Hi! I hope you don't think too badly of me right now since it takes so long for me to update. Sorry! I'm trying to get the chapters out quicker, I promise. But anyway, enjoy chapter 11 out of 23.

Chapter 11 – Run part 1

The shake made us lose balance and fall down the mountain. I heard Alec groan in pain right after I hurt my head in the ground. There was a strong pulsing pain in the side of my head.

"Come on!" said Alec. "Come on!"

"Look…" I gasped.

The black smoke was thick and threatening coming out from the top of the mountain with a smell as horrifying as the volcano itself. The new ash, also coming out from the top was now snowing down on us.

Alec tugged hard on my sleeve but I was frozen. Sacred to death but in the same time mesmerized by the (forgive me) beauty of the mountain. He hit my arm slightly.

"Ginny look at me!" he screamed. "If we don't leave now, we'll be dead within the next hour!" Finally my head was in place. We started to run.

We never stopped. Suddenly I heard a strong bang. Like thousands of gunshots at the same time and even from a far distance, I could see the glowing orange substance through all the trees and the mountains.

The magma was coming near and Alec and I started to lose strength. The adrenaline and the fear of death was keeping us going but we couldn't ignore the pain in our lungs and heart from all the running and the smoke we were forced to breath in.

A scream!

It wasn't mine. And Alec looked just as confused as I did.

"Maybe it's a trick to get us to stop" said Alec and looked over to where the magma was pouring towards us about a hundred meters away. "We have to keep going!"

"Yeah…" I looked around one last time. "NO! Alec, wait! There!"

A small, skinny girl with strawberry blonde hair that was blackened by the smoke screamed as she tried to get away from the magma. Her leg was dragging after her and she could barely move. The girl from district seven, Eve!

"Alec! We have to help her!" I shouted.

"No way! Ginny, if we do that she'll just slow us down and probably be the cause of our death!"

"Alec come on! She's from seven! She wouldn't hurt a fly, she's too sweet for that! Don't you remember her interview? What would you want id you were in her position?"

Alec looked over to the magma for a second. It was only fifty meters away now. Very near Eve. He groaned! "God damn it!" he shouted before he started to run to Eve. There was no time for exhaling so I ran after him.

When we finally reached Eve the magma was so close I started to regret this. Eve screamed even more when we got close. I understood that Alec was losing his patience because he sounded very angry.

"Come on!" he said when he got close enough to drag her up on her feet.

"Please don't kill me!" screamed Eve.

"We are not going to kill you!" I said. "We are going save you!"

"But if we don't leave now, we're all going to die!" said Alec with my help we dragged Eve up on her feet. When we did, she screamed in pain and I could see why in the light of the magma.

The part of her trousers below the knee was burned away I saw a big creepy burn injury along her leg. It was pink and bubbly and blood was coming out from everywhere.

Eve didn't protest when we started to move but she did cry out in pain every time she tried to walk or run so we mostly just dragged her.

The smoke was getting closer, so was the magma. Though it had to stop eventually, right? I was just praying that the gamemakers hadn't mixed with it so that it would follow us until one or all three of us died. The dark wasn't helping either.

At first I was able to see the stars. Now they were covered by the thick smoke.

After what seemed like hours of running, though it was only a couple of minutes, Alec suddenly stopped.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked and took over Eve's full weight on one of my shoulders.

"Ginny, listen to me" Alec started. "We can't keep running forever. Sooner or later the smoke or magma will kill us."

"So what do you suggest?"

"That we find shelter in a low ground."

"Great! See any?"

"Yes I do. There!" He pointed to any opening in the ground about ten meters away." I nodded quickly.

"Come on" I said as softly as I could to Eve who cried out in pain as soon as we started to move again. "Your fine, your fine…" I whispered to Eve.

When we got to the opening, Eve suddenly broke free from my grip and tumbled to the side. "It's alright" I said. "We are going to help you. We'll fix your burn when we get inside." But Eve just stared at us in horror. Her breathing was shallow and she was trying to get up by herself. "No" said Alec. "Let us help you so that you don't get even more hurt."

Then she took off. Crawling, stumbling, running, some kind of weird mix but she took off. Every time we tried to help her or take her back to safety she screamed and kept on stumbling away. Eventually Alec stopped me.

"There's no point" he said. "If she wants to stumble to her death there's nothing we can do."

"Alec…"

"It'll only resolve in us dying too and we don't want that." I nodded slightly.

He helped me in to the opening. It was a bunker. There was nothing in it except stonewalls and a ladder but still. It was somewhere to hide. We helped each other to get clean and preserve our water. Both of them were full since we filled them before going to bed so we decided to use one for cleaning up our self's and the other to drink.

After that we decided to get some sleep without any of us guarding. We both needed the sleep. If anyone would come here, let them. It wasn't worth staying up.

XXX

I woke up with a feeling of being followed. Not so strange considering how we ran from magma the night before. But I calmed down when I turned my head to the side and saw Alec's beautiful face. His face looked so relaxed, how that now was possible.

I was really happy to have him here with me. Don't get me wrong, if I had a choice to deport one of us from the arena it would be him, but now that he was here, I was so happy he was. Because without him, there would probably have been many situations where I would have died.

Alec really was the spark of light in the dark, the single flower in the meadow that kept on growing, the one single and alone glow in the dead fire that would help it come to life again. My true love…

I hope you liked it and please leave a little review and let me know what you think and how I can get better.

Ps. Don't hate Eve or Alec, okay! ;)