Title: The Pageant of Death
Chapter: 10 of 19
Words: 3,332 of 61,217
We switch after a few hours so I'm awake when the arena becomes light. I let Gale sleep as long as I dare but eventually I say, "Gale, it's time."
He blinks slowly and starts to go through his bag. He tears his bread into four pieces and hands two of them to me. "Have one of those for breakfast. If we have nothing but protein we'll lose weight too quickly." I put one of the chunks into my bag and eat the other. I shake the water bottle and take a long sip before handing it to Gale. He takes a long sip too. It wasn't full when we got it and there are only two sips left but Gale puts it in his bag, "We might really need it later. Do we need to run? We're going to sweat and lose water faster."
"Lazy," I say but I smile. "It makes sense. But we can't take many breaks. Those three Careers and the one with a fire know we're in this area so we need to get out soon."
"Fair," he says as he unties his rope.
As we pack our bags I say, "When I got my first look at this bow after the sun came up I was really impressed. It's so light, lean and deadly. I wish it wasn't golden though. It glints in the light. It's going to make us easy to spot." I roll up my sleeping bag. "It's a huge drawback."
Then a metal parachute floats down to us and Gale grabs it. He opens it up and says, "What did Haymitch get us?" It's a pot of black dust. "What is that?"
I take it, unscrew the lid, dip my fingers in it and rub my bow. The black dust sticks to the bow like glue, coating it and making it look dull and drab but the surface feels just as smooth as it did before, not tacky. "Wonderful."
We cover our bows in it and Gale says, "Thanks, Haymitch." After we've painted our bows we use what's left on our hands to rub into our faces and arms. It leaves us gray and might help us blend into the woods.
There is a lot of dust left in the pot and I replace the lid. "We might need to redo them later," I say as I tuck the pot into my bag.
We climb down and get moving. "Prim and Peeta are so blonde and pale; they'd need the whole pot just to try and cover up."
"I can't imagine them in here," the idea leaves me feeling ill.
"They would be a team," Gale says reassuringly. "They would have helped each other… but they don't have our skills."
"True," I say. "But Prim knows medicine."
"Yes, and you always run away when someone really injured comes to your mother."
"That's the one time I don't know how to help."
He nods and then smiles. "I almost laughed when I told Caesar that I wanted you to get married because I'd like you to be taken care of. You're the most competent person I know."
I see something move out of the corner of my eye. "Do you remember the time the mayor's car broke down and the two of us had to fix it?" I ask.
Gale drops to the ground instantly and I let off two of the perfectly balanced arrows quickly. The tribute with the fire goes down. It had just been about to lunge at Gale. I got it through the hand and the forehead. Gale goes through its pack and grabs more crackers, more dried meat and a first aid kit. There's a photo of a family and Gale puts it back in the bag before looping it over its arm. "I'm sorry," he says as I rip my arrows out of its body.
The cannon goes off and we start moving again. I pull my backpack higher up my shoulders as I say, "It didn't stop moving when I said our mayor had a car. I wonder if its mayor has a car."
"It was from 8. They're richer than people in 12. I can't imagine anyone in 12 ever being able to afford a car."
We run when we see the hovercraft. We keep going up hill, keep looking for water. We slow down after a little while and Gale says, "I forgot I didn't want to run. It's just that the ship showed our position to anyone watching for signs."
"That's four. How many died in the Cornucopia?"
"six."
"So there are eleven more of them that we need to kill." He nods but doesn't say anything. "What?"
"Do you feel any different?"
"What?" I readjust my pack and pull my hair off my neck, "I am so hot."
"We've killed four people."
"Now, Gale? You want to talk about this now?"
"Only one of us goes home, Catnip, if we don't talk about it now we won't ever talk about it."
I remember our promise to open our hearts to the Capitol and so I bite back my initial response. "I think you'll find that, actually, I killed three. You only killed one."
"Technically speaking you killed all of them," he says. I turn to respond and see the way he's looking at me from under his lashes, the slight smirk. "I mean, if you're keeping a chart or something."
I can't help it; it's the expression and his matter-of-fact tone. I laugh as I say, "That's not funny."
"You're laughing."
"That's sick," I say, I can't stop laughing.
"You're still laughing."
I roll my eyes and sober as I think, "No, I don't feel different. I think if I let myself think about it… yeah, I'd be upset and disgusted. But I'm not letting myself think about it. They're still 'its,' they're just animals that need to be killed to get one of us home. You're the one apologizing to them after I shoot them."
"Yeah."
"Do you feel different?"
"No… the four from 5."
"Gale," I was hoping he had somehow missed the kid, hadn't noticed the similarity.
"We can only have one little kid on the team. Rue reminds you of Prim and she got an eight so she wasn't going to slow us down. He was fourteen and only got a four. He didn't seem like he was good at anything in the Training Center. He would have been dead weight... his name was Yors."
"Gale."
"He looked just like Rory and I left him to the Cornucopia. He wasn't Rory; his name was Yors… unlike the others I couldn't forget his name. He could have been my brother. I feel a lot guiltier about leaving that boy than I do about killing the others and going through their stuff."
I don't know what to say so I say, "Rory would get an eight, he's good at climbing, he's so smart and he can run like the wind."
Gale thinks about it. Finally he nods, "True."
We fall silent as we walk. Gale keeps readjusting his pack and I say, "Do you want to sit?"
He nods, "Yes, please."
We sit down, our backs to each other. We eat squirrel and some dried fruit. I test Gale's bag. "Your backpack is three times heavier than mine. That's why you've been huffing and blowing."
"Well, we're not about to separate. I just figured…"
"You're an idiot. We're a team or we're not."
"I'm bigger than you."
"You're an idiot," I repeat as I open his pack. I start to divide things evenly.
"I just thought-"
"That you would run yourself down, get tired and become someone who would need my help? Yes, Gale, great thinking."
"Catnip-"
"I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm thirsty and I'm irritated. Do you want to make it worse?"
"I'm sorry. There are three people in here who are allowed to be the one to survive. As we can't even find Rue can we please not have a falling out between us? I'm sorry; I was trying to be a gentleman. I won't do it again."
"Okay, I forgive you." I say and take a sip from the mostly empty water bottle, "Finish that: you need it."
He drains it, "Sorry."
"It's okay." We lean back against each other. "I'm going to hunt while you rest."
"Thank you."
"I'm going to do what I've always wanted to," I say.
"What's that?"
"All of the chipmunks, squirrels, rats, bats and mice we shot and snared were good to eat. But I've always wanted to shoot a bird. I don't think it's illegal to shoot them here."
He laughs, because it's ridiculous to suggest that we don't shoot them all the time but to people watching it will sound different. "If the tributes are fair game the birds must be. You should fulfill your dream and shoot a bird."
"I'm going to." I stand slowly. I can see birds, fat and delicious looking sitting high in a tree. I can't remember what they're called but they were in the books so I know they're safe. I shoot a rock from my bow. It hits the branch and they fly up. I hit two of them and they drop like stones. Then I fetch them and bring them to Gale. "Clean those please."
Gale begins to pluck and clean them while I make the fire then, once I get it going I say, "I'm going to look for fruit or plants. Scream if you need me. Once those birds are cooked we're going to go. Okay?"
"Thanks, Catnip."
I scavenge and find some of what my father called water berries. They taste of nothing and have no calories; they're basically just liquid held in a skin. Some animal has picked over the bush. I take off my jacket and collect the two handfuls that are left, placing them on the material and making a sling so they don't break. I start to walk back and hear a pained grunt so I pick up my pace. Then I hear the cannon sound and by the time I get back to our fire I already have an arrow on the string. Gale looks to be sitting exactly where I left him but he has blood splattered over his face. He's wearing the metal gloves and cleaning the razor wire on the grass. The six from 9 is on the ground; its head is next to its body.
"I was looking at my wire, thinking that tonight we should make a perimeter of snares around our tree. It tried to sneak up on me but it wasn't quiet. The wire went through its neck like a knife through warm goat cheese."
"You okay?"
"It never touched me. Go through its stuff. You were gone a while but the birds need another fifteen minutes, I would say." He puts the wire and his gloves back into his bag. Then he uses a stick to turn the birds.
I go through its stuff and find very little except some empty containers and some more dried fruit. It would be good not to have the meat loose in our bags. "Gale? Did you see its token?"
"No."
"It's not in its bag." He doesn't look away from the fire. "Wipe your face. You're covered in blood and you look scary."
"I just decapitated a tribute, Catnip: I am scary." He wipes his face with his jacket for a long time.
I see it on the ground, a tiny knitted cat that had been tied to its belt. The string snapped, probably when it fell. I tie it back on and walk back to the fire. The hovercraft won't come until we move away. I repack our meat in the containers. I hand one of the pieces of squirrel and fruit to Gale, "Eat while we wait." He turns the birds again as he sucks the bones clean and chews the dried fruit slowly. Once the birds are done I cut them each in half and put them into the containers. Gale had cleaned them of all their organs save for their hearts. "Where are the kidneys and livers?"
"The books didn't say if their organs were edible. Some animals' aren't. I didn't want to risk it but hearts are just meat." It makes sense what he says it and I hold out one of the hearts on the tip of the knife. He blows on it before popping it into his mouth. As he chews he says, "We're eating really well considering where we are."
"We didn't go to the Career Academies, but we grew up hungry so we can feed ourselves," I put the other heart into my mouth. It's hot and it has a great texture. As I shut the lids of the food containers it starts to rain. And as I put the containers into our bags it starts to get harder.
Gale's looking around and says, "We have to get off the ground."
We start to run but the rain is turning the dirt to mud and the top soil is starting to become a running liquid, a few more minutes and we'll be running against the current in a stream. Gale spots a tree and starts climbing and I follow hot on his heels. It has several good branches and we hoist ourselves onto ones next to each other. We sit in silence watching the ground become a full fledged river. A hovercraft comes for the six from 9. The ship gets its body but I see its head bobbing down the river. I start setting out all our water containers out, lodging them so they won't fall as they get full. Gale ties some to ropes and hangs them over branches. We wait. Gale reaches out between our branches and takes my hand. I twine our fingers together. We wait.