Chapter 3: The Slaughter
It was around ten in the morning. Hob stood on his pedestal, a light windbreaker on his back, wondering why nobody could have sent a bunch of teenagers into battle with more than t-shirts and sneakers.
Alliance with the Careers. That's gonna save my ass.
Hob laughed aloud at that one. The idea that teaming up with the professional meatheads was going to- ironically but truly- guarantee his safety for the first couple of days.
"Humor can be valuable in difficult situations," Beetee remarked, standing nearby. "But I would suggest staying alive out there."
"I'm going to." Hob looked dead at the tech genius. "I'll see you when I get back."
"I'll stay alive," Hob's counterpart added. "I'll find a way." She sounded at least halfway confident, but only halfway. Hob didn't think she'd last long.
"Yes, yes, good," Beetee agreed. "Staying alive is preferable to the alternatives. Adapt. Change the situation to your favor." He looked to Hob and added, "Make deals. Alliances can carry you a long way."
He knows, Hob thought. Points to you for that, you eccentric old guy. After I interview with Caesar again I'll ask how you figured it out. That'll be a fun conversation.
With a slight jolt the pedestal began to move. Hob stood nice and steady at the center, weaponless but only for now. They had said nothing about what the Arena would be like this year. After seeing "Foxface," the girl from Five, studying all those species of plants, the dark brown soil of the simulated wooded area for practice at building a fire…
Rising up through the tube to the surface, a good four feet across at best, Hob winced as the opening drew near. It was a bright, sunny day out there, or a masterful imitation of one, quite the contrast to the standby/prep room below.
Trees. There were towering oaks everywhere, some pine, beech and maple as well. Eastern Panem trees, most likely. The grassy field around them, the gleaming silver metal of the Cornucopia with its plentiful bounty of weapons and gear strewn around in half-opened crates.
Yes, someone had felt like a forest was a good pick this year. Hob managed a slight smile, pleased that he'd been right. His smile broadened a little more when he spotted a compact silver-and-black crossbow leaned against one of the crates.
Someone had thought of him once again.
Looking around at the twenty-three other pedestals, Hob caught Cato's eye. The de facto leader of the Careers, the strongest and best swordfighter of all this year's Tributes, gave Hob a respectful enough nod. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then the crossbow.
Marvel rolled his eyes at Hob from nearby, but flashed a thumbs-up to the Career pack, looking around to each one of them. Glimmer suppressed a laugh but quickly readied herself for a sprint forward. Clove rolled her eyes and set her sights on a pouch holding a cluster of throwing knives.
Thresh was fierce as ever, his face set grimly. Rue, to his right, looked tinier and more innocent than ever. Hob feared Thresh out of pure common sense. He pitied Rue out of simple decency.
No more time left. Thinking could come later. Hob knew his survival was not yet guaranteed. The Careers would win control of this clearing… but there would still be a fight to win.
Holographic numbers in a fiery gold flashed into life above the Cornucopia.
10…
I wonder who my parents are.
9…
Stop that. You moved on years ago.
8…
I wonder if they're watching.
7…
No. Fuck that. Get your mind right.
6…
If I bleed out, I wonder if they'd give a shit.
5…
The crossbow. Get. The. Crossbow.
4…
Here we go. Not much time left.
3…
The boy from 12. Mellark. I think he actually likes her.
2…
It's you or them, old buddy. You or all of them in the end.
1…
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!
0
GO!
The Tributes sprang off their pedestals as one. Some, like Rue, disappeared almost instantly, maybe giving up on even trying to get anything from the clearing and instead fleeing into the woods.
Cato, Marvel, Glimmer and Clove all surged forward in perfect unison. They hadn't missed any time at the gym and it saved them now; they were the very first to make it into the center of the clearing. And thus they were the first to the weapons.
Hob ran. Pumping his legs furiously, he ignored everyone, everything, but that crossbow. His lungs burned, his legs felt like lead by the time he reached it- but he did reach it.
A flash of curly, sandy-blond hair- Hob grunted and cried out as the boy from Four crashed into him, sending them both to the ground. They were about the same age and the same size, and suddenly Hob felt a stab of terror as he realized that Four was going for the crossbow, and that the crossbow was already loaded.
Keep it! Keep your weapon!
Four shot out one hand, going for Hob's throat. Hob just managed to tuck his chin down toward his neck in time.
Hob twisted and kicked, then threw his head forward to strike Four in the face. The other boy cried out, falling backward, his grip on the crossbow loosening. Hob shoved at him with one hand, and he fell back onto the grass just as Cato came striding over wielding a short-sword. It was already carrying a great deal of blood on it.
"Wait," Four managed to say. "Wait, hey-"
Cato didn't wait. He plunged the sword down into Four's chest, yanked it back out with a flex of one powerful arm, then drove it down again. Then he reached down with his free hand, effortlessly hauling Hob to his feet.
"Shoot her!" Cato barked, pointing as Clove hurled a knife at the girl from Twelve, Katniss Everdeen.
"Okay," Hob answered readily enough. He raised the crossbow, launched a bolt, but incredibly, the bolt stopped dead-center on the backpack Katniss had raised just in time. Clove, meanwhile, shouted in surprise and anger as the knife she'd thrown shot by Katniss Everdeen's head and buried itself in the grass.
"She's just lying there!" Cato shouted, either at Clove, at Hob, or maybe both of them at once.
"Yeah, I got it, I got it!" Hob answered, scrambling to load another bolt. By the time Hob had the crossbow raised again, though, the girl from Twelve had already scrambled to her feet and gone. She was still in sight, sure, but there was no mistaking how rapidly she was fleeing the clearing. It would have been a waste of effort.
"We still got plenty of 'em, Cato," Glimmer commented, sauntering up with a silver bow and a quiver full of arrows.
"Plenty," Marvel agreed cheerfully, raising a bloodied halberd for emphasis.
Hob looked around the clearing. At least half the Tributes had died in less than a minute. Bodies clad in those cheap dumb windbreakers lay everywhere. The boy from Four had managed to curl up before he'd died. He was that much smaller in death.
"We won," Hob almost croaked, hastily looking away. There were so many dead. Inside the mouth of the Cornucopia there was Jason, the boy from Six. Cato had probably gotten him first, like he'd promised to during training.
"Yeah, we did, Three," Cato agreed. "And now it's time to get to work."
"You doubting what I told you?" Hob challenged.
"I'm telling you, those mines better be back on soon," Cato warned. "You lied to me, I'll add your body to the others."
"If he can't do it, we could always let him run," Clove suggested with a shrug. "I'll still put a knife in his back."
"As long as you don't miss," Glimmer retorted.
"I never miss," Clove hissed. "That was- just now? I never missed before. I won't miss again." She stomped over to look for the knife, but within a couple of minutes sighed in exasperation, giving it up as a lost cause. She had plenty, she announced. It didn't matter.
"I want the mines around all the good stuff," Cato pronounced. "Take a bunch of 'em and set 'em up once we pile everything in one place. Way easier to guard that way."
"How far away do you want the mines from all the gear?" Hob asked.
"I dunno," Cato shrugged, gesturing toward the Cornucopia. "Put 'em right next to it all. Then nobody can get to it."
"And neither will we!" Hob countered, annoyed and unable to help it. It was hot out here, he felt like he'd just run a thousand yards, and he was being given the dumbest ideas he'd ever heard of.
"What?" Cato asked, his eyebrows going up. He clearly couldn't believe he was being talked to like this at all, especially by someone from one of the 'regular' Districts.
"These are contact mines. You place them too close to each other, they'll all go off the second one of them does. You place them too close to the gear, we lose the gear."
"You better watch yourself," Cato countered heatedly. "Nobody said you get to live."
Apart from some bugs making noise from a cluster of the trees, the clearing was silent. Hob knew he was on dangerous ground just after the bloodbath. Cato and the others had just gotten to kill the way they'd been taught to for who knew how long and their tempers were up. Hob's life was cheap right now. Real cheap.
All you needed to do in such a moment was remind your customers that you were valuable.
"Wouldn't you all like to see Thresh get his leg blown off?" Hob asked rhetorically. "I can make it happen. Without setting off all the mines at once."
Cato laughed, but he lowered his sword. "I can take Thresh."
"Be a real shame if he stepped on a mine way out there in the forest, though," Hob observed. "Or if he stepped on some grass trying to raid us and gets blown into space."
"Okay, fine," Marvel said. "We've got gear to move here. You need to dig up those mines. So let's hurry this up. What do you need from us?"
ΩΩΩΩΩ
The sun beat down relentlessly over the next few hours. Hob's left arm ached from where they'd stuck in the tracker. He wanted it gone, but cutting it out without extensive medical support and expertise would kill him. So he lived with it.
What Hob didn't live with was the windbreaker. He pulled his off, then his shirt, working feverishly to get one mine after another out of the ground. Marvel, also starting to melt from the heat, copied him and helped with lifting the mines.
Cato came over and threw a shovel at the two boys, then went back to patrolling the clearing with his newly-acquired longsword. He gave the two shirtless male Tributes a curious look, then shrugged and went along with it. The look was uniform now, and while they pretended they didn't care, it was obvious enough that Glimmer and Clove were enjoying the show.
There was no mistaking how much stronger and more fit Cato and Marvel were. They looked like living statues of an ideal teenage guy's physique. Hob was lean and mean, had a lifetime of experience running from the cops before he'd gotten to making deals with them, but he'd never gotten the food and facilities these two had. The time and guidance for superior training.
He would, though, if he only lived.
It took some time for Hob to find a good enough excuse to be working right next to where Clove had thrown the knife, but when selecting the placement of the mines closer to the Cornucopia, he just happened to pick a spot for one six inches away from where he'd seen the blade land.
Under the guise of briefly pausing amid his work, Hob leaned back and felt around with one hand. After a minute or so, he felt the handle. He slipped the deadly little knife into his right cargo pocket. You never knew when it might come in handy later.
"I'm tired of this, man," Marvel complained, somewhere into what had to be their third hour of work on moving gear and mines.
"That's too damn bad!" Hob and Cato fired back at the same time.
"Well, excuse me," Marvel grumbled sarcastically.
"Lookit 'em," Clove laughed, enjoying Cato's baffled expression. "They're so cute."
"You know it," Hob answered smartly, standing to give Clove and Glimmer a bow.
"Have we got enough of these out here or what?" Marvel asked in exasperation.
"Almost," Hob breathed, hefting the latest one. Marvel grasped the opposite side, and together they lowered it into the hole they'd dug. This one was practically past the treeline into the forest, and when Hob laid the grass back on top of it, he felt real pride in his work.
It was almost like nothing was there. Nothing but some grass and some soil.
"Okay," Hob sighed. "Finally. That's the last one. We've got enough dug in around here. Pathways in and out. And plenty of extras we can set down as replacements or leave out there in the forest as 'presents'."
"Well, why'd you have us make those mounds for?" Marvel asked, pointing at the various heaps of dirt. Looking just like how an amateur would have set mines back in the ground, they were visible a mile off.
"Decoys," Hob explained as Cato, Glimmer and Clove walked over.
Three of the nine lumps strewn around the clearing did in fact have mines in them; you had to have some cards behind a bluff, after all.
But the real threat was almost impossible to see now. So much hard work, but the Career pack had done it. They'd made this clearing absolutely lethal to enter if you didn't know the paths Hob had left.
It took a while to go over the details, but the stars of One and Two listened attentively as Hob explained the decoys, the real ones, the extra mines kept deactivated, and the paths in and out. No two mines were close enough together for one exploding to be able to set another off. All of them were arranged to offer maximum coverage of the clearing.
Someone was going to die because of this. It was only a matter of time. Of course, word would get out one way or another. But it would take down another competitor, maybe two or three if they got really lucky.
And Hob had proven his usefulness at last.
Not even just with the mines or the crossbow he now kept slung over his shoulder. He spoke with such confidence about tactics- what he did know and understand, anyway- that the others couldn't help but listen.
"Well, what do we do now?" Marvel asked finally.
"Nothing," Cato announced cheerfully.
"Oh, great," Marvel sighed, dropping down on his back right there.
"Sounds fine to me," Glimmer agreed.
"Not like anyone still alive is gonna bother us, anyway," Clove remarked.
The other surviving Tributes had all fled for now. No one would be trying a return to the clearing anytime soon. Hob lay down on the grass, too, but kept opening his eyes every few minutes, scanning everything in his field of vision. He was willing to relax some, but not completely. He hadn't lived this long by getting complacent.
No, Hob considered, thinking of the knife he'd retrieved from the grass. Complacency didn't help me at all. He looked around at the Careers, all of them laying there as relaxed as you please.
But theirs might.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
Afternoon gave way to early evening, and with their control over the clearing uncontested, the Careers took their time building a fire. Cato and Marvel seemed to have gotten quite a kick out of going bare-chested for a while, and Hob didn't mind the handful of appreciative glances he got from Clove and Glimmer, but the night was going to be cold. By the time the sun started to dip below the trees, all three boys had their shirts and windbreakers back on.
Hob argued for regular patrols for night and day, but all the Careers wanted to do with night coming was banter about who was going to get who out there. Hob had counted eleven bodies when the hovercraft came and took them during the afternoon. Five were in the Career alliance. That left eight still out there somewhere.
"It's our best strategy," Cato insisted. "We go out there, we hunt a couple of them down. Then tomorrow we do it again."
"We can also just wait here," Hob countered. "We don't have to do anything. We have all the food, all the supplies, all the gear. What're they gonna do?"
"We still have all that if we stay or if we go," Clove answered him.
"And there's no fun in it if we spend the Games sitting around," Marvel added.
"It's okay," Glimmer snickered. "He's District, he doesn't get it."
Hob swung a basilisk-like gaze on her, but before he could speak, the anthem of Panem boomed out from somewhere- probably multiple somewheres- in the Arena. The emblem of the Capitol (and thus of Panem) blazed in white in the night sky that may or may not have been real.
As the notes of "The Horn of Plenty" sounded, the face and district number of each fallen Tribute was displayed, one after another. There were so many from the first day that the anthem was almost finished when the last image was shown.
Of course, the girl from Three was among the dead. Run down and killed by one of the Careers. Hob didn't enjoy having been right about her, but he had been. It would have served no purpose to get to know her, or even her name. He would have only formed a connection to someone doomed to die.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
With the anthem over, Cato turned to the rest of the pack. "All right. Let's go. We've got all night. I want another body before dawn."
Hob personally had no desire to do that, but he knew he'd just be overruled if he tried to argue now. These four were only a few years older than Hob, yet they genuinely felt more like hunting for the other surviving kids out there than anything else.
You gotta wonder how they got like that, Hob considered, following along as they started to move out. I wonder what they even teach them at those fancy academies One and Two have.
The five were reaching the edge of the woods when an older boy's voice called out to them.
"Hey! Hey, you guys! Wait! Hey!"
The pack turned as one to the right, Clove raising one of her daggers, Cato raising his sword, Marvel a javelin and Glimmer her bow. Hob swept left to right with his crossbow, searching for a target.
"Who is that?" Clove asked impatiently.
"No idea," Marvel answered.
"I just wanna talk to you!" the boy called from the dark.
"Why's he even talking to us?" Cato demanded.
"Who cares?" Glimmer countered. "Let's just kill him."
"It's that boy from Twelve," Hob said abruptly as he placed the voice.
"Oh, good, Lover-Boy," Clove responded sarcastically.
"Yeah," Hob added, in full agreement with the deadly girl from Two for once. "Just what we need."
"Come on out, baker's boy!" Cato half-shouted. "Come on, we won't shoot!"
"Not yet we won't," Clove added quietly with a nasty snicker. Marvel and Glimmer laughed.
Sounds in the brush, movement off to the right. Hob swung the crossbow over. If he had to shoot right now, he could take a rough guess at Peeta Mellark's location, but a rough guess only.
Peeta Mellark. Hob hated knowing their names.
"That's close enough," Hob barked as the broad-shouldered boy from Twelve finally came clearly into view.
"I just wanna talk."
"So you keep saying," Clove answered. "What do you want?"
"I wanna make a deal with you guys."
"What kind of a deal?" Marvel asked.
"A deal, deal! I help you find the girl from my District. We can be allies."
Cato gestured at the pack arrayed around him. "I have plenty of allies."
Hob realized, then, that he had to look like another one of Cato's gang right now. Shining, silver-and-black weapon, backpack with plenty of food and water for a 'hunting' trip, and the calm, assured demeanor of someone who had all their needs met in a place where life was cheap.
Shit. Maybe I am one of his henchmen. For now.
"You guys don't know these woods like I do. It's just like this back in Twelve. I know the kind of places Kantiss'll go. I can lead you right to her."
"You're the one that was pouring your heart out on television," Hob reminded him.
"That was just an act," Peeta answered with a laugh. "It's all about getting sponsors. Like you with that routine. The Gentleman?"
"I know what they called me," Hob retorted.
"So let's say you lead us to her," Cato began reflectively. "Then what? What're you gonna do for us then?"
"I'll still help you. You know I can lift and carry things. I can fight."
"You're not gonna really lead us to her," Hob told him. "You're gonna lead us all over the Arena for days because you can't stand the thought of anyone hurting your girl." His voice turned mocking. "Being around her's your weakness, Peeta. Just a minute with her. I know you need it."
"I told you, that was all just an act," Peeta insisted. "It's gotta be convincing or the sponsors aren't gonna buy it. Lemme help you guys."
"Uh-huh," Cato said with a nod, prodding at the grass with his sword as he slowly circled Peeta. "Well, y'know, the thing is-"
Cato brought the sword up with blinding speed, drove it into Peeta Mellark's back. The baker's son managed a pained gasp, but nothing else. Even in the dark you could see his eyes gaping wide, hands pawing uselessly at the sword now a full three inches out of his chest.
"The thing is," Cato continued, "We don't need you. We already have what we need." He yanked the sword back out, and Peeta Mellark collapsed to the ground.
"Nice one, Cato," Glimmer laughed as the cannon sounded.
"Maybe he really was lying. And our 'genius' mine-layer already locked down all the food and supplies for us," Cato said with a shrug. "Not like we needed any more help. We're gonna win."
"I'm gonna win," Clove corrected him.
"We'll just see about that," Marvel interjected.
"My, so eager," Glimmer remarked airily. "Doesn't anyone else see that fire somebody started over there?"
Hob turned, looked. Sure enough, there was a decent-sized fire going maybe a few hundred meters distant. No bonfire, but clear as day all the same. Whoever had started that had just ended their short time in the Games.
"That's another for me," Marvel exclaimed, eagerly starting forward.
"No, no, wait- hang on," Cato said. "Glimmer. When we get there- all yours."
"Unless they try to run," Clove amended. "Then it's free game."
Hob ambled along, trying to keep up with the others, trying not to crash clumsily through every inch of brush, trying not to trip, trying not to puke. He'd lived through the bloodbath at the clearing today. He'd watched Tribute after Tribute die.
It didn't sit right. He got this greasy, unstable feeling in his stomach. The strained, desperate grunts from the boy from District 4 as he and Hob fought over the crossbow. The spray of blood as Thresh had cut down the boy from Seven. That shocked, gaping look from Peeta Mellark when Cato ran him through.
And the high-pitched scream of the shivering, terrified girl from District 8 when she looked around and saw the five well-armed Tributes of the Career pack standing behind her her.
At least she didn't scream for long. Glimmer stood back up with a bloody knife in hand, the cannon's sound rocked the night sky once more, and Hob counted backwards from nine, reminding himself, over and over again, that it was better to be one of those nine, better to be alive than dead.
Better them than me.
A/N: 28 May 2024. Worked on this chapter over the course of some months, but wrote the majority of it in the last couple of days. Integrating a relatively minor character from the 1992 movie RoboCop 2 into the world of the Hunger Games is tricky to do right, but with assistance from AM83220, I believe that's gone well so far.
Half or around half of the Tributes typically died in the first day of the Games for the entire run they had, and the 74th Games were no different. Hob's presence mainly just makes the Careers, and specifically Cato, even more confident in their odds thus far. Enough so that they don't see any real need for Peeta, who in the book and the film canon did manage to make a deal with the Careers. Precisely what he said to convince them is unknown, but he must have persuaded them that his professed crush on Katniss wasn't real, and that he could and would lead the Careers to her. I came up with some dialogue based on that.
Hob has been highly influential on the Career pack so far, transforming their approach in securing the clearing and the Cornucopia, but of course he doesn't get proper credit for that. He's being treated more like a useful minion. Helpful, even valuable in a way, but a minion nonetheless.
The line "A deal, deal!" comes from the 1970 movie Kelly's Heroes.
The line "I know you need it" is from Hob himself, in the one and only canon work where his character appears, the 1992 film RoboCop 2.
The line "I'm tired of this!" and "Well, excuse me" both come from the 2003 film Holes, adapted from the 1998 book of the same name by Louis Sachar.
Reviews and feedback are welcome and appreciated.