The Hunger Games: How It Could've Gone

Possibility 1

(There was a moment in the Hunger Games where Clove threw a knife at a boy in front of Katniss, and then at Katniss. Katniss caught it with the backpack she got, remember? What I've always wondered is why doesn't Clove just throw another knife? It's in the middle of the Bloodbath, she's gotta have at least ten left, after all we saw her wasting a few on that poor lizard in the movie, and besides, she never misses! Why didn't she just throw another knife?...)

. . . 

A boy, I think from District 9, reaches the pack at the same time I do and for a brief time we grapple for it and then he coughs, splattering my face with blood. I stagger back, repulsed by the warm, sticky spray. Then the boy slips to the ground. That's when I see the knife in his back. Already other tributes have reached the Cornucopia and are spreading out to attack. Yes, the girl from District 2, ten yards away, running toward me, one hand clutching a half-dozen knives. I've seen her throw in training. She never misses. And I'm her next target.

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. 

She throws again and again and it hits the trees behind me only because I'm moving so fast. I hear fast footsteps and hear thunk after thunk after thunk. Then she pauses. I don't have time to wonder why. 

She throws another knife at a tree next to me. It's such a bad throw if she was trying to aim at me that I actually have to stifle a grim laugh.   

I keep running. 

"You know," She calls after me, "You're actually helping me by doing that."

I spin around, see her smile at me, and keep sprinting, seeing that she's no longer coming after me so fast. But then I realize. She counted the seconds that it took for me to run from a random point A to a random point B, and then she counted the seconds that it took for her knife to get from her fingers to the target. She's calculating where to throw the knife so that it meets part of my moving body in mid-air. 

I zigzag in between trees, hoping that it will throw her aim off. 

Nope. 

I cry out in pain as the first knife strikes my lower back. Then the second one - upper back, closer to my heart. I scream through gritted teeth, but I can still hear her laughing. Third one - 

I'm out. I'm dead. I'm dying.