Ember Steiner- District Two female
The final two hadn't been good to me historically. Seeing Elara as the only one left didn't give me the hope it might have. Another dead Tribute theoretically should have meant the pressure on me was going down but instead it made it worse. The closer I got to the end the more hope I gave my family. I always thought it must have been easier for the families of Tributes who died in the Bloodbath. I couldn't imagine being a mother and seeing my daughter or son die in the final two just inches from coming home to me. I'd rather know they were going to die from the start.
In a cruel blessing my misgivings didn't last long. It was hard to be worried when I was so tired. It was hard to be when I was so tired. I seemed to be just a collection of muscle impulses moving a pair of legs forward. Higher thought was out the window. My body moved down the road like a tumbleweed caught by the wind.
I wanted my daddy. I wanted my mom. I didn't understand why things had to hurt so much. How could the world have turned out this way? I knew people could feel love. I didn't understand how the same people who loved their children could make a world like this.
Elara Angelo- District Twelve female
Three hours went by after Ferrari and Katrina died. I couldn't be exact about it but by the movement of the sun that was my guess. The sun was about to disappear and start the third night of the walk. There was only one person left with me. Ember was losing her mind. I was losing mine too but she seemed to be going faster. I wondered sometimes who she was talking to.
It seemed to me there had been a time when I hadn't been walking. I could remember my body not hurting. I remembered being able to walk without my feet hitting the ground like it was a carpet of knives. It couldn't have been real. It must be my imagination trying to conjure up some fantasy world where I was happy. Life had never been kind to me and it would be stupid to ever believe it could.
The end was in sight. In a few hours the walk would be over. I couldn't imagine we would last until daylight. My heart was already sinking with the sun. Humans aren't made for the night. They say sick people and old people almost always go at night. The sun just gives us some little bit of light and strength and when you get to a certain point losing that bit is all it takes.
Ember Steiner- District Two female
My face was wet. There didn't seem to be any rain. I was shaking. There didn't seem to be any cold. I thought for a while I was losing my sight until I realized it was just nighttime. Sometimes I looked at Elara. She was still going just like I was. She looked horrible and slowly it came to me that I must look the same way. I must have the same ghostly gray pallor and zombielike broken walk. We looked like something out of the forced marches I'd read about in history books. We shambled like corpses who didn't realize they were already rotting.
When I first got tired I moved forward by looking at some tree far ahead of me. As I got more tired it shifted to nearer landmarks and then nearer still until I was looking at pebbles inches in front of my feet. For an entire day now I'd been living one inch at a time, each inch feeling like I was driving a nail into my eye. I counted each step after the other. Hundreds of steps, thousands of steps, numbers blurring into a hypnotic rhythm that blurred my thoughts away.
Elara Angelo- District Twelve female
I couldn't go much farther. With each step Ember looked like she couldn't go another step farther but I was also reaching my end. My damp pants clung to me with wetness I hadn't noticed as it happened. My shirt was stuck to my chest with ribbons of flood from the material that had scraped away my skin like sandpaper. It wasn't even a coarse shirt. It was just a long walk.
I wasn't sure the Gamemakers could save either of us. My lips were slick with sticky foam. Sometimes a breath made it bubble over and stream drool down my chin. Like a rabid dog. More like it than most onlookers would think. We had no dignity. We had no autonomy. We were ruled by abject pain and fear. We were more like animals than humans.
Ember Steiner- District Two female
The moon was shrinking. It had been full the night before and now it was fading away. Fading away to nothing. I was jealous of it. To have no weight, to have no body that could hurt, to be nothing. Not even to be dead. To be nothing.
Elara Angelo- District Twelve female
One more person. As long as it took. There were two people walking and one of them would take one step further than the other. I didn't have to walk forever. I had to walk farther than Ember. I could see her in the corner of my eye. To see her was to see the Reaper. She was coming for me but she couldn't catch me if I kept walking. Keep walking and outrun the Reaper.