Chapter 11 Bird of Prey
Bobby Jean "Blight" Oakley, District 7 Male
Out in the open, not even trying to conceal himself Blight strolled down the streets hunting for tributes. He made no effort to soften his footsteps or hide his presence.
Yesterday he had seen the faces of four of the Careers in the sky and practically let out a cheer that four of his toughest competitors were already eliminated. With a rifle in his hand and only two Careers left he was certain that he could actually win.
He caught his reflection in the window of a jewelry shop, looking scruffy but not as scruffy as usual back at home. He stood a bit straighter and scowled, trying to look tough.
Who was left? The boys from Two and Four were probably angry at the loss of their allies and working together, perhaps the alliance between the girl from Five and the tributes from Three that he saw in the lunchroom were still intact. Then there were the pretty girls from Six and Eight- not that he was too worried about them. The boy from Nine, both from Ten and the boy from Twelve… he was willing to bet money they weren't as well armed as he was and would fall easily with a spray of bullets and then-and then… he could go home and his entire District would celebrate.
He would live one of those big houses in Victor's Village and his family wouldn't have to work another day in their lives sweating and batting off flies trying to fill up their assigned plot with trees. He felt a big silly grin spread across his face as he imagined the look on his ma's face when he would take her by the arm and usher her into her new home in the lap of luxury.
A low rumbling out of nowhere broke him out of his reverie. He closed his eyes and listened closely, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. Within seconds though the sound became louder and louder until pinppinting the source of the noise became completely unnecessary. When his eyes popped open again the only thing filling his view was a shiny red sports car speeding up and racing towards him.
Without hesitation, he fired a spray of bullets right at the windshield, causing the glass to crack and burst and leaving a large hole on the passenger side. Running away, he shot a few more at the driver's seat but strangely no one was there and the bullets only embedded themselves in the seat. He cursed under his breath. The driver must have ducked at the last second.
The car didn't slow, but turned a corner and he chased after it, shooting the rear. The tires screeched as the car made a u-turn, once again heading straight towards Blight, but instead of running away, he raced towards the car, jumped up on the hood, and rolled inside through the hole in the windshield. Before he landed in the passenger seat, he felt a hand clutch the length of his rifle, pushing it upwards and away. After a brief tussle and several bullets pinging into the roof of the car he found himself face to face with the wild-eyed sultry beauty from Six. All the fight seemed to go out of her eyes when she saw the animosity on his face as if she knew he would have no mercy.
Finally wrenching the rifle from her hands, he held the it against her forehead, finger to the trigger, and hesitated.
The air was punctuated with their ragged breathing and with his rifle against her temple he could actually feel the thump of her heart beating through the muzzle. He willed himself to pull the trigger but his finger and wouldn't budge. Both of them were frozen in place, waiting for him to kill her, but he didn't. Blight wondered he was having such a hard time moving his index finger, and realized it was because she wasn't some cockatrice mutt, she was a person.
My name is Sabine.
My favourite colour is pink.
I'm scared of spiders.
When I was little I wanted to be a racecar driver in the Capitol.
He couldn't do it, for all his talk, and bravado he thought he could do it but something stopped him from pulling the trigger, and it was a sense of morality he never knew he had.
"Well," she panted, strands of limp hair curling across her red face, "what are you waiting for?"
Blight lowered his rifle hesitantly. "I can't," he mumbled. "Can't kill another person."
She fell back in her seat and let out a sigh of relief, having escaped death by a hair. "Me neither."
"Then what the hell were you doing with that car, tryin' to run me over?" he demanded.
"I wasn't, honest! I was hoping to drive right by you, but then you started shooting at me, and I panicked and tried to drive away and you still followed me, what would you have done?"
Blight mumbled an apology and stared at his feet. In all honesty he couldn't blame her, considering what he had said to her during training. He would have done the same thing in her shoes.
"So what were you doing so far, were you the one who killed the Careers?" she demanded.
"Naw, wasn't me," he mumbled. "Didn't see another tribute till you."
She nodded and looked down. "Yeah, me too. And I don't plan to," she said quietly, just loud enough for him to hear.
He cocked his head. "How're yew gonna win then?"
She looked around nervously, then gestured for him to come closer. She cupped a hand around his ear to whisper, "I was planning to just drive off past the arena, out of the Games until I reached one of the out-district countries."
He blinked. The out-district countries? He had heard stories of them, but everyone (well, except for Lester but he didn't count) agreed that they had been long since annihilated. Outside of district boundaries, all that remained was rubble and the existing forest retaking the land, or so he had been told.
"Are you... serious?" he asked slowly.
She bit her lip and nodded.
"Well," he began slowly, the gears in his head turning. "Since this year the Gamemakers traps are probably deadlier than the actual tributes we should team up, y'know because tributes with allies always do better than tributes alone." He gave her a meaningful look.
"You want to come along?" She studied him carefully, trying to gauge what he was really saying.
"Yup. Before I was just walkin' around hoping to run into someone to shoot, but frankly I like your idea a whole lot better," he replied.
"You...you don't think it's a crazy idea?"
A thousand thoughts ran through his head and half of them were about how it wouldn't work, but half of them were hope that it would. But then that would mean Blight would never see his family again, he realized, and giving up the big house and lifetime of comfort by forfeiting in the Capitol's game.
It was a hard choice, try to win or go with Sabine? In the end Blight decided that there were no guarantees in the Hunger Games and the second he was Reaped he basically had all but disappeared from his family's life anyway.
"Hell yeah I do, but it's worth a try right?" He gave her the smallest of smiles, which she returned.
Raven Everdeen, District 12 Male
-Tch tch tch-
Blackbirds squatting on branches and perched precariously on clotheslines cocked their heads at the sound and watched the boy work.
The grind of saw against metal was the only sound in the otherwise deserted ghost-town of crumbling grey tenements. Standing at a carpentry table inside the folded metal door of a garage he stepped out for only a moment to squint at the slowly setting sun and quickly turned back to his work. Something had managed to kill four Careers, four of the strongest contenders yesterday and the sooner he was armed the better.
He hummed a tune under his breath as he worked.
Now I think I understand,
How this world can overcome a man
Raven's right arm ached and sweat ran off his brow into his eyes but didn't dare stop.
On the first day he had managed to grab a backpack and high-tail it out of the bloodbath. After putting as much distance between himself and the Careers as possible he had opened up his pack only to discover it was nothing but useless rocks.
At first he had been disappointed, but then he quickly realized that his surroundings were richer in materials than any pack could be. So he got creative. By the time the anthem had sounded on the first day, he had collected several lengths of metal that he found on the ground in front of a weed-overrun yard with a shopping cart overturned. Then he had pulled down a clothesline, wheels included and fashioned himself a homemade bow.
And not a bad one either, he thought, testing the tension of the string.
After searching for hours for something he could use as arrowheads he had discovered a carpenter's workshop, garage door opened invitingly. He had grown up on his father's stories about what their ancestors used as possible arrowheads during times of scarcity, and sharpened keys were way up there on the list of make-shift points.
And so for the last couple of days he had been doing little more than painstakingly sawing the heads of keys he had collected from various tenements into sharp points.
When the final key was sharpened he unclamped it from his work surface and brought it up to the light, inspecting the balance and symmetry. The deadly point drew a drop of blood when he pressed it against his thumb, bringing a satisfied smile to his tired face. He was glad for the cameras now. He wanted the sponsors to see he was resourceful enough to fashion his open weapons, that he was a good bet because if he was willing to arm himself, he was willing to fight.
He sat down on a wooden stool and glanced at what he had stowed under the work table. In terms of supplies he had picked up a rough brown cloak-something he was grateful for because he was barely dressed in a muscle shirt and ripped jeans that made up his 'uniform', two bottles of water, a pocketknife, and various tins and packets of food.
During the past few days he had also managed to come up with dozen sharpened keys, some string, feathers, and glue. He supposed he could whittle sticks from trees for arrow shafts if he really had to, but a sense of foreboding had been creeping up on him ever since he saw the Careers in the sky and he had the feeling that the sooner his crafting was done, the better.
He stepped out of the garage and turned to the sky. "Any chance of some arrow shafts?" he called.
Not one minute later, a silver parachute holding dozen long uniform wooden shafts came floating down gently.
He grinned and raised three fingers to his lips, then in the air. "Thanks Maddy," he called. In the past forty-five years District 12 had exactly one victor, an old woman who won back in the days before the term Career was even coined.
Back then it was different, she explained sadly. No one was willing kill another tribute, we were all in it together. We thought that if we did nothing they would get bored and send us home.
"But they didn't?"
"No. They did nothing as well. They left us there in the arena, and we starved. I never had to kill a single person, I just had to survive."
... Raven looked away, disappointment etched on his face.
"I'm sorry, but I'm no help in today's Games. The only advice I have is to stay alive."
With the new arrow shafts acquired, he finished fletching just when it became dark. He packed up and stepped outside when the anthem sounded and paused to look at the sky.
No faces appeared and the anthem sounded again. His mouth tightened in a grim line as he slung his bow across his body. No deaths today, but who knows what could happen tomorrow?
Suddenly, he heard a low growl behind him. He whirled around to see a single dog muttation, an ugly rottweiler with pitch-black eyes and long fangs stalking through the shadows.
Hhhhhrrrr
Seemed like the Gamemakers wanted him to put his handicrafts to the test.
He nocked his bow with one of his homemade arrows and let fly, making his first kill in the Games. The rottweiler howled as the arrow pierced its body but was silenced as a second one pierced his neck. Raven frowned. It wasn't his usual clean shot through the eye, but it would do.
He retrieved his arrows from the still body and turned away with a whip of his cloak and a grim face belying the thudding excitement in his chest. He strode past the border of the neighbourhood into the next, turning around one last time to gaze at the place that allowed him to build his bow.
His weapon gave him an entirely new perspective on the Games. He knew he had tough opponents left to face. But he was no longer prey that runs and hides or takes desperate measures. He had a chance, a real chance and as long as he had a bow and arrows, he was going to play to win.
A/N: Okay, rereading my writing, I realize that it's devastatingly bad and pacing is too rushed XD, plus no one's reading it. If I was the type of person who wrote chapter by chapter this would be the point where I give up and abandon the story but since I've already written the rest I'll keep posting weekly and come back when my level is better and rewrite this.
Question: can anybody recognize the District 12 mentor's advice?
Next week's chapter (we're at the halfway point!) : Hope.
Tributes still in play:
Niko
Dexter
Cabel
Marlin
Tally
Sabine
Blight
D8F
D9M
D10F
D10M
Raven