The Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark (1)

}14{ - Tracker Jackers

Rosy streaks broke through in the east.

Back, forth, back, forth.

Livia become vaguely aware of the sawing sound as her mind tried to determine real sounds from the ones in her dreams.

The thumping of something crashing, hitting obstacles on its way down.

The sound paused for just a moment.

With the thud, Livia was up.

She watched in slow motion as a nest burst open like an egg, and a furious swarms of wasp took to the air.

Not wasps.

Tracker Jackers.

"Tracker jackers!"

"The lake! To the lake!"

Livia was on her feet swatting the bugs away as she sprinted off.

She hissed as one stung her in the neck, another the shoulder, and knee- she ripped the stingers from imbedded in her skin and continued on.

Glimmer went completely mad, shrieking and trying to bat the wasps off with her bow, which was pointless.

She called to the others for help but, of course, no one returned.

Lacey staggered out of sight, although Livia wouldn't bet on her making it to the lake.

She watched Glimmer fall, twitch hysterically around on the ground for a few minutes, and then go still.

The nest was nothing but an empty shell.

The wasps had vanished in pursuit of the others.

The poison from the stingers made Livia wobbly.

People had not exaggerated the effects of the tracker jacker stings.

Actually, the sting on her knee was closer to an orange than a plum in size.

A foul-smelling green liquid oozed from the places where she pulled out the stingers.

The swelling. The pain. The ooze. Watching Glimmer twitching to death on the ground.

It was a lot to handle before the sun had even cleared the horizon.

Livia tried to put distance between her and the nest, but never got far, instead going a full circle back to where she'd been before she crashed into a tree.

Her vision blurred, and the sunlight swirled in all colors as they blinded her.

Since when did the world around her start spinning?

She reached Glimmer just as the cannon fired.

The tracker jackers had vanished.

This girl, so breathtakingly beautiful in her golden dress the night of the interviews, was unrecognizable.

Her features eradicated, her limbs three times their normal size.

The stinger lumps had begun to explode, spewing putrid green liquid around her.

Her bow and arrows gone- meaning Katniss must've been there.

Livia couldn't work up the energy to worry the girl could be standing by, an arrow ready to strike her through the head.

Her mouth grew drier than sand and her eyes grew heavy.

Instead Livia stood there and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to purge the image from her mind.

A second cannon fired.

Lacey.

Livia heard the footsteps, several pairs, coming through the underbrush, and she realized they were coming back.

She had to go- had to run.

Livia needed to follow through with the plan.

But she couldn't move.

She slipped a disc into her hand, posed at the ready- only she saw three of them and the stench from the stings was so repulsive.

She couldn't do it.

She couldn't.

She was helpless as the first hunter crashed through the trees, spear lifted, poised to throw.

"What are you still doing here?" Peeta hissed at her.

She stared uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear.

His whole body started sparkling as if he had been dipped in dew.

"Get up! Get up!"

Livi rose, but he was still pushing at her.

What?

What was going on?

He shoved her away from him hard.

"Run!", he screamed, "Please! Go"

Behind him, Cato slashed his way through the brush.

He was sparkling wet, too, and badly stung under one eye.

Livia caught the gleam of sunlight on his sword and did as Peeta begged.

Holding tightly to her discs, banging into trees that appear out of nowhere, tripping and falling she tried to keep her balance.

She was sprinting, tripping over rock and roots. Constantly loosing her footing on the swirling ground.

The world began to bend in alarming ways.

A butterfly ballooned to the size of a house then shattered into a million stars.

Trees transformed to blood and splashed down over her boots.

Ants began to crawl out of the blisters on her hands and she couldn't shake them free.

They were climbing up her arms, her neck.

Someone was screaming, a long high pitched scream that never broke for breath.

And Livia have a vague feeling it was her.

She tripped and fell into a small pit lined with tiny orange bubbles that hummed like the tracker jacker nest.

Tucking her knees up to her chin, she waited for death.

Sick and disoriented, she was only able to form only one thought: Peeta Mellark just saved her life.

Then the ants bored into her eyes and she blacked out.