I sprint through the darkened woods as fast as I can, not slowing down even as the dense brush and jagged branches slice into my arms and legs.
"This is it. I'm finished. I'm not going to put up with this anymore…I CAN'T put up with this anymore…." My mother has gone too far this time, and as far as I'm concerned, she and I will never share the same home again. All I have is the clothes on my back and the precious item that I grabbed from its shelf as I flew out the door, despite my mother's shrieking warnings. Not only is it the only possession that I truly treasure, but it is at least a two day trek through the forest by foot to reach the main city of District 7 and I will desperately need it along the journey.
I come to a break in the trees. Trickling through the forest floor is a small stream, reflecting white moonlight from the tranquil sky. It is only when I see the cool, clear water do I realize that my throat is burning with thirst. I immediately drop to my hands and knees and dunk my head underneath the clear, running surface. I suck down gulp after gulp before I finally have my fill and pull my head from under the water. My long, unkempt hair sends a shower of droplets streaming into the low-hanging leaves behind me. Slowly, I dip my hands back into the stream and begin to run the cool liquid like a balm over the rising welt on my cheek. It does little to calm the pain, but it is enough for now.
I must truly be a sight to behold at this moment: an angry, scared girl of only seventeen, alone in the center of some of the wildest wilderness in Panem. It's the middle of the night, and I only have a hatchet to protect me. I should be terrified, but I know in my heart that a hatchet is all I really need.
As I collapse backwards onto a patch of moss next the stream, my thoughts race back to the incident that may be the last contact I ever have with my parents. I love them from the bottom of heart, but if I stay there with them alone in the middle of nowhere, I will wither and die like a tree robbed of the sun.
For the past few months, I've been begging my mother to let me leave the sanctuary she and my father built to isolate themselves from the world. My father, a quiet man with a good heart, left civilization because it never really had anything to offer him. All he required was his woods, the silent calm of a clear night sky, the twists of home dried tobacco he kept in a box over the fireplace, and the companionship of his wife and daughter. My mother, on the other hand, fled humanity because other people never did anything except try to rob her of everything she ever had: her freedom, her family, and even her life.
The night terrors and flash backs to the torture she felt at the hands of tyrannical strangers, once so horrifying and confusing to me, had finally become so commonplace that by the time I reached my teens, I felt more annoyance than pity. It seemed that my presence was the only thing in the world that could ever give Johanna Mason any respite from her traumatic memories of the Hunger Games and the Revolution. So, instead of growing up safe in her arms, I grew up keeping her safe in mine.
While most children climb into bed with their parents after a nightmare for comfort, in my childhood home, it was the exact opposite. Over the years, I lost count of the times by bedroom door would fly open and I would feel her climb into bed with me. At first, I would dutifully crawl over and hug her tight until her tears subsided, but finally, I just pretended not to wake up anymore.
One particularly horrible night, I couldn't take it another second. As I watched my mother begin to cry for no reason while simultaneously reaching for a bottle of homemade liquor that she always kept at the ready in a cupboard over the sink, I at last summoned the courage to utter a word that has passed through my mind a thousand times before…
"No," I say with newfound conviction as I pull away from my mother's extended arms. She looks back at my face with a mix of betrayal and confusion.
"What?" she gasps through a pained expression.
"No, Mother. I was not put on this planet solely to comfort you. You may love living in this little world that you've built for yourself, but it's not the world I built for me. Tomorrow, I'm leaving and unless you realize that truth, I'm never coming back."
My mother's tears grow worse. I look over to my father, sitting in his chair next to the fireplace with his pipe. He silently gazes over to me with a pair of eyes that show a quiet wisdom that words do not need to express. Though it's killing him, I know he stands with me.
"Olivia," my mother stammers as the tears in her eyes grow worse and worse. "There is nothing out there! Nothing except liars, thieves, and those who would watch you die for their own sick gratification and entertainment!"
"That's not true, Mom!" I shout with strength I never knew I possessed. "I know that you've suffered horrible things in your life, but that's in the past. There has to be some good out there, and I'll never find it rotting here alone!"
"But you're not alone!" she shouts over the top of my pleas. "We're together and we're happy…"
"YOU'RE HAPPY!" I shout as my eyes begin to tear up as well. "You're happy but I'm slowly suffocating. I have to know what life is like outside of this damn forest."
"You want to know what the world is like?" she says as her eyes change her expression from sorrow to anger. "This is what the world is like you stupid, ignorant girl!" She raises her hand and slaps me hard across the face. Instantly, she realizes what she has done and jumps backward away from me. "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry…" she says trying to come close to me again, but I step away once more for the last time.
I begin to cry, but not because of the physical pain. The sense of betrayal I feel is enough to drive me over the edge. Instantly, I turn around and charge straight for the door, pausing only long enough to grab my hatchet before sprinting out into the night.
Now, I find myself here, staring up at the night sky, about to embark upon a new life. I do not know where it will take me or how it will end. All I know is that it will be my own…
With all the effort I can muster, I force my eyes open. I find myself staring up at the wide open empty sky, it's pristine blue hue marred with sporadic black clouds of acrid smoke. My head is spinning as I try to recollect what exactly has led me here.
Slowly, it comes back to me: the aide drop, the missile attack, the explosions, the horrible spinning…then impact and blackness. My head still throbs where I felt the blow that knocked me out. Cautiously, I reach my hand up to the side of my helmet, terrified at what damage I might find. My fingertips feel a piece of jagged metal, several inches long, jutting out from the side of my cranium. Shocked, I bolt upward without thinking, unbuckle my chinstrap, and rip the helmet off my head. I quickly scan the inside of the lining and to my amazement, nothing seems to have penetrated. My hand shoots up the side of my skull, and though it's still tender to the touch, I don't feel any kind of blood or open wound. My protective gear did its job.
"THAT is why we wear that," I think to myself with a relieved grin. I toss my now useless helmet aside and push myself up to my feet. Though my legs still feel a little rubbery, I manage to stand and take a few cautious steps. It's at that moment, that I finally take stock of the horrible carnage around me. The burning remains of the hovercraft lie in ruins in all directions. The main bulk of the wreckage is behind me, but another large chunk landed about fifty yards to my left. Sadly, it looks to be the cockpit where the pilots were sitting.
"No one could have survived crashing in that," passes through my thoughts. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure how I survived. I guess someone up there likes me.
I stumble forward toward a huge sand dune about two hundred yards away from the crash site. It's my hope that it will at least provide a better view of the area we went down in. I know I must be close to the Binwaldi Refugee Camp, but my rifle is nowhere to be found, and is probably lost forever under the tons of twisted, scorched metal that once made up the transport. Despite my first impressions from the air, I don't feel very secure going to Binwaldi without it. I'm still not sure it wasn't one of them that shot us down. All I have left is my hatchet, which still clings loyally to my belt like an old friend.
"Sergeant Major!" I hear a voice cry out from behind the destroyed cockpit. I turn around to see the loadmaster, covered with black soot, stumble out and wave his arms at me. He's stripped off his body armor and helmet and wears nothing but the tattered and scorched remains of his fatigues. I immediately infer that it's a miracle he wasn't burned to a crisp in the crash.
"Are you alright?" I manage to shout back in between gasps and hacking coughs.
"My leg's pretty banged up he says limping along, but I can move. Both pilots are dead, I already checked."
"Son of a bitch," I think as my heart drops like a stone in my chest. I don't care how much action I see or how many good men and women I lose, each one still feels like family. That fact that this is a "humanitarian" mission where our higher told us we wouldn't face any real resistance makes it even more painful.
"This is why you send more than one battalion, Sir," I think as I survey the cost of this blunder. The Ministry of Defense failed to do its homework and sent us headlong into the jaws of an enemy that was far better equipped and far more dangerous than any of them ever expected.
"Alright," I say shouting to the loadmaster who's less than twenty yards away from me now. "We'll send a team back from JOB Mariner to recover the remains of the pilots, but right now we have to get out of…"
At that moment, bullets from a burst of automatic weapons fire kick up sand in all directions and I stare in horror as I see his chest ripped apart in front of my eyes. Instinctually, I dive for cover behind a pile of wreckage as a second burst meant for me slices through the air and ricochets off the debris with a cacophony of high pitched dings and whistles.
I carefully look around the edge of my cover, hoping beyond hope that the loadmaster is still alive, but as I catch a glimpse of his pale face and wide, fixed gaze, I know he's gone.
" !" I curse out loudly. The gunshots came from the top of the same sand dune that I was mindlessly walking to just a few minutes before. If it wasn't for the loadmaster distracting me, it would probably be my corpse lying in the sand instead of his. I curse myself again as I realize that in my daze I forgot a very simple truth: whoever shot us down is still here and is still dangerous. A sharp pang of guilt rockets through my gut as I realize that if I had been more cautious, that if I had the sense to warn him, then the loadmaster could still be alive. However, there's no time for "what ifs" right now. All that matters is I have to stay alive and find a way to get out of here.
Another burst of rapid fire cuts through the air a few inches above of my head to let me know the fighters have not forgotten about me. I see their fierce silhouettes crest over the top of the dune and charge straight down at me. They are heavily armed with rifles and machine guns and are dressed in the same fatigues and headscarves that I recognize from the news broadcasts and intelligence reports.
"It's the militia…"
They scream and yell in a strange language that I can't understand. If I try to run, I'm probably dead, but if I stay here and wait for them to close with me, then I'm definitely dead.
"Well, that narrows down the choices…" I think as I take a deep breath, mutter a quick prayer, and then leap out from behind my cover, sprinting as hard as I can across the desert. I have no idea where I'm going or what I'm running to. I just know I can't stay here.
I leap wildly to the left and to the right, trying to dodge the hails of bullets that kick up clouds of dirt around my boots. I can still hear the wild screams of the enemy closing in behind me. They've tasted blood today, and they're thirsty for more.
I look over my shoulder and see that they're fast closing the distance with me. The shock of seeing them so close causes me to hesitate for a split second….a split second that costs me dearly.
A bullet slams into the back plate of my body armor. Though my vest stops the projectile from penetrating, I still feel the entire force of the round's impact and tumble into the ground with the feeling that a giant took a full swing at me with a sledgehammer.
As my pounding heart rate peaks, my head begins to spin again. I use every ounce of strength I have left to crawl desperately over the sand, but soon realize that it's hopeless. I reach down and feel my hatchet. Though I know I will die, I hope that I'll be able to take a few of them with me on the way out. Images of my mother and father, Clint, and Aurora all flash through my mind. I can't believe that I'll never see them again, and that I will meet my end here, alone on the burning sands of a strange and foreign shore.
I roll over and try to force myself to my feet, but my legs finally give out. I lay propped up on my side, watching my attackers continue to surge forward towards me. They've stopped firing and I actually think they're foolish enough to try to take me alive.
"Alright, you sons of …let's do this!" I spit out through my gritted teeth.
Suddenly, another burst of automatic weapons fire rings out. For a second, I think that they've started firing again, but then I realize that the sound is coming from behind me. There's more yelling and screaming that I can't make out as the spinning in my head grows worse and worse. I see the militia fighters halt their advance and start to fire wildly at someone or something I cannot see. Then, I start to hear the sounds of people approaching from the rear. I try to turn to face the newcomers to the fight, but it's too much. Once again, everything goes black and I collapse in a heap on the burning hot sand.