+ Thanks once again to the wonderful ArtemisCarolineSnow for the review! And yea, we're not done with seeing exactly what Terra can eat in the arena. Yay! And we take a short detour to District 4 in the second half of this chapter. Also, sorry for the wait…this chapter, yeesh. This chapter gave me issues. Hopefully that will not happen again…
/ / / / /
"Huhck!"
So much for courage. I dry-heaved over the bloody rocks where the boy from District 7's body had rested just a minute ago, before the hovercraft had swooped down and spirited it away from this horrible place. I'd killed him. I. Me.
Gods, I'd killed him.
It'd just seemed so simple. He'd fallen, I'd had a rush of bravery, I'd swung the crowbar at his head, and now…now…now I didn't know what to do. I propped myself up on my blood-stained tool and hobbled towards the still-unopened chest, careful to keep an eye on the snake as I did. Wedging the sharp end of the crowbar into the wooden lid, I jammed down on the tool and laid my weight onto it. The lid gave with a sharp crack! and split open. I slipped back down onto the ground and tossed the crowbar aside. For all of…all of that, the prize had to be worth it.
The Gamesmakers, however, hadn't rewarded me.
When I shoved the lid off to the side, a horde of cockroaches swarmed out of the box. I shrieked and jumped back, skidding on the loose scree and landing on my rear. More bugs streamed out nad littered the ground. Enough! I grabbed the dead boy's backpack and the crowbar and hightailed it up the ridge, scrabbling on unsteady rock in my desperation to get out of the hellish hole. I'd forgotten the flare and abandoned any hope that there was anything beneath the sea of bugs – forget it! I couldn't take it anymore. I stumbled over the lip of the depression, fell to my knees, and cried. I'd killed a stranger for nothing. Nothing! The backpack was empty, and I was no closer to keeping my growing hunger and thirst at bay – not to mention keeping away any roving predators or more aggressive tributes who might take advantage of me.
I wanted to throw the crowbar away. I wanted to bury it deep where nobody would find it, but it was all I had. It was the only useful thing I'd gained from killing some kid whose parents and friends probably were cursing me right now. The horrible, brutish black tool caked in blood was my only lifeline out here.
This was all happening too fast. I slumped down into the loose rock, using the backpack as a pillow as I cried myself to sleep.
Yet despite my hopes, day never came. Night reigned when I woke. The Capitol had taken the sun away from me until I died or won. I'd never even heard the announcement of the daily death count. Either I'd been too tired to wake up for it…or the Gamesmakers were keeping us all in the dark. I leaned over, grabbing my stomach and wincing at a pang of hunger. No telling what time it was, but I guessed I hadn't drank anything in somewhere around a day. I couldn't keep going like this.
My thirst wasn't the hardest-hitting problem besieging me, though. When I looked around the empty expanse of rock, lightning, and darkness all around me, I saw nothing but emptiness. Loneliness filled in the gaps in my mind, festering in the nooks and crannies in my fraying sanity. In however long it had been since I stepped into this place, the one person who I'd really met had communicated with me via death. For all I knew, everyone else I'd meet from now until I ventured off into the great beyond would greet me just the same.
I'd never had many friends, but this kind of loneliness crushed me. The arena's void hollowed out a spot in my heart. As I stumbled to my knees and braced myself on my crowbar, my mind howled at me to lie down. Why get up? screamed the thoughts bubbling out from some dark corner of my brain. You're not fighting for anything or anyone but yourself. Don't keep fighting it. Maybe you're already dead.
I got up anyway.
A torrent of lightning crackled off in the distance, away from the Cornucopia and towards the other side of the depression and what I figured was the edge of the arena. A storm, maybe, or the Gamesmakers telling me they were going to push me back towards the center. As hard as I looked, I couldn't see anyone else out here. As much as I wanted to avoid the others, I couldn't imagine the arena would let me stay alone for long. I didn't want to be surprised again.
First off, however, I had to attend to my rumbling stomach.
The depression tempted me back down its hills, and I slid down the scree with a certain sense of dread. The snake was gone, the flare was long since out, and the body was long gone, but walking back into the pit as a boom of thunder roared overhead shook my nerves. It didn't help when I approached the box. Roaches and beetles still covered the crate, and right now, I had to think more about keeping myself going rather than how disgusted this sight made me.
Oh boy.
You ate a beetle yesterday, Terra. Reminiscing over the goopy, crunchy taste wasn't reassuring. I bit my lip and waved my crowbar at the box, knocking a dozen skittering insects to the ground. Breakfast would consist of a half-dozen spiny locusts nearly the size of my palm, a few dark-shelled beetles, and what I only imagined was a gargantuan stick insect born from some horrible nightmare, its finger-length antennae daring me to shove it down my gullet.
Smack! I pounded the insects into a pulpy, leg-strewn mash with my weapon. Squeezing my eyes shut, I gathered the remains into a goopy, burger-like ball and forced it between my lips. My stomach lurched at the taste of iron and…and guts. I forced myself to keep chewing on the horrible block of bug, gumming away as one of the legs dripped out of my mouth.
"There has got to be something else to eat," I wheezed five minutes later, my hands on my knees and my heart thumping with hammer blows to my chest. Everything tasted like trash. I had no words.
How long passed as I trudged over the blasted landscape, my ears ringing with the sound of thunder? Minutes? Hours? Rock blended into rock as I clambered over boulders and tromped across cracked gray clay. For all I could tell, I might have died already and simply missed it. Maybe the three Lords had damned me to pacing this whole stupid wasteland forever, caught in the infinite nothingness between life and something less.
Exhaustion and thirst bore down on me as the sandpaper wind picked up again. I huddled against a crumbling stone obelisk perched on a hill of loose shale, clutching the dead boy's backpack to my chest and resting my weapon in my lap.
Ping!
I scratched my ear – I was hearing things now in between the artillery shots of thunder. My ear pinged again and I dug a finger into my ear canal. The last thing I needed was to lose my last vestiges of coherence out here.
Ping!
I looked up in anger, but insanity didn't descend on me. The wind blew a shiny silver parachute my way, crackling lightning reflected in its glistening fabric. A thick, bulging bundle covered in white wrapping dangled below from a trio of cords. I leapt to my feet and jumped to catch the bundle, grabbing it with both hands and clawing at the packaging like a crazed animal. It suddenly didn't matter what I looked like to the audience. Someone had given me something! Something, anything to relieve the tedium and doubt swirling around inside me was a godsend.
My spirits jumped as I pulled a fluffy brown blanket from the crinkling wrapping. It sure wasn't cold in the arena, and even though the blanket was a neutral color, it probably wouldn't do much for camouflaging me even if I was in immediate danger. When I pressed the soft cotton to my face and inhaled the sweet smell of lavender, however, I knew what the gift was. Finch and Daud wanted to lift my spirits, and clutching the fleece to my chest stirred a warm little flame in my heart that this bitter arena had extinguished from the moment I'd stepped off my platform at the Cornucopia. Just holding onto something gave me a flicker of hope.
Something inside the rolled-up blanket sloshed. Perplexed, I dug my hand into the fleece and pulled out a steel water bottle, splashing around a liquid inside. So they had given me something practical. I smiled just a bit as I took a sip of water that tasted better than the sweetest wine I'd drank back at the Capitol.
Thank you, guys. Thank you.
I didn't realize sleep taking over until I woke up later, my hands still wrapped around the blanket. My fears snapped back on in an instant and I jammed the parachute, blanket, and water bottle into my backpack. I looked around, hoping no one had snuck up on me as I'd napped.
When I looked down at the wasteland flats stretching out towards the ruined city on the horizon, however, I saw my fear walking towards me amidst a storm of swirling sand and dust.
/ / / / /
Annie Odair always woke up early this time of the year.
It was worse this year. Now she was alone, with her husband Finnick and her son Drake off in the Capitol as victors. The Gamesmakers and rulers had left her alone ever since she'd won in the Hunger Games twenty-six years ago, but that reprieve didn't stop the loneliness she felt – or the nightmares that haunted her every hour. Normally Finnick would be there to help her through those times, to hold her, stroke her hair, and tell her everything would be alright in his arms. In past Games years, Drake would just sit with her when she struggled with her demons. He wouldn't say anything, just sit – but her son being there meant so much to the conflicted woman.
Now she had no one. Annie couldn't bear the darkness, so she woke with the rising sun and went to bed with its retreat behind the horizon of crashing waves.
A squadron of squawking gulls circled in the cloudless skies overhead as Annie shut the thick wooden door of her home in District 4's Victor's Village. A stray cat covered in gangly brown fur scampered away from her creaking front porch into the rotting wood of the abandoned house across the way. No one had ever lived in that thing: For all of District 4's success in the Hunger Games, never had victors filled every one of the Village's houses of peeling white paint and splinter-covered decks.
"No!"
Someone shouted to Annie's left. She swallowed a scream and clamped her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes and kneeling down on her porch. Stop, stop, stop! A head rolled along the ground in her mind, resting at her feet and spurting blood like a fountain from the neck. A pair of glazed sea green eyes pleaded with her.
But when Annie looked up, there was no one there. No one had shouted: Brooke Larsen's beefy pit bull next door woofed at her from the neighboring porch as it chewed on an old, bleached-white whale bone. Annie clutched at her arms. Even though the dog wagged its tail and panted like a happy kid as it pushed the bone from one paw to the other, its size and muscles intimidated her. Maybe Finnick and Drake liked Brooke and her mammoth of a dog, but Annie didn't want anything to do with the fiery victor next door.
Annie hurried away from the Village. She rushed off to nowhere in particular, eager to reach the dock markets that she'd be just as eager to leave later. There was no peace during the Games.
Annie scuffled down the dirt path towards District 4's docks. Sea foam sprayed up in the air along the tall, dark cliffs that overlooked a rocky beach of swirling tide pools, bleached driftwood, and salt-encrusted kelp that had dried out on the rocks overnight. She kicked tiny stones and shells out of her way and stared down at her sandals, tracing her shoes' fraying leather with her eyes. Already a pair of trawlers steamed out into the deep blue bay, en route to the vast ocean to the west and a day of scouring the sea for the district's life blood. The black-and-white striped lighthouse off in the distance called out one long, mournful note as the morning mist faded little by little with the advance of the sun.
It was home to Annie, but without her husband and son, all the little sights and sounds seemed a shade or two darker.
She didn't look up as the road widened and people passed her. Annie knew they looked over their shoulders and whispered things behind her back. Even after twenty-six years, she was still the weird victor. She could talk like a normal person and she could blend in with any of them if she tried – but she couldn't when their eyes probed her up and down and their faces showed their disappointment in her. Some showing you are, she imagined them saying. District 4 is a proud district. We deserve better from our best.
She'd heard their other whispers, too. They weren't the whispers of strange woman, but the ones that wound their way through blood and ours and independent. Finnick had warned her not to listen to what so many of the people down at the docks said, but she couldn't ignore the growing energy that seethed in the district, particularly after the Cannery Pier riot back in February that had led to six bodies – one of them much too small – being sent off to the ocean's depths.
The whispers had only grown since then.
Annie was used to the crowds that gathered on the barnacle-covered docks in the mornings, but something was wrong today. A large group of people clustered in a semicircle around the edge of the nearest pier and ignored the crawling red crabs and dried seaweed leaves that tantalized from the market's storefronts. Some looked in shock, others scowled and talked amongst themselves, and all looked angry. Annie couldn't help herself. She hurried forward, craning her neck to get a glimpse of what everyone was gathered about.
A grizzled man with leathery brown skin and a hook-like scar across his left forearm stopped her a dozen feet away from the growing gathering. "Not the sight for you, miss," he growled. "You got enough to worry 'bout."
Annie slipped out of his grip. "Let me see, Rio," she said, struggling into the crowd.
The man sighed and stepped back as Annie pushed her way past a half-dozen men arguing with one another, their faces contorting with a cross of rage and nervousness and their words loud, angry, and full of swearing. Annie saw something small and bloated on the dock ahead. She pushed to the front of the circle and immediately lurched backwards, covering her ears and trying to drown out the horrible sight.
A girl, probably no more than nine, lay dead on the dock. The ocean had taken its toll: She was missing her left arm, bitten off at the shoulder by a shark or other denizen of the deep. Her skin was puffy and spongy from the water's assault. It'd eaten away at a nasty hole in her throat, just under her chin, as if someone had stabbed her. The fishermen perhaps could have explained it away if not for the message slathered in red paint on the plank above the corpse's head.
UNTO ALL INSURGENTS
Annie couldn't move. She couldn't get the horrid sight of her head, and a rush of memories attacked her mind with the ferocity of a swarm of killer bees. She only just heard the conversation next to her as a man said, "They just found her like this?"
"Someone put her there," another said. Annie recognized it as the older man who had tried to stop her – Rio West, one of the district's most respected boat captains. "Warning, maybe."
"From who?"
"Someone stupid. Someone not thinking very hard about what happens when you kill off little kids," Rio growled. "Almost makes you think that something should be done about it."
Annie shut her eyes tighter. The whispers were growing louder.