The Direction Games: A One Direction Fan Fiction

23

23

   The next day, since the rain had stopped, and Louis had shown much improvement in his healing, we decided to hunt, as most of our food supply had been eaten through and not replenished yesterday.

   In two teams we split up – Zayn and Niall heading out to the river and Liam, Louis and I going deeper into the forest – and went out.

   The entire time we trekked into the woods, Louis used Liam as a support. He could walk again; however, he seemed a bit unstable and limped with each step. But, at least he was better.

   Zayn had taken my bow and the quiver. He and Niall would be the two hunting for game, whereas I, for once, was part of the foraging team. I found myself constantly asking Liam for clarification. I was never one to pick berries and dig up edible roots outside District Twelve. That was left to the rebellious hunters. And, during training, I definitely had not paid any attention to the survival stations out of pure boredom.

   The only plants I did know were common things like raspberries, but those bushes had already been well cleaned out. As time progressed, we’d gathered a small bounty of plants we could eat, but not enough to feed the five of us well.

   “What about these?” I asked Liam, pointing to a reddish brown branch with small, white berries with black eyes on it.

   “Don’t even touch those, Harry,” Liam warned sternly. “They’re Doll’s Eyes. They grow all around here, and every single part of the plant is poisonous to humans. They cause instant cardiac arrest, and death.”

   I nodded and left the plants as they were. It explained why none of them had been cleaned out.

   We continued to search for edible foliage, but came up short. The entire forest seemed to be cleaned out by now. It had already been…about eleven days in the arena, give or take. Plus the week of training, I’d been away from home for over two weeks, and, with seven tributes left, there was probably still plenty more to come.

   Since we’d come up short in our hunting, we decided to check in on Niall and Zayn. I whistled out the short, four note song loudly into the forest and waited for the mockingjays to carry it along in the same pitch. It didn’t take long for the notes to change like Niall had whistled them before. They were both doing okay.

   The only thing we could hear in the woods around us was the song for a few short minutes, before it abruptly stopped like it had twice before – before Niall had attacked me, and before Danielle had died. It was a warning signal.

   “Oh, no,” Louis breathed, just before we heard a loud boom ring through the arena.

   The three of us began running – me in the lead with Louis limping alongside Liam right behind me. I whistled out my tune again to the mockingjays, but they refused to carry it along, as if they were mourning. I tried again and again until, finally it was repeated. It came back to us in Niall’s alteration once again. He and Zayn were okay. With Perrie gone, the death either belonged to Claire or Eleanor.

   The five of us met up at the entrance to the cave, completely well and Liam, taking charge once again of our hunting, said we would now hunt as one unit instead of two. And we proceeded in the direction away from the river.

   “Which one do you think died?” Niall asked, breaking a silence which hung over us, purely out of curiosity. It didn’t matter which one fell. We would see the loser tonight amongst the stars.

   Soon enough, we found a bush of berries Liam said were edible. Liam, Louis and I stopped to pick them and add them to our collection, while Niall and Zayn stepped through more bushes to see if they could find any more berries, or even a squirrel or two. But our separation didn’t last long.

   “Mates, come look at this,” Zayn called out through the barrier of trees and bushes between us. We could see him between the leaves.

   The three of us rose to our feet and stepped over, and stopped in front of a girl with long, dark hair lying on the forest floor; the girl from Six who had seemed to have been doing so well in these games on her own. Beside her limp hand were small, white berries with black eyes. And then there were six.