Chapter 37: 75th Hunger Games: Tick, tock
[Summer in the year of the 75th Hunger Games]
At breakfast in the next morning we tried to talk about something else for some time. Surely we could lighten the mood by discussing bakery supplies or at least the weather? We tried hard for a few minutes, but soon failed, and we were back to discussing the games again.
"At least Katniss and Peeta are still alive" Dad offered.
"Yes, but so are the Careers" Wheat added.
"And we also do not know what Johanna's plans are" I continued.
"But she and her companions still do not have water, unless they found some during the night, so that this should slow them down and make them weak" Mabel Everdeen cut in.
"True, but Johanna is still a formidable warrior."
"Do you think that they had another tidal wave during the night?" Prim asked.
"So far," my father replied, "we have seen different dangers, like the blood rain, the fog, the monkey mutts, and the tidal wave. I would expect the gamemakers to have a few more surprises prepared, whatever those are going to be."
"I guess that we will just have to wait and see" Mabel Everdeen commented, and of course she was right; there was nothing we could do anyway. She shuddered a couple of times and moved closer to my father.
Before the viewing started for the day, I could hear Mabel say: "Jacob, I am real glad to be here with you this time. Being with another person you cherish is a big help, and looking back, I wonder how I managed all of those years."
"Well, you had Hazelle, right?" my father replied.
"Yes, sure, but it's not the same, you know."
The review from the night showed no big surprises this time, and none of the tributes had died. Our group had been smart enough to have somebody standing guard at all times, but it appeared that this had not really been necessary. Once the viewing switched to live events, we could see our group waking up, except Peeta. My brother had been affected most by the monkey attack, and he was apparently still asleep even when the others were already looking for food.
Katniss claimed that she was hungry, and the few rodents that she had hunted before where long eaten. Finnick, being a resident of District Four along the coast, stepped out from the jungle canopy cover and started to collect sea shells close to the waterline, in shallow water. When he had collected enough, he got back and opened the shells with a knife, pulling out the interior wobbly content. He did not hesitate to plug a few of them into his mouth and smiled: "They really taste good when fresh!"
"Yuck!" Prim shouted, and her sister in the arena also yelped a little.
Obviously, the male from Four also understood that somebody not from the coast might not like that at all, and he dropped some more into a pot with water, preparing to boil it into some kind if soup. A couple of hours later the soup was ready, and Katniss and Finnick decided to wake up Peeta together, making it almost like a prank, with their faces close to him and poking him in the ribs:
"Peeta, Peeta, wake up!"
My brother jumped up when he opened his eyes and saw the two faces so close to him, and Katniss and Finnick fell back into the sand, laughing.
It almost seemed like the world was all right for our tributes, but they still had some injuries from the monkeys and the fog, and part of their skin showed blisters accordingly, although the paste from the tree had helped a lot. Untreated for more than a few days, those could lead to infection, but in this kind of arena, it was very doubtful that anybody might survive for more than a few more days anyway.
Just when the group had finished their meager meal – the clam chowder, as I had heard it being called, was obviously much preferred to the raw product – Finnick seemed to see something, as he stood up and looked. The camera move, and we could see three reddish objects moving along the beach. Well, when the camera moved closer, the objects turned out to be three human beings, but they had quite a few red splotches on them. A closeup revealed them to be Johanna, Wiress and Beetee, and soon Finnick recognized them. Despite of getting a warning from Katniss, he waved to them and bade them to come closer, and when they all finally met, Peeta said to Katniss:
"Johanna has got Nuts and Volts with her, as it appears"
"Nuts and Volts? Who came up with those names?" Prim wondered.
Meanwhile, Johanna started to explain the red splotches they all had: "We first thought that it was rain, you know, and we were thirsty; however, it turned out to be blood, and not just ordinary blood, but kind of acid one. We tried to get out of it, and that was when Blight hit the force field.
"I am sorry to hear that, Johanna" Finnick replied.
"Well, he was not much, but he was from home at least, and now I am stuck with those two weirdos."
Johanna pointed at Beetee, who was not looking very good, and elaborated: "He caught a knife in the back right at the start, not far from the Cornucopia. And his partner..."
"Tick, tock" Wiress mumbled a few times, and Johanna nodded and replied:
"Yes, tick, tock, we know. I think that Nuts is in shock, as she mumbles that all of the time."
The athletic female from Seven pushed the female from Three down and demanded:
"Stay down, will you?"
Katniss seemed to dislike her attitude and requested: "Hey, lay off her!"
Johanna almost exploded, slapped Katniss hard and shouted:
"Lay off her? Who do you think got her and her partner out of that bleeding jungle for you? You..."
Before she could get even more violent, Finnick grabbed the enraged tribute, carried her down to the water and dumped her a few times. Meanwhile, Katniss and Peeta discussed Johanna's statement, and Prim՚s sister asked:
"What did she mean? She got them for me?"
My brother scratched his head and replied: "I do not know. But, if I recall correctly, you did want them as allies originally."
"True, originally I did. I am not so sure about that any longer, though."
"What?" Wheat called out. "She wanted to have that weirdo girl as an ally? Really?"
"Come on, she's not that bad" I replied. "Think about it; a woman who can handle her axes like she can would be a great help against the Careers."
"Yeah, but only if she does not kill Katniss and Peeta from behind when they're not paying attention."
"Maybe they had talked about that before, during training" father suggested. "Anyway, let's see how this works out; there's nothing we can do about it anyway."
He was right, of course. In the arena, Katniss suggested to help the others clean their wounds and splotches, but Johanna asked first:
"You do not happen to have some water, do you?"
Peeta and Finnick went to one of the proper trees with the spile, and Johanna, Wiress, and Beetee could drink as much as they wanted. Once this was done, Katniss suggested once more:
"Let's try to do something about their splotches now."
There was not really much they could do, though. They did not have proper medicine and there were no sponsor gifts, so the only option was to wash the skin in water and apply the paste from the special tree afterwards, but that was better than nothing at least, and the paste at least alleviated the pain. They also took care of Beetee՚s wound, and they had to undress the man almost completely to do so. While doing that, Katniss noticed some kind of cylinder attached to the belt, together with a loop of vines. She carefully took it aside and continued the cleaning, while Wiress continued to mumble "Tick, tock" repeatedly.
Around noon time, the camera moved out to show a larger area, and across the water from the newly found allies, a tree was again struck by lightning. Katniss stood up when she saw that, and we could hear her mumbling: "Lightning – noon time - ...", while Wiress uttered "Tick, tock" once more. Suddenly Katniss shouted:
"I got it! This is a clock!"
The others were looking at her, and she explained:
"Don't you see it? The arena is built like a clock, with the twelve spokes. Each hour a new horror begins. We have encountered some already, and we need to get moving now!"
This started quite a discussion, and not everybody felt like moving, but eventually they prepared to walk on. When they had walked for some time, Wiress suddenly said: "Two!" The others looked around, and Peeta nodded:
"Look, over there, the fog starts!"
Katniss added:
"You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress."
And indeed, fog was forming in another area, right on the hour.
Beetee smiled commented:
"Wiress is more than smart; she is intuitive. Sometimes she can sense things before anyone else can."
Katniss asked: "So, what's the best place to go to?"
Finnick suggested: "I'd like to go to the Cornucopia, at least if the Careers are not there. Maybe, from there, we can make sure that we are right about the clock."
"I do not think that the Careers are around" Peeta suggested. "We have been walking around the beach for hours, and we haven't seen a sign of them."
Once they got there, Johanna and Finnick started to look around for more weapons, and Peeta started to draw a map on a large leaf he had brought from the jungle. The camera zoomed in, and we could see that it looked like a map of the arena, with the Cornucopia in the center and the twelve strips branching out from it. It almost looked like a pie with twelve wedges.
"Look how the Cornucopia is positioned!" Peeta said.
Katniss looked over his shoulder and saw it: "The tail points towards twelve o'clock."
"Right," Peeta nodded, "and twelve to one is the lightning zone. After that we have blood, fog, and monkeys."
"And from ten to eleven we have the tidal wave" Katniss added.
"That's a lot more than what we knew this morning, I guess" her husband nodded.
While they were talking, the camera zoomed out and moved, and we saw Gloss, the big male from One, sneaking up on Wiress. The older lady was still sitting at the water edge, singing and mumbling her usual "Tick, tock", when Gloss was behind her and slit her throat. Beside him, his district partner Cashmere and the two tributes from District Two, Enobaria Brutus, started to sneakily approach Johanna, Beetee, and Peeta, and none of them were aware of the impeding danger.
Prim jerked on my lap and shouted out: "Oh, no!"
Suddenly Katniss looked up and seemed to be on her guard all of a sudden. Peeta noticed her attention and asked:
"Is something wrong?"
"I don't know. Until a few moments ago, Wiress was singing and mumbling, and now I cannot hear her any longer."
Katniss had her bow out and an arrow nocked as she carefully turned around, and when she saw Gloss turning towards her after he had let Wiress' body slide to the ground, she loosened the arrow, hitting the other tribute right in the temple. Johanna had noticed the commotion, and just when Cashmere started to charge at Katniss, she got an axe buried in her chest.
Brutus had tried to get Peeta with a thrown spear, but Finnick managed to knock it away, being rewarded with a knife from Enobaria in his thigh. Three cannon shots sounded, indicating that Wiress, Gloss, and Cashmere were dead. Katniss had another arrow nocked, but the two remaining enemies – Enobaria and Brutus – manged to hide behind the Cornucopia, and as they realized that the moment of surprise was gone, they were now running down a sand strip towards the jungle again.
While Katniss, Finnick and Peeta were starting to give chase, there was some jerking movement on the ground, almost like an earthquake, and suddenly the central ground with the Cornucopia started to spin. The camera zoomed out to show it, and it was obvious that the tributes had trouble holding on due to the centrifugal forces. Only a couple of minutes later the rotation stopped quite abruptly, and we noticed that Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick had managed to stay in the center; Brutus and Enobaria had been catapulted onto the beach, whereas Beetee and the three corpses had been thrown out into the water. The male from Three was not far and Finnick hauled him in easily, but Beetee shouted about a wire all of the time. Finnick and Peeta did not pay attention, but Katniss suddenly reacted, shouted "Cover me!" and started to run.
"What is she doing?" Prim asked in the bakery.
"I do not know," I replied, "but she seems to be running towards Wiress."
"But Wiress is dead!" Wheat stated.
She was, obviously, but Katniss ran in her direction anyway. When she had arrived at a position which was as close as possible where the corpse bobbed in the water, she dove in and swam rapidly. Meanwhile, a hovercraft started to approach, to retrieve the dead bodies. Just seconds before Wiress' body was lifted, Katniss had arrived and pulled something large from the body.
When she got back to the others, she had the loop of wires Beetee mentioned in her hands and explained:
"The seemed to be important to Beetee, and I felt that I had to get it back. Who knows, maybe it is going to be something which can help us."
She placed the wires on Beetee՚s chest, and he happily ran it through his fingers. We saw that is was quite clean now, but none of us had an idea what it might be good for.
Finnick՚s thigh wound was looked at, but proved to be minor; the male tribute claimed that it would not bother him much and that there was no reason for concern.
The cameras switched now, and we could see the male from District Ten now, moving around on his own. He had lost his district partner early on during the bloodbath. While the man, whose name I had forgotten, seemed to be tall and strong, he did not look like he was used to this kind of jungle environment. During the interviews he had mentioned that he was used to drive cattle around on open fields, and he appeared to be intimidated by the dense foliage. The cameras stayed with him for some time, until a growling noised was heard not far from him. He tensed, and a few seconds later a huge animal was next to him. The man had a weapon, a short sword as it looked like, but he was so shocked by seeing the beast next to him that he not even raised it, and in the next moment the animal had ripped his sword arm off.
The tribute screamed, and so did Prim, and ten seconds later the tribute was dead, ripped in pieces.
"What was that?" Mabel Everdeen asked.
"A mutt, my dear, unless those animals are real in another district" my father responded.
The cameras stayed with the corpse for a few more moments until the pieces were picked up by a hovercraft, and then we could our group again.
Katniss, Peeta, Finnick, and Beetee decided to head into the jungle again, and Katniss suggested to pick a section which should be safe for now, based on the map Peeta had drawn.
She moved into one direction, but the camera showed Peeta, Finnick, and Beetee moving into three different directions. They noticed that, and Peeta asked:
"Twelve o'clock, right? The tail points at twelve!"
"Yes, but that was before the spinning!" Finnick objected. "I was judging by the sun."
"Well, the sun only tells you that the time now is about four" Katniss suggested.
Beetee had a longer comment: "Knowing the time does not necessarily imply that we know where four is on the clock. In addition, they might have shifted the outer ring as well."
"So, any of these paths could lead to twelve, I guess" Katniss sighed. "Maybe we can identify the tree which is usually struck by lightning?"
They looked around, but it was obvious that each section had a tree which looked like it could be that one. They wandered around the center for a little more time until Katniss suggested:
"Wait, we can wait until ten and see where the tidal wave is going, right?"
"But we cannot wait here" Johanna stated. "I need water!"
The picked a path and approached the jungle. While Finnick used the spile to get some water, the others watched the jungle carefully, watching out for potential dangers.
"It must be about monkey hour right now, but I do not see any" Peeta stated.
When they had all received some water, suddenly a loud scream pierced the air in the arena, freezing everybody. Katniss had just been about to pack the spile into her backpack again, and when the scream sounded a second time, she dropped the pack and started running.
In the bakery, Prim looked at me, and I looked back, and somehow that scream sounded familiar to me. Mabel Everdeen shouted out:
"Primrose, that scream sounded just like you!"
"But I am here and not in the arena!"
"Yes," I replied, "but what do you think your sister is going to do when she hears you screaming, even knowing that you really cannot be there?"
"How can they have my scream in the arena?"
"I do not have a clue."
Meanwhile, Katniss was running towards the area where she thought she had heard the scream, and she shouted "Prim!" a few times. Eventually she got close enough, but still did not see anybody. The scream sounded again, right above her, and the camera zoomed in to a bird.
"A jabberjay!" Katniss shouted when she saw the bird.
"What is a jabberjay?" Prim – the real one, on my lap – asked.
None of us knew, but Dad suggested: "Apparently this is a bird which can mimic human voice."
Katniss nocked an arrow and killed the bird swiftly, when Finnick crashed through the jungle and found her: "Katniss? Are you all right?"
Prim՚s sister nodded: "Yes, I am okay."
She did not really look okay, and obviously she needed to cool down from the excitement. "I thought that I heard my sister screaming, but..."
She was interrupted by another loud scream from somewhere else, a different voice this time, but also like from a young woman. This time Finnick was affected. He got pale, and his pupils dilated, as a closeup showed, and after a second scream he started running.
"Another bird?" Wheat asked.
Katniss started to run after Finnick, and although the big man from Four was faster, Prim՚s sister maneuvered through the jungle more efficiently, so that shew as able to keep track with him. Eventually he was seen running around a real big tree, and the bird was quickly shown to sit on a large branch further up, unseen by the tribute. Katniss tried to tell Finnick that it was a bird only, but he was too agitated to listen, so that the girl climbed a tree next to the one with the bird, found a stable position, and swiftly killed the jabberjay with an arrow; the bird dropped right at Finnick՚s feet.
The tribute picked up the bird, and slowly he started to understand. Katniss was next to him a few moments later, and she tried to comfort him:
"It's all right, Finnick; it was just a bird."
"But the voice was exactly like my Annie! How could that bird know how she screams?"
That got Katniss thinking, and before she could came up with something else to say, another voice sounded through the jungle, a male scream this time.
"This is Gale!" Prim shouted from her usual position on my lap. The Everdeen and Hawthorne families had been very good friends for a long time, so that Primrose knew Gale's voice quite well, and so did her mother:
"You are right, that really seems to be Gale's voice."
"How do they do that?" Wheat asked.
"I have no idea" Dad replied.
Meanwhile Katniss had started to run, but Finnick held her back, and eventually Katniss calmed down. Soon the two of them walked back to the others, but when they were almost next to them, they were stopped by an invisible barrier. Peeta tried to make some gestures from outside, but soon more birds arrived, and more voices were heard. While Katniss tried to diminish the voice attacks by killing birds with her arrows, there were simply too many of them, and soon the area around Katniss vibrated from a cacophony of sounds and voices, some of them we did not know, and some of them we could recognize.
Mabel Everdeen heard her own voice, Prim heard herself again, and we also recognized screams from Posy and what we thought might be Madge Undersee, besides many others we did not know. This lasted for what felt like an eternity, with Katniss desperately trying to cover hears with her hands, until suddenly the voices died down, and Peeta was next to his wife in a moment; the force field must be gone now.
"It's all right, Katniss" he tried to comfort her. "They are gone now."
"But you did not hear them – this was so real!"
"I heard Prim՚s voice right at the beginning, but it wasn't her, it was just a bird."
"It was her, somewhere; the jabberjay recorded it!"
"I wish I could tell her that I am safe at home" Prim shouted out.
"Think about last year" Peeta went on. "They had those mutts with eyes looking like those of killed tributes, but they were not; they were just mutts. Same here; the voices sounded like our loved ones, but they were not."
"But, they were torturing Prim!"
Peeta raised his hands, indicating that he almost gave up, but then he came up with something else:
"Katniss, do you recall how many tributes are left alive as of today?"
"Why is that important?"
"It is because we are almost down to the final eight. Do you recall what happens once there are only eight tributes left in the arena?"
Katniss looked her husband in the eyes, thought about his words for a few seconds, and then slowly replied: "The final eight? Family interviews, right?"
"Yes, they interview your family and friends. So, can they do that if your family had been abducted and is being tortured somewhere?"
"No, I guess."
"Right, they can't. So, preparing for the family interviews, they cannot afford to hurt our families. Your mother and Prim will be the first to be interviewed, and they will need to be alive and well for that."
"Finnick is right" Johanna added. "Everybody in the entire country loves Prim, and if they hurt her, there would be an uprising for sure, and this is not what the Capitol wants at all."
Katniss now also asked Finnick and Beetee for their opinion. Finnick was a little bit unsure, but Beetee offered:
"You know, with some of the technology we manufacture in our district, you can easily change voices. For your mother and sister, Katniss, all they'd have to do is to take some samples from last year's family interviews and do some electronic wizardry, and you've got their screams. At home, older children learn something similar at school."
Johanna decided to break up the conversation and stated: "I need to get some water."
She took the spile and started to walk into the trees, right in the section where the birds had come from.
"Don't go in there – the birds..." Katniss shouted.
Johanna laughed and replied: "They cannot hurt me. There is no one left I love."
While they were drinking from the water Johanna brought back, a cannon sounded, and a hovercraft was seen picking up parts of a body from another jungle section.
"Who is left?" Johanna asked. "Besides the five of us?"
"Chaff from Eleven, I think, and Brutus and Enobaria from Two."
In the evening, Katniss and Peeta were shown to have some discussion about who should survive if they made it to the finals. Somewhat similar to last year, both of them insisted that the other one was more important and better suited to get our alive, and eventually Peeta stopped the discussion by drawing his wife into a long kiss, and for an hour or so the two of them were making out on the beach.
Prim turned her head and asked me with a smirk: "Is that the male way of thinking – when you run out of arguments you just start to make out?"
Before I could come up with a proper answer, Wheat responded with a big grin: "Of course it is. It's a win-win-situation, you know!"
Not much more happened in the arena in the evening. We could see our group posting guards, and the final scene shown for the day was the projected image of the male tribute from District Ten, who had been killed by the big mutt on that day.
When Prim and I were in my room just before preparing for the night, my girlfriend mused:
"You know, seeing my mother and your father so close and cozy with each other is a little odd. Have you seen them holding hands many times today?"
"Yes, I have noticed that," I replied, "and I am happy for them."
"Can you believe that Mom even asked me if it was all right for her to be here in the bakery with us?" Prim added. "She was a little unsure how I'd see that, but of course I assured her that I would like to see her happy."
"Yeah, Dad also asked Wheat and me." I replied.
Prim giggled and added: "I also told Mom that she was allowed to have some fun with your Dad in his bedroom, and I have rarely seen her blush like she did. She did not even try to deny it, though."
We both burst out laughing, and a few minutes later my cute girlfriend asked me:
"So, do you think that one day they are going to get married?"
"I not sure, but conceivable." I responded. "Based on what they told us last Christmas, probably quite likely."
Prim giggled again: "That's going to be the day – the two us will get married and our parents as well, maybe even before us!"
"And Peeta and Katniss have already done that, too! We are going to be a real special family, with a threefold family union; this is really something extraordinary!"
Prim՚s face saddened for a few moments: "It will be, if Katniss and Peeta somehow manage to survive."
[Author's Notes: Once more, some background of the events in the arena stay hidden from our main characters. Let's see how the games end this time; it won't be exactly like the book in all details.]
