The Hanging Tree. *ON HOLD*

Chapter Fifteen ~ Spider Mutts

Chapter Fifteen ~ Spider Mutts 

Prim’s POV

I glanced over to Finnick who was stock still, holding his knife for dear life, pointing it towards the mutts, and Caden who looked much calmer than my brother, but not much. The mutts that stood in front of us were, to say the least, terrifying. They looked like huge spiders but instead of having 8 hairy legs, these mutts had 10, each with 7 sharp, barbs sticking out of its legs, which could impale and kill you instantly, and, knowing Snow’s cruelty, they were probably topped off with a lethal poison that would make your death slow and painful. The spider mutts had one huge eye stuck in the middle of their ugly head, that was darker than black.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked gulping back my fear, animals could sense fear right?

‘Kill them…’ Caden said hesitantly. Despite the situation, I started to get annoyed.

‘Thank you Mr Helpful! There are 5 of them, and 3 of us. We don’t stand a chance!’ I almost shrieked back, but stopped myself as the spiders started making their way towards us, slowly, contemplating the best way to murder us, I guess.

‘Well what else do you suggest?’ I heard Finn say, his voice high-pitched and frightened.

‘ATTACK, ’Caden screamed. With the scream he ran towards the spiders and closed the distance between them. I swore under my breath, before grabbing the sheath of arrows and the bow from my back. I strung an arrow and with unbelievable accuracy I shot it, right in the huge black eye of one of the spiders. Luckily it dropped to the floor, and became very weak, unluckily, it was still alive. Caden was fighting a losing battle against one of the spiders, and the other 3, that hadn’t been shot my arrow or fighting with Caden, stood back watching, probably amused. Finnick was behind me, pretending not to be cowering and whimpering.

‘Run?’ I asked Caden knowing fighting was useless and it would just tire us out.

‘Run.’ Caden agreed before slashing the black eye and grabbing the backpack from its resting place on the floor. Finnick had already bundled the sleeping bag in his arms. I nodded to him and, probably because he was terrified, he didn’t nod back and simply took off running with Caden close behind. I ran after them screaming at them to go faster as I heard the spiders clicking almost directly behind me. I had only just realised how desperate our situation was. We had two choices.

Choice #1: Become a Spider Mutts meal.

Choice #2: Run straight into Laguna and the careers territory and be brutally murdered by them.

Our chances were incredibly slight, and I silently prayed for my parents, that they could continue with their lives even if their children were dead.

Option #2 seemed a tiny bit better than being devoured and becoming a spider’s dinner.

The huge house came into view the moment we came crashing out the woods. Two tributes, possibly allies, were at the edge and jumped half a metre into the air as we came into view. I didn’t have time to make out what districts they were from but I could tell they were younger than both Caden and me and probably Finnick. We continued running and I think 2 spiders left the pack to munch and terrorise on the two young tributes. And I wanted to sigh in relief because now it was evened out, in numbers anyway. This made me feel sick and made me feel like an awful and a cruel, cruel, cruel person. 2 people, 2 children, had probably just lost their lives because of us. I tried to force myself to feel some kind of remorse when two booms of the cannon sounded through the arena and I felt puke come up in my throat, but I couldn’t stop, there was too much nervous energy and adrenaline pumping through and my legs just kept going.