Ch. 20- Escaping Hell
Suspended in a weightless black ether. Dark, dark, darkness. Nothing existed and everything existed together at the same time. Hell wasn't a place someone went after they died. It was here, on Earth, in Panem—in Peeta's mind. It was like a warzone in his head and he couldn't find reality. A movie reel of images flashed before his eyes: blood floating through moonlit water in wisps like spilled paint, wide terrified eyes, an arrow plunged in and out, in and out, black scales, white talons, yellow eyes—human eyes. It was all jumbled in his head. He had been a muttation. But he wasn't. He was Beetee. He was going to be sick. He wanted to vomit—to purge everything from his being. He couldn't breathe.
A lizard muttation sliced through the water straight for Peeta. He needed to move. His lungs strained for oxygen. Everything burned. His mind screamed for release and his eyes stung from salt and exhaustion; exhausted with being the window to so much blood and gore, death and violence. It was never ending. The mutt swam closer and closer through the black ink water. Maybe if he just closed his eyes, gave them a rest, everything would be better and this hell would end. Did they really need him on the surface anyways?
Wait, no. Prim needs me. Gale needs me. They shouldn't have to pay for my sins, Peeta realized.
'Even when it's hard, listen to your true heart. It will never lead you astray.'
Those puzzling final words Plutarch Heavensbee had left with Peeta at the Victory Tour ball might not have been so crazy after all. Had he foreseen that Peeta would lose himself in this Arena? That he would question his sanity and moral character? What other purpose was there for leaving him with such a cryptic message?
Prim. Cato. Gale. They were his reason to keep moving. They were his heart. They were the reason he had to fight. Fight against the darkness. Even if his mind had been fouled, tainted by evil, they were still in his heart. The love he had for them was real and he would let that guide him. His heart would be stronger than his mind and he would save them; it would save him. For Beetee.
Peeta twisted through the water to the side at the last second and the monster just barely missed clawing his neck. The scaly mutt flipped around, using its tail to propel it back at Peeta, but now he was ready. He dove down, deeper yet into the dark depths of the water. Peeta worried there was no end to this ocean. The mutt followed after him chomping at his feet. Finally, when oxygen deprivation threatened to blacken out everything Peeta saw him float into view like an apparition.
I'm so sorry, Beetee, Peeta thought before ripping the arrow from his stomach and stealing the gold wire from his cold fingers. Touching him made it real. Made the violence of his mind a reality. But it wasn't important. Not at the moment. He used the final burst of his energy to kick up towards the surface. The mutt was bearing down on him with its snout wide open, ready to devour him and Peeta steered straight into it. In seconds the jaws would clamp down on Peeta and thrash, breaking him. But Peeta pushed the arrow out before him. It sank right through the open mouth of the monster and out the back of its skull. Its teeth scrapped along Peeta's arm, lacing it with shallow cuts, but Peeta managed to pull it free from the dead monster.
The moon hung in the midnight sky above him, warped by the ripple of waves and tinged green by mutt blood—tantalizingly close yet just out of reach. The morning light seemed so far from him now. He would never feel warmth again. The shadows pressed in like a suffocating blanket. Peeta's lungs felt like they might explode. The pressure in his chest was unbearable. He was all out of energy. He wasn't going to make it. The edges of his vision grew dark. The muscles in his body tightened and cramped like a vise had clamped down on them, but he couldn't let it end like this. He couldn't die a murderer. He refused to let that be his final act in the Hunger Games—in life. And so he dug deep into the resources of his body, deeper than he'd ever gone for that last kernel of energy. Then he kicked up off the body of the dead mutt for the final propulsion towards the surface.
The feeling of the cool night air on Peeta's wet skin was like a salve to his broken mind. He gulped down large mouthfuls of air, tasting the blood and stale fear left in the air. But he was alive. Most of the mutts were gone from the beach, off to chase after the survivors. Peeta had to move. He couldn't take the time to think or he'd lose it. His mind would crack open and everything would spill out into the abyss. Insanity.
The insects in the final section of the forest before the midnight lightning screeched a chorus of cacophonous clicks as Peeta swam awkwardly to shore. Kick, stroke, kick, stroke. A dull chant in his mind that helped ground him and push back on the parasitic fear that threatened to invade his mind.
Finally reaching shore, Peeta struggled to lift his body out of the water and onto the shore. He collapsed face first into the white sand of the beach and felt each prickly granule grate against his skin as he pulled forward, further and further out of the water and away from Beetee's mangled body. Peeta's body was exhausted. Everything ached like he'd been run over. He focused on his breathing, forcing it to an even keel until it didn't sound so ravaged and choked. Then he moved one limb at a time. Lifting one arm, then the other, pushing his chest up off the sand. Life slowly returned to his body like the eventual receding of floodwaters. The trauma was over—for now. Then he was up one knee. Pausing as the jungle spun precariously before him. He leaned forward and vomited, but quickly slapped a hand to his face; feeling the sting against his cheeks he forced his other leg up to finally stand. He could do this.
Howls erupted from the forest and then a scream. The mutts had found the others. Peeta was out of time. He pulled the bow from across his shoulder, strung an arrow and then threw out some gold wire behind him into the water before racing forward, leaving a careful trail of the oddly vibrating line behind him.
The sounds of the bugs directly to his left and the howls of the mutts ahead made it hard for Peeta to locate a position on the others as he raced through the dark jungle. He knew to give a wide berth to the clicking insects. Nothing good could possibly come of straying into that section. Then he heard grunts and hacking sounds up ahead. He dodged around trees and pushed through the palm fronds frantic to reach the others; ignoring the scrapes and bruises he accumulated. He burst onto the scene of a canopied creek and tripped over the hacked body of a muttation. He managed to hang on to the bow, but the arrow he had strung flew from sight. His head collided with a rock and disoriented him. Pain bloomed above his right eyebrow and the vision in his right eye was suddenly clouded as hot blood trickled from the open wound.
Further ahead of Peeta was Johanna, alone and locked in fierce battle with two lizards. There was a slash across her abdomen that was bleeding profusely and she winced each time she threw out her right hand with the battle-axe. The lizards kept feinting forward attacks, almost as if they were toying with her. Their black scales almost camouflaged them in the dark environment of the jungle. Their forked tongues kept dipping out to taste the air. They could tell she was weakened. Peeta had a feeling their plan was to force everyone to separate and kill them off individually. The Capitol made a mistake in letting Gale live and now they were going to correct it and force the end of the Quarter Quell. He bet anything his and Cato's break up was broadcast fully across the nation along with their struggle now. They probably wanted nothing more than the games to end with Asasia or Enobaria as Victor.
One of the lizards made a sweeping motion with its tail. Johanna jumped, dodging the attack. But that inhibited her from defending against the advance of the other mutt to her left, which lunged. Peeta forced his body up, pushing back the pain and dizziness into the furthest corner of his mind—he'd allow time to deal with it all when this was over, if he made it. He scrambled for another arrow, but he wasn't going to be quick enough and so he screamed, "Leave her alone," praying it would be enough to throw the attacking mutt off balance.
The mutt faltered, his eyes leaving its target for a split second to find the source of the new stimulant: Peeta. In that second Johanna managed to rebalance. Her hand flew through the air in a clean arc and sliced right through the neck of the monster. Its body fell stiff to the side while its head floated down the creak. The other mutt fell dead to the ground with an arrow through the back by Peeta before it could counter.
Ragged breaths, chirping bugs and the soft trickle of the green tinged stream seemed to drag on for hours rather than seconds as Johanna stared Peeta down from a distance. Then she marched forward, a determined look sharpening her stark features.
"If you're looking for something to say, you could start with thank—what're you do—Ow! Get off!"
Peeta fought against Johanna, but he had so very little energy. She had shoved him to the ground and was now seated on his chest, holding him down. Her eyes held no emotion, cleanly focused on the task at hand.
"I knew we shouldn't have trusted you!" Peeta snarled before whimpering in pain as she cut into his forearm with the tip of her axe.
"Jesus you sure act like a bitch for being the famed Mockingjay," Johanna snapped. She pulled up off him, done with whatever her task had been and brushed a hand through her short hair. She cleaned the blade of her axe against her leg. Peeta sucked in the breath he had been holding as she cut him and then when he realized she wasn't going to kill him, stood.
"What the hell was that? And how do you know of my Mockingjay moniker?"
Confused by her behavior, Peeta trailed after her as she took off at a stilted jog. He picked up the fallen arrow and took brief count of how many remained—three—not the most comforting.
How did she know he was called the Mockingjay? The only time he had ever heard anyone refer to him as that was when he met those girls from Eight on the run for District Thirteen. He cringed just reminded of their brutal execution. They had said the rebels had taken to calling him their Mockingjay. It was a secret way of communicating their alliance. But she—Johanna couldn't be. Peeta paused in thought to analyze her from behind. She looked like any other Victor. Battle hardened and rough with spiked hair and a sharp frown like she was always trying to scrub the femininity from her persona as if it degraded her.
"I know a lot more than you think. Now where's Beetee? We've got to find the others and do this now." Johanna said, completely brushing aside his burning curiosity.
Peeta's feet halted their movements at the mention of Beetee's name. It was like he'd been gutted. Everything felt hallow. Oh god. What could he say?
"Oh." Johanna stopped too. Her eyes fell as she put two-and-two together. But she couldn't possibly know. It wasn't that obvious. "That canon fire was his, wasn't it? The mutts… they got him."
"Uh—yeah…" Peeta stuttered out breathless. He was surprised by the amount of grief that flashed across her face before she wiped it clean; her ruthless game face firmly back in place. "The—the others though? What happened?"
They started hustling again up a steep incline and Johanna held her unarmed hand to her stomach. The cuts looked deep and painful. It was amazing to Peeta that she was able to move at all. The pain had to be unbearable. He also noticed her arm was bleeding in the same spot as Peeta's. Where she had cut him. Things were starting to click into place for Peeta, but he still felt like he was missing something fundamental. The bread had meant something. Johanna and Finnick and maybe even Beetee knew something of this rebellion. They kept saying time was running out, but what were they counting down to? The lightning strike? And what was the real purpose of this wire Peeta continued to trail behind them if not to finish off the Careers?
"We were overwhelmed by Mutt's. There were so many of them. I got separated, I—I don't know what happened to them, but they've got to be close."
Just as Johanna finished talking Prim's scream ripped out of the dark and hit Peeta like a sledgehammer. They were near, but still in trouble. Was there an end to this horde of mutts?
"That way!" Johanna pointed and they both took off running.
The jungle began to thin and even out. The charred lightning tree grew in size as they neared its location and that of Prim's scream. Snarls and howls joined in on the sound as the bugs high-pitched clicking grew to a crescendo. Peeta had an unsettling feeling they were almost out of time.
"No, Gale, no!" Prim pleaded.
Urging his feet to move faster, Peeta passed Johanna and bolted out onto a wide circular clearing at the top of which stood the charred tree that had been their goal. Then just behind it, shimmering almost invisibly stood the force field that kept all the tributes trapped in the Arena. Prim was shielded behind Finnick who used his trident to fend off the swarm of Mutt's. Their backs were to the lightning tree and they both had matching cuts to their arms. And then there was Gale running straight into the pack of mutts—there had to be a dozen of them at least.
"You want me, you scaly fuckers? Come and have me!"
"Gale! What're you doing?" Peeta shouted. Dropping the wire he charged towards the fight, but he wasn't going to make it and Gale was going to do something stupid. He knew it.
The mutts swarmed and slashed at Gale, but he was quick. His lithe, athletic body built for this. He dodged and outmaneuvered them, managing to kill two with his pickaxe. Peeta fired off one arrow and took down another as he raced towards the battle. Peeta saw from his periphery Finnick to the opportunity given to him by Gale to escape with Prim. All of the monstrous lizards howled and hissed in anger as they hounded after Gale. He managed to break out the back of them and he gave one swift look over to Peeta who was still racing towards him. He shook his head, no. There was nothing but longing in his midnight blue eyes, but a stronger urge to protect propelled him on. Peeta knew what he was going to do.
"The bugs, they're carnivorous! Nothing makes it out of their section alive." Gale trilled. "Looks like I've got that pesky martyr complex now!" He never looked so alive as he did right now, sprinting away into the jungle and towards the shrieking insects, all the mutts now chomping at his tail. The last words he heard before Gale disappeared—possibly forever—were, "I love you Peeta Mellark."
Peeta wasn't going to let him do it. This wasn't his fight. He couldn't lose him too. Not after everything. But Peeta suddenly flew forward, tackled to the ground from behind before he could chase after Gale.
"Ger'offme! Gale! GALE!" Peeta shouted into the dirt while trying to throw an elbow back at Finnick. He took it with a grunt but held him pinned to the ground nonetheless.
"No." Finnick growled forcefully. "He knows what he's doing and you know what you have to do." Finnick lifted Peeta up, but kept him locked in a tight bear hug. "Be the hero I know you can be."
Peeta wanted to scream until his throat was raw and bleeding. To beat at the ground until his knuckles were bruised and broken. To give up and let the insanity take him because it would be easier than all this: all this hurt and sacrificing and caring so damn much.
Except Finnick was right. He needed to fight. To be the hero everyone thought he was—more so now than ever after what he did to Beetee.
"I don't know what you all want from me…" Peeta groaned, letting the tears slip down his cheeks freely now.
"To do what you know is right," Finnick said. "Johanna is tying the wire to the tree. I'm sure by now you get it. What's at stake here…"
If everyone wasn't so damn cryptic then maybe Peeta could get it, but right now it was all too much and his head throbbed and his heart ached. Soon that bridge would break. Crumble into little bits and he'd never feel that connection again. It had already happened once today. It was too much. Finnick let go of him tentatively, but when Peeta didn't run he left him be for the moment. Peeta looked up at the sky and the stars. They were always brightest at midnight.
Midnight…
'It begins at midnight.' It begins at midnight. What if Plutarch had been trying to say something else? Something besides the Arena was laid out like a clock? What if he was trying to signal that the beginning of whatever they'd been working towards in this Arena, whatever Johanna and Finnick seemed to know, started at the stroke of midnight? Someone was helping the rebels Gale had said. A mysterious group with connections, it would make sense if they were Capitol defectors working secretly to help the Districts. Who else would have connections to supplies and insider info?
It dawned on Peeta. At midnight something will happen and I can either be a part of it or fail in passivity
The shrill screech of the bugs skyrocketed. It was a frenzy of terrible howls and noises that felt like needles piercing at Peeta's eardrums. He had to block from his mind the images those sounds threatened to conjure up. He couldn't think about that now or his heart would truly fail him. Not even the pacemaker could keep it beating. The insect sounds then ceased just as abruptly like a song cut off in the middle of its climax and the bells started tolling. The first of which was like a shock of ice to his system. The lightning would strike just after the twelfth bell. The time to act was now. He knew what he had to do. It all clicked into place like the fitting together the last piece of the puzzle. The wire. The lightning tree. Johanna's worry about time running out. Cutting out everyone's tracker. Beetee's insistence on tying the wire to his arrow. At midnight, it begins at midnight.
The barrier was right there. If he aimed and fired at the perfect moment maybe he could bring the whole thing down. They could all escape. It was as if all the fog had cleared and he could see the whole land laid out before him perfectly. How everything fit together and exactly where his place was with in that world. Maybe he was going crazy, but he could still try to save everyone. He could still make one final act of rebellion and let the world of Panem know he stood with them in their fight.
He was a rebel. He would defy the Capitol's control yet again.
He would be the Mockingjay.
Turning and running towards the charred trunk of the tree Peeta realized something was off.
A third bell tolled.
At the foot of the tree Peeta found Johanna face down and unmoving in a pool of dark liquid; the wire still clutched in her right hand. There was only one explanation for that. Peeta plucked the wire from Johanna's hand—his heart hammering in his chest—and raced around the base of the massive tree, tying the wire to one of his two remaining arrows and stringing the bow. He stuttered to a stop on the other side of the tree to find none other than Asasia and Enobaria. Finnick was pinned by Enobaria to the ground by his trident. Enobaria beamed a wicked razor toothed smile as she dug the tip of the trident in to the flesh of Finnick's neck. There was no sanity to be found in her eyes. Finnick gasped through his clenched jaw and blood trailed down his neck. Rage boiled in Peeta's veins. Was that what the future held for him? Beside her stood Asasia, legs splayed over Prim's crumpled form and her spiked club raised high, ready and willing to end another life.
"I've finally learned my lesson, Peeta," Asasia confessed.
Her beetle black eyes sneered triumphantly towards him and he felt a stab of icy hate in his stomach. He had never wanted someone more dead than he wanted her. He trained his bow and arrow on her, but he couldn't fire it for the wire attached to it held the key to all of their survival. A fifth bell tolled. Finnick groaned in pain as Enobaria clucked gleefully—pinching her tongue between her razor teeth until blood welled up. She pulled the trident up, taking aim, and held down on Finnick's stomach with her foot.
There where only two arrows left. Peeta couldn't possibly save both of them and destroy the force field. He felt trapped, like some caged animal. Everything in him screamed to be released. Maybe he'd always been. Caged in by the Capitol, by Snow, and now he was slowly losing his mind from the deprivation; growing more frenzied and violent by the day in his bid for freedom.
"And what's that?" Peeta asked. His tongue felt thick and his throat raw. His hand crept around his back towards the last arrow. An eighth toll of the bell sounded out and he could feel the static electricity building in the air. His hair began to stand on end. He had to decide now because the lightning was coming. Either fire his last two arrows in quick succession and save his friends or save one and launch the wired arrow at the barrier. But how could he choose? Prim didn't deserve to die and Finnick deserved someone to fight for him. It wasn't fair.
"Strike first, gloat later."
Asasia right bicep bulged, every muscle tensing for a killing blow, and then she swung downward with so much force she was sure to obliterate Prim's face. Prim screamed—finally coming too—as Enobaria simultaneously brought down the trident on Finnick. Peeta had a split second to act and so he let the wired arrow drop to the ground.
A tenth bell sounded.
There was a crackle in the air above them.
Peeta's hand flew like a bullet. His last arrow sliced through the air with perfect accuracy. The eleventh bell sounded at the same time that the cannon fired, twice in rapid succession.
BOOM, BOOM!
Asasia was dead before she hit the ground, an arrow embedded directly between the eyes. Next to her fell Enobaria's lifeless body—her stomach eviscerated. Standing over her, with wildly dark brown eyes was a panting and bloody Cato. His sword dripped with freshly spilt blood. Prim remained frozen on the ground in shock or horror, or both. But Peeta didn't have time to feel anything. The twelfth bell had just sounded out.
Peeta flung out his to snatch the arrow with the wire from the ground. His fingers fumbled numb and suddenly inept. A roar of static sounded above him. He pulled the bow taught with the arrow. Then Peeta swung to face the barely shimmering force field, closed his eyes and fired. The insides of his eyelids lit up red as lightning blossomed in the sky above, shooting down to strike the tree with a giant CRACK. Then he opened them and watched. It had worked! Where the arrow had struck molten red lines spider-webbed across the night sky. It looked like the sky itself were about to crack open and an apocalypse would rain down upon them—the gates of hell literally opening before them.
BOOM!
It sounded like the firing of the canon, except infinitely louder and fired right next to Peeta's ear. It reverberated across the entire Arena. The force field ripped apart and the sound wave knocked Peeta sprawling backwards. He rolled over and pushed up on his hands, looking over to see Cato had shielded himself atop Prim. She was screaming, he could tell by the set of her face and her wide-open mouth but he couldn't hear it. Peeta latched on to Cato's eyes and held them. There was no more hate in them like earlier. Instead they were replaced with a look of awe and he felt a glimmer of hope. Then another sound wave erupted over them and knocked Peeta's hands out from under him—dropping him back to the dirt.
Looking up Peeta watched as the last of the force field fizzled away into non-existence. Finnick stirred and they both tried to stand, only to be knocked back down by another blast. The force field was gone, but why couldn't they get back up on their feet? It was then that Peeta saw it. Two silver hovercrafts in the night sky, almost like two blotches of liquid steel swimming through the stars. It was almost beautiful. Then bullets erupted from both of them, shooting across the sky like falling stars, burning red as they broke through the atmosphere. They burst apart in a shower of sparks just before touching the metal of the other hovercraft. They had shields too.
Peeta didn't understand what was happening. Then the apocalypse really began. Fire rained down from the sky and explosions erupted all around. They shook the ground with the force of an earthquake and made it nearly impossible to run. But Finnick managed to get to his feet and scrambled towards Peeta. He waved Finnick off.
"No! Get Johanna, I'm not sure she's really dead!" Peeta ordered. "We have to get out of here."
On shaky legs Peeta got to his feet and spread them wide to brace against the explosions. One went off at the edge of the clearing, raining jungle debris and dirt all around them. Smoke grew thick in the clearing and it became hard to see. Hard to breath.
The sound of the two hovercrafts above them doing battle was all he could hear. It was like being launched into the middle of a massive combat zone. Missiles exploded in midair and gunfire spit in rapid succession like the buzzing of mechanical insects. Peeta ran towards Cato and Prim. She was still screaming, covered in dirt, but preferable to the blood he first saw her in earlier that evening. Bullets sprayed the ground right before Peeta could reach them and he skidded to a stop, turning and running in the other direction. One of those hovercrafts was aiming to kill them. A missile screeched through the air above Peeta. He ducked and was blown forward by the blast, the charred lightning tree behind him blown to splinters. Some embedded in his back and he cried out in pain.
Through the smoke and dust Peeta caught a glimpse of something moving. Another bomb went off somewhere and Peeta's body jolted with the movement of the earth. He pushed himself up, adrenaline buzzing and blood pumping. It was pure chaos. Terror and panic overwhelmed him as he ran. Then he saw something. He had to rub his eyes. He was seeing a ghost. The smoke was thick, but it thinned just enough before him that he thought he saw Gale. He was covered with red welts and bites, but alive. Then he evaporated from view as the smoke thickened and fouled.
The air smelled like sulfur and burning wood. Everything was bathed in a flickering orange glow. Fire burned all around them. Someone was shouting Peeta's name. But everything was too loud. The roar of the hovercraft engines, the bombs and bullets blotted out all other distinguishable sounds. But Peeta focused, trying to pinpoint the location of the shouting. He had to find the others. They had to escape this Arena. They had quite literally just thrust themselves into the middle of the war and nowhere was safe at the moment.
Thinking they were to his left Peeta picked up and ran towards them. Bullets splattered the ground he had just left behind. There was another boom like the cracking of the force field earlier, but this one on a much smaller scale. Then a bomb dropped directly to Peeta's left and he was blown sideways. The world twisted. He screamed in agony he'd never felt before. It was a pain so strong that everything else by comparison in his life wasn't really pain, it was only masquerading as that to trick him into thinking he knew what real pain was so that when he really did feel it he was unprepared. His body felt like it was ripped apart by fire. His very veins flowed with molten lava and his vision burned red.
Another explosion sounded—this one the biggest yet. Peeta was on his back and he had a perfect view up at the sky. Smoke billowed around him, tinted orange by flames. But it thinned above him and he saw one of the silver hovercrafts was on fire. It blew apart in the sky like the shattering of a mirror before crashing down in pieces to the left of Peeta's eye line. Then everything went silent. Peeta could no longer feel anything. The smoke grew too thick and blackened out everything. Or maybe it was just Peeta slipping into unconsciousness. Peeta knew there was a high probability he wouldn't wake up, but the relief he felt as his mind went dark and his body went numb was enough to sooth any woes he might have had about dying. At least now he could die having done one last heroic act. Maybe it would turn the tides of the rebellion. But most of all he just hoped it gave those he loved the opportunity to escape this hell.
And so we've reached the end of Part 2. The next chapter starts Part 3 and the final leg of the series. Only a little remains before it's all over! So please, leave a review. Let me know what you think of everything so far. Where do you think it's headed? Who has been your favorite character so far? What did you think of this quite literally explosive chapter? Let's reflect together before we begin the final leg of this journey.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this story. With out you guys as an audience I would never have even made it this far with the story so thank you!
xoxo,
crobb07
