CHAPTER NINE: VICIUM MEHEMII


"Destroying things is much easier than making them."

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games


"Rue!" I scream, reaching out for her blindly. My hand catches hold of her thin wrist, and I pull her towards me. We bump clumsily into each other. "Stay close!"

I shakily grip my bow in one hand, knowing that if I lose it in the dark the tributes will finish me in seconds. Right now, this weapon is my lifeline. I can hear Rue grappling for the knife she's stuck into the waistband of her pants. It's one that Clove "generously" lent her while they waited for me and Cato to join them.

"Katniss," she yells, "we have to –" But then she's yanked roughly away from me, and her words become lost in the chaos that follows.

Someone leaps onto my back, and I stumble forward, startled by the sudden weight. Bucking, I try to throw them off, but it's a useless attempt. She – I can tell it's a girl now, by the length of the hair – has a firm hold on my shoulders. Desperate, I back up against a tree, crushing the air out of her lungs.

"Get off," I snarl, and elbow the tribute in the stomach.

Gasping, she crumples to the mossy floor, clutching her chest.

In an instant, I have my bow held straight out in front of me, an arrow notched. I hesitate a moment, unsure, but then Rue screams my name…and I release the arrow. It shoots through the tribute's neck. She's already gone when she hits the ground. By the dim light filtering through the leaves, I glimpse the number 7 etched on the back of the girl's shirt.

I swing around, aiming for heads and chests. A few hundred yards away I see a hulking form making a beeline for me, and something inside me quivers. There's no mistaking that cocoa-colored skin and those dark, emotionless eyes; it's Thresh, Rue's partner from District 11. I wonder if she knows he's here. In fact, I wonder who else might be here…Peeta? The District 4 tributes? Maybe even Foxface? I don't know for sure because it's so dark. Besides, everyone is moving too quickly for me to pick out small details.

That is, I won't know for sure unless I kill them, which seems like a distinct possibility. I feel like shooting anything that moves, human or not. The trees themselves sway threateningly. Reacting swifter than I thought possible, I leap to the side just as Thresh swings a spiked mace at my head. A terrified squeak escapes me. I still have my arrow in position, but there's not much I can do while I dodge and run and stumble my way through the forest. I can't hear Rue anymore, and that scares me. What if she's –?

As if on cue, an agonized scream pierces the air…a decidedly feminine scream.

Tensing, I strain my ears and whirl in every direction, scanning the forest. My eyes land on a small, dark-haired girl with a knife in both hands. My bow swivels in her direction involuntarily, and it takes me a long moment to realize that the girl I'm looking at is Clove. I've almost forgotten about the Careers, which is really saying something. I usually keep an eye (and ear) focused on them at all times; otherwise, they might stab me in the back.

Clove catches my eye and nods.

I open my mouth to ask her if she's seen Rue when I sense something flying through the air behind me. My body moves before my mind comprehends what's happening. I drop to the ground, sprawling unceremoniously into a patch of wriggling weeds. Thresh's mace soars over my head and buries into a tree trunk. The tree itself shivers, as if it has felt the blow all the way down to its roots, and it begins tipping to the side. Ear-splitting cracks rip through the air, like tiny bursts of thunder.

A thought flickers through my head – what's his problem? why does he want to kill me so bad? – and then it's gone, pushed out by other, more important thoughts.

I'm on my feet in an instant, running around the base of the slowly falling tree. Somehow I know where Rue is…and if I don't get there soon, she's going to be crushed. I make it to the area where we were originally attacked.

There, fifteen feet in front of me and in the direct path of the collapsing tree, is Rue.

She's covered in blood and dirt, and across her forehead are four straight lines that are oozing even more blood. Knife wounds. My mind flashes briefly to Clove – could she have done this while I was preoccupied? – but I know that moving is more important than thinking right now.

"Rue!" I shout, heedless of the tributes battling around us. "Move, Rue!" In the back of my head I'm aware that Glimmer and Cato and Clove are fighting somewhere inside this mass of people, and that Thresh is lurking nearby, hunting for me. He might pop up at any moment, but then, so could Cato.

"Katniss?" comes a voice from far off. One that doesn't belong to Rue.

Skidding to a halt, I turn to my right, and there, hiding among the shadows, is Peeta. He's holding a lumpy, obviously handmade trident, and his face is covered with dirt. His pupils are dilated, and he seems jumpy, like a scared rabbit.

"Are you part of this?" I ask loudly, momentarily forgetting about Rue.

Guilt flickers across his face, and I know then that it's true. Whether he meant to attack me specifically is still questionable though.

"Did you know that I was with the Careers all this time?"

He shakes his head quickly, dodging a stray knife that flies past his head and disappears into a bed of wildflowers. "No, Katniss, I swear. The seven of us – me, Thresh, both tributes from District 7 and 10, and the girl tribute from District 5 – meant to go after the Careers. I had no idea you and Rue were…allying yourselves with them."

"We're not allies," I shout as a chorus of screams interrupts us. Sounds like the girl from District 10. "They're keeping us captive!" How can he possibly think I would ever fight alongside those monsters on my own? I rage silently. He thinks so little of me.

Peeta blinks. "You're not?"

"No!" Catching a blur of motion out of the corner of my eye, I slide to my left and whip my bow into firing position. I can't rightly see who it is, but that doesn't matter – I can tell just by gauging the tribute's height that it's not Rue. One by one, I take my fingers off the quiver until the arrow is released. The tribute falls to the ground with the tail end sticking out of their chest.

"Then come with us!" Peeta looks frantic. "We need you, Katniss. I need–"

His terrified eyes have shifted to my left, but the split-second warning is unnecessary; I'm way ahead of him. Thresh jumps into the clearing, roars, and swings the mace at me. I cringe as it passes through a cluster of dead trees and into Foxface's lower left leg. She'd been on the verge of lunging at me; I could tell by the way she was crouched. But now she cries out and drops to the ground, pressing her hand against the wound. Thresh seems momentarily surprised by his actions, but the emotion doesn't last long.

Meanwhile, I'm bounding across the blood-soaked forest floor, heading straight for Peeta across the fifty feet that separate us. Although the two of us have acted awkward and unsure around each other ever since the Reaping, his offer seems genuine. Passing up that opportunity would be downright stupid.

I'll even admit that, at times, I may come across as rigid and impersonal…but I'm far from stupid.

I'm five feet away from Peeta when I sense the mace coming for me yet again. Falling to the ground, I cover my head, feeling it pass through the air directly above me. Peering up at Peeta, I see that he has scrambled back, away from me. But not out of fear. Determination is written all over his face, and even when he raises the trident I don't understand his intent.

When he releases the weapon, however, the realization hits me.

"Don't, Peeta!" I scream. "You'll hit –"

But it's not Thresh's name I'm about to say.

The second the trident leaves Peeta's hand, I'm up and running. I crash through the underbrush, recklessly shoving tributes and weapons out of my way. Thresh sees me coming for him, but he's also paying attention to the twirling trident, and so when he ducks, he throws the mace sideways in a last ditch effort to take me down.

Several things happen at once.

Thresh hits the ground with a strangled-sounding groan, and the impact makes me jolt forward. I catch myself on my hands and knees, my eyes still glued to Rue. Even in a crazy moment like this, I know intuitively that Thresh hasn't caught sight of Rue yet.

If he had, he wouldn't have jumped out of the way.

In those precious few seconds, my eyes take in everything. I don't miss a single detail.

The mace misses me entirely – as I suspected it would – and lodges into a tree. The tail end of it, however, whips to the right, as if possessed by some malicious spirit. The chain smacks Glimmer across the face, and her cheeks are instantly covered with red. Her jaw seems to snap – no, unhinge – and her eyes roll back in her head as she collapses. This doesn't kill the blonde tribute though; I can still see little clouds of her breath puffing into the chilly air.

Peeta's face pales a deathly shade of white when he realizes that he threw his trident wide. Too wide.

And finally there's Rue. She staggers as the ground vibrates from Thresh's clumsy fall. Squinting through the encroaching darkness, she sees me on my hands and knees, my mouth open in silent exclamation. I'm not sure whether I want to scream or cry or whisper that everything will be okay, but in the end it doesn't matter.

In the end, I'm too late.

Our eyes meet – chocolate brown to slate gray, unaware to hideously certain – and for some reason she begins to smile. It's like she believes that I will save her from this mayhem. Somehow she believes, despite everything, that no harm will come to her while I'm around.

Our eyes meet, and words fail me.

Our eyes meet, and the air around us quivers.

Our eyes meet…and then the trident comes between us.


TRANSLATION: vicium mehemii = "mayhem" in Latin