Chapter Seven

It was raining again, worse than it had since the Hunger Games had started. Huddled under my nylon tarp, I tried to keep myself as dry as possible, but it wasn't easy to do. The rain fell in sheets, and a chilly wind made it impossible for me to get warm.

I was back at the sanctuary, having made my way back there the previous day. I'd had a fairly uneventful time, and the only thing of note that had happened had been that the two careers from District Four had died. The cannons had sounded in quick succession, and I could only guess that the other careers had ambushed them both.

The rain had been falling since I'd woken up that morning. I hadn't really moved, except to get a few fruits and ferns, as the river was still empty of fish. I was glad now to have kept my nutrition bars, because I was going to need them before long.

The cannon sounded, followed almost immediately by a streak of lightning and thunder, making me question what I'd heard. But I figured that rains such as these were making things difficult for all of us. Already, I could see that the river had risen, and I had a feeling that there was going to be flooding if it didn't stop soon.

A gust of wind hit me, colder than anything else so far. I shivered, then sneezed, wondering if I should take more poppy water. It had helped with my arm, as had the ointment I'd rubbed on the puncture wounds, which were now almost fully healed. However, there were bruises running from my elbow to the middle of my forearm. It didn't hurt too badly though, so I decided against it, huddling under both my jackets to try and stay warm.

I was having a rough time of it. I wanted a fire, but it was pointless, and getting into my sleeping bag when I was this wet would just make everything even more uncomfortable. I wished someone would send me a parachute with more waterproof clothes, however, that wasn't going to happen. If I'd indeed heard the cannon, it meant that there were five of us left. None of us would get anything this late in the Games.

The storm continued for the rest of the day, finally letting up by the time night fell. The rain lessened to a drizzle, but the breeze it had carried stayed right where it was, making me feel colder, if that was possible.

I opened my bag, finding that my second shirt had stayed dry, along with my second pair of pants. Quickly, taking care not to hurt my arm any more than I needed to, I stripped off my sopping clothes and put them aside, wringing them out and hoping they would dry in the night. My legs were damp, but I had nothing to dry them with, so I used my hand before putting on my other clothes. I shook out the nylon tarp, securing it a little more to the tree and using rocks to make sure that it stayed in place on the stairs above the one I was sitting on.

Finally, I took out a nutrition bar and ate it slowly. Night had fully fallen by the time I finished it, and the temperature was getting colder and colder. I was sure that the Gamemakers meant for one of us to get very sick, though I didn't think this was entirely fair.

You're in the Hunger Games. Of course it's not fair. Nothing about this is fair, Nova.

No, nothing about this was fair. We were cold and hungry, and I was sure that all of us would have given a kidney to see our homes again. With most of the tributes dead, I could only imagine the frenzy in our districts now. I wondered what my parents were doing.

I shivered as I unrolled my sleeping bag and slipped inside, my bag at my back for warmth and to make sure it wouldn't get too wet in case the rain started up again. I stayed awake until after the sky displayed the fact that it had been May, the girl from District Eight, who had been killed that day.

Five left…

The storm came back during the night, but it wasn't only rain that fell. The temperatures fell so drastically that I saw snowflakes by the light of the full moon. It was enough to freeze everything, and by the time the sun rose again, my nose was completely stuffed up and I had a headache, along with what I knew to be a fever. My arm was hurting more than ever, and I considered drinking all of my poppy water, but I had to save it. If I was careful with it, I'd have enough for another five days, after which I hoped I would be able to get more poppies.

I sat up, shivering violently. I had no desire to leave my sleeping bag, and had I been at home, I would have spent the day in bed sleeping and whimpering for my mother to bring me some hot soup and a hug. But I didn't have that kind of luxury.

You could always return to the Cornucopia, I thought to myself. The problem was that I had no idea where the careers were. They could have returned there with their supplies, but now that I thought about it, I hadn't found any of their supplies when I'd come back to the sanctuary. I wondered whether they'd lost everything when the mutts had chased us.

Everything was white. It wasn't snow, but I could tell that every surface on which rain had fallen the previous night had frozen. The stairs looked treacherous, and when I tried to fold back my nylon tarp, I found it frozen solid.

Oh, hell, I said to myself. I took my axe and began to gently tap the material, watching as chips of ice cracked and fell. The sound was as loud as a gunshot, and I winced, afraid that somebody would hear. Ten minutes later, I was able to shake out the tarp and roll it back into my bag before taking two careful sips of poppy water, and eating whatever was left of my ferns and berries. I had three nutrition bars left, and I wanted to keep them until the last possible moment.

Every part of me ached, from the roots of my hair to my back and legs. My arm felt worse, but when I examined it, I saw that the puncture wounds had completely healed, although the bruising remained the same. I grabbed some ice and put it in the parachute, wrapping my arm in it. I shivered more, but hoped that it would help with the swelling.

I spent my entire day in the sanctuary. I looked for ferns and fruits, but there was nothing there anymore. The river was frozen, and even when I managed to break a hole in the ice, I saw that there still weren't any fish there. All I had left were my nutrition bars and maybe a handful of nuts. At least I had plenty of water.

I began to cough sometime in the middle of the afternoon, around the time the cannon went off. My chest hurt when I did, and I stifled the sound as much as I could so that nobody could hear me. With the way I was feeling the careers could have finished me off without much resistance.

Swallowing a bit of water, I grimaced at how raw my throat felt. I couldn't be sick now. There were only four of us left. Only four! I could win this. I didn't know how it was possible, that it was the thirteenth day of the Hunger Games and I was one of the last four people remaining, but I could win.

I had eaten half of a nutrition bar for lunch, and forced myself to keep the rest for later if I could. I was a little hungry, but I had to conserve whatever food I had. I could make my bars last me an extra three days, after which I supposed I would start dying of hunger if the Games weren't over.

That night, as the Panem National Anthem played, I felt the air warming up a little, then suddenly cooling dramatically. My clothes from yesterday were dry, so I was lucky there, despite the fact that I was still shivering violently and that my coughing had gotten a little worse. The face in the sky that evening was the girl from District One.

They've turned on each other, I thought. That was to be expected at this stage, but that made me feel oddly satisfied. They wouldn't come after me until they'd decimated each other. But that meant that if I were to encounter someone, it would be a fight to the death. I had to get back to the Cornucopia, and resolved to make my way there the following day.

I started doing exactly that as soon as the sun rose. I'd coughed a lot in the night, so I hadn't slept much, and I felt like my fever had gotten worse, so I'd taken an extra dose of poppy water.

The cannon fired a little after eleven, and my heart began to race. Only three. I could do this. If anything, the Hunger Games would be done in three days, if not less. The weather was a little warmer that day, enough so that the ice had melted from the river, which had become a wild torrent. I was afraid of falling in when I replenished my bottle, for a dunking now would surely finish me. My chest hurt a little when I breathed, and the poppy water didn't help that at all, but as long as I could walk, I felt safe. I kept my axe at my belt, barely having the energy to wield it. I thought about grabbing a branch and making it into a spear, but forgot about it after a while.

I reached a clump of bushes hanging in the water, and a distant memory of picking cranberries and being terrified of orange fish came to my mind. The bush was bare now, without leaves, and I still saw no sign of a fish as I ate the rest of my nutrition bar and gobbled up a second one without even thinking about it.

The taste of the chocolate shook me from the stupor I'd been in. The poppy water had helped with the fever, but I felt absolutely drained of energy. Minutes felt like hours, and I barely registered the sound of the second cannon firing that day. As night fell, I found myself at the graveyard I had passed on my first day. I didn't want to stop there, but I felt I didn't have a choice.

Spreading my sleeping bag between two bushes and putting the now-stiff nylon tarp over them to create a shelter, I lay myself down, shivering more than I had before. My fever was back, not helped by the fact that the weather was still cold and rainy.

The anthem began to play, and I watched, seeing that the boy from three and the boy from two had both died.

That meant that only Bronze and I were left in the Hunger Games.

As their faces faded into black, I heard something from the direction of the graveyard. When I looked, I gave a cry that sounded more like a frog's croak, the hairs on the back of my neck stiffening. A smell of decay reached me, and I nearly vomited on the spot as corpses ambled about between the graves. The full moon – it had been a full moon every night so far – cast them into the light, and I saw that it was all the tributes. Alex, May, Nero… everyone who had died was there. They were just walking and moaning softly, and I wanted to run, but I had a feeling that if I even attempted to cross the area, they would come after me.

Mommy, where are you?

A mist began to rise from the ground, smelling of death and mud. The smell reminded me of the hyena, and for a second, I became terrified that one of the creatures would come after me, but nothing did. I didn't so much fall asleep as faint from fear.

My vision was blurry when I woke up the following day. I was shivering again, and I could tell that my fever had gotten worse. My chest hurt every time I took a breath, causing me to take a longer time than usual getting to my feet. For breakfast, I took poppy water, gathering that I only had enough for a day, maybe two if I rationed myself.

Get to the Cornucopia… you have to. Maybe Bronze will die on his own… or maybe you will.

I began to cough, feeling that my throat was horribly raw and painful as I did so, and when I brought my hand to my mouth, it came out streaked with bright red blood. I looked at that blood, terrified, wondering what I'd done to myself.

I was dying.

I had to keep moving. It was more important now than it had been during the bloodbath.

I walked slowly, painstakingly. The aches in my body had lessened a little, and the bit of food I'd eaten was probably helping to keep me moving, but I'd promised myself I wouldn't eat anything else until I reached the Cornucopia. It seemed to take days. I was positive that I'd died and that my own personal hell was that walk back to where it had all begun.

There it was. The ruined archway, the tree that I'd climbed down from, and the wall surrounding the square. The river was nearby, which I hadn't noticed before, and I barely had the presence of mind to fill out one of my empty bottles before stumbling through the archway and into the square.

The careers had obviously cleaned up the area, probably meaning to have it as a home. Even in my state, I could see how this place would have been cozy, even protecting them from the rain, if they had stayed inside the horn. But there was no food here, just empty ruins and inedible weeds. Eventually, someone would have had to venture out, even if they'd had all of their supplies with them.

As I reached the horn, I collapsed, too exhausted to move on. I'd been coughing on and off all day, but now, a proper coughing fit overtook me, leaving me breathless. I stayed on the floor of the horn, noticing a dry blood stain near one of the walls. I guessed that a tribute had died there on the first day. The thought made me sad.

I couldn't seem to fall asleep as night fell. Bronze was still alive, for no cannon had sounded, and I imagined him running over to the horn and killing me where I lay. I drank some poppy water and ate my second to last nutrition bar just as the sky began to lighten. Colors looked strange. Too bright and new. The red of my blood was ethereal, while the sky, steel grey and cold, seemed so close that I could have reached out and touched it.

I ate again, drank the rest of my poppy water – a large dose – and fell asleep curled under my nylon tarp. The dreams I had hovered somewhere between memory and insanity. Alex was a hyena in love with me and screaming at me that he'd never leave me. The Capitol was a spider who had us trapped in its web of games and was laughing at everything we did as it watched us together, eating berries and fish.

When I woke up, I saw someone in the square with me.