9: Up in Flames (Day 4)
Gale
Once again, I fall asleep watching the live Games footage. After the stress of watching Katniss nearly succumb to dehydration, I am exhausted and simply can't keep my eyes open any longer. The last image I see before I fall asleep is Katniss, strapped into a tree, holding a now-full water bottle.
A few hours later, I am woken by a roaring noise coming from the television. It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings before I realise what is happening on the screen – a wall of fire is sweeping through the arena, heading straight for her!
Instantly I am on my knees in front of the television. The camera shows Katniss fumbling with the strap around her waist, trying to detach herself from the tree. Once she's free, she jumps down and runs and runs and runs as the Gamemaker's fire chases her.
Hacking coughs wrack her body and she stops behind some stones to vomit. Every second she waits there, the fire comes closer and the more she runs away from it, the closer she gets to the careers.
Balls of fire start to shoot from out of the wall of flames, narrowly missing her every time. For agonisingly long minutes, she dodges and ducks out of the way of each fireball but then, just as she seems to be in the clear, one catches her leg. Her trousers set alight and she burns her hands trying to extinguish the flames. She's badly injured, but at least the fire attack seems to have stopped now.
Thankfully, she is close to a pool and she wades into it, hopefully relieving some of the pain of her burns. However, it is at this point that the cameras cut to the career pack, showing me that they're not far away from Katniss now – the flames did their job and drove her towards them.
When she sticks her leg out of the water to take a look at it, I can tell she is trying hard not to faint or vomit again. Although she can kill and skin an animal with no qualms whatsoever, Katniss has never been good when it comes to injuries. She pulls off her backpack and roots through it, eventually finding the small medical kit. There is a tiny pot of burn medicine, but nothing which would help a burn of the size or severity of that on her thigh. It does seem to offer relief for her hands, though, which is important if she is to use the bow and arrow.
She relaxes back into the pool, soaking her leg, and I want to shout at her that the careers are getting closer, but I know she can't hear me.
The sun is rising but there's no way I'm going to school. My Mum doesn't resist when I tell her this - it's not like I'd get anything done today anyway.
Steffi
I've made it to the fourth day of the Hunger Games. Twelve tributes haven't made it, but I have!
At the Cornucopia, I just grabbed the two items closest to me – an empty water bottle and a square of plastic – and ran for it. Having established that I'm useless with most weapons, I decided that hiding out and hoping that the others didn't find me was my best bet. I've found myself a good hiding place, in a cave which is practically invisible from the outside. It's near a small stream, so I have a constant source of water, although I am a bit worried about having nothing to purify the water with.
My biggest problem is food. I tried to set a few snares but they haven't caught anything yet. There are a few different berry bushes nearby, but I can't tell which ones are safe to eat and I definitely don't want to risk trying them.
Being from the Seam, I'm used to going without food but it's been nearly four days and I've never been this hungry in my life so I decide to venture a bit further away from the safety of my cave to try and find something to eat.
I follow the water, hoping that there will be more plants growing downstream. I pass some more berry bushes and a plant with strange brown pods growing on it, but nothing which I recognise as edible.
I feel like I've been walking for hours. I don't even feel hungry any more, but my head knows that I need to eat, and soon. I've been drinking water to keep my stomach full, but it's not giving me the energy I need; I have to rest. I sit on a soft patch of moss beside the river and shortly darkness descends over my vision as I black out.
Gale
I stay by the television all day. Having been awoken in the middle of the night, I do fall asleep a few times but each time I awaken to Katniss still wallowing in the pool and the careers getting even closer to her.
Aside from the careers and Katniss, the other tributes seem to have been left unaffected by the fire; evidently the Gamemaker's just wanted to force Katniss towards the pack. Steffi, the other tribute from District Twelve, seems to have taken a turn for the worse however, as he has been passed out in broad daylight for a few hours already. Apparently the announcer finds it brilliantly ironic that he's passed out from hunger just metres away from a blueberry bush. Katniss is my main priority and I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Steffi will have to die in order for her to come home. Nevertheless, I can't help hoping that nobody will come across him passed out and kill him.
When my younger siblings return from school, Katniss is still in the same place but the careers are dangerously close now. She's half-asleep and mumbling to herself but suddenly jerks up as she hears them approaching. She jumps up and starts running in the opposite direction, held back by her burnt leg but still making good headway. She climbs a tree surprisingly quickly, given her injured leg and shoulder, and by the time they catch up with her she's at least six metres from the ground.
She calls down a cheerful greeting to the careers. It's good to hear her voice, despite how croaky it is from the smoke; I realise that she's been completely silent throughout the Games so far. She has a brief exchange with Cato, the career from Two, before he starts climbing up the tree towards her.
He climbs slowly and laboriously, his weight and inexperience holding him back. By the time he has reached the branch where she had been, she's already much farther up, balancing on a slender branch like a squirrel. It's at this point that she decides to reveal the bow and arrow which had thus far been concealed in her backpack.
The shock is clear on Cato's face – apparently none of the careers realised that she'd managed to retrieve the weapon. Her hands are noticeably shaking as she shoots him in the thigh. It's not a fatal shot, but it causes his heavy body to fall to the ground, snapping off branches on the way down. For a fleeting second he lies perfectly still and I hope that he might've sustained a broken neck from the fall, but then his eyes open and I see the raging fire in them – he's furious.
While the careers are still reeling from the shock of what just happened, Katniss has notched another arrow into her bow and taken aim. The arrow flies gracefully through the air and hits it's target: Glimmer. The beautiful, blonde-haired tribute looks shocked and confused for a second as the arrow pierces her neck, before slumping to the ground as the cannon fires.
By now, the remaining careers know exactly what's happening – they're under attack. Before she even has time to raise the bow again to aim at the next career, they're running away from her at full pelt. Even Cato, who still has the arrow protruding from his leg, is able to escape surprisingly quickly – that's what adrenaline can do to you. She shoots a couple of arrows at their retreating backs, but her hands are still shaking and she only manages to graze Marvel's shoulder.
She leans back against the trunk of the tree, breathing heavily, her hands still shaking. After a few minutes she descends the tree and approaches Glimmer's body. Glimmer was carrying a few knives, as well as a bag full of supplies and a water bottle. Katniss leaves all but one of the knives – they'll be taken by the hovercraft - and takes the bag, swinging it onto her back over the top of her own, and hurries into the woods in the opposite direction from where the careers were.
My head is exploding with conflicting emotions. First and foremost is relief that Katniss managed to escape from five careers completely unharmed. After watching her all day, expecting the worst, my relief is massive. Secondly, I feel strangely proud of her. It might sound wrong to be proud of someone for killing another human being, but the rules are different when it comes to the Hunger Games. I also know that killing a career, and injuring another, is really going to help Katniss in terms of sponsors. On the other hand, I'm worried for her. She had already incurred the wrath of Cato by outshining him in training and scoring an Eleven, but now she's humiliated and injured him as well. If and when they encounter each other again, Cato is going to be baying for her blood.
Peeta
I still can't quite believe what I just saw. Katniss had been surrounded by the careers. I felt certain that she wouldn't be able to escape – there were five of them and only one of her – but obviously I had seriously underestimated her! She managed to kill Glimmer and even injure Cato, who is her main competition in the Games, besides Thresh.
I've seen the squirrels she shoots, always a clean shot through the eye, but I've never actually witnessed her skill with a bow and arrow before. She never ceases to amaze me; she's beautiful, intelligent, strong... and deadly.
She retrieves a backpack from Glimmer. After walking for about an hour, presumably hoping to get away from the tree where she had been cornered in case the careers return, she opens it to take a look. It doesn't contain an awful lot because the careers left most of their supplies at the Cornucopia, but there is quite a lot of food in there and a long-sleeved jacket. Katniss shrugs off her fire-damaged jacket and replaces it with the new one from Glimmer's pack. Night is falling, so she climbs another tree, straps herself to the branches and starts eating some of the food. Minutes later, a silver parachute descends and lands on the branch beside her. It's a pot of ointment which she spreads liberally onto her leg, the relief evident on her face as it heals her burnt flesh.
Meanwhile, the careers are heading back to the Cornucopia. The whole way back, Cato has been cursing and fuming about Katniss and all the horrific plans he had for her when next they meet. I hope beyond hope that they never cross paths again.
Shortly, they are back at the Cornucopia and the young boy from Three, who had set up mines around their supplies, comes out to meet them. He heard the cannon's boom earlier and was probably hoping that they'd be in a good mood after killing another tribute. His face falls when he notices that Glimmer is no longer with them – she's the only one of the careers who has actually shown any kindness towards him, giving him some of her dinner last night. Unbeknownst to him, Glimmer is also the only one who disagreed with Cato's plan to kill him as soon as possible.
The young boy approaches the group of careers.
"What happened? Where's Glimmer?" he stammers, apprehensively.
Cato doesn't answer him but grabs the boys head and snaps his neck. As quick as that, the boy collapses to the floor unconscious and his cannon fires. Cato walks past the body though he wasn't even there. Apparently, taking out his anger on the boy makes him feel better as he's no longer loudly ranting and raving about Katniss. However, as he settles on a rock and starts to polish and sharpen his sword, I can almost make out the muttering under his breath and it doesn't sound good...
A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating, it's exam season so I'm pretty busy! Thanks to everyone who's added me to favourites or alerts, I really appreciate it!
