Ab Extra, Salus {Part 2 | Chapters 10-12}
Part Two: The Fighter
Chapter Ten
I returned to the tunnel where I had spent the night, purified my water, and drank until I didn’t have that nagging need to swallow against dryness. A slab placed in the tunnel provided me with a marginally sheltered place to sit, and the lay of the land was such that I could see a reasonable distance, including two or three roads and a handful of destroyed houses.
Eleven dead. That meant that we were half way there, but it was barely creeping into the afternoon of the second day. The Games rarely went this quickly; there was no fun in it, I supposed, having the violence and death be over so fast. Although the Bloodbath could sometimes take even more than half of the tributes, the fact that the deaths had continued over the rest of the day and into the second was more food for thought.
Of course, there was Kidagakash and her pack as well. I could hardly even call them a pack - a deformed boy, a thirteen year old girl, a boy who seemed intelligent but no fighter and... well, I supposed that Esmeralda at least had some potential, though I had not watched her too closely during our training days.
I crossed my legs and tucked my pack between them to examine the contents all over again. The fact that the water remained in the culvert was a good sign, as long as I made sure to thoroughly purify it before drinking. As for food, I had jerky, dried fruit, dense flatbreads and energy bars, as well as caffeine tablets in case I needed an extra boost. And, of course, the roll from Four that I did not understand. I was down to the clothes that I had, having burnt the lightweight ones and left my jacket by the fire whilst making my escape. I could always sneak back and see if I could retrieve it, but I preferred my current one anyway. My knives, eleven arrows, and the staff now sitting beside me made up my armoury. I didn’t understand half of the contents of my medical kit - creams, gels and shaped pads, alongside the more normal plasters and bandages. So far, mercifully, I had not had any need for them.
Tired, I allowed myself to rest for the afternoon, sneaking a little further down into the pipe and out of sight, and drifting in and out of sleep with one ear still open. The hours passed easily, and though I shuffled occasionally to find a more comfortable position, I concentrated more on getting some rest and allowing the rest of the tributes to handle themselves for a while. Let the cameras drift away from me.
I wasn’t sure whether or not to be surprised when no more cannons went off.
As evening fell and the anthem sounded, I crawled out of the tunnel again and stretched my legs and shoulders. Maleficent’s face was the first to appear in the sky tonight, followed by the boy from Three - Buzz - the two from Ten - Woody and Jessie - and the girl from Eleven, Rapunzel, who I had ended up finishing off. Then the Capitol seal came up again, and the anthem played a second time.
I considered returning to sleep, but felt too restless. With no sounds for most of the afternoon - and no sign of anyone, even from my spot - I was still curious about what the Careers might be doing, and where Kidagakash and her group could have gone.
Once again, I made my way to the edge of the houses that edged the culvert, letting my night vision get good enough to pick out the rocks that marked my path, slight variations in the ground. This time, the sky was cloudless, strewn with stars and with a half-moon to provide some light. The world glowed silver and grey around me. Unlike what I had imagined, and unlike what the televisions showed every year, the Arena was quiet. Quiet enough to hear the crunching gravel beneath my feet, the distant sound of water in the culvert.
It was eerie, but more than anything else I noticed what I could not here. There was no wind cutting between buildings, no sound of animals, not even the sound of other tributes moving around. Picking my way carefully, I could be quiet for most of the time, only occasionally giving enough sound to a footstep that it might have given me away.
Slowly, the night wore on. I followed the line of the houses along the culvert, stopping for a while to examine an area of disturbed water which might be due to a tunnel cutting across the culvert, or a large pile of rubble underneath the surface. It did not keep me for long, however, and I kept going again. There was a remarkable monotony to the path, looping around at a constant, gentle angle, and before too long I could see the looming silhouette of the stadium.
It was starting to get light again as I stopped, leaning on a wall and looking at the stadium pensively. I had probably been right in my earlier calculations; if the Arena was roughly circular, then it was about three hours across, nine or ten in circumference. Most Arenas were considerably larger, would take days to move around - or to be found in. Perhaps it was meant to force us together and make it difficult for us to avoid each other. The smaller the groups that formed, the more likely it became that you would walk into an enemy.
The Careers, Kida's group, myself, and up to four other people. I wasn’t yet sure what to make of those odds.
The explosion had been tremendous, but we had not waited to see what the result had been. As the sun rose over the Arena, turning the pretty silver of the night to dusty bone-grey, I made my way up towards the stadium. It wasn’t a steep hill, but I did feel increasingly exposed as I climbed it, and paused frequently to glance over my shoulder for movement or the flash of non-rusted metal.
The stadium had once been an oval, probably used for various sporting events. Both long sides had collapsed - or perhaps been collapsed - in the middle, but the curved ends had some damage on them as well, making the shape ragged. Old doorways stood open at the base as black rectangles, some with rubble or twisted metal partially blocking them, some yawning clear.
I prepped myself with my knife and flashlight and walked up to one of the doorways, staying to the side. They would make a perfect hiding place, if anyone had returned to them after the explosion had settled. Crouching down, I turned sharply, scanning with the light, but no figures appeared in the corridor.
Good. With measured steps, I walked down it, checking corners and scanning the walls for anywhere that might have been broken. I double-checked each step, making sure that there was nothing uneven about the stones, no wires or ropes spread across to form a trap, and the ceiling as well. There were a hundred ways to lay a trap, and those were only the ones that I knew of.
At the end, the corridor split into two, each half turning round into steps to lead up to the seating. I chose left, and went up, treating the steps the same way that I had treated the corridor until I started to see daylight above me, the stadium opening out.
I clicked the flashlight off, crouching down to gain some cover from the concrete around me. The early morning sunlight was bright, but not glaring, and let me check that block after block of seating was clear as I moved slowly upwards into the stands.
No sign of anybody. I found one of the plastic chairs that seemed to have survived relatively intact, opened and closed it a couple of times to check that it wasn’t too brittle, and sat down. It creaked, but held.
I wondered what the name of this city had been. There must have been a city, once upon a time, although I had yet to see anything beyond the culvert. How many people had lived here, what sport or sports this stadium had been for. Most of the games that had existed before the Dark Days had been forgotten by now, relegated to sections in obscure history books or stories for children that talked about the strange ways our people used to have. A few of them had survived, notably ‘boxing’, which had been built into our fighting training, and more basic ones like running and swimming.
But team sports, they were long gone, the stuff of our grandparents' stories. Football, soccer, hockey, basketball. Doubtless the Capitol didn’t want us to know how to make teams. We barely knew how to make alliances in the Arena, although that was probably rather different seeing as soccer games had never ended with most of the players dead.
About the same number of people, though. Maybe the Gamemakers would have found the comparison amusing.
I sipped water and watched the sun rise, slowly spilling light into the centre of the stadium. Between the damage done by the explosives and my raised position, it was almost unrecognisable as the place where we had started. The Cornucopia had fallen, twisted and buckled by the blasts, now a crooked golden shape across the ground. A dusty oval of dry ground, which might have once been grass, seemed to form the centre of the stadium. The outer edges of it were undisturbed, but the centre had fallen away, forming a crater of jagged rocks and metal that had to be ten metres across and had doubtless swallowed up the supplies that Kidagakash had not deemed necessary or desirable. One end had blackened, charred remains which suggested the fire that had burnt there.
I put my feet on the back of the seat in front of me - there was, after all, no-one to complain - and sipped water as I contemplated a possible plan for the last few days.
From what I had seen, there were four people in the Career pack. They were armed, and had clearly survived this long, but they could not have had much in the way of supplies. If the five people who I suspected they had killed had been carrying food and water, that might have provided them with some, but they would surely run out before too long. Most of the tributes had grabbed a bag or two and run, and there would not be much food among that. For food, I gave them forty-eight hours’ worth at the most. If they had iodine, they would be fine for water.
Kidagakash’s pack was a different story. They were armed, and had three or four days’ food each, as well as medical supplies far better than mine. Between her training and the intelligence which I had seen one of her companions, Milo, display, I had no doubt that they would not be easily trapped. They could easily roam the Arena, staying out of the way of the others and staying alive.
Three others. I remembered seeing Hercules the previous day, but could not remember who the other two were. He had definitely been working alone, and armed, but I did not know anything else about them. They were wildcards, non-Careers, and might have been following their own tactics or no tactics at all.
And me. I hoped I could keep things flexible enough to not have my moves predicted by the others, but I wasn’t too sure. How much like a Career was I acting?
I took out the loaf of bread from District Four again, turning it over in my hands. I’d eaten it before, some years ago. My father had a liking for it, the way that the salt and seaweed made it taste, but I hadn’t much liked it at the time. Figuring that a few years made a big difference to the taste buds, I started to tear pieces off and eat it, impressed that it wasn’t already starting to go stale. It definitely tasted better than I remembered.
I popped a caffeine tablet mid-morning to keep myself awake, drank another litre of so of water, and around midday trotted down the stadium steps to get a closer look at the damage to the centre of the stadium.
From a distance, it had looked bad. Up close, it was almost terrifying. Chunks of rock, from powder up to boulders larger than I was, lay in heaps that trailed down into a slithering slope into the crater. It was at least fifteen feet deep, and felt distinctly unstable beneath my feet as I ventured a short way down. Thinking better of it, I retreated again, and frowned down into the mess. There were twisted lumps of metal that might have originally been weapons, jagged shards of wood and melted pieces of plastic. I couldn’t see anything that might be of use after it had been so thoroughly destroyed. Before I set off a stray mine or got myself killed in some equally stupid way, I backtracked out of the playing field and into the seats, this time settling into one of the players’ boxes and scraping a corner clean before lying my jacket on it and sitting down.
I considered it likely that, one way or another, some of the tributes would come back here in search of supplies. There were seven people who did not know how bad the explosions had been and, if they had not been back already, they probably would be before too long.
Chapter Eleven
The sky began to darken only a few hours later. I frowned; this was far too early for night to be setting in. Leaning out from my shelter, I saw dark clouds gathering in the sky and heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Rain. Despite myself, I frowned at the sight, irritated that water supplies would be going to those who hadn’t otherwise managed to get them. I supposed that it was boring for the Capitol to watch people starve to death, rather than actually fighting.
A few years before, they had tried maintaining permanent channels on each of the tributes as well as the Capitol-decided primary one, allowing people to follow whatever tribute they most liked the look of. The behaviour of some of the tributes, however, had been unacceptable to the Gamemakers, and some of the screens had gone black from time to time. As far as I knew, they weren’t doing the same this year. Part of me wished that I did, just so that my family wouldn’t be having to watch other tributes and wonder what I was doing.
Before long, the sky was so dark that it might as well have been night, though the thunder remained a distant threat and no rain was forthcoming. I settled down comfortably, ate another of the flatbreads and some jerky for protein, and continued to watch time tick away.
My thoughts were fragmented, not clear enough to get anything together. They jumped from past to present to future and back again: my family, the state I was currently in, the great gamble I had made in coming here. Really, there was no way that I could succeed. I felt a painful heat behind my eyes, and cursed myself for even thinking of crying.
The anthem sounded, and I looked up automatically, like a dog searching for food. The seal was traced clearly on the dark clouds, looking if anything brighter than usual against them. Afterwards, though, no faces followed. For the first day since the start of the Games, there had been no deaths.
It wasn’t that unusual. After a busy few days, the deaths tended to settle down as the tributes turned to survival rather than killing. Defence and offence; I could remember our trainers back in District One talking about them as if they were two completely different sets of tactics. Even at the time, I hadn’t been so sure that they really were. After all, didn’t you win by staying alive?
For possibly the first time since the Games had begun, I started to wish for an alliance. Or, at least, an ally. Someone to talk to, rather than sitting in this oppressive silence waiting for something to happen. In training, of course, we were told to not trust anyone, that any alliances that we made would only be temporary. But on the screens, I had always seen the Gamemakers show conversations between allied tributes, especially non-Careers. Touching scenes. Character moments. Apparently the Capitol wanted to get to know people before they died.
Tiny cameras all over the Arena would be recording us all, the thirteen people that were left. Were some of them talking to each other? Or were they sitting in similarly oppressive silence? Even with the caffeine fading from my veins, I struggled to get any sleep as the night wore on.
When I awoke, it was still dark, but the growing heat still made me think that it was supposed to be daytime. The air seemed to have grown thicker, hot and humid in a way that made me feel as if I was sweating before I had even moved. My clothes stuck to my skin, and I realised that I had not cleaned them in the entire time that I had been here. I could not risk stripping to bathe, though, even if I felt safe enough to do so.
My dried fruit would probably not last much longer, so I ate most of what was left and followed it with another flatbread. I had two left, a handful of strips of beef jerky, and my energy bars. Food for perhaps two days, if I rationed it properly.
I ventured out of the back of the stadium and made my way down to the water in the culvert. It seemed to have gone down since the previous day, to judge by the dark line around the edge, but not by more than ten or twelve centimetres. For extra safety, I filtered the water through a layer of gauze from my medical kit into the bottle before adding the iodine. It took off a layer of mud and bits of leaves, and I made a mental note to do it again even if I had been lucky enough, so far, to not fall ill.
I had spent time learning how to hunt, but that was no option in an Arena that did not even seem to have rats or insects. At least the others would be in the same state. I doubted that anything could live in the water in the culvert, short of mutts from the Capitol. I was six years old in the year that Grimhilde, one of the tributes from Two, started to cannibalise the bodies of her opponents after she killed them; I remembered hiding behind my father’s arm as she did so, larger-than-life on the television screen. As far as I knew, it had never happened before, and it had certainly not happened since.
Thinking too much about food made me hungry, and I tried to tear my thoughts elsewhere. All over again, I thought wistfully of having an ally, just for someone to talk to.
Of course, I didn’t have to sit in silence. I cocked my head to one side thoughtfully as I wandered back to the stadium, then took a seat and settled my bag beside me, setting my elbows on my knees. There might not be other people around, but there were certainly cameras.
“So, the 74th Hunger Games,” I said to mid-air. It felt strange, and perhaps the Gamemakers would be wondering whether I was going mad. Part of me did myself. I tried to think of it as an interview, but one in which I was making up the questions as I went along. “It’s certainly an honour to be involved.”
That had been the word, all the way through. Honour. My father had acted honourably, and now it was an honour for me to take part. If I won, I would bring still more honour on my family. The irony of the word twisted on my lips after I said it, and I found myself smiling, but probably not for the reason that the Gamemakers would be thinking.
“So far, it’s been a whirlwind,” I said quietly. “I grew up in the Victor’s Village, among the children of other victors. Even last year, one of us volunteered at the reaping.” For a moment, my throat tightened warningly. My dear friend Khan, son of the female victor of the 54th Hunger Games, had never come home. “We all know what the Games are. How terrible and glorious they can be. But it’s still strange to be here, in this Arena with so few other people and yet all of you.”
The Capitol. Laid out before me, although I couldn’t see it. Of course, it was possible that their attention was elsewhere, that some other tribute was being more interesting than I was. But it was dark and quiet, and I might still have been the one that they had the attention on.
“Many of you know that my father, Fa Zhou, won the Quarter Quell. The 50th Hunger Games. And now, twenty-four years later, here I am. His son, in the 74th Games. There are thirteen of us remaining, but let me say this: I want to win.”
I had to draw a deep breath on admitting it.
“Someone once said to me that some tributes go into the Arena to survive, and some go in to win. And I want to win. I want to go home to my family in honour, to do what has not been done in a generation and be a victor, child of a victor.
“I always knew that I might be in the Games.” My voice softened. “I always knew that I might have this... opportunity. I did not expect it to be this early, though. I had thought that I might volunteer when I reached eighteen, for the honour and for the sake of the younger tribute who might be called.
“I... my family means everything to me.” For this first time, my voice cracked, and I allowed it to. Possibly for the first time since these Games had started, I was telling the truth. “I can’t imagine being without them, or hurting them... or disappointing them. I couldn’t bear to disappoint them.”
My voice almost faded away, and I felt tears in my eyes but forced them back. For one moment, I looked down to my hands, then back up again to where I imagined the cameras would be.
“Baba, this is for you. I’ll be coming back soon.”
I sat for a moment longer, looking into the distance, then gathered myself and got to my feet. I was shaking, far more so than I had during my interview with Snow White. That had felt like a game, as if I was an actor in a play, and this had not. With my invisible audience and my Games-dirty state, I still hoped that they would show the message. And that my father would see it.
I milled back and forth around the stadium, walking all the way around the central court, going up and down the stairs and checking how many were still intact and passable. Once or twice, I thought that I heard creaking in the metal roof, far above, but when I looked up there was nothing. Metal settling, perhaps, or just part of my imagination. I ate two energy bars, but even so I was starting to feel weaker by the late afternoon, tiring.
Night fell again, still barely darker than day, and for the second day there were no faces in the sky. The previous day it had not seemed so strange, but this time I frowned, even as I took my staff from my pack and swung it, experimentally, just checking that my muscles still remembered the fluid movements. A short practice, and then I selected a new place to sleep, higher up in the stands and hidden among the seats. Waiting for the waiting to finish.
When I next awoke, it was still dark. Once again, I decided it had to be morning by the mere fact that I was awake, and got up stiffly to survey the gloomy sight of day four. I drank over a litre of water, and ate the last flatbreads, but I was still feeling woozy as well as agitated. Two days with no fighting, but also with minimal food, was starting to wear on me.
I wandered down to the crater again, this time poking around to see if anything had survived the blast. A couple of knives still looked usable, so I removed them, and a metal cooking pot, although buckled, was at least recognisable. It must have held a good three or four litres, so I took it down to the river, filtered water into it, and headed back into the shelter of the stadium.
Even washing my face felt like a luxury. I could see the water becoming grimier as I did so, but it still seemed usable, and I tried to keep as much as I could in the bowl. My face felt shiny and the air surprisingly cool against it as I wiped away the water again. I did not bother washing my hair, but tried to comb it out with my fingers before putting it back into its usual tight bun.
My hands went next. I used my knife to trim my nails short again - despite my mother’s coaxing, I had always kept them as short as Ping ever had - and carefully scrubbed off as much of the dirt as I could. Shrugging off my jacket, I continued up my arms to above my elbows, letting the water evaporate off my skin and raise goosebumps in its wake. After some consideration, I also removed my shoes and socks, sighing at how good it felt to have air on my feet. Although I’d loosened my boots at night, I had not fully removed them in case I needed to fight, or to run, at short notice.
It was so strange, how just four days could make such a difference. Of course, there were some for who the difference had been final, but I thought again about my father’s words. ‘The Hunger Games has no survivors. Just a victor.’ Even if I made it home, I would not be the person that I had been when I left. It wasn’t just appreciating mostly-clean water and knowing what it was like to feel hungry. It was the people that I had killed, and doubtless the horrors that the Gamemakers would have in store for us once the lack of deaths began to get too boring.
For good measure, I washed my socks and laid them out to dry, dangling my feet over the seat as well. It was cool, and still humid, but it still felt good to have the air on my feet.
Occasionally, thunder rumbled, but it sounded distant enough to be outside the Arena. I was fairly sure, as well, that it would not be enough to drown out any cannon fire. By the time that evening came, I had eaten almost all of the food that I had, drunk four litres of water in an attempt to fool my body into thinking that it was full, and was starting to contemplate whether there was any way to make concrete edible. For the second day in a row, the Capitol seal in the sky was unaccompanied by any faces, and the feeling sunk into me that, tomorrow, the Gamemakers were bound to do something to make the Games more ‘exciting’. By which, of course, they would mean more dangerous, more deadly. More exciting to film.
If they wanted to try and kill me tomorrow, I was going to need to be well-rested for it. I picked yet another different place within the stadium to sleep, and for a moment as I drifted off I could almost have imagined a great shadow of a bird flitting about the roof above me.
Chapter Twelve
I awoke sore, hungry and irritable. A breakfast of my last energy bar did not even take the edge off, and I sat with my foot tapping and thoughts swirling in my head as to where I could find more food. Had I seen any plants, walking around the city? Any semblance of green? Outside of my dreams, had there been any movement that could look like an animal? Surely there could not be anything living in the culvert.
I drank water and tried to pretend that it was food. I had always known, of course, that food was a major issue in the Arena, but there had not been an Arena so completely bereft of food sources since the last Quarter Quell, and my father’s success.
Not even food from sponsors. Could it have been banned, or simply made so expensive that nobody could afford to send food? My family had been receiving a victor’s money for many years now, and if anybody would be able to afford food, they would. Either there was something that I was missing, or the Gamemakers had made a deliberate choice.
And yet, the bread, on day two. Just after I had left Kidagakash. Where could that possibly fit in?
Sitting in the stadium had bought me no competing tributes, and no chance of food. Time to move on. I sorted and shouldered my pack, opting for my bow and arrows over my staff, and prepared to leave the stadium through the side nearest to the city. Just as I was about to do so, a silver parachute fluttered down from above me, and I frowned at it right up until it reached my feet.
“Nice timing,” I muttered, and my stomach gave a growl. I opened the parcel, hoping desperately for some sort of food.
Naturally, it was not. The package contained a net, a good eight feet square and tough. Either Shang and Chi Fu were advocating trapping the other tributes and eating them, or they wanted me to know that at least something was capable of living in the filthy water of the culvert.
“All right, you win,” I said to no-one in particular. I had never been much of a fan of seafood.
I crossed the stadium back to the culvert, glancing around cautiously. There had been a bridge, about two hours clockwise of here, but I didn’t fancy going anywhere so exposed. If any of the others had worked out that they were supposed to fish as well, they would also probably go there.
I pulled out the half-melted knives I had retrieved from the explosion and used them to weight one end of the net, before kneeling on the edge of the culvert and tossing it out into the water. The ropes that led to the four corners twined together into one and tugged in my hands as the current tried to pull it away, but I held on determinedly.
At least sitting and waiting did not take too much energy. I felt light-headed, empty no matter how much water I drank, and drowsy despite the fact that I had slept well. I could feel my eyelids growing heavy, my head nodding, and jerked myself awake with little growls every time that I realised I was falling asleep.
The air grew warmer, muggier. Tiredness swelled stronger and stronger within me, and I sighed as my head tilted sideways towards my shoulder. It would be so easy just to rest for a while...
The rope tugged in my hands, and my head snapped upwards immediately. My hands tightened on the rope, twisting so that it could not slip from my grip, and I tensed against the pull. It was strong, tugging me towards the water even as I got one foot beneath me and heaved back against it, and I found myself breathing hard as I struggled to my feet and took a step back from the edge.
In my hands, the net bucked, and the water was churned white with whatever was thrashing inside. But I could feel my heart pounding, my body reacting eagerly to the fight, as I hauled again and again on the net. Slowly, one small step at a time, I crept away from the edge of the culvert, with more and more of the net coming free of the water and, just occasionally, a dark shape breaking the surface into visibility.
Whatever was throwing itself around had to weigh at least ten or twelve kilos, and it was with a wrench and a furious muted scream that I wrenched it up on to the road. At first I could make out nothing more than a dark blur, a furiously moving shape, but my eye managed to catch sight of feet, a tail, to recognise the darkness as fur. No matter; it was an animal, and it had to be there to be food.
I drew my knife, moving fast before it could disentangle itself from the net, and pounced onto the creature. My aim was to pin it beneath me - it was over half a metre long, but sleek and almost snake-like - but it was slippery and fast, and sank its teeth into my hand as I tried to grab its neck. Its bite felt like a handful of needles, almost too fine to feel and then burning as my skin realised what had happened, but whilst it was clinging to my hand its head was still, and I grabbed the knife with my left hand before slamming it through the creature’s skull.
It sank in up to the hilt, and with a final jerk the creature fell still, jaw still locked around my hand. I tried to pull its mouth open, but it would not move, and I had to stick the knife between its jaws and use it like a lever to pull the teeth apart. Even then, when I whipped my hand away, they slammed shut again.
Elation mingled with pain as I got to my feet, cradling my throbbing and bleeding hand to my chest. Once it was still, I could see that the creature had to be some kind of mutt from the Capitol; it looked a little like otters that I had seen in books or on the television, but more powerfully muscled, with a cord-like tail and sharp claws on the end of its lengthened limbs. Its head was different, shaped more like a dog or a wolf, with larger ears and a muzzle full of too many needle-like teeth to count.
And if it wasn’t edible, I was going to be pissed off.
Its claws had done some damage to my net, but nothing that I couldn’t patch, and for now I used the net to drag the creature back into the shelter of one of the stadium entrances. Still facing the culvert, the force field and, beyond, the grey wasteland that stretched out to a flat horizon, I settled down and started to skin my catch.
I didn’t have anything left to burn; the firelighting waxes were not real fuel and there was no wood. For a moment, I considered burning the net, but that would leave me unable to find food again, and nobody ever knew how long the Games were going to last. Starve to death, or risk poisoning myself on raw flesh? I considered the decision as I sawed the creature’s head off and started to gut it. With teeth like that, it would be a carnivore, making most of its innards inedible.
My hunger had been dulling, almost unnoticeable really, although I supposed that was a bad sign in itself. Now, though, with raw meat on my hands and the carcass nestled neatly on top of its pelt to protect it from the dirty ground, my stomach twisted painfully and my mouth began to water. I forced myself to take my time removing the intestinal tract of the animal and setting it all aside, neat and without any breaks. The liver and kidneys followed because it was a carnivore, and I broke the ribs one at a time so that I could carefully manoeuvre the lungs aside.
Even now, there was at least ten kilos of meat left. There was a drain to one side of the corridor, and I used the pelt to tilt the carcass and let the blood run down it. I knew that blood was drinkable, but I didn’t fancy going that far just yet. It drained out quickly, and I heaved the carcass back to the edge of the sunlight once again.
My knife paused, hovering over the carcass, not because of indecision but because of the sheer amount of food laid out before me. Eventually, I chose the shoulder, where powerful muscles must explain why the creature had been such a fight to catch. I cut a swathe of meat off, having to saw through the tendons to come away with a chunk of meat larger than my hand, still slightly bloody, and still warm.
Thoroughly uncivilised. Then again, I supposed that was a good commentary on the Games themselves. I took a deep bite, feeling a rush of warmth and wetness in my mouth, and closed my eyes in faint ecstasy as I chewed my way through the first mouthful. Uncivilised and wonderful. I ate most of the muscle in one sitting, waited half an hour whilst I carved up the rest to ensure that it was not going to come back up again, and then gorged myself. Lean muscle, soft fat, and impulsively I broke open on of its leg bones to suck out some of the rich, fatty marrow.
It was a pity that the meat would not keep. I had read in old history books about peoples who ate rotten meat, in countries across the seas, but I doubted that I wanted to take that risk myself. So instead, I ate until my stomach hurt, then bundled up the rest of the meat and thought about what to do with it.
If I threw it into the water, it could poison the whole supply, which would not do me any good either. I supposed that it could at least attract insects or vermin if I did leave it to rot, but more likely it would just reek and the bacteria from its innards would make it dangerous as well. I packed up the heart into the silver case that the net had come in, along with a couple of chunks of the fattier meat, and put it safely into the middle of my pack. Hopefully, airtight, it would last at least until tomorrow.
The carcass looked thoroughly savaged by the time that I was finished with it. I wrapped it back up in the pelt as best I could when an idea occurred to me: if I was hungry, the Careers would probably only be hungrier. Perhaps even hungry enough to look twice at an animal carcass draped over the large rocks just outside the front of the stadium.
For lack of much better to do, I took the mutt, pelt and all, out to the front of the stadium and then tossed it over the steps. The pelt flicked the intestines out in a bloody string, sending the bones that I had cut apart rolling over the dirty ground. There was no going back from this, not if I wanted to avoid the risk of sickness. For a moment, I considered keeping the pelt, then dumped that on the ground as well, fur up. It would probably be the only animal anywhere outside of the water in this place, and hopefully it would be interesting just for that.
I retreated to the stands, got out my bow and arrow, and watched. The slope outside the stadium was relatively visible from all directions, and I had seen flickers of light down in the city before, quickly extinguished. The Careers had probably staked out territory down there - perhaps they thought that Kidagakash had claimed the stadium, rather than me and my tedium - and were waiting for the other stragglers to be foolish enough to cross their paths.
The cloud cover seemed to thin a little, letting some light through although it did not break enough to let the sky behind show. If this kept up for much longer, I was going to forget what sunshine looked like. I perched on the edge of a chair, arrow knocked but not drawn, watching over the carcass and feeling like a vulture.
The red splattered against the grey, the only lash of colour in this damned place. I had not realised before how strange it could be to be stuck in a monochrome world. After a while, my fingers started to grow slick on the bow, sticky with humidity, and my over-full belly felt barely less painful than my empty one had.
When part of the carcass moved, I thought at first that I was seeing things. Tilting my head, I had to squint slightly as I leant forwards, over the edge nearest to where I was sitting. Was a joint rolling downhill? No, one of the pieces of meat was definitely sliding sideways, apparently without anything moving it. The arrow slipped from my fingers as I leant still further forwards, and then in one swift move the meat simply disappeared.
Grey. I couldn’t even see where the meat had gone. Was there something underneath the ground? Annoyance boiling over, I replaced the arrow, drew it back to my ear, and sent it flying into the ground half a metre away from where the meat had been.
When it struck, I saw a ripple, and realised that it must be some sort of camouflaged sheet more effective than my jacket. Standing, I readied a second arrow, when a nimble shape darted out from beneath the sheet and, faster than I could take aim, disappeared beneath the eaves of the stadium and out of my sight. I recognised Pocahontas’s slight figure immediately, and could not help the burst of laughter that came out of me at the sight of her. Of all the unlikely survivors, she was still there, and for a moment I forgot that I was supposed to be killing her and marvelled at how strange the Games could be.
Chapter Ten
I returned to the tunnel where I had spent the night, purified my water, and drank until I didn’t have that nagging need to swallow against dryness. A slab placed in the tunnel provided me with a marginally sheltered place to sit, and the lay of the land was such that I could see a reasonable distance, including two or three roads and a handful of destroyed houses.
Eleven dead. That meant that we were half way there, but it was barely creeping into the afternoon of the second day. The Games rarely went this quickly; there was no fun in it, I supposed, having the violence and death be over so fast. Although the Bloodbath could sometimes take even more than half of the tributes, the fact that the deaths had continued over the rest of the day and into the second was more food for thought.
Of course, there was Kidagakash and her pack as well. I could hardly even call them a pack - a deformed boy, a thirteen year old girl, a boy who seemed intelligent but no fighter and... well, I supposed that Esmeralda at least had some potential, though I had not watched her too closely during our training days.
I crossed my legs and tucked my pack between them to examine the contents all over again. The fact that the water remained in the culvert was a good sign, as long as I made sure to thoroughly purify it before drinking. As for food, I had jerky, dried fruit, dense flatbreads and energy bars, as well as caffeine tablets in case I needed an extra boost. And, of course, the roll from Four that I did not understand. I was down to the clothes that I had, having burnt the lightweight ones and left my jacket by the fire whilst making my escape. I could always sneak back and see if I could retrieve it, but I preferred my current one anyway. My knives, eleven arrows, and the staff now sitting beside me made up my armoury. I didn’t understand half of the contents of my medical kit - creams, gels and shaped pads, alongside the more normal plasters and bandages. So far, mercifully, I had not had any need for them.
Tired, I allowed myself to rest for the afternoon, sneaking a little further down into the pipe and out of sight, and drifting in and out of sleep with one ear still open. The hours passed easily, and though I shuffled occasionally to find a more comfortable position, I concentrated more on getting some rest and allowing the rest of the tributes to handle themselves for a while. Let the cameras drift away from me.
I wasn’t sure whether or not to be surprised when no more cannons went off.
As evening fell and the anthem sounded, I crawled out of the tunnel again and stretched my legs and shoulders. Maleficent’s face was the first to appear in the sky tonight, followed by the boy from Three - Buzz - the two from Ten - Woody and Jessie - and the girl from Eleven, Rapunzel, who I had ended up finishing off. Then the Capitol seal came up again, and the anthem played a second time.
I considered returning to sleep, but felt too restless. With no sounds for most of the afternoon - and no sign of anyone, even from my spot - I was still curious about what the Careers might be doing, and where Kidagakash and her group could have gone.
Once again, I made my way to the edge of the houses that edged the culvert, letting my night vision get good enough to pick out the rocks that marked my path, slight variations in the ground. This time, the sky was cloudless, strewn with stars and with a half-moon to provide some light. The world glowed silver and grey around me. Unlike what I had imagined, and unlike what the televisions showed every year, the Arena was quiet. Quiet enough to hear the crunching gravel beneath my feet, the distant sound of water in the culvert.
It was eerie, but more than anything else I noticed what I could not here. There was no wind cutting between buildings, no sound of animals, not even the sound of other tributes moving around. Picking my way carefully, I could be quiet for most of the time, only occasionally giving enough sound to a footstep that it might have given me away.
Slowly, the night wore on. I followed the line of the houses along the culvert, stopping for a while to examine an area of disturbed water which might be due to a tunnel cutting across the culvert, or a large pile of rubble underneath the surface. It did not keep me for long, however, and I kept going again. There was a remarkable monotony to the path, looping around at a constant, gentle angle, and before too long I could see the looming silhouette of the stadium.
It was starting to get light again as I stopped, leaning on a wall and looking at the stadium pensively. I had probably been right in my earlier calculations; if the Arena was roughly circular, then it was about three hours across, nine or ten in circumference. Most Arenas were considerably larger, would take days to move around - or to be found in. Perhaps it was meant to force us together and make it difficult for us to avoid each other. The smaller the groups that formed, the more likely it became that you would walk into an enemy.
The Careers, Kida's group, myself, and up to four other people. I wasn’t yet sure what to make of those odds.
The explosion had been tremendous, but we had not waited to see what the result had been. As the sun rose over the Arena, turning the pretty silver of the night to dusty bone-grey, I made my way up towards the stadium. It wasn’t a steep hill, but I did feel increasingly exposed as I climbed it, and paused frequently to glance over my shoulder for movement or the flash of non-rusted metal.
The stadium had once been an oval, probably used for various sporting events. Both long sides had collapsed - or perhaps been collapsed - in the middle, but the curved ends had some damage on them as well, making the shape ragged. Old doorways stood open at the base as black rectangles, some with rubble or twisted metal partially blocking them, some yawning clear.
I prepped myself with my knife and flashlight and walked up to one of the doorways, staying to the side. They would make a perfect hiding place, if anyone had returned to them after the explosion had settled. Crouching down, I turned sharply, scanning with the light, but no figures appeared in the corridor.
Good. With measured steps, I walked down it, checking corners and scanning the walls for anywhere that might have been broken. I double-checked each step, making sure that there was nothing uneven about the stones, no wires or ropes spread across to form a trap, and the ceiling as well. There were a hundred ways to lay a trap, and those were only the ones that I knew of.
At the end, the corridor split into two, each half turning round into steps to lead up to the seating. I chose left, and went up, treating the steps the same way that I had treated the corridor until I started to see daylight above me, the stadium opening out.
I clicked the flashlight off, crouching down to gain some cover from the concrete around me. The early morning sunlight was bright, but not glaring, and let me check that block after block of seating was clear as I moved slowly upwards into the stands.
No sign of anybody. I found one of the plastic chairs that seemed to have survived relatively intact, opened and closed it a couple of times to check that it wasn’t too brittle, and sat down. It creaked, but held.
I wondered what the name of this city had been. There must have been a city, once upon a time, although I had yet to see anything beyond the culvert. How many people had lived here, what sport or sports this stadium had been for. Most of the games that had existed before the Dark Days had been forgotten by now, relegated to sections in obscure history books or stories for children that talked about the strange ways our people used to have. A few of them had survived, notably ‘boxing’, which had been built into our fighting training, and more basic ones like running and swimming.
But team sports, they were long gone, the stuff of our grandparents' stories. Football, soccer, hockey, basketball. Doubtless the Capitol didn’t want us to know how to make teams. We barely knew how to make alliances in the Arena, although that was probably rather different seeing as soccer games had never ended with most of the players dead.
About the same number of people, though. Maybe the Gamemakers would have found the comparison amusing.
I sipped water and watched the sun rise, slowly spilling light into the centre of the stadium. Between the damage done by the explosives and my raised position, it was almost unrecognisable as the place where we had started. The Cornucopia had fallen, twisted and buckled by the blasts, now a crooked golden shape across the ground. A dusty oval of dry ground, which might have once been grass, seemed to form the centre of the stadium. The outer edges of it were undisturbed, but the centre had fallen away, forming a crater of jagged rocks and metal that had to be ten metres across and had doubtless swallowed up the supplies that Kidagakash had not deemed necessary or desirable. One end had blackened, charred remains which suggested the fire that had burnt there.
I put my feet on the back of the seat in front of me - there was, after all, no-one to complain - and sipped water as I contemplated a possible plan for the last few days.
From what I had seen, there were four people in the Career pack. They were armed, and had clearly survived this long, but they could not have had much in the way of supplies. If the five people who I suspected they had killed had been carrying food and water, that might have provided them with some, but they would surely run out before too long. Most of the tributes had grabbed a bag or two and run, and there would not be much food among that. For food, I gave them forty-eight hours’ worth at the most. If they had iodine, they would be fine for water.
Kidagakash’s pack was a different story. They were armed, and had three or four days’ food each, as well as medical supplies far better than mine. Between her training and the intelligence which I had seen one of her companions, Milo, display, I had no doubt that they would not be easily trapped. They could easily roam the Arena, staying out of the way of the others and staying alive.
Three others. I remembered seeing Hercules the previous day, but could not remember who the other two were. He had definitely been working alone, and armed, but I did not know anything else about them. They were wildcards, non-Careers, and might have been following their own tactics or no tactics at all.
And me. I hoped I could keep things flexible enough to not have my moves predicted by the others, but I wasn’t too sure. How much like a Career was I acting?
I took out the loaf of bread from District Four again, turning it over in my hands. I’d eaten it before, some years ago. My father had a liking for it, the way that the salt and seaweed made it taste, but I hadn’t much liked it at the time. Figuring that a few years made a big difference to the taste buds, I started to tear pieces off and eat it, impressed that it wasn’t already starting to go stale. It definitely tasted better than I remembered.
I popped a caffeine tablet mid-morning to keep myself awake, drank another litre of so of water, and around midday trotted down the stadium steps to get a closer look at the damage to the centre of the stadium.
From a distance, it had looked bad. Up close, it was almost terrifying. Chunks of rock, from powder up to boulders larger than I was, lay in heaps that trailed down into a slithering slope into the crater. It was at least fifteen feet deep, and felt distinctly unstable beneath my feet as I ventured a short way down. Thinking better of it, I retreated again, and frowned down into the mess. There were twisted lumps of metal that might have originally been weapons, jagged shards of wood and melted pieces of plastic. I couldn’t see anything that might be of use after it had been so thoroughly destroyed. Before I set off a stray mine or got myself killed in some equally stupid way, I backtracked out of the playing field and into the seats, this time settling into one of the players’ boxes and scraping a corner clean before lying my jacket on it and sitting down.
I considered it likely that, one way or another, some of the tributes would come back here in search of supplies. There were seven people who did not know how bad the explosions had been and, if they had not been back already, they probably would be before too long.
Chapter Eleven
The sky began to darken only a few hours later. I frowned; this was far too early for night to be setting in. Leaning out from my shelter, I saw dark clouds gathering in the sky and heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Rain. Despite myself, I frowned at the sight, irritated that water supplies would be going to those who hadn’t otherwise managed to get them. I supposed that it was boring for the Capitol to watch people starve to death, rather than actually fighting.
A few years before, they had tried maintaining permanent channels on each of the tributes as well as the Capitol-decided primary one, allowing people to follow whatever tribute they most liked the look of. The behaviour of some of the tributes, however, had been unacceptable to the Gamemakers, and some of the screens had gone black from time to time. As far as I knew, they weren’t doing the same this year. Part of me wished that I did, just so that my family wouldn’t be having to watch other tributes and wonder what I was doing.
Before long, the sky was so dark that it might as well have been night, though the thunder remained a distant threat and no rain was forthcoming. I settled down comfortably, ate another of the flatbreads and some jerky for protein, and continued to watch time tick away.
My thoughts were fragmented, not clear enough to get anything together. They jumped from past to present to future and back again: my family, the state I was currently in, the great gamble I had made in coming here. Really, there was no way that I could succeed. I felt a painful heat behind my eyes, and cursed myself for even thinking of crying.
The anthem sounded, and I looked up automatically, like a dog searching for food. The seal was traced clearly on the dark clouds, looking if anything brighter than usual against them. Afterwards, though, no faces followed. For the first day since the start of the Games, there had been no deaths.
It wasn’t that unusual. After a busy few days, the deaths tended to settle down as the tributes turned to survival rather than killing. Defence and offence; I could remember our trainers back in District One talking about them as if they were two completely different sets of tactics. Even at the time, I hadn’t been so sure that they really were. After all, didn’t you win by staying alive?
For possibly the first time since the Games had begun, I started to wish for an alliance. Or, at least, an ally. Someone to talk to, rather than sitting in this oppressive silence waiting for something to happen. In training, of course, we were told to not trust anyone, that any alliances that we made would only be temporary. But on the screens, I had always seen the Gamemakers show conversations between allied tributes, especially non-Careers. Touching scenes. Character moments. Apparently the Capitol wanted to get to know people before they died.
Tiny cameras all over the Arena would be recording us all, the thirteen people that were left. Were some of them talking to each other? Or were they sitting in similarly oppressive silence? Even with the caffeine fading from my veins, I struggled to get any sleep as the night wore on.
When I awoke, it was still dark, but the growing heat still made me think that it was supposed to be daytime. The air seemed to have grown thicker, hot and humid in a way that made me feel as if I was sweating before I had even moved. My clothes stuck to my skin, and I realised that I had not cleaned them in the entire time that I had been here. I could not risk stripping to bathe, though, even if I felt safe enough to do so.
My dried fruit would probably not last much longer, so I ate most of what was left and followed it with another flatbread. I had two left, a handful of strips of beef jerky, and my energy bars. Food for perhaps two days, if I rationed it properly.
I ventured out of the back of the stadium and made my way down to the water in the culvert. It seemed to have gone down since the previous day, to judge by the dark line around the edge, but not by more than ten or twelve centimetres. For extra safety, I filtered the water through a layer of gauze from my medical kit into the bottle before adding the iodine. It took off a layer of mud and bits of leaves, and I made a mental note to do it again even if I had been lucky enough, so far, to not fall ill.
I had spent time learning how to hunt, but that was no option in an Arena that did not even seem to have rats or insects. At least the others would be in the same state. I doubted that anything could live in the water in the culvert, short of mutts from the Capitol. I was six years old in the year that Grimhilde, one of the tributes from Two, started to cannibalise the bodies of her opponents after she killed them; I remembered hiding behind my father’s arm as she did so, larger-than-life on the television screen. As far as I knew, it had never happened before, and it had certainly not happened since.
Thinking too much about food made me hungry, and I tried to tear my thoughts elsewhere. All over again, I thought wistfully of having an ally, just for someone to talk to.
Of course, I didn’t have to sit in silence. I cocked my head to one side thoughtfully as I wandered back to the stadium, then took a seat and settled my bag beside me, setting my elbows on my knees. There might not be other people around, but there were certainly cameras.
“So, the 74th Hunger Games,” I said to mid-air. It felt strange, and perhaps the Gamemakers would be wondering whether I was going mad. Part of me did myself. I tried to think of it as an interview, but one in which I was making up the questions as I went along. “It’s certainly an honour to be involved.”
That had been the word, all the way through. Honour. My father had acted honourably, and now it was an honour for me to take part. If I won, I would bring still more honour on my family. The irony of the word twisted on my lips after I said it, and I found myself smiling, but probably not for the reason that the Gamemakers would be thinking.
“So far, it’s been a whirlwind,” I said quietly. “I grew up in the Victor’s Village, among the children of other victors. Even last year, one of us volunteered at the reaping.” For a moment, my throat tightened warningly. My dear friend Khan, son of the female victor of the 54th Hunger Games, had never come home. “We all know what the Games are. How terrible and glorious they can be. But it’s still strange to be here, in this Arena with so few other people and yet all of you.”
The Capitol. Laid out before me, although I couldn’t see it. Of course, it was possible that their attention was elsewhere, that some other tribute was being more interesting than I was. But it was dark and quiet, and I might still have been the one that they had the attention on.
“Many of you know that my father, Fa Zhou, won the Quarter Quell. The 50th Hunger Games. And now, twenty-four years later, here I am. His son, in the 74th Games. There are thirteen of us remaining, but let me say this: I want to win.”
I had to draw a deep breath on admitting it.
“Someone once said to me that some tributes go into the Arena to survive, and some go in to win. And I want to win. I want to go home to my family in honour, to do what has not been done in a generation and be a victor, child of a victor.
“I always knew that I might be in the Games.” My voice softened. “I always knew that I might have this... opportunity. I did not expect it to be this early, though. I had thought that I might volunteer when I reached eighteen, for the honour and for the sake of the younger tribute who might be called.
“I... my family means everything to me.” For this first time, my voice cracked, and I allowed it to. Possibly for the first time since these Games had started, I was telling the truth. “I can’t imagine being without them, or hurting them... or disappointing them. I couldn’t bear to disappoint them.”
My voice almost faded away, and I felt tears in my eyes but forced them back. For one moment, I looked down to my hands, then back up again to where I imagined the cameras would be.
“Baba, this is for you. I’ll be coming back soon.”
I sat for a moment longer, looking into the distance, then gathered myself and got to my feet. I was shaking, far more so than I had during my interview with Snow White. That had felt like a game, as if I was an actor in a play, and this had not. With my invisible audience and my Games-dirty state, I still hoped that they would show the message. And that my father would see it.
I milled back and forth around the stadium, walking all the way around the central court, going up and down the stairs and checking how many were still intact and passable. Once or twice, I thought that I heard creaking in the metal roof, far above, but when I looked up there was nothing. Metal settling, perhaps, or just part of my imagination. I ate two energy bars, but even so I was starting to feel weaker by the late afternoon, tiring.
Night fell again, still barely darker than day, and for the second day there were no faces in the sky. The previous day it had not seemed so strange, but this time I frowned, even as I took my staff from my pack and swung it, experimentally, just checking that my muscles still remembered the fluid movements. A short practice, and then I selected a new place to sleep, higher up in the stands and hidden among the seats. Waiting for the waiting to finish.
When I next awoke, it was still dark. Once again, I decided it had to be morning by the mere fact that I was awake, and got up stiffly to survey the gloomy sight of day four. I drank over a litre of water, and ate the last flatbreads, but I was still feeling woozy as well as agitated. Two days with no fighting, but also with minimal food, was starting to wear on me.
I wandered down to the crater again, this time poking around to see if anything had survived the blast. A couple of knives still looked usable, so I removed them, and a metal cooking pot, although buckled, was at least recognisable. It must have held a good three or four litres, so I took it down to the river, filtered water into it, and headed back into the shelter of the stadium.
Even washing my face felt like a luxury. I could see the water becoming grimier as I did so, but it still seemed usable, and I tried to keep as much as I could in the bowl. My face felt shiny and the air surprisingly cool against it as I wiped away the water again. I did not bother washing my hair, but tried to comb it out with my fingers before putting it back into its usual tight bun.
My hands went next. I used my knife to trim my nails short again - despite my mother’s coaxing, I had always kept them as short as Ping ever had - and carefully scrubbed off as much of the dirt as I could. Shrugging off my jacket, I continued up my arms to above my elbows, letting the water evaporate off my skin and raise goosebumps in its wake. After some consideration, I also removed my shoes and socks, sighing at how good it felt to have air on my feet. Although I’d loosened my boots at night, I had not fully removed them in case I needed to fight, or to run, at short notice.
It was so strange, how just four days could make such a difference. Of course, there were some for who the difference had been final, but I thought again about my father’s words. ‘The Hunger Games has no survivors. Just a victor.’ Even if I made it home, I would not be the person that I had been when I left. It wasn’t just appreciating mostly-clean water and knowing what it was like to feel hungry. It was the people that I had killed, and doubtless the horrors that the Gamemakers would have in store for us once the lack of deaths began to get too boring.
For good measure, I washed my socks and laid them out to dry, dangling my feet over the seat as well. It was cool, and still humid, but it still felt good to have the air on my feet.
Occasionally, thunder rumbled, but it sounded distant enough to be outside the Arena. I was fairly sure, as well, that it would not be enough to drown out any cannon fire. By the time that evening came, I had eaten almost all of the food that I had, drunk four litres of water in an attempt to fool my body into thinking that it was full, and was starting to contemplate whether there was any way to make concrete edible. For the second day in a row, the Capitol seal in the sky was unaccompanied by any faces, and the feeling sunk into me that, tomorrow, the Gamemakers were bound to do something to make the Games more ‘exciting’. By which, of course, they would mean more dangerous, more deadly. More exciting to film.
If they wanted to try and kill me tomorrow, I was going to need to be well-rested for it. I picked yet another different place within the stadium to sleep, and for a moment as I drifted off I could almost have imagined a great shadow of a bird flitting about the roof above me.
Chapter Twelve
I awoke sore, hungry and irritable. A breakfast of my last energy bar did not even take the edge off, and I sat with my foot tapping and thoughts swirling in my head as to where I could find more food. Had I seen any plants, walking around the city? Any semblance of green? Outside of my dreams, had there been any movement that could look like an animal? Surely there could not be anything living in the culvert.
I drank water and tried to pretend that it was food. I had always known, of course, that food was a major issue in the Arena, but there had not been an Arena so completely bereft of food sources since the last Quarter Quell, and my father’s success.
Not even food from sponsors. Could it have been banned, or simply made so expensive that nobody could afford to send food? My family had been receiving a victor’s money for many years now, and if anybody would be able to afford food, they would. Either there was something that I was missing, or the Gamemakers had made a deliberate choice.
And yet, the bread, on day two. Just after I had left Kidagakash. Where could that possibly fit in?
Sitting in the stadium had bought me no competing tributes, and no chance of food. Time to move on. I sorted and shouldered my pack, opting for my bow and arrows over my staff, and prepared to leave the stadium through the side nearest to the city. Just as I was about to do so, a silver parachute fluttered down from above me, and I frowned at it right up until it reached my feet.
“Nice timing,” I muttered, and my stomach gave a growl. I opened the parcel, hoping desperately for some sort of food.
Naturally, it was not. The package contained a net, a good eight feet square and tough. Either Shang and Chi Fu were advocating trapping the other tributes and eating them, or they wanted me to know that at least something was capable of living in the filthy water of the culvert.
“All right, you win,” I said to no-one in particular. I had never been much of a fan of seafood.
I crossed the stadium back to the culvert, glancing around cautiously. There had been a bridge, about two hours clockwise of here, but I didn’t fancy going anywhere so exposed. If any of the others had worked out that they were supposed to fish as well, they would also probably go there.
I pulled out the half-melted knives I had retrieved from the explosion and used them to weight one end of the net, before kneeling on the edge of the culvert and tossing it out into the water. The ropes that led to the four corners twined together into one and tugged in my hands as the current tried to pull it away, but I held on determinedly.
At least sitting and waiting did not take too much energy. I felt light-headed, empty no matter how much water I drank, and drowsy despite the fact that I had slept well. I could feel my eyelids growing heavy, my head nodding, and jerked myself awake with little growls every time that I realised I was falling asleep.
The air grew warmer, muggier. Tiredness swelled stronger and stronger within me, and I sighed as my head tilted sideways towards my shoulder. It would be so easy just to rest for a while...
The rope tugged in my hands, and my head snapped upwards immediately. My hands tightened on the rope, twisting so that it could not slip from my grip, and I tensed against the pull. It was strong, tugging me towards the water even as I got one foot beneath me and heaved back against it, and I found myself breathing hard as I struggled to my feet and took a step back from the edge.
In my hands, the net bucked, and the water was churned white with whatever was thrashing inside. But I could feel my heart pounding, my body reacting eagerly to the fight, as I hauled again and again on the net. Slowly, one small step at a time, I crept away from the edge of the culvert, with more and more of the net coming free of the water and, just occasionally, a dark shape breaking the surface into visibility.
Whatever was throwing itself around had to weigh at least ten or twelve kilos, and it was with a wrench and a furious muted scream that I wrenched it up on to the road. At first I could make out nothing more than a dark blur, a furiously moving shape, but my eye managed to catch sight of feet, a tail, to recognise the darkness as fur. No matter; it was an animal, and it had to be there to be food.
I drew my knife, moving fast before it could disentangle itself from the net, and pounced onto the creature. My aim was to pin it beneath me - it was over half a metre long, but sleek and almost snake-like - but it was slippery and fast, and sank its teeth into my hand as I tried to grab its neck. Its bite felt like a handful of needles, almost too fine to feel and then burning as my skin realised what had happened, but whilst it was clinging to my hand its head was still, and I grabbed the knife with my left hand before slamming it through the creature’s skull.
It sank in up to the hilt, and with a final jerk the creature fell still, jaw still locked around my hand. I tried to pull its mouth open, but it would not move, and I had to stick the knife between its jaws and use it like a lever to pull the teeth apart. Even then, when I whipped my hand away, they slammed shut again.
Elation mingled with pain as I got to my feet, cradling my throbbing and bleeding hand to my chest. Once it was still, I could see that the creature had to be some kind of mutt from the Capitol; it looked a little like otters that I had seen in books or on the television, but more powerfully muscled, with a cord-like tail and sharp claws on the end of its lengthened limbs. Its head was different, shaped more like a dog or a wolf, with larger ears and a muzzle full of too many needle-like teeth to count.
And if it wasn’t edible, I was going to be pissed off.
Its claws had done some damage to my net, but nothing that I couldn’t patch, and for now I used the net to drag the creature back into the shelter of one of the stadium entrances. Still facing the culvert, the force field and, beyond, the grey wasteland that stretched out to a flat horizon, I settled down and started to skin my catch.
I didn’t have anything left to burn; the firelighting waxes were not real fuel and there was no wood. For a moment, I considered burning the net, but that would leave me unable to find food again, and nobody ever knew how long the Games were going to last. Starve to death, or risk poisoning myself on raw flesh? I considered the decision as I sawed the creature’s head off and started to gut it. With teeth like that, it would be a carnivore, making most of its innards inedible.
My hunger had been dulling, almost unnoticeable really, although I supposed that was a bad sign in itself. Now, though, with raw meat on my hands and the carcass nestled neatly on top of its pelt to protect it from the dirty ground, my stomach twisted painfully and my mouth began to water. I forced myself to take my time removing the intestinal tract of the animal and setting it all aside, neat and without any breaks. The liver and kidneys followed because it was a carnivore, and I broke the ribs one at a time so that I could carefully manoeuvre the lungs aside.
Even now, there was at least ten kilos of meat left. There was a drain to one side of the corridor, and I used the pelt to tilt the carcass and let the blood run down it. I knew that blood was drinkable, but I didn’t fancy going that far just yet. It drained out quickly, and I heaved the carcass back to the edge of the sunlight once again.
My knife paused, hovering over the carcass, not because of indecision but because of the sheer amount of food laid out before me. Eventually, I chose the shoulder, where powerful muscles must explain why the creature had been such a fight to catch. I cut a swathe of meat off, having to saw through the tendons to come away with a chunk of meat larger than my hand, still slightly bloody, and still warm.
Thoroughly uncivilised. Then again, I supposed that was a good commentary on the Games themselves. I took a deep bite, feeling a rush of warmth and wetness in my mouth, and closed my eyes in faint ecstasy as I chewed my way through the first mouthful. Uncivilised and wonderful. I ate most of the muscle in one sitting, waited half an hour whilst I carved up the rest to ensure that it was not going to come back up again, and then gorged myself. Lean muscle, soft fat, and impulsively I broke open on of its leg bones to suck out some of the rich, fatty marrow.
It was a pity that the meat would not keep. I had read in old history books about peoples who ate rotten meat, in countries across the seas, but I doubted that I wanted to take that risk myself. So instead, I ate until my stomach hurt, then bundled up the rest of the meat and thought about what to do with it.
If I threw it into the water, it could poison the whole supply, which would not do me any good either. I supposed that it could at least attract insects or vermin if I did leave it to rot, but more likely it would just reek and the bacteria from its innards would make it dangerous as well. I packed up the heart into the silver case that the net had come in, along with a couple of chunks of the fattier meat, and put it safely into the middle of my pack. Hopefully, airtight, it would last at least until tomorrow.
The carcass looked thoroughly savaged by the time that I was finished with it. I wrapped it back up in the pelt as best I could when an idea occurred to me: if I was hungry, the Careers would probably only be hungrier. Perhaps even hungry enough to look twice at an animal carcass draped over the large rocks just outside the front of the stadium.
For lack of much better to do, I took the mutt, pelt and all, out to the front of the stadium and then tossed it over the steps. The pelt flicked the intestines out in a bloody string, sending the bones that I had cut apart rolling over the dirty ground. There was no going back from this, not if I wanted to avoid the risk of sickness. For a moment, I considered keeping the pelt, then dumped that on the ground as well, fur up. It would probably be the only animal anywhere outside of the water in this place, and hopefully it would be interesting just for that.
I retreated to the stands, got out my bow and arrow, and watched. The slope outside the stadium was relatively visible from all directions, and I had seen flickers of light down in the city before, quickly extinguished. The Careers had probably staked out territory down there - perhaps they thought that Kidagakash had claimed the stadium, rather than me and my tedium - and were waiting for the other stragglers to be foolish enough to cross their paths.
The cloud cover seemed to thin a little, letting some light through although it did not break enough to let the sky behind show. If this kept up for much longer, I was going to forget what sunshine looked like. I perched on the edge of a chair, arrow knocked but not drawn, watching over the carcass and feeling like a vulture.
The red splattered against the grey, the only lash of colour in this damned place. I had not realised before how strange it could be to be stuck in a monochrome world. After a while, my fingers started to grow slick on the bow, sticky with humidity, and my over-full belly felt barely less painful than my empty one had.
When part of the carcass moved, I thought at first that I was seeing things. Tilting my head, I had to squint slightly as I leant forwards, over the edge nearest to where I was sitting. Was a joint rolling downhill? No, one of the pieces of meat was definitely sliding sideways, apparently without anything moving it. The arrow slipped from my fingers as I leant still further forwards, and then in one swift move the meat simply disappeared.
Grey. I couldn’t even see where the meat had gone. Was there something underneath the ground? Annoyance boiling over, I replaced the arrow, drew it back to my ear, and sent it flying into the ground half a metre away from where the meat had been.
When it struck, I saw a ripple, and realised that it must be some sort of camouflaged sheet more effective than my jacket. Standing, I readied a second arrow, when a nimble shape darted out from beneath the sheet and, faster than I could take aim, disappeared beneath the eaves of the stadium and out of my sight. I recognised Pocahontas’s slight figure immediately, and could not help the burst of laughter that came out of me at the sight of her. Of all the unlikely survivors, she was still there, and for a moment I forgot that I was supposed to be killing her and marvelled at how strange the Games could be.