Rue's POV

Gale and I know that we have to destroy the food. The careers almost never win without their supplies. They always depend on someone or something to provide the food. Without that, they can't last long. The question is how.

I wonder if the mines would set off like a chain reaction, where one mine blows up and then the one next to it and so on. And, if we're lucky, we could take one of them out in the process. I would prefer Cato, but we could settle for one of the others.

I watch as Clove practices her knife throwing on passing by animals while the rest of us are out here struggling to make it through the night. It makes me sick.

And I watched Cato kill the boy from district 10. He didn't even look at the boy. He just twisted the poor tribute's head like and walked off like it was just an obstacle in the road. District two has always seemed like a deadly district to me. I've seen their tributes: ruthless, bloodthirsty, and power hungry. I don't trust them.

But Clove seems worse than Cato in a way. She likes to "play with her food" before she kills them. Cato just gets to the point. Clove makes them suffer and hurt. Cato doesn't give them time to think before they die.

Can you imagine taking lives without thought? Gale did that. I mean, these kids have families! I have a family... who I might never see again. And that goes for Gale, too. We both have siblings that we are forced to protect. Kind of like what Gale's doing for me. I think he would die to protect me. Prim said he would.

I miss Prim. I'll never see her again. I think that if we lived in the same district, we would become great friends. She was my age, and a lot like me. I just wish I could see her one more time. I never even got the chance to say goodbye.

None of them did. They just lose their lives and then their bodies are shipped to their districts.

But, back to reality. Gale thinks that we should drop something on the mines because they're pressure activated. But dropping something would require coming out of our hiding spot. Or we could throw something, but even if we do hit the mines, the other two careers would come after us. But what if we did it in a tree...

Gale is well hidden in the underbrush. I'm about 40 feet up in a tree. I have a dozen rocks in case I miss, but I don't think I'll need all of them. I wait until one of them, Marvel I think, went to collect food, and I threw one. I missed by about 15 feet. Wow that sucked. At least no one noticed.

I took a second rock and threw it, and may I just say "KABOOM!" Everything exploded, including... Marvel. My first kill. I suppose I should feel happy. One less person trying to kill me, right? But I don't feel happy. The explosion nearly causes me to fall out of my tree, but I don't.

I watch the careers trying to recover from the explosion. Luckily, they don't know where the rock came from so they can't track us down. Cato points in a random direction and motions for Clove to follow. They're way off. Though, just to be sure, I don't climb down at first. I wait about five minutes, and then leap from tree to tree until I see Gale in the woods.

I give him the thumbs up sign and climb down.

And then comes the boom of the cannon.