The Direction Games: A One Direction Fan Fiction

13

13

   It wasn’t hard to follow the Gamemaker’s logic. Seven of the twenty-four of us were dead. The others were probably spread about the arena. We had asked for water, and, they wanted us to have it, even if it meant killing us off.

   “Up into the trees!” Louis barked out the command. I dashed behind him as he approached a tall pine. Zayn was on my heels.

   “Lou, its coming too quickly,” Zayn protested, “I can’t climb that fast!”

   “It’s okay,” Louis grunted as he began to hull himself into the branches. I did the same. Zayn, however, remained on the ground. “If it hits and we can’t hang on, just swim for it.”

   “Lou!” Zayn yelled over the growing loudness of the flood approaching us. Louis and I both turned our head to look down to him. His face held a distinct horror, and he looked as if he were going to cry. His mouth opened, and I was surprised his voice didn’t shake once he breathed out, “I can’t swim.”

   Louis stopped for a brief moment, biting his bottom lip. He let go of the branch in front of him. “Then we run,” he said simply, leaping from the branches.

   I jumped from the tree with Louis, and made a break for it. All three of us running as the flood approached us all. I could already feel my heart pounding in my chest.

   “What about Rebecca?” I asked loudly over the thundering water rolling toward us.

   Neither of them seemed to care. They hadn’t made an alliance with her. I hadn’t either. She was on her own during this disaster.

   A fallen log blocked our path, and all three of us pulled ourselves over it, just in time. Louis hands grabbed us both by the arms of our jackets and pulled us down behind the trunk of the fallen tree as the tidal wave crashed over our heads.

   I took in a deep breath, filling my lungs as the deep water crashed down over me. I felt its current drive me forward. I struggled to open my eyes under the water. I could only see blurs, but none of them made out to be Zayn and Louis.

   I felt my lungs, only because they began to burn from lack of oxygen. I had forgotten all thoughts of possible dehydration. With the Capitol’s sudden “gift,” I wouldn’t complain about a lack of water for a long time. What I needed now was air.

   I moved my arms and legs and moved myself upwards, trying my hardest to breach the surface of the flood of water.

   In past Hunger Game’s we had seen natural disasters similar to this occur. They were a play by the Capitol to drive tributes toward each other, so that they may kill one another, the real “entertainment” of these games, if they lived through the disaster itself. We’d seen tributes die in floods like this, or in fires or avalanches. It was what the Capitol hoped for. They wanted to kill off tributes, simply to remind the world that they could; that they were in charge.

   I reopened my eyes and saw myself approaching a light surrounded by the blurriness of water. I was reaching air, and the oxygen my lungs were crying out for.

   When I resurfaced, I was still tossed around by the current, but I filled my lungs again with air. The rushing water bobbed me back under the surface, and then up again, leaving me to struggle to keep my head up, and keep my body close to a place where I could get oxygen.

   Up ahead, I could see a steep embankment, whose height wouldn’t be affected by the water; high ground that I could pull myself onto; safety.

   I followed the current, riding it until it slammed me into the side of the embankment. I held onto the packed dirt and used my arms and feet to hull myself out of the water. My curls stuck to my face by now, and I was soaked to the bone, but I was finally safe.