A loud thud woke Clove up from her nap. Her eyes snapped open, and within a split second she knew it was a life or death situation.
There were wasps. Everywhere. A big nest of them was sitting where their fire had been, and it was split open, the bugs angrily buzzing about and trying to sting all of them to death.
Immediately she began shrieking, trying to use her jacket to bat as many of them away as possible, before Marvel yelled "To the lake!" She followed him, doing her best to keep the murderous insects away from her, although they were starting to get to her, based the extremely painful stings on her arms. Cato was close behind, swinging his sword as if that could kill the wasps, and Marina was behind him, staggering but moving. Glimmer, meanwhile, seemed to have gotten the worst of it, with far more bugs around her than anyone else.
Clove jumped into the water, hoping that it would put enough distance from the nest and drown any of the pests that made it that far. After holding her breath for about a minute, she got up, climbed onto land again, and followed Marvel to camp, where Orson was cooking an egg for breakfast.
"Medicine, NOW!" Marvel roared at the District 3 boy, who dropped his breakfast to start scrambling in the nearest container for any disinfectant, insect repellent, or morphling that could help with the large lumps growing on the arms of the two careers that made it back to camp first.
Clove felt the world spinning, her head extremely weak and wanting to roll over. But she had enough sense to realize who was there and who wasn't. "Where's Cato?" she asked weakly to no one in particular, stumbling about while Orson kept looking for any sort of medication. "Cato, Cato, where the hell did you go…"
Cato stumbled about in the forest, the tracker jacker stings making him disoriented and weaker than usual. He still swung his sword at anything that was a threat, real or perceived. "Where the fuck is she," he kept muttering to himself over and over. "Where the fuck is she, where the fuck is she."
He knew that bitch from 12 had to have been behind the wasps somehow. Maybe the nest was high up in the trees and she broke the branch to distract them all, possibly kill some of them, and give her time to come down from the tree and make an escape. Smart of her, but she just got lucky. We'll see how lucky she is at the end of a sharp blade.
He continued to wonder the forest, questioning whether he should just head back to camp or keep trying to find that bitch when his decision was made up for him. In the distance, he could see Lover Boy, yelling something to Katniss, probably to run or something. He fucking knew it; Peeta was dumping them for his so-called crush at the first hint of trouble.
Not that he'd live to enjoy it much longer.
Even with one eye swollen, Cato was able to make a close enough swing at Lover Boy to catch him off guard. The first few swipes were misses, but one eventually cut Peeta in the leg. Cato was about to finish him off when he tripped and fell on a fallen branch, one of his arm scrapping against a boulder. Doing so caused one of the lumps on his forearm to bust, and it hurt more than anything Cato had experienced in his life. Some sort of green puss poured out as Cato got up and tried to get back to camp, satisfied Peeta wouldn't last more than a few days on his own with a wound that was exposed down to the bone.
It took all of his remaining energy to get back to the Cornucopia, and he passed by the body of Marina on his way. She was not a pretty sight, and it appeared to him she had actually been very close to survival, her hand falling over the ledge that led to the pool of water. Cato jumped in it, hoping it would numb the scorching pain on his arm and eye somehow and keep any wasps straggling from bothering him anymore.
Less than thirty seconds later, he was up and out of the water, tapping into the last of his energy to get back to base. He could faintly hear Clove screaming his name as he collapsed, the world going to dark around him.
After what seemed like an infinite amount of time, Cato woke up in his tent, bandaged up and wrapped in some of the blankets from their supply dump. The busted sore on his arm had healed to a degree, but was still painful to move and touch. He noticed an injection wound right next to the sore: someone had given him a shot of something for the pain, the swelling, or both.
He was going to try to sit up, but Clove entered the tent and easily forced him down in his weakened state, despite him normally towering over her. "Lay back down, dummy. You'll need a lot more time than that to recover from tracker jacker stings."
So that wasp nest was indeed tracker jackers. Even if it was a normal nest, it would've been an effective trick by Katniss to take them all out. Mutated murder hornets only made the whole ordeal even worse. "Those damn bugs from biology class?"
"Yep. I only found out because our mentors managed to get sponsors to give us proper treatment." She held up a pair of syringes, both of them used up. In her other hand was a note from Brutus and Enobaria: that surprise attack could've gotten both of you killed. Lay low for a few days and keep your eyes open. B and E
"This is anti-venom for the jackers," Clove explained. "It's basically watered down morphling mixed with other chemicals, but nowhere near as addictive as the actual stuff. We each need two doses of it every few hours, and even then the lumps will take time to heal. That bitch in the tree got very lucky, that's all."
He nodded, agreeing with that. "Who else got out, besides us?"
"Just Marvel. Marina collapsed before making it to the lake, and Glimmer had the majority of the bugs on her when the nest broke." She silently lamented not being able to be the one to kill the blonde girl. Katniss had stolen that from her, and she wanted to make her pay for that just as much as almost killing her, if not more.
"Ugh… this hurts. How long was I out for?"
"Several hours. Most of the day at least. It's early evening by now. Here, get some food." She tossed him a bag of beef jerky and a water canteen. "I thought you would've died. That was very stupid of you not to immediately run back to camp."
Cato cocked a brow. "I saw him. Fucking Lover Boy was helping Fire Bitch the whole damn time. He was telling her to run before I cut him in the leg."
"Still. We could get him later. The main thing is keeping your ass alive long enough to see it through."
"But you'd like that, wouldn't you? One less person to worry about killing to become a Victor. I think you'd prefer not to have to be the one to do it, would you?"
She raised a hand to slap him, but pulled it back and put more food around him. "I don't want to talk about that, meathead. I don't… fuck, now you have me thinking about how one of us is going to have to kill the other soon."
"Alright, we won't talk about it. Aren't you dealing with all those stings as well? Why aren't you resting too?"
"I got the medicine first, dumbass. You spent all your energy chasing Lover Boy through half the forest, remember?"
"Right, right."
It took nearly a day and a half for the three Careers to recover from the tracker jacker stings. Luckily for them, no one else came trying to steal their stuff. Not even the redhead from 5, who either had enough food from that one backpack or knew how to hunt for prey somehow. It was almost boring, after several days of hunting and butchering, but the pain came in waves, even with the proper medication, and it was enough to keep the three of them lying down for most of the day.
It wasn't until the next after noon that Cato was up and walking again. The dizziness and hallucinations were finally going away. He could've sworn that Clove's body was between his legs half the time, only for him to realize he was daydreaming. What exactly did they put in that tracker jacker venom to make you see your wildest dreams and bizarre fantasies?
He waved away the last hallucination and got up out of the tent, ordering Marvel to set up more of those crude traps. The mines would keep their supplies safe, but sooner or later the stragglers among the other tributes would come closer. They were all basically the same: disguised to match the surroundings of the forest, activated by stepping on the wrong stone or branch, and trap the victim long enough to be finished off – if they made it that far, with such dangers as sharpened branches in some of them.
Once those were done, they began to get bored again, so they ended up playing games of tic-tack-toe and checkers using rocks, just to pass the time. Even that only lasted an hour or so, and the repetitiveness began getting to them. At Cato's insistence, the three remaining Careers traveled as one to patrol the forest around them, Orson left behind to maintain the mines and look out for any other threats.
Marvel chose a path that allowed them to review each of the traps set up earlier and inspect them, making small modifications as necessary. What was supposed to be a simple walk ended up being taxing on all of them, but they had to build up their strength again and not let their guard down.
They were leaving the third trap of the trail when they heard the sounds of a kid struggling behind them. Cato, Clove, and Marvel turned around to see the boy from District 10 caught in the trap, several wooden stakes in him. It wouldn't be long now if they didn't put him down, like the owner of a pet performing euthanasia at the end of their companion's life.
"Let him die on his own, or put him out of his misery?" Cato asked.
"Doesn't matter to me," replied Marvel, considering this his kill regardless of the outcome.
"I'll do it," said Clove. Though the academy taught them to alternate between relishing the hunt and knowing when to go for an instant kill, she was inclined towards the latter today. Torturing Lover Boy or Fire Girl was one thing. This kid, on the other hand, simply happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing personal.
Besides, they didn't want to waste too much time. Others could be out there, watching and waiting for the right moment.
So Clove took out one of her knives and plunged it into the boy with the bad leg, granting him a quicker death than most. A minute later, the cannon rang to confirm the kill.
"Anything else?" Clove asked sarcastically, to no one in particular, as they began the trek back to their temporary home.
Cato and Clove spent the night spooned up against each other. They didn't have the energy for much else, frankly. Which Cato thought was a shame, but they needed the stamina for the rest of the games. Sex would have to wait.
The next day, the four of them decided to wait it out in camp. Save their energy for when someone inevitably came to their supplies, hungry and desperate, and watch them either get blown sky high or stabbed by one of the Careers.
Clove sharpened her knives, Orson messed around with the detonator to the mines (a small box shaped piece of plastic that had multiple switches and buttons), while Marvel and Cato resorted to another game of checkers. Chess had been covered at the academy, as a way of keeping their minds sharp for puzzles and strategic thinking, but Cato had never given it much thought until now, when he would've preferred that game to the more simple checkers.
Marvel was the better checkers player, having won two games so far, and they decided on a short break from the monotony of the games. It had barely been a minute, the two of them sitting in lawn chairs, when Marvel spotted the smoke. "Guys, look, look!"
All of them saw it: smoke in the distance, as if it was someone making a fire. Clove wondered to herself who was stupid enough to do that in the daytime. She considered it to be a trap, but there were three of them, four if you counted Orson, and likely the others still hadn't formed any sort of alliance yet. They'd have to take their chances investigating.
"Should Orson stay here on watch duty?" Marvel asked Cato and Clove.
"He's coming," was Cato's blunt reply. "We can use the numbers, and no one's touching the supplies with the mines." He tossed Orson a spear and the four of them set off in the forest, running to where the first trail of smoke was coming from.
It took them about twenty minutes to find it, but find it they did. And it was an empty nest, either hastily abandoned or set up as a decoy to keep the Careers away from somewhere else. "There's another one," Clove said while pointing out a hole in the leaves, where they could see more smoke.
"I'll bet it's another decoy," Marvel grumbled.
"Only one way to find out." Cato took the lead again, the others trailing behind in a steady jog. A few minutes later, they reached the second fire. Again, it was a dead end, probably a distraction.
"I wonder which one of them set these up," Clove mused to the group. "One of the kids from 11? Or Fire Girl, maybe?"
"Whoever did it is probably trying to use the time to get something from the supply dump," suggested Marvel. "But they'll never get within five feet without setting off-"
There was the sound of a massive explosion, that all of them could hear. Cato swore it fucked up his eardrums.
That could only be one thing: the mines.