The smartest thing to do was to not carry all my food and weigh myself down. There weren't many landmarks along the river but there was a tree that acted as a bridge and that was distinctive enough to remember. I concealed half of my biscuits and all the meat in a hollow up another tree. They would last. My rolls and apples wouldn't. Bread and fruit, not the worst meal to live off… We didn't get much fruit in District 9. Bread though… far too much bread. When your District was all about grain, you started to choke on bread.
I picked my way downstream, looking for somewhere better to sleep at night. Perhaps I was crazy to think I might find a cave. It was better to look than not to.
There were ten of us left, the four Careers were likely still together and looking for the six of us, if they knew there were only six left. The Capitol never kept score. You had to do that yourself. You had to remember who was dead and who was left.
No one died on Day 3 and I found nowhere to sleep. It rained and my nook wasn't dry and my sleeping bag wasn't waterproof. I wondered how the others were doing on shelter. Only the Careers were assured a roof if they were still occupying the Cornucopia. I really hoped my fire had worked. Perhaps they were sleeping in the ashes.
Day 4… I spent the morning attempting to dry out my sleeping bag. I considered making a fire but I would probably set the whole forest on fire or just give away my position. There weren't just Careers to worry about. There were five others who were just as much of a threat. I wondered where June was.
I didn't have a plan now. Stay alive… I had a spear even though I didn't really know how to use it beyond sticking the pointy end in my enemy. What more did you need to know about a spear really? Not knowing where anyone was made any plan pointless. I knew nothing about the arena, besides the location of the Cornucopia and this river.
I carried on along the water. I couldn't get lost following the river and as it had been hammered into us during training that finding a water source was imperative, the other tributes were likely to be along this route. Perhaps unlike me they had found shelter, a place to base themselves while hunting or foraging. At this point though, only the Career female from District 4 was likely to have any knowledge of foraging if she could fish from the river. The rest were all production tributes, except for me, only I worked in the mills all my life so I could barely recognise wild grains. By burning the stockpile at the Cornucopia, I had made things difficult for everybody, not just the Careers.
I watched a pair of ducks swimming against the current, looking perfectly content. I was sure that another tribute would have known how to catch, pluck and roast them in short order. I wasn't about to throw myself in the river with my spear though. The ducks were swimming against the current with contemptuous ease but I didn't lose sight of how fast it was flowing. I could swim, everyone from District 9 could swim with a giant lake right on our doorstep but that didn't mean we took to the water the way District 4 did. Besides, their ocean was probably a lot warmer than our lake. We only went into it during the summer.
The arena was quiet though the size of it meant that all hell could be breaking loose on the other side and I would have no idea. The Gamemakers had ways of forcing us together if we became too spread out and comfortable in our positions. One year the tributes had all scattered and been left alone for a whole week, scavenging and living peacefully for seven days without a single kill.
On the seventh night the fires had started. The viewers had been treated to an overhead shot of the entire perimeter of the arena on fire and the flames drawing in toward the centre, driving the tributes and everything else toward the imagined safety of the middle. When the fires had gone out, two thirds of the arena had been reduced to charred ashes, two tributes had been consumed and the remaining nine had been thrust together. The Games had ended three days later, a District 2 female with four kills on her sword and wounds so terrible her Victor's interview had been a subdued affair. Even the Capitol hadn't been able to repair the burns to half of her face. Even the great Flickerman had been hard-pressed to make it positive.
Idly I considered that I was in an arena that seemed to be mostly woodland. It was a favourite of the Gamemakers as woodland provided adequate sustenance for the tributes as well as shelter and cover. Open arenas led to swift Games. One year half the tributes had frozen to death in an arena without wood and very cold nights which had gotten the head Gamemaker that year… we weren't entirely sure what had happened to him, only that he had been 'punished'. Knowing the Capitol, he would have been grateful to face a firing squad.
I remembered one cold arena though, covered in snow. There had been plenty of shelter though and matches had been plentiful in the Cornucopia supplies, letting tributes make fires in their caves with wood from the snow topped trees. That year had been lauded as the perils of the snow had made for an interesting spectacle; the Games had concluded with a District 7 tribute losing his axe and spearing a District 4 through the eye with an icicle. No one could say it had been anticlimactic.
The thud of the cannon boomed through the arena. One more tribute down.
I walked for as long as I could until the air in front of me seemed to shimmer. No one really knew much about the arenas. There was a school of thought that said there was a vast dome somewhere and the Gamemakers spent a year altering its interior for the next Games. I thought this was unlikely. The other theory was that they used they used District 5 to power a massive forcefield to create an artificial dome. Judging by the shimmering in front of me; that was what was here. Sometimes the forcefield threw anyone who encountered it harmlessly back while other times it struck them with enough power to blow off limbs. I wasn't going to test it. I was going back.
I watched the sky that night and felt a considerable emptiness wash through me as I watched June appear up there. We had barely spoken but she was still from home. At least now I didn't have to worry about meeting her. Tributes who killed those from home were not well received outside of the Career districts.
Day 5. It was a windy start to the day, the trees swaying in the breeze that sent the leaves whirling through the air. Five days… If my fire had been especially effective, the Careers would be growing hungry now. Two things broke up the Career alliances, hunger and tension. Six Careers went into the games and usually survived the bloodbath. The six of them faced against the half dozen surviving tributes and usually their alliance dissolved when the remaining real threats from the other tributes died. The Careers ate together in the training centre, they joked and laughed and were a nasty little gang toward the others. All the while they all knew that their alliance would end suddenly and brutally. It was almost a yearly event to watch the Careers turn on each suddenly and for a second bloodbath to ensue. As few as one might survive the carnage.
With nine tributes left in the arena and four of them Careers, that carnage wouldn't be far off.
I considered my enemies. Four careers, little F3, M5 who had made no impression on me whatsoever, M6 being from the transport district was much like me with no experience of weapons or dangerous tools unless he happened to be able to swing a wrench pretty well and F8 was from the textiles region and I wasn't sure how dangerous a dressmaker could really be. We were all meat for the Careers.
Meat… My Hunger Games were going okay so far. I was armed, I wasn't hungry and I had killed a Career. But I hadn't seen anyone else since. That was good. It was better to outlast than outfight if you weren't a Career. Flickerman had asked me if I had a strategy, if there was anything I could do to even the odds. I had snidely told him that unless the Gamemakers provided me a sack of flour and the other tributes were willing to stand still while I hit them over the head with it, I didn't have a strategy. I had thought I was being rude and contemptuous but the audience had loved it and Flickerman had declared that it was a fine thing to see a tribute so proud of his District's industry. It had been impossible not to smile along with him. I often wondered about Flickerman. The man had the strangest job in Panem, to interview twenty four children knowing that he would only interview one of them again and to do so in a way that made his audience laugh, that made his guests feeling happy to be there and to do it every year. How many dead children had Flickerman interviewed?
Did he ever lie awake at night remembering all the smiles his jokes had made?
He wasn't an evil man, except when he gushed in commentaries of previous Games over death blows. His interviews though were about turning nobodies into people the Capitol could know and root for. He had certainly done that with me. I had gone in sullen and uncooperative. I had left as the proud miller from District 9, resolute despite my shortcomings. In many ways, Flickerman was as much a friend to you as your escort, prep team and mentor.
With a pack full of food, I didn't have much to do. Other tributes would be expending all their energy on scavenging for food while I had nothing to do.
