The night sky is dark, with heavy clouds casting a grim shade over the burnt sienna sand. A cold breeze passes by, sending a chill throughout my body. The desert heat during the day hasn't been a problem; if there's anything that 9 has prepared me for its warmth. The cold during the night, on the other hand, is a different story. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from shivering. Play to the cameras, Milton. Don't let them see you suffer. Bread and circuses. Our district supplies the bread, and now you supply the circus.
Next to me, Clarabelle rubs her hands over her arms, shrugging and trying to retain a bit of heat. We have a few matches, snagged from the outer edges of the Cornucopia before escaping, but starting a fire when it's this dark is completely out of the question. Not with the roving pack of inner district tributes lurking around, or worse — the mutts. We've encountered giant lizards, snakes, and birds galore, but the real problem has been the scorpions. They're manageable alone, but when drawn together? No, it's much better to brave the cold in the dark.
As we wander the desert looking for food and shelter, a cannon goes off. Later in the night, when the dead tributes are honored, we see a crudely detailed picture of a young girl in the sky. District 6, I think. I remember her in a conductor's hat at the parade. Not a surprise. She only scored a four in training, and I'm mostly surprised she even lasted three days. I have no idea how they scored us, but clearly my rudimentary swordplay and survival skills were at least good enough to get a seven. Clarabelle fared a lot worse, clocking in at a five, but I could tell she had a lot more to offer than the Gamemakers could tell.
We met at the camouflage station. She was in the midst of painting herself into the least convincing bush that I'd ever seen when I nearly stumbled into her, half blind in my poorly attempted disguise as a cactus. We'd laughed our asses off until the instructor had sternly kicked us out. That evening, I found her at the dining hall and made my alliance offer official. Her district partner laughed in my face, but Clarabelle smiled and shook my hand. The joke's on him, he's dead and she's alive.
I made sure to find her right as the Games started — two tributes over from my pedestal — and we ran off into the desert wasteland together. Looking back at it, we probably should've made a better attempt to grab supplies. The small backpack hanging off my shoulders is disappointingly light, and food and water are both scarce. We've been living off of rat meat and cacti water for the better part of the Games. Neither of us wanted to risk the bloodbath though, so here we are. It hasn't been the end of the world, too, as Clarabelle's survival skills have helped us scrounge up enough calories to keep us going.
In the darkness, we hear a deep chittering sound from behind a rock. Scorpions. Clarabelle quickly moves several feet to the left, clutching the self-fashioned bolas that she's been using as a weapon. By this point we've developed a system for dealing with them; one of us distracts them from the front while the other smashes their head in. Just as we've practiced, a dog-sized scorpion comes scurrying out from behind the rock towards me, and Clarabelle smashes it into pieces. We're lucky it was just one. Easy work. For our efforts, we're rewarded with a small sleeve of hardtack . Lehlani, our escort, may be as dumb as a bag of rocks, but even she knows how to farm the sponsorship money every once in a while.
We sit down on a nearby pile of stones to enjoy our meager reward. As we're gnawing on the hardtack, Clarabelle suddenly points to the sky.
"The sun is rising. Is it daytime already?" I look up and see a dark orange sphere peeking out from just over the horizon. The glow is bright, but contains none of the natural warmth that one would expect from daylight.
I know the sun. That's not the sun.
"I think we need to get out of here."
As the glowing blood moon rises, my worst suspicions are confirmed as the chittering returns, then grows louder and louder. I refuse to turn my head back and keep running forwards. Clarabelle leads the way (I secretly think her cardio is much better than she lets on) as we tear through the arena looking for somewhere to hide. A cannon goes off. Minutes after, another does. I'm not sure how many tributes are left, but it can't be very many. The chittering grows louder and louder until I can't ignore us and I steal a glance behind us. About a hundred or so scorpions have swarmed together into a shifting mass, pouring over the desert and consuming everything in their path. The horde grows in numbers every second, and soon the entire horizon is littered with bugs. A cannon fires every few seconds. I've only ever seen a flood once, when I was maybe 5 or 6, and the sight takes me back to it. I remember the way the water tore down everything that had the misfortune of being in its way. One thought immediately imprints itself into my mind.
"We need to find high ground, NOW!" Clarabelle and I sprint past barren sands and ominous caves before we spot a small mountain ahead of us. It's close enough, but we pick up the pace anyways. When we reach the base of the mountain, I notice the pack of tributes from 1, 2, and 4 running up from the other side. They're looking fairly worse for wear and are missing the boy from 1 and the girls from 2 and 4. Across from them, I see a few more stragglers stumbling towards our common goal. One of them, a thin, emaciated looking boy, is too slow and gets swallowed up by the horde of scorpions behind him. The boom sends a ripple down my body and I start running faster.
I'm almost at the top of the mountain, a flat area a few meters wide, when I see that the boy from 2 has beaten me to the punch. The rest of his alliance isn't far behind him and they've been dispatching the rest of the competition with ruthless efficiency. A series of cannons go off, and I understand immediately what it means. We're their next target.
I pull myself up quickly with Clarabelle at my side. The boy from 2 is just finishing off the girl from 7, kicking her down into the rapidly ascending wave of scorpions climbing after us, when we send him tumbling down after her with a scream. The rest of the pack, still gaining their bearings, finally notices us.
"GRANITE!" The girl from 1 screams at the sight of her ally being stung and bitten before his bloated body finally disappears under the wave of bugs. The passion in her voice indicates something more than just friendship, as do the tears swelling in her eyes. She turns to us, snarling, and draws her sword.
"You'll pay for that, lower district scum." Her allies follow suit, pulling out swords and knives galore. Clarabelle and I are in trouble, that's for sure.
She lifts her trusty bolas and I raise my fists. I'm no fighter, but the grain fields have given me a natural strength that most lack. We charge ahead, hoping to gain an advantage through initiative. It doesn't work. I manage to push the girl from 1 down into the waiting pincers below, but separating myself from Clarabelle allows the other two from the pack to split us in half. The boy from 1 grabs Clarabelle's wrists with a learned deftness, while the one from 4 knocks me to the ground and points a sword at my neck.
"Hey fish-boy," the boy from 1 calls, "Why don't we have a little fun with her first?"
While the scorpions keep crawling upwards towards us, I watch helplessly as the boy from 1 runs his knife softly across Clarabelle's skin, not enough to draw blood but just enough to leave a mark.
"MILTON, HELP ME!" She screams loudly, and the boy from 1 chuckles. The boy from 4 adjusts his position, kneeling on my back while pinning both my arms down so I can't move.
"Sorry boy," the boy from 1 says. "You get to wait and watch until this is all over. Then I'll cut your ugly face up too" The knife finally pierces inwards, and I hear my friend's screams cut through the air. I try to break free of Four's grasp, but it's no use. I'm stuck.
The scorpions come closer still.
The next few minutes feel like hours. The boy from one starts cutting into Clarabelle's arm, digging and prodding like he's looking for something buried in her flesh. Her screams grow louder and louder until I'm sure that her vocal cords must have erupted by now. Even the boy holding me has to look away as the boy— no, the serial killer in training from 1 slices and flays her a hundred different ways. I think I'm going to be sick, but the sponsor gifts are raining down upon him, not that he needs any. Clearly, the Capitol approves of the horror show in front of me.
"That's enough, Miracle." The boy from 4 is clenching my arm with an iron grip, and I'm not entirely sure it's just to keep me down anymore. "Finish her off already and we'll get to 9."
"What's that," Miracle teases, "Can't take a little gore?" He finishes carving up Clarabelle, who at this point is barely alive. She's got deep knife wounds streaking across her upper body and is leaking blood like a broken dam. She's missing a few fingers, and she's screamed so much that I don't know if she can even make a sound anymore. I catch her eye and she stares at me with dead, broken eyes. I think she's trying to mouth something, but she's missing several teeth and it's so bloody that I can't tell what she's trying to say.
"I'm just saying, it's a little excessive." The boy from four lifts his hand to gesture in the air. It's a mistake, but he doesn't notice. As the two inner district tributes left squabble with one another, I slowly and carefully reach out my left arm to find something, anything to use as a weapon. I come up empty-handed, finding nothing but dirt.
"Fine, I'll put her down." It seems that their argument has come to an end. The chittering grows louder and louder as Miracle slits Clarabelle's throat in one swift motion. As she hits the ground, her cannon booms. It's just me and her killers now, and my mind is racing, trying to find a way out of the situation. I'm all out of ideas when suddenly it hits me.
I extend my arm out and grab the first scorpion that crawls into my reach. It starts pinching at my hands, and I steel myself as I shove its tail straight into the eye of the boy from 4. He screams in agony, and his eye quickly swells into a deep purple. He doubles over for just a second, but it's enough for the swarm to overwhelm him, and he collapses under a wave of insects. Miracle moves faster, sending two knives spinning through the air at me. I duck fast enough to dodge the first, but the second buries itself deep into my leg.
I let out a guttural war cry as I slowly rise to my feet, clutching the still-squirming scorpion with unsteady fists. I rip the knife out, and blood gushes out. It hurts to stand, hurts to move in general but I force myself to march ahead to where Miracle stands. He must have been panicking when he threw those knives, because he's out of weapons and bracing himself for a physical fight. He's big, but I'm bigger and he knows it.
With the flood pouring in, we charge at each other. He dives for my injured leg, and I respond by stabbing the scorpion's tail into his back, just barely breaking his shirt. Searing pain courses through my body from the wound on my leg, and I'm once again taken down to the ground. Miracle is nowhere near as strong as his ally was, though, and I push my arms free, wrapping them around his neck in a chokehold. I squeeze as hard as I can, and spittle begins to fly out of his mouth as he resists with all the force he can muster. Whatever training he's had is clearly working, because he's holding on to consciousness much longer than anyone reasonably should be able to. Maybe my strength is waning from my injuries, but I keep him locked in a guillotine hold regardless.
While we wrestle on the ground, the flood has finally reached us. The scorpions are just about to climb onto our bodies when Miracle manages to choke out a few words.
"You'll kill us both, idiot. Either you let go or we both die right here." He's right and I know it. Even now, I can feel the claws pinching at my skin. If I released my death grip, I might be able to stumble to my feet and make a break for it. The scorpions would pose a threat, but I'm fast and strong enough to maybe make it out. And Miracle…
Miracle would live too. He'd escape and receive the undoubtedly many sponsor gifts waiting for him. He'd heal, armor up, then come back and kill me tenfold.
And he'd never fucking pay for what he did to Clarabelle.
"Shut up and die, boy" I whisper into his ear. Mustering up the last of my strength, I pull the hold tighter, feeling the air squeeze out of his lungs. The flood washed over us both, and I feel nothing but the sharp claws and stings of a thousand scorpions eating us both alive. I black out.
A cannon goes off, but I'm not awake to hear it.
Author's note: This chapter gave me a lot of trouble, mostly because I had no idea where I wanted to go with it. I think I brought it to a place that I'm comfortable with, so I hope you enjoy it too :)