The Hunger Games

13

His first impulse was to jump from the tree and flee, but he was belted in. Somehow, he managed to unbuckle the belt with shaky fingers and fell to the ground, still inside his sleeping bag. There was no time for packing. Fortunately, his backpack and water bottle were already in the bag. He shoved in the belt, hoisted the bag over his shoulder and ran off, opposite direction from the upcoming fire.

The world had transformed to flame and smoke. Burning branches cracked from trees and fell in shower of sparks under his feet. All he could do was follow the others, the rabbits and deer shooting through the woods. He trusted their sense of direction because it was way sharper than his.

They were much faster, however, flying through the bushes so gracefully as his boots caught on roots and fallen tree limbs, there was no way for him to keep pace with them.

The heat was indeed horrible, but the smoke was much worse, which threatened to suffocate him at any given time. He pulled the top of his shirt up over to his nose, grateful to find it soaked in sweat, and it offered a thin veil of protection.

And he ran, choking, his bag banging against his back, his face cutting through the branches that materialized from the wilderness without warning, because he knew he was supposed to run.

This was no tribute's campfire gone out of control, no accidental occurrence. The flames that were bearing down on him had an unnatural height, a uniformity that marked them as human-made, machine-made, Gamemaker-made. Thing must have been too quiet. No deaths, perhaps no fights at all.

The audience in the Clave would be getting bored, claiming that those Games were verging on dullness. That was the single one thing the Games couldn't do.

It wasn't hard to follow the Gamemakers' motivation. There was a Career pack and then there were the rest of them, probably spread out far and wide across the arena. The fire had been designed to flush them out, to drive them together. It might not be the most original device he had ever seen, but it was very, very effective.

Jumping over a burning log, the tail of his jacket caught on fire and he had to stop to rip it from his body and stamp it out in flames. He didn't dare leave the jacket, scorched and dirty as it was, so he took the risk of shoving it inside his sleeping bag, hoping that the lack of air would extinguish what he hadn't already.

That was all he had, what he was carrying on his back, and it was little enough to survive with.

In a matter of minutes, his throat and his nose were burning. The coughing began soon after and his lungs began to feel as if they were actually being cooked. Discomfort turned into distress until each breath sent a searing pain through his chest.

He managed to find shelter under a huge stone, just as the vomiting began. He lost whatever little he had ingested earlier and the small quantity of water in his stomach. Crouching on his hands and knees, he retched until there was nothing left to come up.

Knowing he had to keep moving, Alec stopped himself for a second. He was trembling and light-headed, gasping for air. He allowed himself a spoonful of water to rinse out his mouth and then take a few swallows from his bottle.

One minute, he told himself. One minute to rest. He took the time to reorder his supplies, wad up the sleeping bag and messily stuff everything into the backpack. His minute was up, though. He knew it was time to move, but the smoke had clouded his thoughts.

The animals that had served as his compass had left him behind. He knew he hadn't been in this part of the woods before, there had been no sizable rocks like the one he was sheltered against, on his earlier travels.

Where were the Gamemakers driving him? Back to the lake? To a whole new terrain filled with new dangers? He had just found a few hours of peace at the pond when that attack had begun. Would there be any way of travelling parallel to the fire and work his way back there, to a source of water, at least?