Chapter Eleven
Fifty-nine seconds more before I can swim to the cornucopia. I'll definitely be one of the first one's there.
Fifty seconds. The cornucopia is in the center. Mason is a few over to my right. Ceaser is beside me to my left. Gem is a few down from Ceaser. Birch is beside Gem. Valarie and Rory must be on the other side.
Thirty-nine seconds. I see it. It's sitting right in front of me, only separated by water. My trident. My trident. No one else's.
Thirty seconds. It's salt water. I had recognized it instantly when I came up from the tube. Can't drink it. That'll be a lure for some. There are trees around the beach. Maybe some of them hold water. Backpacks and supplies litter the cornucopia. I can make it. The trident is right there for a reason. They want me to go after it. The water is here for a reason. So I can get to it first.
There's only a few seconds left, and I prepare myself to dive into the water like I'm in a swimming competition back home. That's all it is. I'm competing for the first place medal, my trident. The gong sounds, and I'm in the water instantly. I'm swimming the fastest that I can. I reach the cornucopia in seconds. I'm the first one here. I grab the trident. Ceaser isn't even halfway here.
"Capri!" I hear Mason's cry. He's running at me. He picks up a belt of knives along the way. Gem joins us quickly, taking a few knives from Mason. I take out both from Three without hesitating. I kick the female from Eleven in the head, and she falls into the water. I don't know if she's dead.
The boy from Ten puts up a good fight, but he relied on his weapon. As soon as I kicked the knife from his hands, he was scared. He looked like he was going to run, so I grab some nearby net. I chuck it at him. It should work, and it does. It freaks him out, and pins him to the stone ground of the outside of the cornucopia. I toss my trident at his heart with a force that I've never felt before just now.
Retrieving my trident from his chest, I see the chaos has died down. Now I see that there's no way to and from the cornucopia other than to swim. Maybe there's a floatation device or two in here for Ceaser. I smile to myself, and look around for the others.
"Help! Capri, help!" It's Mason. I race to the other side of the cornupoia and see the boy from Eight pinning Mason against the cornucopia. Now's not the time to kill someone slowly. I toss my trident at his back. He's fairly built, so it shouldn't pierce Mason. Mason crawls away quickly as the boy falls to the ground. I retrieve my trident from his back.
"We need to get to the others." I find the Ceaser, Rory, and Valarie at the tail. "Where's Gem?"
Ceaser looks angry. "That bastard from Seven got an axe and sliced her." Her body is lying on the stone, chopped and bloody. It's one less tribute I have to worry about.
"You should have listened to me and grabbed the axe while you still could. Now he's gonna off us all. Great job, Ceaser." Now I'm angry. If they'd have listened to me, they would have gotten the axe while they could, but I'm a joke to them.
"Don't you dare talk to me like that again," Ceaser grips my arm, and he leans in close with a furious face.
I rip my arm from his hand. I guess Finnick was actually good for something. I twirl my trident around my fingers and look him in the eyes threateningly, "You won't tell me shit about whom I talk about and how I talk about them." Ceaser and I stare at each other until he rolls his eyes, mumbling something along the lines of "fine," and turns away. I smirk. I just won my place with them.
Everyone stares at me, slightly shocked, slightly filled with awe. "Well, we can't set up camp here. We should probably keep moving the entire time. Everyone else will expect us to camp out on the beach, but we're not going to do that. Collect what we need, but keep it light. We're going to be moving around."
For some reason, they listen. I don't know why. I must have sounded frightening. Maybe they respect me because of our surroundings. That our surroundings are exactly in my comfort zone. Maybe it's because even Ceaser, the strongest of them all, listened to me. I know Finnick said to run when they knew I was the one to beat, but wouldn't that be now? No, it's too early.
I find a lightweight, blowup raft in the cornucopia. I hand it to Ceaser to blow up. At first he refuses, but I'm already exhausted of him. "Listen, Ceaser, we need someone to keep watch. Who knows if Piers has a bow and arrows," that shuts him up, but I continue, "Besides, you've got the biggest lungs of all of us, so you should do it anyway." I toss it at him roughly. He sits down with a damaged ego and begins to inflate the raft.
There's more than enough backpacks in here for each of us. Valarie, Mason, Rory, and I rummage through them, finding everything useful. I find a spile in one. I was right. There is water in these trees. I don't announce my discovery because no one else announces theirs. I know that though we're in a pack now, but everyone is looking out for themselves. So I slide the spile into the side pocket of the backpack I'm going to be using.
"Guys," everyone's head turns towards me. "We probably only need two backpacks between all of us. It'll be easier to move with fewer backpacks." Ceaser is the only one that looks not to approve of the idea, but he does so silently and continues blowing up the raft. "Think about it, with two backpacks we can share the burden of carrying everything, but remember only the necessary things. It's tropical here. We won't need tents and sleeping bags and jackets," I look at Valarie and Rory as they slowly take items out of the packs. "We'll need a pack or two of matches per pack, a water bottle for each of us, iodine if there is any, a weapon per person, rope, wire for snares, maybe a few medical things, and non perishable food per pack. That is it."
No one questions me. I sit down next to Mason and fill the same, small pack I was filling earlier. I double check to see if the spile is still there. It is. "Me and you are the only ones carrying this pack, you got me?" I say, barely audible in his ear. He gives me a faint nod as he puts in two water bottles and a vile of iodine.
The water from the trees will be clean. Iodizing saltwater would be a frivolous attempt. Perhaps we come across a river or the gamemakers decide to rid the trees of their water. We need to be prepared without being over-prepared. Ceaser tells us the raft is ready to go.
"Valarie, you put your pack on the back, and I'll put mine on the front. It'll balance out the weight." She nods and does as she's told. It feels strange to have this much power over people. I'm not sure I like it. One by one, we get in the water. I get in the front of the raft and tie the raft to my waist with some rope lying in the cornucopia. I'll head up the raft, Rory and Mason will be swimming on the left of the raft, Ceaser and Valarie on the right.
When I get to the beach, Mason, Valarie, and Rory aren't far behind. We have to wait for a moment for Ceaser to get to the beach. I pull on my pack and stab the raft. I roll it tightly and put it in my pack. We could potentially use it later for protection against rain.
We spend the day traveling through the woods, scanning the area and figuring out what is located in the arena. There are a few fish filled ponds scattered around the arena. When we come across the second one, it is late afternoon. We decide to rest a while. None of us are hungry quite yet because we've all spent the last week gorging ourselves on Capitol food.
The pond we're currently at is covered by a canopy of trees. The previous one had been in the middle of valley. It had been a freshwater pond as well. It will be a popular location later in the Games for tributes desperate for water. I see vines hanging from the limbs. While the others are relaxing, I hand the pack to Mason and head off to cut down some of the vines with my trident to make nets. It makes me think of Finnick's Games. Maybe I'll use them for capturing people later, but for the time-being they will be for catching fish.
Once I've returned with a bundle of vines, I sit beside Mason and begin knotting a net. That's when the canons go off. The gamemakers wait until the afternoon of the first day to recount the number dead in the bloodbath because so many die at once. One turns into two. Two turns into five. Five turns into ten. Then it stops.
Half of those kids died at my hand. I want to cry because of what I've done. I want to shout apologies to the cameras that are watching us so that the parents will know I'm sorry for what I've done.
But I don't because I know that if I do, the Capitol won't show it. I know that the rest of my alliance will see me as weak. So far I seem to be a leader in the group, and no one likes a weak leader. Weak leaders tend to be killed, so I keep knotting silently. In my head, I resign as one of the leaders of the group. Heaven –if there is a paradise after this hell- knows that I'm not cut out for it.
"I say we make camp here for the night. We can catch some fish in the morning, and then go hunting," it's Ceaser that speaks up. I wonder what he means by hunting. He'll have just eaten. Then, I understand. He means tribute hunting. I nearly hurl. I don't want to kill anyone else. I just keep knotting a net. I don't want to meet Ceaser's eyes. They're probably filled with an emotion that I never wish to experience. Desire and thirst to kill.
I prop myself against the trunk of a large tree. My fingers continue making a net while my mind wanders. It wanders back to Four. I can't imagine what my father is thinking right now. I can't imagine what Paige or the Ekkos are thinking right now. I wonder if any of them will want to even be in the same room with me when I get home. I wonder if they'll think of me as a monster. I wonder if it looks like I know what I'm doing because really I have no idea.
I think about Henry mainly. I wonder what he thinks of me now. I denied dating him on national television. It'll be a miracle if he still wants to date me when I get back to Four. I have to get back to Four. I can't die thinking that he hates me. Even if we split up because of these stupid Games, he deserves closure. Not a dead girlfriend.
Night is beginning to fall when I hear a clunk between Mason and me. The parachute was emblazoned with a number 4 and carried a large basket of bread. I guess Finnick approves of me being quiet and knotting nets. There are four rolls from 4, four I recognize from 2, and two that I assume are from 1. The ones from 4 are tinged green. I pull them out for Mason and me. I toss the two from 1 at Ceaser. I pass the basket with the four rolls from 2 over to Valarie to split with Rory.
"Thanks," Ceaser mumbles before he nearly swallows the entire roll.
"Thank you," chorus Rory and Valarie.
I look up, as if Finnick and Mags could see me, and whisper, "Thank you."
Mason and I mutually decide to eat only one of the rolls tonight each and then save the other one for later. We place them at the top of our pack and zip it closed. Soon, the sky will light up with the fallen tributes of today's activity. Ten are dead so far.
A canon frightens me. I look around to see if Mason is still here. He's now clutching my side. Then another. Two more tributes are dead. I'm clutching my trident. I don't know how far away those tributes are from where we are, so I resolve to never letting the trident out of my grasp again. The anthem plays, and we can see the faces of the fallen through a clearing at the top of the canopy.
Gem's face is first. Then Macen and Webb from Three. Both from Five. The girl from Six. The brother and sister from Eight. The boy from Ten. The girl from Eleven. Both from Twelve. The anthem plays again, and is ended with silence.
I killed five of them. Macen and Webb from Three, the boy from Eight, the boy from Ten, and the girl from Eleven. Five are dead by my hand.
The moon lights up the faces of everyone from our alliance.
"We should probably have someone watching out while everyone else sleeps. We can alternate throughout the night," it had been silent too long, so I said something. I've seen far too many alliances, mainly career packs, get attacked in the night and early hours of the morning because they are all sleeping at the same time.
"Now, listen here, Four," Ceaser stands and begins walking towards me. I grip my trident tighter and am ready to throw at any second, "just because-"
"I think it's a great idea," Valarie pipes up from the other side of me.
Rory speaks up next, "I agree. Tons of alliances have been attacked and killed because they're all sleeping through the night. We need to be cautious, Ceaser."
Ceaser tosses his sword into the ground and sits in front of me. Mason keeps attached to my side. Valarie and Rory sit orthogonal to Ceaser and me to form a three-year-old's version of a circle.
"I'll go first," I say. Valarie volunteers to go next. Then Mason, Rory, and a reluctant Ceaser follow. "As a rule, you should keep watch for as long as you can. If you feel like you're about to fall back asleep, get the person next in line. I'll get Valarie, she'll get Mason, he'll get Rory, and he'll get Ceaser. Ceaser, you'll wake up me. Keep to that rotation, and it'll be a fair system."
I tell them all goodnight and give Mason a kiss on top of his head with promises that I'll be back soon. With my trident in my hand and the net over my shoulder, I sit against a tree that gives me optimal view of my surroundings. Everyone is sleeping a few feet away from me. The pond is on the other side of the clearing. The trees that are more densely packed are behind me. The ones that are less are in front.
Everything is quiet and peaceful. I'll figure out if these trees have water in them in the morning before we've eaten. I sit for hours and nearly toss my trident at a lizard that had wandered through the grass because I thought it was another tribute. When I feel my eyes droop and the first yawn reaches my lips, I stand to wake Valarie. As soon as she's on her feet, I'm lying somewhere on the ground among the members of my alliance.
A/N: Once again, I hope you all are enjoying this story. Thank you to everyone who commented, favorite, and followed since the last update.
From now on, I will try to update every Saturday afternoon. This is week two, so let's see how far we can go. I'm currently writing Chapter Eighteen, so get excited because we might be kind of almost done!
If you don't like something about my story, I would love to know what it is. Please leave a review about what you do and don't like about what I'm writing so that I can get better. Thank you and have a splendid day!