Undecided, For Now Chapter 8, a hunger games fanfic

Okay, this one is longer than the last chapter about Madge. Don't worry, though, I promise that the games will get better soon! Maybe even in this chapter…

Also, there's a flashback in the chapter. I would write "FLASHBACK" or something in huge capital letters before it starts, but I have this strange feeling that you are all smart enough to figure out where the flashback is.

Second Day Theories

We are running as fast as we can. The trees and bushes and rocks fly past us as we do our very best to get as far away from the cornucopia and the blood bath as possible. I try not to think of Madge, who will most likely be teaming up with Penelope at this very moment, that is, if she isn't already dead.

Desperately, I try to separate my thoughts and feelings about Madge from the rational, instinctive, and game playing part of my head. I think that, last year, Peeta Mellark proved that a whirl wind romance and the Hunger Games don't really mix all that well.

Byte calls out that we should take a quick break and see if there's anything useful in our back packs. I can tell that he's tiring quickly, but I agree if only for the simple reason that we need to find some way to cover up our tracks in the snow. I know that it should have been my first priority, but when you're running from a pack of murderous Careers, you tend to get sidetracked and do things like run for your life very easily.

We dump out our packs and, between the two of us, we have five packs of jerky, seven packs of dried fruit, a water bottle, three knives, a bow and sheath of arrows, a pack of matches, iodine, a package of bandages, two yards of rope, and three blankets.

We try not to be disappointed, but our clothes aren't going to cut it during the freezing nights. We'll have to risk building fires and possibly drawing attention to ourselves seeing as neither of us managed to get our hands on a sleeping bag.

At this point, our biggest threat isn't Mart or even the capitol: it's going to be the cold.

Byte and I pause next at the sound of the canons firing.

Boom

"Nine," Byte remarks quietly.

"Fifteen," is my dark reply.

"We'd better keep going, Gale," Byte says. "We can see who made it and who didn't later on tonight."

I nod in agreement, and we keep on walking, me in front- bow and arrow only a movement away from a position to attack- and Byte in the rear, with our "snow blower thing" attached to the bottom of his back pack. Thankfully, he had made a couple of those back in District 3 so he knew what it was even after I found it attached to my back pack, called it a piece of useless junk, and then tried to throw it away into the forest. Now, we don't have to worry about leaving tracks.

"Remember, it's the one with the two peaks on it," Byte calls. I nod to let him know that I remember which peak we are headed towards.

"Look, Gale, call me crazy, but I have this theory about how the arenas all work," Byte begins. We are at the station for spear throwing. After meeting over by archery, we realized that together, we would be the perfect team. We're both smart enough, but Byte is a genius. He's not the best with weapons, which is where I come into the picture. He does all of the strategizing and I make sure that we have enough to eat and aren't killed.

"Byte, what does this have to do with anything?" I ask.

"Look, Gale, if we can figure out a way to escape the arena, we can both live," Byte says. I have to admit, at first, the idea seems to be perfect. We both live. We both escape and run off into the wild. But then I get to thinking about our families.

"What about the Capitol's reaction, Byte? They'll kill our families if we do that," I point out.

"Gale, I haven't got any family. I have nothing to lose. I get it if you don't want to help me, but could you at least consider it?" he asks.

I think about it for the rest of training and into the night. If the plan worked, then all of the tributes could escape. Madge could escape, part of my head says. I try to push that thought as far away from the rational part of my brain as possible. Nothing with girls is ever rational.

The next day in training, my first words are:

"I'm in," I say.

"Great. I know what to do and how to get it to work out. You'll just have to follow my lead and trust me, Gale," Byte says excitedly.

"One condition, though," I say. Byte nods, signaling for me to continue.

"I'm out of there when you actually blow up the escape route."

We keep walking for the entire day until we reach a rushing river, filled with chunks of ice and fallen tree limbs. On the other side, we can see the steep incline of the mountains, though they really just look a lot more like a pile of rocks than anything else. An intimidating pile of rocks, I'll give the Game makers that, but they don't look anything like the mountains back in 12. There are absolutely no trees or any plants of any kind growing on them. It's just sheer rock and cliffs all the way up. And, because they surround the entire arena, Byte and I are going to have to find a way up and over them, until we've reached the other side, where we can hopefully find a way to escape. I'm even more doubtful that Byte's plan will work, now that I see the arena. But he is determined, and I agreed to help him. Besides, this might help me out last all of the others.

"We should stay here for the night and then try to find a way up and over tomorrow morning," Byte decides. I can tell that he's a bit thrown off by this new development, but not enough to consider taking his chances in the arena. He knows that he has no chance here. Brains can only get one so far. But the same goes for brawn.

"I agree. We won't get much farther tonight and I'd rather cross the river in the day light that way we can see where we're going," I agree. "Do you want to split up and look for a place to camp along the shore?" I ask.

"Yeah, but let's not go too far. It'd be pretty bad to lose each other now," says Byte.

I nod in agreement as I start heading to the left and Byte heads for the right. I'm looking for a cave of some sort or maybe a thick thicket of bushes that we can stay out of the wind and other elements in. If we can start a fire in it, that'll be a bonus.

"Hey, Gale! I think I found a good place over here," Byte calls a bit too loudly for my liking, but I ignore this and hurry over to him before he can do anything else that might give away our position to the other fifteen tributes that are now dispersed throughout the arena.

I reach Byte and see that he has found a large rock with an even larger over hang. We put our back packs inside of it and I keep Byte and the back packs covered as he races down to the short distance to the rushing river to fill up our bottles with water. I have my bow and arrow poised and ready in case of an attack, but thankfully none come. Instead, I shoot two squirrels that look like they will have a fairly decent amount of meat on their bones.

Byte returns with two filled bottles in his arms and a bit of wood for a fire. Now that the sun is going down, it's safer to risk building a fire. I use only one match after I shape the wood into a small square filled with sticks and brush. I don't want to waste anything, not when a match could go up to hundreds of dollars in the blink of an eye for sponsors.

"Should I get a stick to cook the meat on?" Byte asks. I know that he probably feels useless right now, seeing as he is incapable of starting a fire, so I tell him to go look one and then soak it in the river so that it's harder for it to catch fire. He does so and returns about ten minutes later. I've already skinned both squirrels by this point.

The anthem of Panem begins to play and I notice how quickly the dusk has gathered around us. Back at home, Posy would be begging me to let her stay up later, Rory would be begging me to take him out with Thom, and Vick would be sitting next to the fire in the spare room that we had stuck an ancient couch in reading some old, fraying book that he got from the library about anything from different rock formations to how to build cars. But I can't let my thoughts wander now. All I can focus on is surviving this and getting back to them.

The first face to appear is the girl from 3, Cellus, I think her name was. I look at Byte and he looks as if he's trying to keep a straight face. The next is the career girl from 4, then the boy from 5, and both of the tributes from 6. 7 and 8 are skipped over and I feel a sense of dread that both Cedar and Birchly are still alive. Fimble, the girl from 9 whom I considered allying myself with at one point, appears next. The two from 10 appear next and, finally, the girl from 11. No one from 12 is in the sky tonight.

Byte sighs and puts his head in his hands. I know that he and Cellus weren't particularly close, but it's got to hurt, losing your district partner especially this early in the Games. I give his shoulder an awkward pat and he mumbles something that might have been a "thanks".

I turn my attention back to the fire and begin to cook the meat from the two squirrels. Byte begins to restlessly play around with the rope, tying useless knots and then undoing them. I know that he wishes he could be more useful, but that doesn't exactly help improve my mood. I sigh as the darkness of night surrounds us. It's freezing, but we have food and water, which is better than most tributes make out on the first day.

We eat our squirrel meat in silence, both dreading the days that are to come.

The light is still dim when Byte and I set out towards the river. We gather up some wood and wrap it in the blankets then we stuff it all into our packs. We'll need wood for the fire and it doesn't look like we'll find any of it on the other side of the river. I'm skeptical about this plan, at best. But our chances are probably better over there because at least we'll have the huge, dangerous river between us and most of the other tributes.

"We should probably look for a sort of make shift bridge, a place with enough rocks for us to use to jump across, or a place to wade across if nothing else," I instruct and we walk along the edge of the river until we find a fallen pine tree that stretches across almost the entire river.

Byte gets up first leaving me in the back to fend off any attackers. We didn't hear anything last night, which is probably a bad sign because the crowd and the Game makers will both be thirsting for blood to be spilled. They won't be interested in whatever it is that Byte and I are doing. There's no action unless one of us falls in the river, and even that isn't going to please the Capitol audience that much.

We manage to scramble across the fallen tree without too much difficulty, but Byte has somehow managed to scrape his leg open and it's bleeding all over the place. I decide that aligning myself with some one this useless was not exactly the best course of action. Hell, Madge probably would have been a better choice! At least she had the ability to wrap up a wound properly.

But at least Byte knew how useless he was.

I have just finished wrapping up Byte's leg when we hear a sound coming from the other side of the river.

We don't even have to turn around in look to know that it's the career pack and that they've spotted us.

"Take my pack and go, Gale. I knew that I was never going to make it," Byte says.

I don't have time to argue with him and, in the end, this change in the game works out to my extreme benefit. If the Careers kill Byte, that's only one less person for me to worry about killing, in the end. So I take the pack and run for it, trying to maneuver my way in between the jagged, gray rocks that are shooting up all over the place. Byte stumbles along behind me, but we both know that this is no use and that he'll be killed soon enough. I turn around only when I hear Byte's cry of pain and I see him being stabbed by the boy from District 2.

I turn and keep moving as quickly as I can, up the rocky, dangerous terrain. It's not ever a mountain; it's a pile of rocks- jagged, sharp rocks, at that. It's definitely not an ideal situation, but it's a whole lot better that Byte's. I almost turn around to look at him, but I know that he'll be dead soon.

Boom.

The canon only confirms my fears. Byte is dead.

A knife whizzes pat me as I continue my climbing, but it bounces off of a rock and falls down a long, dark crevice between two rocks. If the situation was different, I might try to reach it, but right now is not the time to be thinking about weapons. That knife won't matter at all if I'm dead.

I manage to scramble up and over the top of a pile when I hear a loud rumbling sound coming not from the sky, as thunder would. It's not coming from the careers, either. No, it's coming from the earth itself and I'm suddenly back in the darkness of the mines listening to Thom shout at us to run for the lifts. It's like a cave in, only outside.

I feel the rocks around me start to shake as the rock slide begins to sweep along the mountain side. I have to get out of here and as quickly as I can.

Boom.

Though I am alerted to the death and pleased that it is most likely the canon for a career caught in the rock slide, there are more important matters to attend to. I begin to try and climb down to the river, but even without the shaking of the ground the descent would take quite some time, so my movements are slow going and careful.

Boom.

Two careers are now dead from this havoc brought on by the Game makers, yet I still seem to be just fine despite a bit of shaking. I'm either lucky or too popular with the crowd to kill off just yet, but I don't stop to ponder this just in case it's the former.

I'm almost to the river when a spear flies by me. I turn around briefly to see that Mart and Liam, the boy from District 7, have managed to avoid the worst of the rock slide's damage. That's not exactly ideal because if I had to chose any careers to be taken out by the rock slide it would be Mart, Liam, and Liam's district partner, Birchly.

Boom.

Three careers are dead now. Two are on my tail.

I manage to get to the river and an ax lodges itself into the ground by my feet as I slide off of a rock and onto the river side. They must be close now if Liam can manage to move the ax that close to me. I grab an arrow from the sheath and string it onto the bow. I turn and shoot. I hear a cry of pain and I'm almost positive that it's Liam, but now's the time for me to make my get away.

I'm racing along the river when I hear a cry from the other side.

"Gale, over here!"

I look and see a very blonde someone on the other side motioning to a group of rocks that are practically stepping stones. Mart and Liam aren't far behind me, though, and I see that she has a spear out and ready to throw.

I'm across and I hear the satisfying thunk telling me that the spear has found its mark, but no canon sounds, so she's missed any vital organs. It doesn't matter, though, as we race through the snowy forest until we're sure that we've lost them.

"Long time no see, huh?" Madge asks.

I grin grimly in response.

Okay, I saw Hunger Games last night and it was SO good! Especially in the beginning :) I was just so mad that they cut out a certain character that I happen to love.

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