My eyes open to a dark night, though dawn is not far off. The sun slowly begins to rise in the far east sky, a small dot of light that gradually enlarges to a coin, and finally to the size of a coaster. I only know about those because they were a staple at every Capitol meal. The sounds of night life begin to recede, to be replaced by the sound of morning birdsong. I open the window to feel the cool air fan my face and stare at the sun's reflection in the basin of water near my bed. It's the last time I'll be able to do any of this in safety. I empty my mind of all worries and emotions for a brief time, and feel Old Boone there, asleep and content in an uninhabited field.
My door creaks open, rousing me from my brief meditation. Marius is there, looking annoyed, holding out a simple grey shirt to me. "Put it on," he orders gruffly. I do so.
"So, Dallas," he says, as we walk toward the stairway to the roof. "what did you forget to do last night?"
I know very well what he meant but I say, "Uh, I don't know", glancing at him questioningly and trying to sound completely mystified. He stops walking as we alight on the last step. The roof door is closed. "Well, remember what I told you to do? I told you to wait till the interviews to press the button in your suit."
"Oh, that," I say, my face clearing. "Well, I was so caught up in talking to Caesar, it just slipped my mind. The crowd loved it though; your button was just superfluous."
"Another big load of money wasted," he says with a sigh. "ah well, maybe next year. I hope you die a gruesome death. And I'm still looking for a way to permanently cripple Cinna somehow. Anyway, bad luck in the arena."
I open up the roof door. An avox stands near a simple table and chair, beckoning toward the food on the table. I quickly eat the simple meal and wait a while before a hovercraft appears to take me to the arena. The ride is brief-less than an hour-and uneventful and I'm the only person inside the craft.
The landing is smooth and I climb down the ladder, which has lengthened considerably. I must be underground. A woman meets me at the bottom and pokes my left arm with a needle, causing me to grunt in pain. "Your tracker, Dallas," she says briefly, pointing at a small room. "All your supplies are in there. I'm surprised your stylist isn't here, but put on those clothes and wait."
The arena outfit is a simple yellow jacket, thin pants, a tight belt and hiking boots. A male attendant asks me if I want any more food or water. Having already eaten, I decline the food, but water is very important in the arena, so I want to make sure I start with a full tank. It's fresh and cool as it slides down my throat.
As I finish it off, I hear a loudspeaker announcement to prepare for launch. There's a circular plate on the ground to step on, and as I do, the ground around the plate rises to my arms, pinning them there. My limbs immobilized, I can only look around and think about the impending conflict. My throat begins to churn. Will my training be enough? Will I even survive the bloodbath long enough to use it? What if there are no spears? What if all the careers go for me? What if Cato targets me because of my insult last night? What if? What if ...
I feel an increase in pressure against my feet as my plate begins to rise up into the air, taking me with it. After ten or so seconds, it clicks back into place. It takes my eyes some time to adjust to the light. After the silence of the launch room, the sound of twittering birds and flowing water is unusually loud. I notice other tributes standing on their plates near me.
"Ladies and gentleman, let the 74th hunger games begin!"
The stentorian tones of Claudius Templesmith fill the air. His announcement signals the beginning of the 60-second countdown. I am free to move, except for the fact that the active land mines would obliterate me if I try before the 60 seconds have passed. These 60 seconds are valuable, because after that, all hell breaks loose. Mastering my racing thoughts, I force myself to partition the time. 15 seconds to analyze the arena layout, 15 seconds to analyze the placement of the other tributes, another 15 to decide my starting strategy, and whatever time is left to prepare to carry it out. 15 seconds might seem like a short time, but I know that if I resist the urge to say the words to myself as I'm thinking, my thoughts will move much faster.
Arena layout, I order myself. The tributes' plates are arranged in a circle with the cornucopia, a large metal horn, at the center. The cornucopia is teeming with camping gear, weapons, food, medicines and other necessaries to survive in the arena. More valuable items are nearer the horn, less valuable items closer to the plates. Behind me is a large lake, the source of the flowing water. To my right I can see a downward slope leading to a field with shoulder-high grasses. On the left is a large area full of low grass, trees and pine needles.
The tribute plates seem to be equidistant from each other. I notice the girl from 7 on my right and Pita on my left. His eyes are scanning the terrain, probably deciding where he will go when the gong sounds. I can see Katniss's gray jacket about a half dozen tributes to the left, her legs preparing to run forward into the fray. Stara and Jill are next to each other on my extreme right. I catch Stara's eye and she nods. Cato is about across from me, glaring alternately at Katniss and me with eyes full of vengeance. The other careers are scattered randomly around the horn; I notice the district 4 girl next to Thresh and Stara about 4 tributes to my right.
So what to do? I keep telling myself that I have to get my hands on a spear if I am going to have any chance of winning. If I can just get the spear and run away... but no, they'd come after me. But only after they've organized their loot. I decide to try it. I have no chance otherwise, no experience with surviving in the wild. I tense my legs to run but continue to watch the other tributes.
My mental countdown reaches 11 seconds. Pita looks at Katniss and gives her the slightest shake of his head. He, like i, realizes that she is about to head for the cornucopia, and is trying to persuade her not to. But why? She looks at him, a question in her eyes, and Pita begins to lift his index finger to point at something. He turns toward the forested area, but before he can finish I hear a deafening sound of a gong. The land mines have been deactivated. The games have begun for real.
My limbs explode into action. I run forward, my limp barely hampering me now. Weird that I think of it now when I am in no position to do anything about it. I see a big spear in a pile of weapons that, judging by it's position, is of medium quality, and veer off in its direction. Thresh collides with me, running full pelt toward a tent pack in the very heart of the cornucopia. Pita rushes toward Glimmer, who is just a few tributes farther along the circle, and when he reaches her they run toward the supplies themselves. Stara and Rue move speedily in the opposite direction, toward the trees, largely unnoticed for now.
I am at the pile of weapons with the spear. I reach down to grab it. I see a girl whirling a newly-found sword in my direction and dive out of the way of the clumsy slash. The girl takes a moment to adjust the sword grip in her hand, giving me enough time to rush back and grab the spear. I wield it perfectly as a result of my training, knowing that she has no chance. I turn toward the girl. She raises her sword to try and ward me off. Shouting an incoherent group of furious sounds, I plunge the spear deep into her abdomen. She screams in pain and shock and I rip the spear free, causing even more damage. I leave her on the ground to die or be finished off by someone else.
I allow myself to survey my kill for a few brief seconds with satisfaction, but I realize my mistake too late. I'm hit! The point of a serrated throwing knife is slowly drawing blood out of my left arm, and the wound stings horribly, making it slightly harder to focus. I pull it out with a decisive tug, gasping at the brief flash of pain it caused. I can see the district 2 girl making her way to Cato,who is currently ransacking the cornucopia with the other career tributes, armed with around a dozen knives. She's pulling out another one to throw and launches it with a merciless gleam of triumph in her eyes. Luckily though, it's not at me, but at another boy who's just managed to get to the middle ring and get his hands on a spiked mace. He's wearing the dark orange of district 6, but that quickly begins to change to red as the blade impacts in his chest.
Cato finally rushes back to the main fighting, alongside his district partner. He's wielding a formidable looking longsword; the Capitol even took time to engrave a leopard on the hilt. Basically, the sword had been made for Cato. A big burly girl from district 9 is running toward the grass field bearing a big backpack that bulges oddly, obviously full of cornucopia supplies. "No," I hear him shout. "She can't get away with that. Kill her clove!"
"Too far," I hear her call. Cato, even though he's stocky, is quick. He Sprints forward toward the girl and catches her before she's moved a dozen more paces, wrenching the backpack from her shoulders and getting her into a choke hold. She punches ineffectually at him as he pulls out his longsword and slices off each of her limbs in turn. The ground around them stains with red. Unable to take my eyes from the grizzly scene, I still manage to notice the district 4 girl and boy heading towards the cornucopia in my peripheral vision. The little runt's whooping as he gleefully grabs up a spear and hands a second to his district partner, who, without any preamble whatsoever, plunges it into his chest. Glimmer joins her a few seconds later, an unstrung bow on her shoulder. She nods approval at the district 4 girl, says something and laughs.
I notice Jill, who doesn't seem to have moved from her plate. She's just standing there, her eyes unsure of what to do. Even though I know it will make me a target, I yell, "Jill! Get moving now! The trees! Anything!"
Then I sprint off toward the field of grasses, where Thresh has disappeared. I can do nothing more. I chance a look back and see the careers and a few stragglers still battling it out near the horn, but predictably the careers are sweeping the field. Pita is with them, and I do catch a glimpse of him slitting the throat of a boy with his knife before I turn away. But now I have to run as I have never run before to put some distance between me and the danger.
About 20 minutes later, the opening cannons begin to sound. During the opening bloodbath, the tribute death cannons are delayed until it's over due to all the confusion, and because the sound of multiple cannons going off at once would be deafening. I count eleven booms. Almost half the field dead already. At least one or two districts must have lost both their tributes in that bloodbath; probably their escorts and mentors left the betting rooms when they realized there was no point in staying. Back home, 11 families would be reacting to the deaths of their children. Lives needlessly thrown away to settle a 74-year-old blood feud, Stara's words echo in my mind.
I mentally slap myself and focus back on the arena, on trying to stay alive. The grass is up to my shoulders now, forcing me to slow my pace to a power walk. Right now I am simply trying to distance myself from the cornucopia, though I am also on the lookout for water and a safe place to sleep. I catch up with Thresh about an hour later. He's wielding a large rock about the size of a loaf of bread, but that's not much use against the grass. Together we continue our futile search. The hours stretch on, marked only by the sun as it travels across the sky.
A tree! I point at the unmistakable shape looming up from within the seemingly eternal field of grass on the horizon. The field has been cleared in a 30-foot circle around the tree, providing ample room to set up camp. If we had any camping gear, that is. Of course we will have to sleep out in the open, but the grass will probably do a lot to throw off hunters. And we could probably use it to make primitive coverings for ourselves. The game makers control the weather in the arena and seem to enjoy making it overly cold, to encourage tributes to make fires. Where there's fire, there's conflict.
The sun sets, and the Capitol seal appears above me, followed by the dead tributes' faces, a final salute to their brief stretch of valor. The girl from 3, which I left to die. The boy from 4, betrayed by his own district partner. The boy from 5, both from 6 and 7, the boy from 8. The girl from 9, savaged by Cato. And finally, Jill. In a way, I'm glad she's gone. Even though she was little more than dead weight on the trip, I wanted to care about her but could not. She was too timid to make it far in the arena, so at least she made it quick. The anthem booms out grandly from hidden loudspeakers. Nightlife takes over once more as the moon begins to rise, washing everything in pale light. Thresh and I take some fallen grasses near the edge of the cleared section and shape them into rough pillows for our heads. The last thing I think before drifting off is that I'm glad I don't snore.