ACT I, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ❛smoke covers the stars ❜ content:blood/gore/injury, death, violence, angst, dissociation.
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A / N this is another sad one that depicts a particularly violent death, please read with discretion.
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In an instant, she has all her supplies in her arms and her feet are pounding against the unstable ground, straight for the sand dunes to her north. The burned hand, cradled to her chest, throbs in time with her panicked heartbeat. Her eyes are locked on the ground, widening in horror as fire melts small holes in the earth itself all around her. Gritting her teeth, she somehow quickens her dead sprint, legs a blur of motion beneath her.
Her only hope is the dunes. The rocks are half a day's journey behind her. Either she dies with a sand dune breaking her fall into hellfire, or she slips through one of the widening tears in the ground, spilling coils of smoke black as night into the scorching air.
The dunes seem miles away, but she runs on. Through breaths tasting of blood, the dunes grow larger and larger, yet the ground grows frighteningly thin beneath her. She can see the glow of the fire now. . . burning red under the sand like the morning sun through closed eyelids.
Then the smoke starts to hit her lungs. It spews through holes large as her head, burns hot against the lining of her throat and lungs, turns her stomach bile into acid. As she runs, she hacks so hard that it almost makes her fall to her knees. She needs to slow down. She can't keep going, or she's afraid she'll pass out from smoke inhalation. What can she do? What does she have to combat this?
She's about to douse her shirt in water and put it over her nose when she remembers the gas mask in her backpack. Kaimana had grabbed two of them when she saw them at the Cornucopia, figuring they could be important if the Gamemakers triggered an event.
Madaket, still choking on smoke, tears open the bag as she stumbles through the desert. She's inching closer to the dunes, but she's afraid that even the mask won't be enough against the smog. She puts the mask over her face and instantly it's like breathing pure oxygen. The relief almost sends her to the ground in shock, but she recovers quickly. It's astounding how incredible the difference the gas mask makes.
Thank you, Kaimana.
Madaket runs faster toward the dunes, able to hop over the spaces between solid ground and hellfire with relative ease now she can breathe. A cannon booms in the sky above. Somebody fell through. . . she can only imagine the agony of their death.
She gains ground fast with the gas mask and adrenaline coursing through her veins. It's almost like she was born for this. She races like there are twenty hogs chasing her, like President Snow himself is holding a lighter to her heels. She's never been this fast in her life, breath soaring through her lungs, moving swift and agile as a deer.
