Day 6: Muttations
Five days in the arena.
Seventeen dead tributes.
Six deaths separating me from my victory.
That's all I keep telling myself over the next few hours. I mutter the words to myself like a mad mantra as I scuff through the hallways, blood splattered and clutching the hand with the broken finger. My voice distracts me from the pain, at least enough that I don't break down crying. I have found a pack of matches in the backpack of the girl from District 3, and two of the sticks and a strip of cloth torn from her pant leg are now supporting my finger. Still, it hurts. I don't know about medical things, but I do know that when someone slowly breaks your bones with their shoe, it's not healthy. I wonder in how many places the joints are broken? Are muscles crushed, veins damaged beyond repair? How much do you actually need a little finger? After all, only six opponents remaining means that it will soon be over. That I'll soon have access to the best doctors in the country.
I feel like a ghost as I stagger through the golden hallways. I stumble from wall to wall, sometimes zigzagging, sometimes pulling myself powerlessly along one side. For the viewers in front of their TVs, it must look as if I've gone wacko, completely insane. Am I? No, then I couldn't think about it. For my image, I try to walk more upright. The Hunger Games are a television show. A game. I have to make an effort to play it, to fucking win. But eventually the pain becomes too much, the lingering pressure on my chest too strong, and I'm too hungry to keep going. I collapse, stay in the middle of the corridor, and I sleep, sleep through the anthem, sleep until probably the next morning.
It's not that a good night's sleep could solve all problems, but in my case, rest fixed a lot. In hindsight, it's a good thing I collapsed in the hallway – I was too knackered that way for thoughts to distract me from restful sleep. Well, at least coupled with the luck that none of the other tributes stabbed me that night. The pack of career tributes must have moved on a good bit.
When I awake, the pain from my broken finger runs straight through my body, but it no longer befuddles me. I merely contort my face, then grit my teeth and do my best to ignore the injury. After eating, I am almost well, so well in fact that after some twisting, turning, thinking, and walking around, I am able to figure out my location on the map of the arena. A sigh of relief escapes me. A few quick mental math exercises and jumping jacks later, I have convinced even the skeptic in me that I am mentally and physically fit enough to continue on my way. There is hardly anything else left for me to do.
I have left Sector B and have just crossed half of the middle arena area when I hear it.
"ALYS!"
A scream jolts through the silence. The voice echoes through the tinny hallways, amplified a thousand times. My name. That was my name. Or was it? I pause and glance at the map in my hands. All around me merely corridors are marked, nothing that would indicate a trap. If I have counted all the turns correctly, I am now back near my camp and thus the exit to the Cornucopia. A long way from where I suspect the career tributes to be.
"ALYS!"
This time I'm not mistaken. It really is my name being shouted across the arena. And it's unmistakably coming from above, from outside, from the desert around the Cornucopia. I run down the aisle until I stand before the rungs that lead up to the hatch and out. Then I pause. Who is calling? Is it perhaps a career tribute trap after all? No. The voice sounds too desperate. The one calling out must be Tic, because apart from him there are only girls left alive, or boys like Saylor who have long since passed their change of voice. None of them would convincingly imitate the cry of a thirteen-year-old. But what if they're the ones who are making him scream in the first place? Would Tic lure me into the clutches of the enemy? Probably not.
When the next scream sounds, I don't think twice. With quick fingers, I untie the knots of the shoes on my belt and slip into them. Thinking of the boy from District 3, whom I simply let die in his suffering, I swing myself onto the ladder. I cannot reconcile another failure to help, another denial of assistance with my conscience. This is different from murdering to win. I climb so fast that I hit my head against the hatch. Then the bright light of the desert sun blinds me and the heat hits my skin like pinpricks. Due to the fact that the artificial lights are permanently turned on underground, I hardly had an overview of the times. But here the sun is clearly at a morning angle.
The Cornucopia lies glowing before me, hot and empty. All the supplies have been looted from the crates by now, but I can still see some weapons lying on the ground as I step out and walk to the edge of the Cornucopia. Wind and sand have half buried them.
"ALYS!"
My weapon in hand, I squint my eyes and scan the surroundings. Everything looks the same as it did on the first day of the Hunger Games: Glistening bright and sandy.
No. A few dozen meters away from me, I recognize a person.
Small. Thick. Wild hair.
There's Tic.
I take a deep breath, then leap from the Cornucopia. The impact pulls at the soles of my feet, but I don't dare roll off. I just run toward Tic, struggling through the desert. No sooner have I run a few meters than I hear a howl, then I feel a draft. A wind comes up, the grains of sand rise from the ground, and the closer I get to Tic, the harder it becomes to even see him.
I curse. Still, I return his next call. He's only a few steps away from me when he yells, "MUTTATIONS!"
Fuck. No.
But no sooner does he mention them than I can see them for myself: Forearm-sized, protected by thick carapaces, their stingers raised. Scorpions. Instinctively, I take a step back to fully assess the situation.
At first glance I count ten of the creepy things, two are already lying motionless on the ground. My head is racing – what do I know about scorpions? Smaller forms of them are native to us in District 5 in the south-west of Panem. I wonder if their larger, Capitol-created counterparts also resemble them in their abilities. If so, they are poisonous, their claws sharp, and their carapace incredibly difficult to penetrate. And I can't imagine that the man-made muttations in front of me eat only small animals and insects.
Tic stands a few steps away from me. His skin has turned the color of his hair after several days in the desert, and it is beginning to peel in several places. I recognize large yellowish blisters and scaly areas. But most importantly, the boy from my district is not alone. Standing a little way down the dune is a second person I hadn't been able to see from the Cornucopia. She is younger than Tic and wears her curls tied into a large chignon at the top of her head. The girl from District 9. Since she doesn't attack Tic and gives me a relieved look – as far as I can tell through the sandstorm that has risen in the meantime – the two have probably had an alliance for some time. Both are holding spears in their hands.
But even the weapon doesn't help the girl when a muttation digs itself out of the sand directly beneath her and stabs its spike through her clothes and into her leg. She screams out and Tic leaps to the side. Awkwardly, they both stab the scorpion. As it lies dead in the sand, however, the girl also collapses. Her scream turns into a whimper. It's hard to tell through the burns on her skin, but in no time her blood is pumping the muttation's poison through her body and her veins take on a greenish hue. I catch on faster than my district partner. While Tic still stares at his ally in fright, I jump over and snatch her spear from the girl's now convulsive hand.
"You can't help her now!", I yell at him, while hacking with the spear at the next scorpion that comes too close. The blade bores between the armor plates and it's dead. Then another. And a third.
"Quinn?" whispers Tic to the girl from 9. I also take a quick look at her, who by now is kneeling in the sand, completely slumped over. Her face has turned green and she looks frozen. But there is still no cannon. She is alive. Still, she can't move. I ram my elbow between Tic's ribs, yanking him back into the fight.
"We'll check on her later. Help me!", I urge him. Together we finish off more muttations. More and more seem to crawl out of the sand and my vision is getting worse. "We have to go back!", I decide. "To the Cornucopia!"
I push Tic up the dune I came from, then turn to Quinn. If I want Tic to follow me, she'll have to come with us, too. And how much can a twelve-year-old weigh? Meanwhile, the girl from District 9 is lying face down in the sand. I grab her arm to pull her onto my back, but as her body moves, horror grips me. With one swift movement, I dodge another scorpion and flip Quinn onto her back.
It's gruesome. Some of the muttations have gotten too close to her and apparently consider her a food source. Some parts of her chest, moreover her cheek, have been completely decomposed by the animals' venom by now. When I pull Quinn aside, parts of her flesh remain as a pulpy mass, similar to the crushed leg of the girl from 3. Quinn's chest is bleeding profusely, and through the hole in her cheek I can see into the roof of her mouth, recognize her tongue, the molars, pressed tightly together. The girl's eyes are wide open and covered with sand.
She's not going to make it. I consider putting her out of her misery when the sand opens up at my feet, too, and a scorpion digs itself out of the ground. Therefore, I let go of Quinn's arm and follow Tic.
"Where's Quinn?" he calls out to me, but I shoo him on with arm movements. That's when the cannon sounds.
Instantly, Tic stops and I run past him. "COME!", I yell. I can't stop. The scorpions have grown to a large number by now, and now that I know how their poison works, I don't want to get too close to them. Quinn's spear in one hand, my knife in the other, I run straight for the Cornucopia. I only notice that Tic's panting has stopped behind me as I climb up the supply crates into the golden metal construction. Panicked, I turn around, and there I see Tic, who has stopped halfway to the Cornucopia. Around him, five scorpions scramble back and forth. And as I watch, one stings him in the foot. Then another.
I clutch the spear tightly and raise it above my head to throw it. Perhaps a sponsor's gift could still save Tic, if he is merely poisoned but not decomposed. But there are too many of them. The mass of huge beasts buries the boy beneath them as he sinks to his knees. Before I can hurl the weapon, I see flesh and blood trickle down Tic's body. Then the sound of the cannon makes me tremble.
For a moment, I stand perfectly still. Then my head automatically begins to count the remaining tributes, even before I can allow feelings of grief. Saylor, Cassia, Saffyr, Angel, me. Five. And that means one thing: the career tributes are now exclusively after me.
Out in the desert I can't stay, so I run into the Cornucopia, swing through the hatch. Still on the rungs, I want to take off my shoes again, when the spear falls out of my hand and clatters to the ground. Cursing, I jump down to the corridor and bend down for the weapon, when the imbalance causes my bag to slip off my shoulder. It falls down and with it falls a scorpion.
At the last moment I pull my arm back under its sting and kick my bag between me and the muttation. The hook-and-loop tears open and my last ration of food spreads across the floor, but the ice pack flask hits the animal. Together they crash into the wall. Completely distracted by me, the scorpion raises its stinger and rams it into the object. I pick myself up, am with him in a few steps and ram my knife between two armor plates and right through the animal. It cracks and for a second I'm afraid that the edge of my weapon is broken, then the resistance wears off and the muttation sinks lifelessly into itself.
Carefully, I pull the dagger from the beast and run over to the nearest faucet on the wall to wash the beast's poisonous blood from my weapon. The strange blue liquid disappears down the drain along with the hot water.
With my heart still pounding, I gather my things and stuff them back into the bag. As I do so, I take care to keep as quiet as possible again. The career tributes are currently roaming the corridors somewhere in search. They may even be hunting me down as we speak – they don't have much of a choice, after all.
I bend down to the ice pack in the corner and what I see makes me halt. The lost scorpion has left a finger-sized hole in the container and a thick silvery liquid is now dripping out of it. I hurriedly press the tip of my jacket onto it, but within a few seconds the fabric is soaked. The coolant runs down my clothes and through my fingers, and the drops fall to the floor, where they make a metallic sound on impact. It's broken and with it my chance of drinking water from one of the taps. Damn it.
Discouraged, I sink to the floor and bury my face in my hands. However, as I lay the knife I was still holding down on the ground beside me, a low hissing sound is heard. Immediately I raise my head. Did I imagine the sound? Have I fallen into a career tribute trap? I jump to my feet in alarm and scan the room. Nothing.
But as I grab the knife, I see small silver smoke curls rising from the blade, which immediately evaporate. And I understand: the still-hot metal of the knife has reacted with the coolant of the ice pack scattered on the floor. At the very same moment, I am gripped by a stronger will to win than ever before, because my plan to win these Games is in place.