When I wake up, dark has begun to fall. I roll to my stomach and push myself up. My arms shake but, luckily, they are able to hold my weight. I raise myself to my feet, legs shaky but stable. Biting my lip at the concentration that it takes to stay on my feet causes the raw skin to break open again and blood begins to fall in droplets. I sigh and stop, grabbing my packs, deciding to walk through the night. I can sleep tomorrow. Unless there are faces in the sky tonight, the Gamemakers will create a catastrophe designed to throw us together.
An hour later, the anthem starts to play. No deaths. I smile grimly and begin to walk again. It's not half an hour later that I hear the silence in the trees. I pause and look up wildly, expecting some Gamemaker creation to swoop down on me. I'm right, because squirrels catch my eye and lunge at me. I swear, grab the knife from my belt, and begin slashing at them. Seven squirrels, which, I realize with dread, is more than last time, will pose a big problem in my weakened state. Desperately, I lash out.
In the end, a chunk of my forearm is missing, scratches are added to my growing collection, and there are seven squirrels lying dead. I use the cloth from the boy's pack to bind my arm tightly, fighting the blood loss. It is soaked in minutes but when I change it, the next cloth seeps up the remaining blood sluggishly. I nod in satisfaction. I take the time to eat three of the beef stips, because of the blood I lost, and move on. I have to keep moving.
Midnight rolls around and the catastrophe has yet to strike. I feel my wariness fading and struggle to hold on to it. I know that something will happen but, as each hour passes, I steadily become less vigilant because it has not happened yet.
And it doesn't.
And it doesn't.
And it doesn't.
It's not until dawn that I notice something wrong. Animals, which have so far been absent, begin to pass me, running in the direction that I was just going. Warily, I look back. When I see what the Gamemakers have devised, I freeze for the second it takes me to register just how bad the danger is. Then, I am running, following the fleeing animals.
The volcano, which has so far been dormant, has erupted, spewing lava and projectiles from its midst. In the distance, I saw tributes running down the mountainside and being overcome by the quickly flowing lava. I race on. Birds screach alarm calls; animals crash through the trees. The forest is safer than the mountain, but there are still lava rocks that have been thrown from the volcano in the eruption that crash into several trees, starting small fires. I can not worry about those, can only run farther into the trees. In the trees lies safety.
While small fires burn in a few of the trees, the forest is mostly untouched. Whether the lava will enter the forest and the danger to me will increase, I cannot know until it happens. I doubt it. The Capitol audience will want to see more than the remaining tributes burnt to crisps. They will want blood. Which means that the Gamemakers will want some safety for those of us that remain. Which means that the forest will probably be safe enough for the moment. Whether it will be so safe once the remaining tributes, the remaining Careers, start hunting is a different story.
When the lava has calmed, still spitting slightly, the only remaining danger for the time being is the fires in the trees. That problem is solved moments later, when the rain begins falling. At first, I am cautious. The water was poisonous in the stream, the rain could be the same. The water streams around me, soaking my clothes and body. It clouds my eyes and slips between my lips. After two minutes, I decide that if it was poisonous, I would be dead by now, I lean back and open my mouth, letting the water fall in. The rain is falling so heavily that my mouth fills in less than a minute. I remember the District 8 boy's empty water container and set it on the ground, letting it fill up. I let my bottle of water and the bowl from my pack fill up as well.
The containers overfill before the rain stops, which happens only five minutes after it's started. I drink the water in the bowl, recapping the two bottles, before searching around. I need a place to sleep for the day. Everyone will, most likely, be recovering or dying. Moments after I think this, the cannons begin. One...Two...Three...Twelve shots, twelve dead. Again, the number of tributes has been halved. Thirteen tributes left. Twelve left to die.
I fall asleep in a dense part of the jungle, a view of the volcano from my hole in case it lights up again and wake up to the anthem, the pictures in the sky. I shift, dreading the sight of Haymitch in the sky as much as I hope for it. I shove him from my mind as the pictures start to flash.
A boy from 1 is first, followed by two girls from 2. Three Careers down. A girl from 3, a girl and boy from 4. Five Careers down. The girl from 8, all four from 9. There is one more left. The girl from 10. The seal shows again, and that's it. The sudden silence seems deafening. I feel an instant rush of relief, followed by dread. Who is left?
Two from 1.
Two from 2.
One from 4.
One from 5.
Two from 6.
One from 7.
One from 10.
Three from 12.
Thirteen tributes remaining. 12 has the most players in the Games at this moment. 3, 8, 9, and 11 are gone. There are five remaining Careers.
Not wanting to fall asleep in the daylight, when it will be easier to see me, I fall back asleep. The dawn comes quicker than I'd imagined and, with only twelve tributes left and with how fast they'd been dying, I drink a large gulp of water and eat two beef strips and one of the apples before taking off.
It's only an hour later that I hear the first shot of the day. I can only suspect that the Careers have recovered, and are on the move.
I move forward more cautiously now. While before the Careers centered themselves in the mountains, everyone left alive is in the trees now. I will need to be extra cautious.
My caution pays off. Around two hours after the cannon, I hear twigs snap underfoot. I sink back into the bushes as a girl from five exits the woods into the clearing. She has red hair and dark eyes. I watch for a moment as she glances around anxiously. She is skinny, starving, and she looks like she hasn't slept at all. There is a knife in her hand and she grips it as though she will die if she lets it go. She's probably right. But a knife will not save her from me.
I notch an arrow and pull it back. I aim for her heart and, when I release, hit my target exactly. A cannon goes off immediately, a clean kill. She has no pack and I don't need another knife, so I take off immediately, allowing the Gamemakers to retrieve her body.
I am forced to stop moments later by a thickly woven hedge that refuses to let me through. I suspect that this is the end of the arena and sigh. I follow the hedge and find that it is leading me back through to the center of the woods. I pause, unwilling to be lead into a trap. I hear a rustle behind me and spin, notching another arrow. The boy from six freezes and throws up his hands, showing that he's without a weapon.
"Wait." He pleads. I pause, holding my arrow but not releasing. "I'm not...I just... Please don't."
He looks young, younger than me, and he's begging and blonde with brown eyes, but for some reason, Joe pops up in my head. Maybe it's because I've spent the last five days alone, or maybe it's just that I miss having my brother around, but I don't want to kill this boy.
"There's eleven of us left." I tell the boy bluntly. "That's not many."
"I know." The boy says, but there is hope entering his voice. I sigh and lower my bow. I watch him warily as he moves closer. In my head, I hear my mother's voice scoffing at those tributes, besides Careers, who form alliances when they know they may have to kill the person later. I shove her voice aside, thinking instead of my father taking the food we had to spare to the families in the District that had too many mouths to feed or too few members to work. He didn't dare risk the mayor and the Peacekeepers's wrath, but he helped when he could.
I pause, considering, but I know my choice is already made. I start to reach for my pack but freeze. With the poisonous flowers and the squirrels, I'd eaten more than was wise. I count in my head and realize I have only 4 beef strips left. I pull back, not wanting to share the precious little I have with this boy. Instead, I reach again for my bow. The boy tenses and I pause.
"I'm going to find us something to eat." I say finally. I dig the matches from my pack and toss them to him. He fumbles and they fall to the ground. He flushes and picks them up hurriedly. "Gather some wood and light a fire for us to cook it when I get back." While it may not be wise to light a fire with the Careers now so close, I know that it would be worse not to do so. The plants and the water is poisonous, who says the animals aren't? Some poisons are able to be destroyed through heat. Not trusting the boy, I swing the pack on my back and set off.
Because of the volcano, the animals are now all in the forest, and clumped together tighter than before. I am able to shoot a monkey and a strange-looking bird within a mile of where I left the boy. For a moment, I consider just leaving rather than returning. While it may be a better idea to leave before I get attached, I don't like the thought of him waiting by a lit fire for me to return and having the Careers sneak up on him. I head back to the campsite.
Halfway there, I'm interrupted. A cannon shot rings out, and I freeze. Another shot shatters the silence moments later. A longer pause, and then a third shot a few minutes after the second.
Slowly, I continue back to the campsite. I wonder inwardly who is dead. The thought of the boy waiting for me causes me to speed up but I know that he is fine. There were three shots and I would have heard him scream.
Haymitch pops into my mind next and, while I scold myself for caring, I allow myself to think of that possibility. If the Careers did get him, I think smugly, he took some of them out with him.
When I reach the place where I left the boy, I find him with five matches littering the ground, a sixth in his hand, and no fire. I snatch the sixth from his hand, using it to light the fire. The boy yelps in surprise and then sits back to watch me.
"What's your name?" I ask bluntly, unable to justify not asking. I can't just keep calling him 'boy' if we will be allies.
"Ben." He says. I nod. "What's yours?"
"Katniss." I sit back, cleaning the animals, plucking them, and setting them on the fire to roast. I turn them once in a while, but otherwise we relax back and wait.
"There's eight of us left." He says. I nod simply and he falls silent. They'll be doing interviews at home. I think. I wonder what my father or Joe will say to them. I smirk at the thought of Joe's jibes and my father's strong reassurance.
When the monkey is fully cooked, I give it to Ben. It looks as though he hasn't eaten anything since we entered the arena, so I allow him to have the whole thing as I begin to pluck the bird. He eats ravenously and finishes just as I put the bird on the fire to cook. I glance over at him barely a minute later to find him asleep. I sigh and shake my head slightly, thinking that he must not have gotten much rest. I let him sleep as my food cooks.
Then, I hear the cannon.
I don't realize what has happened right away, merely glancing at Ben to see if the cannon woke him up. Instead, I find that he has stopped breathing. My breath catches in shock and I'm moving before I realize it, dousing the fire and repacking my things. I don't touch the bird, certain that it, too, must be poisonous beyond help. As the water was, the flowers were, and the monkey was.
I glance back at the edge of the clearing where we made our camp and watch as the hovercraft picks the boy up and carries him away. In my mind, I see his face as he held up his hands in surrender, pleading for me not to kill him. I have done so anyway. When the hovercraft is gone, I head into the woods without looking back.
