Chapter Nine
As the sun set on the second day in the arena, the anthem began to play and the Capitol seal appeared in the sky, followed by the face of Digit from District 3; he had to be the tribute who'd died late last night since there had been no other cannons in the last twenty-four hours, apart from . . . Digit faded from the sky to be replaced by Linus, his projected face, devoid of acid burns, a stark contrast with how he had looked after his encounter with the bird mutt. The image of the District 8 boy lying on the ground, his skin reddened and blistered, had imprinted itself on Dyson's mind. He'd had to kill Linus to spare him from the agonising death he would surely have suffered otherwise; it was the only merciful thing to do.
All the same, he couldn't shake one particularly uncomfortable thought, the thought that the arena was already turning him into a killer. First Pleat, now Linus - both the tributes from District 8 were dead because of him. Two nights ago, they had been chatting with Caesar on live television, trying to sell themselves to potential sponsors. Now they were in simple wooden boxes, being shipped home to their grieving families. And it was all because of him . . . No, that wasn't quite true. He hadn't set the bird mutt on Linus; that was the Gamemakers' doing. All he'd done was put Linus out of his misery. But there had been no mutts involved in Pleat's death, just himself and the machete at his side, the machete he'd used to eliminate two tributes. Granted Pleat had been trying to kill him, but even so . . .
"Dyson, what's wrong?" Astra ventured as Linus's face disappeared and the seal reappeared to mark the end of the death recap. "You look like something's bothering you."
"It's nothing." Dyson shook his head to try and clear the images of Pleat and Linus from his mind. "I was just wondering how long that District 8 boy was lying there before we found him." A lie, albeit with an element of truth, told because he didn't feel ready to share his fears about what the Games were doing to him, his fears that he would have to live with the fact that he had killed two other kids for the rest of his life. Which might not be very long, trapped as he was in a sadistic game which only one player could survive.
"At least he's not in pain any more . . ." Astra paused, then, sensing that Linus was the last thing Dyson wanted to talk about right now, quickly asked: "What do you want to do tomorrow?"
"I don't know. Survive?" Dyson smiled in spite of himself, relieved that she had steered their conversation away from the subject of the District 8 tributes and his role in their deaths. "In that case, we'd better see if we can find anything edible here." He gestured round at the vast expanse of moorland, punctuated by stands of trees like the one where he and Astra had made camp, that made up the arena. "We can't live on crackers and beef jerky." Aside from anything else, the supplies they had obtained at the Cornucopia wouldn't last forever and, when they were gone, the two tributes would find out just why the Hunger Games were called the Hunger Games.
"Do you think we'll be able to remember what we learned in the Capitol?"
"I hope so because we'll starve to death if we can't. And I've got that twine in my pack that we could use to make snares." Dyson recalled spending time at the trapping station back at the Training Centre, watching as Achilles showed him how a simple noose could catch a tribute their supper. Tomorrow, he would try to put what he'd learned into practice. Of course, wire would have been preferable for setting snares, but his twine should do the job. All he had to do was remember what Achilles had taught him.
Meanwhile, the Careers had also been watching the death recap, sitting in a circle around their campfire. It had been slim pickings for the pack so far this year; the only other tribute they'd encountered since the bloodbath had been the boy from District 3, Digit, not that his name made any difference to them, but he'd been an easy kill. All they'd had to do was surround him, then Salacia had thrown her trident and that was the end of him. Some of their number, specifically Bellona and Lupus, would have preferred to have drawn it out a little longer, to make the kid suffer before they finished him off, thereby giving the Capitol the show they had come to expect. And then there was Linus.
"Who do you think killed him?" Dazzle asked as the face of District 8's male tribute hovered over the arena. She recalled hearing the cannon go off that morning, but there had been no way of knowing whose death it signalled until Linus appeared in the sky. From what she'd seen of him during training, he was the kind of tribute who wouldn't last long in the arena. And he hadn't; he may have survived the bloodbath, unlike his district partner, but he'd died less than twenty-four hours later. The only question was, how?
"Well, it certainly wasn't any of us," Bellona replied, the expression on her face suggesting that she would have liked to give Linus a taste of her halberd, to impale him with the spear or maybe decapitate him with the axe head, except someone (or something) had already done the job for her and she could hardly kill him twice. Still, there were other tributes out there; it was just a matter of hunting them down and eliminating them one by one. Like most District 2 tributes, she was determined to kill as many of her fellow tributes as possible, including the five currently sitting around the campfire with her. They might be her allies right now, but she was well aware that they wouldn't stay her allies, that they would eventually turn on each other. These were the Hunger Games and the cardinal rule of the Hunger Games was that only one tribute could survive. And, if winning meant killing your ally, or even your district partner, that was what you had to do. But not just yet; right now, Dazzle, Garnet, Lupus, Salacia and Fathom were far more useful alive.
"Whoever it was," said Garnet, "we'll get them." He looked down at the sword at his side. "And then we'll teach them not to steal our glory," he added, imagining himself thrusting the blade into whichever tribute was responsible for Linus's face being in the sky. The thought that anyone other than himself and his five allies was actively taking part in the Games was more than he could stand. He'd volunteered for the glory of potentially bringing the crown back to District 1; the last thing he wanted was for some nobody from one of the outlying districts to emerge as victor instead. And the only way to make sure a non-Career wouldn't win was to kill them all. "So who's left, apart from the six of us?"
"Girl from 3," replied Salacia, counting on her fingers. "Both from 5, girl from 6, boy from 7, both from 9 and 10. That makes nine."
"But not for long," Lupus added, a meaningful look on his face as he threw another stick on the fire and listened to it crackling and snapping in the heat. Tomorrow, the pack was going hunting and the other tributes would be their prey.
Tallulah peered out of the cave that had been her shelter for the past two days. The sun was rising to the east, marking the beginning of another day in the arena, another day hiding from the other kids who had been forced into this deadly game. Her mentor, a middle-aged man named Holstein, had instructed her to keep away from her fellow tributes and wait for them to wipe each other out; it was her only chance of getting out of the arena alive. "If you were older, it might be different," Holstein had said. "But you'll be one of the youngest in the arena and that puts you at a disadvantage. So, when the gong goes tomorrow, get clear of the Cornucopia - don't stop for anything. Find somewhere to hide and wait out the Games; I'll see to it that you're kept supplied with food and water, so you needn't worry on that count."
Following Holstein's instructions, Tallulah had ignored the bounty in the Cornucopia and fled the scene the moment the gong sounded. As she ran, she vaguely noticed that some of her fellow tributes had also chosen to make good their escape rather than risk getting caught up in the bloodbath, but she paid them no heed except to make sure not to run in the same direction as them. None of them could be trusted, not even her district partner, Randall; they were all potential killers. It was much safer to do as Holstein had said, find a hiding place and wait for him to send her supplies bought with money received from whatever sponsors he had lined up. Even with her age against her, he was sure there would be someone in the Capitol who was willing to back her.
It had been late afternoon when she'd come across an opening in the rocks which, on closer inspection, proved to contain a small cave, just large enough to offer her shelter. Perfect. All she had to do was get inside and the other tributes, most of them anyway, would never be able to get at her. From there, it was just a question of holding out longer than everyone else. If she did, she would be the youngest ever victor, not to mention that she would also be only the second District 10 girl to win the Hunger Games after Tammy, the victor of the Fifth Games, who had retired as a mentor when Tallulah was a toddler. Since then, she had spent her time sitting on the verandah of her house in District 10's Victors' Village, watching the world go by, her thoughts filled with memories of the tributes who had represented 10 in the years since her own Games. More than a hundred of them and, so far, only two had come back alive.
Tallulah wondered if she too would one day sit on her verandah in Victors' Village. Perhaps, but it depended on Holstein being able to keep her well supplied and she knew the price of items always went up the longer the Games went on, so the same amount of money which bought a full meal on the first day might stretch to a few crackers on the fourteenth. Not to mention that her strategy depended on her being able to avoid the others and the Gamemakers wouldn't allow her to do that indefinitely. Tallulah had seen it before. If things got too quiet in the arena, meaning the tributes weren't eliminating each other fast enough, the Gamemakers would trigger a "natural" disaster, unleash swarms of mutts . . . anything to drive the tributes together and facilitate conflict. Still, they showed no sign of doing anything like that, not yet anyway. And she had food - Holstein had sent her a pot of chicken casserole last night and the night before she had received a loaf of bread baked in the District 10 style, crescent-shaped and tapering to a point like a cow's horn - so she didn't have to worry about starving to death. As for water, there was a stream nearby. Trouble was, getting a drink meant leaving the sanctuary of her cave and that meant she risked being spotted by another tribute.
"Suppose I've got no choice," she thought out loud. "I'll just nip out and get a drink, then get back in here." After carefully checking that no-one was nearby, she crawled out of her cave and ran the short distance to the stream. Since she had no water container - maybe her casserole pot could serve that purpose once it was empty of casserole - she knelt down and formed her hands into a cup. Just as she was about to scoop up some of the water and bring it to her lips, she heard a movement behind her.
Startled, Tallulah turned to find herself facing the tributes from District 1. Dazzle and Garnet, not that she cared what they were called. What she did care about was the fact that both of them were carrying swords - and the expression on both their faces told her they meant to use them. Neither spoke, but had they done so they would probably have said something along the lines of: "Well now, what do we have here?"
Tallulah bolted, scrambling to her feet and running away as fast as her legs could carry her. Alone and unarmed, faced with two tributes who were bigger and stronger than her, she had no other choice; she wouldn't stand a chance against one of the District 1 tributes, never mind both. Not to mention that the rest of the Career pack was probably nearby, ready to trap her like the stockmen back home trapped cattle, sheep and pigs that were destined for the slaughter. So she ran, not thinking about where she was going, oblivious to everything except Dazzle and Garnet. She could hear their footsteps pounding behind her and knew they had given chase. And they would not give up until they had succeeded in killing her, unless she could evade them somehow. So she ran, not daring to stop for anything, hoping against hope that . . .
Suddenly, the ground disappeared from beneath her feet and she found herself falling through the air, tumbling towards oblivion. In the seconds before she made what she knew would be a fatal impact, she closed her eyes and called forth the images of her parents and Walter; even if they were not physically present, she wanted to see them before she died.
Dyson was just concealing the last of the three snares he'd made using the twine from his pack when the cannon fired. Another dead tribute. That made ten now: the seven who'd fallen in the bloodbath, plus Digit, Linus and whoever it was that had just been killed. He knew it was not Astra since he could see her nearby, plucking berries from a bush and putting them into her mess tin. The two tributes had come across a stand of berry bushes and, recognising the berries as a variety they had learned was safe, decided to gather some. Or at least Astra had since her mess tin could be used as a container; Dyson had decided to use the time to try his hand at snare-making. Remembering his lessons with Achilles, he had used a pair of scissors from the first aid kit in his pack to cut lengths of twine which he then formed into nooses and concealed in the bushes. With a bit of luck, something, a rabbit maybe, would be caught in one of the snares and provide himself and Astra with a good supper. Or as good a supper as one could obtain when foraging in the wilderness.
"Ready to move on?" he asked Astra, keeping his voice low to avoid being heard by any other tributes. For all he knew, whoever had killed the tribute whose cannon had just sounded might be nearby, looking for more victims. The arena was, as far as he had been able to establish, fairly large and the tributes must be scattered all over it, but there was no sense in taking chances, not if you wanted to stay alive.
"Sure - my tin's nearly full." Astra began to make her way over to her district partner. She was only a few yards from him when she felt the ground shift beneath her foot; seconds later, a cloud of insects appeared as if from nowhere and swarmed around her. "Dyson!" she screamed as the insects began to bite her. She swatted at her attackers with her arms, dropping the berries she had gathered in the process, but she gave no thought to this. All she could think about was the relentless swarm which surrounded her. "Dyson!"
Dyson didn't hesitate. He could not tell what type of insects they were - some kind of mosquito, perhaps - but he knew their sudden appearance was unlikely to be an accident, that they must have been placed in the arena as a Gamemakers' trap. And that meant they must be mutts, genetically engineered as living weapons, and goodness knew what deadly abilities had been bred into them. Ordinary mosquitoes were bad enough, but mosquito mutts . . . He could not let Astra suffer whatever fate the swarm had been programmed to inflict on their victims. He sprinted the short distance which separated him from his partner and pulled her away from the insects. "Come on!" he shouted, seconds before a stabbing pain on the back of his hand told him he had been bitten.
Forcing himself to ignore the pain, he urged Astra to start running, hoping desperately that the two of them would somehow be able to evade the mosquitoes. Which could be easier said than done; there were mutts that had a kind of built-in guidance system and would pursue their victims relentlessly, only stopping once they had achieved a kill.
"Keep . . . going!"
Neither Astra nor Dyson had any way of knowing how long they had been running; all they knew was that the swarm of mosquito mutts was still right behind them, relentless in their pursuit. Both tributes had received several painful bites, forcing them to stop and swat the mosquitoes off; the swarm would then regroup and continue chasing after the two humans who had triggered the trap which had concealed them. And it didn't seem like they were going to give up the chase any time soon; no matter which direction Astra and Dyson ran, they couldn't shake the swarm. They were about ready to drop from exhaustion, but they dared not stop running, knowing that, if they did, they would be dead in moments. And, even if they did manage to escape, they had both been bitten multiple times and there was no telling what deadly substance the mosquitoes had injected into them.
Presently, Dyson spotted something up ahead. A cave. If he and Astra could get inside, they might finally be safe from the swarm, assuming the insects didn't follow them and there was no telling with mutts. Not to mention that, for all he knew, the cave might be home to some other kind of mutt, or contain a concealed trap set by the Gamemakers. It might even have been claimed by one or more of the other tributes and he had no way of knowing who among them could be trusted not to kill himself and Astra on sight. The Careers were a definite threat, but the rest were unknown quantities. Even little Tallulah; she might seem harmless, but it never paid to judge by appearances when it came to your fellow tributes.
On the other hand, the threat from the mosquitoes was very real - and very painful. Dyson had lost count of the number of times he'd been bitten, but he knew he couldn't take much more and neither could Astra. Their only chance was to get under cover and the cave was the only shelter around as far as he could see. They had to try and reach it before the swarm overwhelmed them.
With a final, desperate effort, he urged Astra forward and the two of them found the reserves they needed to cover the distance between themselves and the cave. As they stumbled through the opening, the floor of the cave suddenly lurched, causing him to lose his balance. He was vaguely aware of Astra kneeling beside him, asking if he was all right; he tried to reply, but for some reason the words wouldn't come. The bites from the mosquitoes must have done something to him, and to Astra too, which since the insects were mutts could be bad news for both of them.
The last thing Dyson saw before his dizziness overwhelmed him was a glimpse through the cave's entrance of the swarm flying away, called off the attack by the Gamemakers.
Near sunset, the Careers, who had divided into pairs in order to try and cover more ground, met up at their campsite. The scowls on the faces of the tributes from Districts 2 and 4 mirrored each other, telling their own story. Neither Bellona and Lupus nor Salacia and Fathom had seen any of the other tributes all day, which meant they hadn't been able to make any kills. "Then whose cannon did we hear this morning?" Bellona wondered out loud, recalling how she and Lupus had been searching for potential victims when they heard the sound which signalled the death of another tribute. That had ended up being the only time the cannons sounded all day.
"Girl from 10," replied Garnet. "We . . ." He nodded in Dazzle's direction. ". . . were chasing her when she ran right off the edge of a cliff. Smashed herself on the rocks." He sighed, recalling how he had been prepared to run Tallulah through with his sword. Even though he had a sister named Tiffany who was Tallulah's age, he did not see the District 10 girl in the same light; rather, she was a piece in the Capitol's sadistic Games that had to be eliminated. "Oh, well," he added. "I suppose we'll still get credited for taking her out." After all, he reasoned, he and Dazzle had been in pursuit of Tallulah when she fell, which should count for something where the Gamemakers were concerned.
The anthem began to play and the seal appeared in the sky, followed by Tallulah's picture, then the seal again, before darkness fell over the arena. The third day of the Sixty-eighth Hunger Games had come to an end.
