Day 12.
Who was the enemy? In here, everybody. You knew the only way out of the arena was if everybody else was dead and no matter what you thought, you weren't going to keep your hands clean if it meant going home.
But outside the arena, who was the enemy then?
The Peacekeepers obviously made sure no one carried any weapons into the Reaping and from that moment, you were entirely in the Capitol's power. What could you do? You were carefully monitored every second from the moment you were Reaped so you couldn't take your own life and escape the Games that way. What would killing yourself achieve anyway? The Capitol would just say that you were a coward, forfeiting the honour of your District. If you wanted to live, if you wanted to come back from the Games, you had to play them. The Victors who had won without killing anybody, they had survived by hiding until everyone else was dead; either by each others' hands or the Gamemakers. You didn't score a moral victory by hiding and letting others do the killing; you were just branded a strategist, who aware of your weakness had left the other tributes to take care of one another for you.
You had power over nothing.
Twelve Districts. Twelve of us and nine of them were taken and the other three volunteered. The Careers, they made the Games what they were. There would be no Cornucopia Bloodbath without six of the twenty four going in trained and eager to kill. If all of us, children, went in with nothing; who among them could strike the first blow? I had killed Sulla because I knew he would kill me in a heartbeat but my first kill could have been the girl from District 11 if I hadn't been struck by the enormity of what I was supposed to do to her.
A Career almost always won because they had the winning mentality. The rest of us, if one of them won it was because they snapped, because the desire to go home made them every bit as brutal as the Careers they had feared in Training. Like me.
What would it have been like if there were no Careers? If twenty four unwilling and terrified tributes were pushed into this arena? Perhaps we would sit and wait for the Gamemakers to slaughter us; with traps, with mutts, with the weather… Then it wouldn't be a spectacle; it would only be Panem watching twenty four children killed by adults from the safety of a command centre.
Maybe if I won, I would talk to the other Victors and see if we could get all the non-Careers to band together and take down the Careers at the Corncopia and then simply refuse to fight. There was a dream. What an act of rebellion that would be. A simple calm pacifism. That would take the fun right out of the Games. Even the Capitol citizens couldn't enjoy it then if they were watching machines slaughter kids.
Six brutes though, down to three now. Probably still together. Probably hunting the three of us, each thinking about how they would kill the others the moment the time came. I had killed Sulla with inspiration from a previous Game but they had come here with mentality that let them torture a girl before leaving her to die of her injuries; except one had a bit of a conscience. Maybe… Perhaps she just wanted the kill credited to her.
What was I doing? Prowling up and down the river, looking out for the Careers, thinking about my desire to kill them for what they had done when if I met them they would gleefully tear me apart. If I met Kayla again, I couldn't kill her. M6… Maybe if he attacked me I could kill him in the heat of the moment.
The Careers. Always the Careers. Why hadn't paid attention in training? Maybe at one of those stations I might have learned how to set traps that might have killed or crippled them. Instead I was walking and carrying a spear with only the knowledge that you put the pointy end in your enemy. I had been carrying the damn thing for days but I hadn't used it.
We were twelve days in and there were six of us left in the arena. There was no reason for me to meet anyone. Perhaps Kayla was still stalking me, maybe she had moved on and was trailing the Careers.
Just me and my damn mind, raging against the Capitol who had brought me here, the Careers who wanted to be here and the resignation I had brought with me. I should have been dead by now. Other people with things to live for and motivated to go home, they should have been here. June should have been here. Instead I was; the most undeserving son of a bitch and non-Career to make it this far.
I kept walking until I met the forcefield again. Was there even anything beyond it? Stupid question to ask.
I carved some more pine and gnawed at it. I barely even noticed my stomach anymore. To think I had been hiding and rationing my food with some strategic thought. What was the point? I was here to kill the Careers or die trying.
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"You know I never knew my mother. I don't even have a memory of her. She never existed. And my dad… working father… left me with the neighbour until I was old enough to be on my own… seven. She never liked me. Took me years to figure out why. She couldn't have children and looking after me for my dad, that just made her bitter. At least she never had to worry about having a child come here." The camera whirred as it focused in and out on me. Maybe they were broadcasting what I was saying, maybe not. If they were I would be edited. "Then I never really knew my dad either. I wish I'd had brothers or sisters, June made it sound great. Do you know what happened to June? I don't. I don't think little Kayla would lie to me, so maybe you're all real excited about me and the Careers having a showdown. That'd be fun, wouldn't it? Great fun. The stuff of Games legend." The camera seemed to zoom right in on me. "Since I've been here… You know I've liked being out in the woods? I've spent so long stuck watching grindstones I hear them in my sleep. But out here, it's quiet. It's nice. I like it. Does make me mad? I like being somewhere where I'm going to die. That does make me mad."
I stood, getting away from the camera. There were everywhere but the visible one had caught my interest. I wondered what would happen if I went around breaking them, how quickly I would be eliminated by traps or driven toward the Careers.
The thirteenth day in the arena was as quiet as the last few had been. It had been four days since M5 had died. Four days of peace. They would be playing highlights and talking about the mental strain on the tributes. I'd be great for that. Spitting and cursing at Kayla would make for great speculation. The Careers would have certainly raged at one another when they found their supplies destroyed and that would be another great highlight. They would probably be playing them back to back, comparing us. Great TV…
I could have struck out into the middle of the arena but I knew this river now. It was familiar ground and I knew that it was better to fight on ground you knew.
"Because I'm a Career now. All tactics and strategies."
Had I been sane at home? Grinding gears and the stink of flour. A whole life time of it… The people in the fields they got some variety. My life in the spring and the fall had been identical.
"I guess this at least mixes my life up." I looked up at the sky, wondering if anyone was looking back. "Death is inevitable. And death… death makes a difference. It makes all the difference. June dies up on screen, I feel sad for a little while but I still think, it was inevitable. And then I find out how she died and it shouldn't have been inevitable. It shouldn't have been meaningless. You know what that makes me? That makes me a real asshole." My voice would be carrying but who cared? "Sora's parents; if this makes it through to you. I'm sorry. I hope you liked that I helped ease her passing, and I hope you don't hate me, thinking I took advantage. If I make it out of here, she's going to haunt me the rest of my life. They'll all haunt me. Sulla, Alba, Sora, June… I know that. That's the prize of winning; remembering forever."
It felt so good to vocalise what I had been thinking. So good to hear a voice, even my own. Kayla… Her words, her horrible, horrible, matter of fact words… They were bouncing around my skull but at least it had been the sound of another human being.
"Alba's parents… She may have volunteered. She may have wanted to be here. But I think she got it before the end. She got what this place is. I'll never be able to hear someone say 'please' ever again without thinking about her." I chuckled, feeling the bile surging in your throat. "I'll never have manners again. Alba is 'please' and Sora is 'thank you'."
What were the others doing? What were they thinking? Were they going completely out of their minds as well? No wonder Ellis always stared off into space. I got it now. No wonder he hadn't liked me with my attitude; I hadn't even wanted to try and stay alive and now here I was.
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I had slept through the rain with a soggy sleeping bag but this I couldn't ignore. I wasn't damp, I was lying in a puddle. I shuffled out of the bag and out of my nook and tried to pierce the darkness.
The narrow river wasn't as narrow as before. The dark water was growing, slipping silently over the forest floor. I pulled the bag out of the muck, rolled it up and put it away even as they water approached my feet. There were bubbles in the water and I heard them now, making glooping and slurping sounds. They hadn't increased the water flow, they were pumping it straight up into the bottom of the riverbed.
"Oh fuck…"
I ran. There was only one reason to make the river bigger and that was to flood the arena. The other side were Alba and Sora had died would be cut off or covered over and this whole part of the arena below the Cornucopia would be a lake.
My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw where I was going even as my ears picked up a new sound. It was a quiet rustling. Not the wind in the trees but water through the leaves. As it had spread over flat ground it had silently picked them up but now it was flowing downhill and rushing over them.
I was running downhill… I was running away from a flood by going downhill. There was nowhere else to go, I realised sharply that there was a small valley between me and the Cornucopia. Perhaps it sat on a hill in the middle of the arena and they were driving all of us to it.
The rustle became a defined trickle, like a washroom of taps going all at once and for a few seconds I imagined that water sweeping up leaves and washing along branches. Then I didn't have to as my feet splashed and the water gushed past me. I was still going downhill and the water, the water was rising over my boots, pushing at my ankles.
Debris swept past me, not just a mess of leaves and twigs but bigger branches that jabbed at my legs and clawed at my feet. My feet were sticking in the mud now, every step harder than the last. I needed to go faster but now the water was up to my knees and I was wading, not running.
My stomach shot up into my mouth as my feet went out under me and I was reminded that water wasn't soft as my hands and head slapped into it. The spear slipped away, gone in an instant, out of sight and out of mind as my pack dragged me under and my world became a dark freezing haze. I thrashed and somehow managed to roll over onto my front and I gasped for air that hurt my lungs as it went in cold as the water caught me and threw me along and my feet couldn't find the bottom.
I hurtled past trees, pulling at the water desperately to avoid being slammed into one. We were still going downhill, me and the water, faster and faster. It had me and there was nothing I could do. Even the girl from District 4, she couldn't have beat this current. What chance did a millboy have?
I managed to tread water, even as I began to shiver as the freezing water stole the feeling from my toes and finger tips. There was no way out of it. If I snagged a tree and climbed who knew how if the water wouldn't just keep rising until it plucked me off again. I had no idea how deep it already was.
Finally and with my clothes and pack heavy with water, we seemed to slow down and I assumed I was in the valley now and it was filling. Filling fast it seemed as I was still being pushed along and craning my neck around, I could see white water where the current coming down the slope hit the bottom.
I tried to swim. I tried. But my pack and my clothes were too heavy and my feet in my shoes were useless. I couldn't kick with them and I ended up splashing and tiring myself out.
I laughed. What a way to go. Caught in water, helpless, the strength ebbing out of my numbed limbs, until I either slipped beneath the water and drowned or just… faded away. I had watched people fade away from infected wounds, maybe taking days as they shivered with fever. Falling asleep in the cold and not waking… drying out under a burning sun without a drop to drink. These were the ways of dying that they called 'a failure of will'.
Not me. Not yet.
