm day.
Just before we got to the house he stopped, looking at it for a long moment and then at me.
"What?" I asked.
He hesitated for a minute. "You know I love you, don't you."
I rolled my eyes.
"I just want you to know that, right?" He walked in to the house.
Dinner that night was like the old days. We laughed and joked. My dad told stories about fishing with his father. My mom sang a song for us, one of the old songs they used to sing in these parts, seemingly happy but actually full of sadness and longing if you heard the words. She called it a spiritual.
I woke up just in time to see my dad and brother heading for their boats. My brother was carrying his other tackle box. He noticed me looking at it and shook his head at me, to say nothing.
I thought about that for most of the morning while I was on the deboning machine in the cannery, then it hit me. He's putting extra bait in his boat. He's planning on being out there a while.
He was planning on making a break for it.
The door to the cell opened, flooding it with light. A peacekeeper told me to stand up. He sounded bored. I did as I was told, trying to cover my body with my hands. Another peacekeeper stood a few feet back holding a prod in his hands. The first peacekeeper spun me around, wrenched by hands back and tied them together with a little piece of hard plastic. He yanked me out of the cell.
I was ashamed and crying as they walked me out of the hovercraft and on to the landing field of the base. My eyes stung in the bright sun. It must be noon. My brother… it had happened before breakfast. They marched me across the concrete landing pad toward a low one story building with slit windows. Probably detention. It was very hot and sticky, something heavy hung in the air.
The blast of cooled air in the detention building was a shock. A thin, white-haired man in a lab coat was standing next to a desk, talking to a female peacekeeper who was nodding her head at what he was saying. When the door opened they both looked at us.
"Good God," the man said, "show a little decency, would you?" He shouted. He pulled his labcoat off and quickly wrapped it around me. "And take off those cuffs – are you scared of what a little girl might do to you?"
The peacekeeper that had handcuffed me pulled out a knife and cut me free. "I was just following orders, doctor."
"You're dismissed. The sergeant and I can handle it from here."
"She and a boy were trying to escape," he said.
The doctor waved him off with his hand. "We've got it."
The two peacekeepers saluted and left. The doctor put his hand on my shoulder and smiled.
"Now, now, let's get you something to eat. You must be frightened out of your wits, you poor thing. Everything's okay. Let's get you something to eat, and then you can tell me your side of the story."