The Incoming Storm: The Tale of the 325th Hunger Games

Chapter 14

 I emerge from my tube onto my pedestal. I am bathed in bright light, the air is warm and dry just like a summer day back in District 9. "Let the 325th Hunger Games begin!" the announcer's voice booms over the arena. The countdown begins, we have one minute to take in the arena. I look around, we are in a field of dry grass. The clearing is surrounded by forest on all sides, at first, I am confused by what the trees are. They are draped in brownish-gray stuff, my mind jumps to the cobwebs I'd see in the less used corners of the house.

I scan the ring of tributes, looking for any of my teammates. My eyes lock with Spoola's, she gives a brief nod. I then locate Bran who is standing just next to her in the ring. I know that I will need to make my way to them when the gong sounds. I turn my head towards the cornucopia and notice that a blade is sticking out of the ground right in front of my plate. With a quick glance, I confirm that each tribute has a machete placed before them.

I squint and look into the mouth of the cornucopia, the weapon racks typically there are gone, replaced by more barrels of food, crates or supplies, and so on. When the gong sounds I grab my machete and sprint for my allies. On my way, I grab a large backpack and two drawstring pouches.

I reach the edge of the clearing and meet with Spoola and Bran, both holding their machetes. Ross joins us in moments, being chased by Orion from 2. The four of us crash into the tree line and are engulfed in the silky, sticky webs coating every surface of the forest. We gallop through the rocky wilderness, as Orion bursts through more branches and webs.

We cat back and forth between trees and boulders, listening for Orion's pursuit. Eventually, his footsteps grow quieter and become silent. We stop for a moment to regroup. I give Spoola and Bran one of the drawstring pouches each. Ross managed to get a duffel in from the cornucopia before coming for us.

"Took it right out from under his hands," Ross pants.

We continue pressing into the woods, we jog for a little, but as a big group it becomes hard to traverse. It has become clear now that this arena is anything but a savannah. This arena is a forest draped from root to treetop in thick spiderwebs. The arena is full of mutation spiders the size of dinner plates that dangle from trees and watch us with their large black eyes. I struggle to maintain composure, but I can tell Spoola is taking it harder than me. She is visibly distressed by the spiders.

We find a small rocky area relatively devoid of spiders and decide to take a moment to rest and regroup. Just as we sit down the cannons from the bloodbath begin. Seven cannons. That is a very small bloodbath, but it lasted a good while. Surely there were some fights or chases.

After the cannons, we begin to go through the items in our packs. My backpack has a sleeve of crackers, a large bag of jerky, a roll of twine, a full water bottle, folded net, and a small cast iron pot. The first drawstring, that I gave to Bran, has a flint and steel, a pack of cotton balls, a can of tomatoes, a can of chicken, and a toothbrush in a plastic wrap. The second drawstring, which I gave to Spoola, has a roll of pyro-cord, a detonator for it, a small box of matches, an empty water bottle, and a bottle of water purification tablets. The final duffel retrieved by Ross has a rolled blanket, empty water bottle, a bottle of iodine, a small bottle of pain pills, a large roll of gauze, a pack of safety pins, and two pairs of sunglasses. Overall, not a bad haul from the cornucopia. It is easy to note that there were no weapons hidden in our packs, which leads me to believe I was correct to think that the only weapons in the arena are our machetes. 24 weapons for 24 tributes.

We have a decent amount of food between me and Bran. Despite that, with four people in our group, food will run out quickly in the arena. "Keep your eyes out for food," I say, zipping my backpack shut.

"Watch!" Spoola says, stabbing a spider the size of my head with her machete. Thick dark red ooze drips from her blade as the spider twitches and dies.

"Thanks," I say looking at the mangled corpse at our feet.

We press forward ducking underneath trees covered in spiders. Some of the spiders are tiny, no bigger than the ones I'd find back home in dim corners, others are big as the feral cats that wander the district.

We continue further into the spider-infested woods as the sun begins to set. We pass into a clearing at one point, we stick to the edge of it, watching as stars begin to appear in the twilight sky. A little way into the woods from the clearing, we find a pretty sizable cave underneath a tree with relatively few webs.

Ross crawls in first and gives us the all-clear. We deposit our things and establish a camp using the blanket from Ross's duffel as a floor mat. We also use the net from my bag to block the entrance to the cave so we can hopefully have a little more warning should another tribute find us. We all sit down to have dinner, we split up some crackers and jerky. With just one meal we've burned up half of the crackers and a portion of the jerky.

As I am putting the leftover food back into my backpack, the anthem begins to play. We push the net to the side and realize very quickly that the webs will make it extremely difficult to see anything. I jog with Spoola back to the clearing just in time to see Orion disappear, the next to appear is Mola and Gamma, both tributes from District 5 have died. After that is Aaron from 6, Pastor from 10, Till, the victor's cousin, from 11, and finally Thomas from District 12. I recount just to make sure we didn't miss anyone's portrait, but we saw all seven of the fallen.

We go back to our cave and relay the fallen to Ross and Bran. We drape the mouth of the cave back in the net. Ross agrees to take the first watch, and we all settle in for the night.