The 67th Annual Hunger Games

Chapter 9

I felt the sun burning on my cheeks as I sat up with a groan, looking over at my brother who was still deeply asleep beside me. I'd fallen to sleep on watch, for the second night in a row. The gamekeepers will be growing impatient with us, as we'd not left the hill for days, and nobody had died since the bloodbath.

On the second day, I was watching the trees, when a load of leaves and birds flee up into the air, from a set of trees across the meadow, when Flicker from three emerged screaming from the trees, followed by what must've been a mut. She had a large piece of wire, drawn out between her hands, and wrapped it around it's neck, silencing it's squawks.

I realised that the reason the gamekeepers were keeping quite was probably because we were parched, and I was pretty sure that the water around the cornucopia was the only water in the arena, meaning that sometime soon we'd have to go down there, were the careers had probably set up camp.

I shuck Albert lightly, uttering his name quietly, urgently forcing him to wake, as an unknown fear gripped me. I had grown more and more paranoid over the days we'd spent here. I just wanted this all to be over.

He finally awoke with a grunt, putting his arm across his face to shield the sun from his eyes. It took him a while to come round, but in the end we decided that going to the cornucopia was our best chance of getting water.

We packed one of our spare bag with a few emergency foods, and other various things, before we strapped all our weapons to our belt, expecting the worst. We then covered the rest of our supplies with leaves and grass to camouflage it like Al had learnt in training.

He did a reasonably good job at hiding everything, and once we'd both decided that it was now or never, we slowly made our way down the steep slope that was the hill.

We crept down the tunnel we'd come down a few days before, and snuck down the narrow hole, the light of the cornucopia guiding our way. My breathing was louder than my footsteps as we neared, my heart pounding and a dart tight in my sweaty hand.

"Look." he whispered, pointing subtly towards Echo, Onyx, Topaz, Flicker and Tamarack, who were gathered in a circle round the edge of the cornucopia. I heard Echo laugh in an over exaggerated high pitched voice, as Al watched her, his eyes wide.

"You go round." I whispered, pointing at other tunnel. He understood my plan instantly, and had disappeared it the ddarkness within seconds.

It was impossible to get to the water without killing the careers who were guarding it. They'd probably figured out the fact that it was the only water source in the arena before we had.

Before long, I saw the shadow of Albert on the opposite tunnel to me, the shimmer of his knife glittering in the light from the cornucopia. I heard dripping around me, which seemed to amplify millions of times as I saw Albert walk slowly towards the careers.

"It's been a while." he said, as Onyx slowly approached him with his knife bared, when he noticed Al's presence, the other careers backing behind him, their weapons all left behind in a mound near the wAyers edge.

"Where's your slutty sister?" shouted Tamarack, suddenly making me stop as I crept round the edge of the pool.

"There." he said, his mouth twitching a smile as he pointed at me.

I had already thrown two or three darts which had all hit Topaz, ad she was now screaming on the ground in fits.

The other tributes ran from the scene shouting and screaming, before there was only us two and Topaz left.

"You..." she said, raising a bloodied finger that had just been lieing in the hole I'd created in her abdomen and pointing it at Al, before dropping back to the ground, her eyes empty.