The Seventy-Second Hunger Games
The lump that the tracker injection gave me is starting to bruise, because I'm pushing on it too hard. My hands need something to do while I wait for death.
Sitting down is hard enough. My legs can't stop shaking and my whole body is trembling. When Blight, my district mentor, asks me if I want some food, I reject. I'm so nervous, I couldn't even eat a piece of cardboard. I don't deny the water he gives me though.
I sit there, sipping on my water as I the hovercraft windows begin to close, indicating we are close to the arena. When I finish my glass of water, I chew on the inside of my lip until it begins to bleed. Suddenly, there's a dropping feeling in my stomach and the hovercraft stops moving. Blight looks at me and I sigh.
I get up from my seat and I climb down the ladder that will lead me to the launch room, or, as District Seven calls it, the slaughter house, where animals go to get killed for meat.
Before I go into the launch room, Blight has me shower and change into my tribute outfit. A green shirt with a black rain jacket over it. Light tan pants that are sort of straight at the bottom. A pair of hiking boots, not really the kind you'd want to run in. Once I'm changed, Blight leads me into the launch room.
Everything in this launch room is brand new and I will be the first and only person to ever use it. There's an elevator that's blocked off that leads to the arena in one corner of the room. On the left wall is a bench, where Blight and I sit until a pleasant female voice tells us there is twenty seconds until launch. The elevator is no longer blocked.
"Good luck, Caleb," Blight says, with a bit of nervousness in his voice. "Remember, get your weapon. Then hurry up and clear out before you have any pursuers. Find water quickly, too."
Why is he nervous? He isn't going into the arena. I am. I should be nervous. And I am.
I step onto the elevator and glass case encloses me, blocking me from Blight. The woman's voice counts down from ten, and suddenly, I'm being lifted up. For a moment, there is nothing but darkness as the elevator rises. Then I'm blinded by a bright and I smell something like pine. The platform I'm on clicks into place on my tribute plate. If I step off before the sixty seconds given to us to take in our surroundings, I'll be blown up and they'll have to scrape my remains from the ground.
I hear Claudius Templesmith's booming voice all around me, "Let the Seventy-Second Hunger Games begin!"
My eyesight begins to focus, and I take look around me. In front of me, about sixty yards, the golden cornucopia glistens, blinding me for a second as my eyes begin to adjust to the sudden change of light. The cornucopia is piled high, with weapons spilling out of it. Some are spread out around the cornucopia. For instance, to my right a couple of yards is a knife blade, but in the cornucopia is a large, silver sword, with a serrated edge. Blight's advice rings in my head. "Remember, get your weapon. Then hurry up and clear out before you have any pursuers."
There's forty seconds left on the clock now. I take in my surroundings. To my left, in front, and behind are huge trees, there trunks a kind of reddish-orange color with very few branches on the bottom, but lots on the top. Redwood forest, I think. Yes, I remember now, my dad teaching me the different types of forests and trees. These trees range from fifty to two hundred feet tall, towering high above us. Over to my right are river rapids and behind that, more forest. The roar from the river echoes in my mind.
I realize my feet are poised to run, straight into the cornucopia. I look at it and my eyes home in on two golden battle axes, crossed together, just waiting to be picked up. There's fifteen seconds left now. Suddenly, I'm trying to look for my district partner. I'm thinking Kinisly is nowhere to be found, when I see her to my right, her feet poised to run too. Five, four, three, two… the gong sounds and I'm off my tribute plate so quickly.
I run into the cornucopia, and I grab the two axes that my eyes honed in on earlier. The axes have a nice leather grip on them, making it easy to swing with. I look around me, and there's already killing going on. To my left, I see a career swing the sword with the serrated blade I saw earlier into another tribute's stomach, who's bent over, grabbing a backpack. While I'm puzzling over this, someone slams into my side. When I fall, I swing my axe and it finds its mark in my attackers head. I hurriedly grab it and maneuver it out of his head. It's soaked in blood. I get up and look around me, ashamed of what I just did, but no one seems to notice. They're too busy killing.
Getting up, I grab a backpack and knife that the boy I killed was holding. I look to my right and see Kinisly struggling for a pack with a girl who I think is from Five. I run over to Kinisly and the girl, a slam my axe into her side, then quickly pull it out, drop the knife I had, and run off in the direction of the rapids. I look back and Kinisly is staring at me, wide-eyed. Then I see her grab the pack and the knife I dropped and run off into the woods.
I turn my head in front of me and focus on my current obstacle. The rapids are moving too fast to cross and they're too wide anyway, so I decide to follow the creek down river.
I break out into a run until the trees obscure my view from the cornucopia, I begin to jog then. I alternate between walking and jogging for a few hours, when suddenly, a cannon goes off. It must be the death toll for the blood bath. Since there is too much killing during the initial blood bath, the cannons that represent a dead tribute go off hours after the tributes have been killed. One, two, three… all the way up to twelve. Twelve dead on the first day, eleven left to die.
I sit down on a log and decide to check and see what's in my pack. Neatly laying the items on the ground in front of me, I look them each over. A rope, an empty water bottle, some matches, a pack of dried fruit, a pack of crackers, insulated gloves, a blanket, and iodine. Wonderfully, really, this is actually a great back. The color of it is green, almost the same shade as the leaves in the trees, perfect for concealment. That's it then. I pack everything up except for the water bottle, which I'll fill up in the rapids.
Well it's not really rapids now. It's a lot calmer, like a regular creek. I bend down on the river bed and hold my bottle to the water and fill it up to the brim, then put a couple of drops of iodine in it. I walk while I wait for the water to purify and look for a tree to climb. I can't really find a good tree to climb on, but I find a tree that had fallen down at one point, a tunnel cut through the middle of it. I walk over to it, and it looks like there is almost a path that leads under it, because the ground inside of it is a blackish color. Strange. I walk into it and there is something rubber in it. A car tire.
Why would there be a car tire in an arena in the middle of nowhere? I am very positive just about everyone in Panem is wondering the same thing. I sigh and sit down in the tire, which is actually quite comfortable. I decide to make camp here. The tree is quite relaxing, and it also conceals me from predators somewhat. A great a shelter, as well. Plus, the roof offers concealment for smoke, so it's alright for a fire to be lit inside of it, but it's too hot for a fire right now.
I lay down there, resting and reflecting over today's events. I can't help but thinking I killed two people. Two innocent people. Well, not exactly innocent, because the boy tried to kill me.
But I actually killed someone without even giving it one thought. Two people, actually. Stop, I tell myself. If I want to get out of here alive, I have to deal with the thought of killing innocent people who don't deserve to die.
Night is beginning to fall and the sky turns a sort of pinkish-purple color. It is, surprisingly, truly beautiful, even though it's fake. In a couple of hours, the sky will show the nightly death toll. Each person that died that day is shown in the sky with their district number.
Eventually I doze off and am awakened by the country anthem that signals the beginning of the death toll. The sky shines with the dead and I get up from my tire and head out of my camp to look at the sky.
The first is the boy from District One. That's strange. Usually, the careers make it through the first day. Then there is the girl from Five, who killed earlier, both from six, the boy from Eight, who I must've killed earlier, both from Nine, Ten, and Eleven, and the boy from Twelve.
Twelve gone, bled white and sent back to their districts in a wooden coffin, where the families of the fallen will say their last goodbyes.
I decide to go to bed and try and get my mind off of the Games for a bit. I walk back to my camp and settle down in the tire, put the blanket over me, and drift off in my dreams.