Author's note: hey guys, sorry for not posting another chapter in, well, over a month. Lots of school work. Anyway, thanks for the reviews, lots help for writing this chapter. Please continue to review and I hope you enjoy this next chapter.
Even with all my rotten luck, I still had hoped that Saxton and I could get away. Escape, live and be free. As Saxton walked away, I became scared. Would we be able to do this? I was terrified that Saxton really would kill my father. Not that I wanted him to get away with what he did to my mother, I feared what would happen. How could Saxton kill him? He is a good guy; my father was the murderer. He had no heart. No soul. No thought or care for another person. What would this do to Saxton psyche? Looking back now, this day was the day that would begin Saxton's transformation to who he would become. But I'll get to that; back to that retched dawn.
As my mother was being murderer, no one was in the streets. No one walked past our little house. They had no need to be; they were all inside, watching 24 hopeless souls parade to their glorified deaths. TVs were turned up loudly, with ear-shattering cheers as Globe and Laxie rode in. No one heard the threats or my attempts to save her life. The frying pan meeting her skull was drowned out by the playing of the Panem anthem. Yet the world was silent in the early hours of the morning. Nothing to drown out the shouting between my father and my defender. Saxton told me that after the screaming there was a brief altercation that ended with the destruction of the inside of my former house and my dad's head going through a concrete wall.
As I waited in fear, I couldn't help but wonder who would find me here. Would Saxton manage to kill him or would my father escape and come looking for me. I held my breath, my heart pounding as my destiny walked towards me. Saxton casually walked down where he had left me, and took my hand. I let all the air out of my lungs as his calm, cool hands took my shaking one, filling me with a surreal calmness that wouldn't last too long.
We quickly walked to the factory where he worked, and Saxton pulled me through a side entrance. If it weren't for the current situation, I would never have put up with such rough treatment, even if it was from Saxton. He slammed the metal door shut just as shrieks and shouting began as the first of my neighbors discover the dead bodies of my parents.
"Saxton," my voice shook, "Wh-what do we do? They'll come looking for me. They'll want to know why both my parents are dead and I'm missing." I was shaking with fear. What was I to do? My brief moment of freedom; stolen before I could even live in it. The Peacekeepers would kill me; make an example of me, if they thought I did it. But really, one of the murderers was already dead, the other holding my hand as he led me through a dimly lit labyrinth. My breath caught in my throat; my best friend was a murderer. But no! He couldn't be, I wouldn't let myself think of him that way. What he did, he had done to protect me. I looked up at Saxton. He wasn't a killer, he was a protector. He had protected me from any revenge my murderous father might have, from the Peacekeepers, from the terrible life homeless girls like me must live through in Three.
"Effie," Saxton pulled me from my mind. "I'm going to hide you in here." He breathed into my ear. "You must stay in this storage closet. No one uses it so no one will find you." His voice was calm, but eyes were pleading with me to obey what h was asking me to do. We stood under a metal staircase, facing a barely visible door. Saxton opened it and pushed me in. "Effie, you must stay in here and not move from this spot until I come and get you. No matter what you hear outside, you cannot come out without me. Do you understand?" I looked around, judging the cluttered room. It was overflowing with large stacks of boxes containing the dreary, gray uniforms that the factory workers, both male and female, have to wear. All I could do was nod my head meekly; this plan of getting away was falling apart before my eyes. Saxton picked me up and lifted me over a box so I might be able to hide easier.
Just before I slipped behind the box, he grabbed my arm. "I will come back for you Effie. I promise." Overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty, I leaned over and kissed him briefly. "Hurry." Saxton let go of my arm; I scurried behind the box and as the door shut, I was locked into terrifying blackness.
What if he didn't come back? What if Saxton was arrested for my parents' murders and I was forgotten here; left to die. These questions and more flooded my already aching brain and I began to have trouble breathing. I couldn't deal with this uncertainty for much longer or I would go crazy. But in reality, Saxton was fine; at first.
He started work as normal, yet less than hour later, Peacekeepers stormed the factory, in search of two wanted people. All workers were to report to the center of the factory floor while the search occurred. In the chaos, Saxton slipped away and returned to me. At first I heard scuffling feet outside the door and feared a fight was about to break out. I climbed over the boxes and groped the door, trying to find the knob. I grabbed it just as a fist thudded against it. "You cannot come out without me," echoed through my head. The fist on the other side tried to pull open the door. No! You will not take me away, I thought to myself as I pulled back on the door with all my strength. "Effie, open the damn door!" a strained voice huffed quietly.
Relieved, I let go of the handle. The door flew open and in front of me stood Saxton. Before I could do or say anything, he grabbed my hand and pulled me out. We ran down the hall, Saxton's pulling hand begging me to go faster. Peacekeeper shouts echoed from the factory floor ordering the workers to move as the search ended in the main room for Citizen Ledderman (Saxton) ended and the wider search throughout the whole factory began. Red lights flashed and sirens blared as the factory went into lock-down.
"Saxton, why are they looking for you?" I shouted as we ran. Why were they looking for him and not me? We made it to the side door we had entered through earlier. Saxton pushed me out first, and then followed. He grabbed my hand and was about to head off down the currently disserted street when I stopped him and pulled him behind an overflowing dumpster. "What the hell Effie? You want to live right? Come on."
"Dammit Saxton," I startled even myself at my outburst. "How did they know it was you to search for?" he looked away, "Tell me!" I wasn't going to leave until I found out what happened back there.
"Someone- I'll explain later. Effie, we need to get out of here. We have to run, now!" I was ready to run with him. Run with him from this day, this district. But mainly I was ready to run with him from this life. This life ended last night with the death of my mother. Yet I saw something that would stop me from doing any of that. The two Peacekeepers, a block and a half away from where we crouched. The taller, heavier one seemed to be telling the shorter, skinnier one something. Oh God. The first one pointed in the direction of my former home and then to the factory behind us. They were discussing Saxton and I and they would surely notice two people franticly running from the factory that was currently being searched for a double homicide suspect. The whole district knew. Just then, a hovercraft landed on the roof of the factory. They were sending in reinforcements.
Before he had a chance to move, I grabbed Saxton's arm once again, keeping him behind this dumpster. He hadn't seen the two Peacekeepers and was about to run straight into them. "We can't go that way, at least not running like frantic idiots. Don't you see the Peacekeepers? They'll stop us for sure, especially you because you're a former employee here and a murder suspect." I was surprised I was thinking so calmly and logically.
Saxton stopped and thought about this for a moment. "Well," he sighed, "what do you propose we do? Walk around like we're from the Rafter or something?" The Rafter was the rich part of District Three. Well, the people aren't rich like the citizens of the Capitol but they were rich in comparison to the rest of our humble little district. "Like we don't have a care in the world and didn't have to be at work until nine o'clock but decided to take an early morning stroll through the Fog." The Fog was where all of the factories were and where the poorer citizens lived.
What he said gave me an idea. "You know Sax, that's just might work. We could do it. But we'll have to walk arm-in-arm. So it looks like we're a couple." I added quickly, looking down and blushing. Saxton thought for a minute, looking at me, then at the Peacekeepers, weighing our options.
"Only problem is," Saxton pulled at his bland colored jumpsuit. "I only have this and we're too far from my apartment for me to even be able to change."
He was right and we were running out of time. Come on, how could we pull this off? Wait that was it. Pull off. If Saxton could take off the top past of his suit and then put on a different colored shirt, the plan could work.
"Saxton take your jumpsuit off."
"What?" As soon as I said it, I realized how inappropriate what I had just said to him sounded.
"No, no. I mean just take the top part of it off. You know your shirt."
He stared at me blankly. "Again, what?"
I explained to him my idea. "See, if you have a different shirt on that doesn't have the factory's emblem on it, we would look like normal people, not a fugitive factory worker and local girl whose parents are dead." I had thought of everything.
Saxton thought my plan over, nodding his head, but then frowned. "Two things: one, where are you going to get clothes that aren't soaking wet," I'd forgotten about my destroyed nightgown, "and two, where am I going to get this 'other shirt?' We can't just walk into some random house and take peoples clothes. Nor can we buy anything. Someone would recognize us. He sat down, putting his face in his hands and muttered a few choice words. He was right. There were too many flaws in my desperate plan.
Looking for a new escape route, I saw a little apartment that I knew so well. I had been there many times with my mother. There. There we could get help. "Why didn't I think of them before? Come on, Sax, get up."
He stared up at me. "Think of whom before?" he asked. My mind was going a mile a minute. I pointed over to the corner of a building. There, on the ground floor, was a little apartment lived Mr. and Mrs. Collins.
Saxton stood up. He followed my gaze and sighed. "That's nice and all Effie, but what have the two of them have to do with anything? Hey, where are you going?"
I was already walking away from him, down the alley towards the little apartment. Towards the little bit of hope that I still had in my presently hopeless life. "Hurry," I said breathlessly. "Hurry, they can help us." He asked how I knew them. "My mother and I would come here sometimes, really to get away from father, and help them with some of their chores when the two of them were sick or just tired. We are su- we were going to go there today." My voice faltered. Saxton put his hand on my shoulder and gave a concerned look. "Sorry, it-it just hasn't really sunk in yet. I know they're both gone, but I just keep on having this feeling that she'll walk down the street with a basket full of food from the market. That she will see the two of us here so close together and tease us about all of our 'flirting.' I just miss her so much." Saxton brushed away a tear and very gently kissed my forehead. I didn't tell him that I feared that my father would walk up too, and kill us both.
Author's note: I hope you all like the chapter. What do you think will happen next? Who are the Collins? Will Saxton and Effie escape? Don't forget to comment. (the more the better, they really help me write) Also, I'm guessing you've heard that Suzanne Collins has announced she is writing a prequel to THG! What do y'all think it's gonna be about?