Hope and Nightmares - A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Two days.

Two days have passed since the last death. The Capitol must be getting restless. Of course, Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith are always there to fill up the actionless times with commentary, statistics, and the like, but two days is about as far as you can go in the Games without any deaths.

I have been cautious about everything. The Gamemakers control everything in the arena.

I'm careful to split open the berries from my favorite berry bush to check that they haven't turned poisonous overnight. I'm careful to make sure that the snakes I'm eating aren't venomous, though you can never be sure.

My opportunity to change the game arises when I'm all tucked up in my sleeping bag and blanket in my new home tree, snuggling up in the fork where two branches create a cradle-like formation.

I'm drifting off - about to fall into much-needed sleep, when voices penetrate the hazy shroud of sleep draped over my conscience.

This wakens me no problem. I have been waiting for an opportunity like this to happen. It will hold off the Gamemaker attacks for another day if I'm lucky, and not to mention get rid of another tribute. One less to worry about later in the Games if I'm still alive.

I bolt up in my sleeping bag, listening carefully for the voices. They're coming from about a hundred yards to my right, beyond the creek, probably on the shores of the lake.

I hear the familiar, raucous laughter echoing off the lake.

"Next up is Blondie!"

"You hear that, Myles?" My heart nearly leaps into my throat.

The Careers.

Flint's Point of View

"Myles, where the hell are the matches?" Trexler yells, rifling through the backpack.

"Front pouch," Myles says, propping himself up against a tree.

A couple sparks, a flame, and we have ourselves a fire.

Finch, the girl from 4 that we picked up, is stretched out in front of the fire, already snoring.

Everyone else is already starting to doze off - Trexler cocooned up in a sleeping bag, Priscilla curled up next to Myles.

I zip my jacket up to my chin, plotting Ruby's death. Once my eyelids become too heavy to keep open, I shove Blondie to the back of my mind and allow myself to drift off into sleep...

I bolt awake at the sound of a cannon. Chaos has erupted around the campfire.

A red chasm has been slit in Finch's porcelain white throat, gurgling with blood, her eyes wide open and her hands limp at her neck.

I swing around to look for the killer.

Myles is thrashing and moaning on the ground, clawing at his right thigh. His pants are punctured and soaked with blood. Whoever killed Finch got to Myles too.

I whip my head around and just barely catch a glimpse of a tangled blond mane of hair before it disappears in the treeline.

Ruby's Point of View

I tear through the trees, my breathing shallow and my veins pumping with adrenaline. Both of my knives are clenched in my fists with white-knuckle grips.

My purpose for running so fast is unveiled as I hear someone crashing through the woods behind me. I've never been a great runner, and I guess refusing to participate in Crimson's track meets are now coming back to bite me in the butt.

I whip around to face my attacker. Flint.

I hurl my first knife at him. It would have been a direct hit to the forehead if he didn't duck at the last millisecond. It breaks skin open as it skims over the top of his forehead and is stopped by some shrubbery behind him. "Holy shit!" he yells, which lets me know I've startled him with my knife-throwing abilities.

I keep running, which won't hold me off for long. I've seen Flint run - the Survival Skills academy is right next to our house; I can see onto the track from my bedroom window. A cheetah wouldn't stand a chance against Flint.

I turn around to greet him; there's no use putting off the confrontation until I'm too tired to fight him.

He's brandishing a rather sharp sword - the tip simmering orange from recently being plunged into the smoldering depths of the fire.

I bring my arm around in full swing, sinking a deep slash dragged from his temple to his opposite eyebrow. He yells through his teeth in evident pain, but it does nothing to prevent him from swinging his sword in a full circle right for my neck. His swings are powerful but too slow. I use his sluggish muscles to my advantage, ducking and taking another swipe at his arm, which he dodges.

He puts both of his hands on the hilt and brings his sword over his head, preparing to bring it down onto my skull.

I do the only thing that I could think of at that moment in time, and it was plunge my knife into his gut.

It wasn't the same as the mountain lion. The mountain lion was an animal. A wild beast who wanted to rip my throat out and eat me. I killed him to save myself.

Flint blindly stumbles around for an appalling few seconds, then his sword clatters to the ground, shortly followed by the rest of his body.

I yank the knife out and collapse to my knees, about ready to hurl. He falls to his knees almost dramatically, clutching the blood-soaked hole in the fabric of his stomach. He falls onto the ground, blood stifling his shallow breaths.

I back away from the body. His moans and ragged breathing are horrible. I can barely make out a dark liquid dribbling down his chin. My stomach lurches at the sound of his cannon.

Why did I have to choose to be handy with knives? Why can't I have chosen to be a skilled archer, where you can fire from afar and not feel your knife entering your victim's flesh?

I can still go back and finish off the Careers. Myles is injured, thanks to me. If I would have been able to think the whole thing through and actually take the noise the cannon would make into account, I could've gotten a clean shot at Myles and would've made it far, far less painful.

The Careers probably think that Flint killed me. After all, who would stand a better chance in a fight: a small girl with nothing but a couple knives or a six foot five killing machine built like an ox and trained for the Games themselves?

But by the time I gather my bearings, and get enough strength to pull myself off the ground, the anthem is already playing and the seal of Panem shining in the black sky.

The first image they show is of a District 1 tribute. But it's not me. Not tonight.

Flint, looking so strong and menacing with his buzzed black hair and his overly masculine face, is shining up in the sky as one of the fallen.

Because of me.

They show the remarkably pretty face of the girl from 4, whose name I will never know. The girl whose throat I slit in her sleep. The girl whose family will only see her returned home in a coffin.

Sounds of commotion erupts to my right, echoing off the lake and broken by the woods. I killed two of their own. And you can bet they will stop at nothing to kill me.