I'm back from Africa and happy to be home where it isn't ninety degrees at night!


Alinta Fintan

We weren't going to last very long. Any of us could win, but we were a very big alliance of very young and small Tributes. I was surprised more of us hadn't died in the Bloodbath. If I didn't win and one of my allies did, I bet it would be Peach. She was big and tough. If she died, the alliance would get picked apart pretty quick.

It was fun to go through all the flowers on the different graves and pick out the edible ones. I wished I'd known about them at home. There was never enough food for all of us. We all knew the easy plants, like clover, but I never knew I could have eaten all those little purple violets that came up every spring. The only ones I didn't like were the roses. They tasted like soap.

My allies were a strange bunch. Silver and Anise both wanted to protect us. That didn't make any sense, since they were trying to protect more than one Tribute. They couldn't possibly keep two of us alive. What would happen if they had to pick? Anise would pick Alice if she could. Silver... she would probably just die of indecision. And didn't they want to stay alive? How could their own lives be so cheap to them? They were a little older than I was, but they weren't old or anything- not old enough that they should be ready to die.

Whoever won this time was going to go through some terrible things. The mutts were already bad enough, and I was sure they'd just barely started. The final battle of the Games was going to be something everyone remembered. It was going to take a really strong Tribute to make it through that. They definitely wouldn't come out in one piece.


DeMarcus King

It was so creepy that some of the gravestones were of us. Not me in particular, at least. I'd died, but none of the graves had my name yet. It would be so weird if I saw that. I hoped I had something good, like "beloved son", and not "DeMarcus King, died fighting some stupid gang battle".

It felt like night, even though it was always dark. The Anthem hadn't gone off yet, but it seemed like it didn't always go off at night necessarily. It just sort of sounded when enough people died. That way it was harder to tell how much time went by. We were confused, and confused people were easier to push into violence.

We all jumped out of our skin when a huge noise came out of nowhere. It wasn't alive, so it could have been worse, but then it sounded again. It sounded measured and regular, like the same exact noise. It echoed in the room as we all jumped up and got ready to fight.

"It's a clock," Blaise said, just when I figured out what it was. Normally that wouldn't have been scary, but I about died anyway.

"Shit shit shit..." Logan said, and he kept saying it. Austin started to hyperventilate and we all squeezed into the doorway, ready to bolt out or huddle inside depending on what happened after nine more sounds. Because of course that would be how many there were. The clock was striking midnight. Nothing good ever happened at midnight. It was never a tea party or a basketball game. It was always an alien invasion or a plague of ghosts.

My heart raced as the final gong sounded. As the echoes faded, nothing happened. I knew it was just the calm before the storm. We looked out at the graves around us and waited for hell to break loose. And it did. In unison, all around us, hands burst out of the ground.


Elara Angelo

I thought something terrible was going to happen when I heard that clock striking. I hadn't seen anything yet, but I was keeping my eyes open.

I was sort of wrong and sort of right about the Arena. The food was all on the graves, so I didn't have to find it myself. On the other hand, I had to go through a lot of graves in order to find enough water. Maybe I was in a bad stretch- a bad stretch of freaking cemetery, imagine that- or maybe it was like this all over. I suspected none of us were going to die of hunger or thirst. With seventy-three Tributes, the Gamemakers wanted a lot of fights.

Since I'd expected there would be no food, I'd run into the Bloodbath to take supplies. I had everything from a sleeping bag to a pair of shoes. I also had a hunting knife to use against anyone else I ran across. I hoped it would be helpful against the mutts as well, but I suspected they'd be even more formidable than usual. Or maybe they were ghosts and couldn't be killed. Unlike Tributes, dead mutts probably can't get killed again.

I screamed and twisted around when a rock hit my cheek. I scanned all around me, but nobody was there. I tried not to panic as I imagined which grave someone might be hiding behind and how strong they might be. They could stand up at any second and shoot an arrow at me almost before I saw them.

Another rock came at me, but I saw it coming this time. A rock just picked itself up off the ground and tossed itself at my nose. I had time to move out of the way and it sailed past my head.

"Who's there?" I asked, but I knew it was useless. No one was there. No one threw a rock at me. And then no one giggled and picked up another rock.

Wonderful. A poltergeist. A "noisy ghost", as I remembered from who knows where. It sounded like a child, a conclusion aided by the low height from which the rock propelled itself. I moved again and the poltergeist huffed at me. The air around me shot down in temperature and my hair stood up. Two invisible fingers pinched my arm.

"Quit moving!"


Kerry Samosa

Zombies suck. I was never scared of ghosts. They just floated around and wooooooed at you. Werewolves sounded kind of cool. Maniacs were at least human, and vampires hated looking dumb so they wouldn't run after you if they ran. Zombies, though... Zombies kept coming. They were scary and gross-looking and they just kept chasing you trying to wear you down so they could gnaw you to death. Zombie stories were the only ones that ever scared me.

There weren't as many as there could have been. Most of the graves stayed the way they were. I quickly noticed that the zombies meandering closer to us looked very familiar. Only the Tributes were coming back. I recognized Titus and couldn't help but that think that it was very appropriate. He looked pretty similar to when he was alive, except his lower jaw wasn't there and he was covered in rotten spots. So really, not similar at all.

I might have been making noise, but I couldn't tell over terror and also the groaning the zombies were making. They just had to be extra creepy about it. Zombies weren't enough. It had to be Tribute zombies making nasty groaning sounds. It was working. It would have worked if they were just plain zombies.

We didn't try to fight them. We just ran for it. The were slow, of course, but I didn't like knowing they were behind me even if they were a long way off. And more kept joining them. They came from all sides, like they could sense living flesh. Soon they were all around us, forming a ring that was getting slowly smaller.

Instead of looking out, I looked up. There was a giant angel statue near the far end of the zombie circle. I shouted for my allies and pointed to it. We reached it before the zombies made much progress and I started clambering up. I was sitting atop one of the wings in seconds, and I reached down to help the others. I grabbed Vextrix's shirt as she folded herself over the wing and hauled her up. We helped Zetan up, and then all three of us lifted Castiel. By that time, the zombies were just feet away.

The statue was about ten feet tall. We were out of reach of the zombies clustering around us, but not by much. They reached up and tried to grab our dangling feet, and we curled ourselves in tighter. More of them joined in until around twenty of them were grabbing at us.

Vextrix stabbed one in the head with her spear. I sagged with relief when it fell. Some zombies had to be shot, but these ones just required a big enough head wound. She stabbed another, but it hardly made a dent in the group. It was going to take ages for her to kill all of them. I just prayed she didn't drop her spear.


When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth

No (human) deaths this time, but I'm sure it won't take long. Theoretically, there could be 920 zombies at this point in Games history (disregarding changes from two Resurrection Games), but there aren't that many. I don't have a set number, but there's no more than 50 zombies across the Arena. They're your classical slow Romero-style zombies.

Really slow answer: Yup, Christopher Lee sent me two signed pictures, since I sent him two letters. They're very handsome.