Love and War (A Clove and Cato FanFic)

Chapter 13: A Deep Pain and A Big Explosion

It came suddenly. Something hit the ground and a shooting pain went up my leg. I shot up, not looking but running. I screamed as more pain came. It was everywhere. Marvel and Cato were up and running with me. I noticed Glimmer was nowhere in sight. I stopped and turned around. Glimmer writhing body was lying on the ground, face-down. She kept convulsing, almost like she was having a seizure. Cato turned me around and led me away from the chaos. We half ran half stumbled through the forest, trying to get back to the lake. “The lake!” Cato kept shouting. We frantically jumped into the lake and all sighed.

~*~

Tracker Jackers.  Their venom cause pain, hallucinations and in serious cases, death. Glimmer had died. We knew it was Fire-girl who had dropped the nest on us. We all hoped she was dead as well. I was sad that Glimmer had died, but I was happy because now Cato didn’t have anyone to flirt with, unless he all shocked us and flirted with Marvel. That was doubtful. We treated to our Tracker Jacker wounds for about what seemed like fifteen minutes and then we realized Lover-boy was gone. “Where has he gone?” Cato and I ran into the woods, leaving Marvel behind. We saw a flash of blonde hair and followed it. Lover-boy jumped out of the bushes and raced toward a figure. It took me only a second longer than Cato to figure out it was Fire-girl. Lover-boy ran up to her and begged her to run, to run away from here. Cato dashed through the bushes and got Lover-boy. Fire-girl stumbled into the woods, in the opposite direction of us. Lover-boy was running away from us, in another direction, but Cato got there faster. Cato whipped out his sword and slashed at Lover-boy. He howled in pain as the sword cut deep into his leg. He kept on running away from us. Cato, looking satisfied, came back to me and held me in his arms. “Now he’s scared of us. He knows whose boss in all of this and he made a mistake coming to us.” I nodded because he was right. We walked back to the camp, hand in hand.

When we got back, Marvel looked upset. He was upset because he was out of the loop. “What happened? Why didn’t you take me with you?”

                “We took care of Lover-boy.” Cato said.

                “We didn’t take you because you look awfully comfortable in the lake.” I added.

                “How did you ‘take care’ of him? I didn’t hear his cannon.”

                “We made sure he was scared of us. He won’t be bothering us ever again.” Marvel nodded as if understanding what we did and why we left him behind.

The last few days were uneventful. We gathered more food to put into our pile of goods. We went out every night, hoping to find a kill, but came up empty handed. The boy from 10 died this morning. We didn’t kill him, so someone else must have. There was Fire-girl, Lover-boy, the 2 from 11, us, and the fox-faced girl from 5.

                It was late in the afternoon when we saw it. We were just lounging around and Marvel just happens to look up. He started yelling at us. We looked up also and saw that there were two long pillars of smoke wafting into the air. We gathered our weapons and told district 3 boy to stay and guard the supplies. It was booby-trapped, but if those bombs went off, our food would explode also. We ran into the woods to see who was making a fire. We saw one fire, but nobody there. We ran into a second fire and we realized we had been tricked. Cato looked around and ran forward. We all followed him and saw a figure running up ahead. We chased after it until we heard an ear splitting boom. “Marvel! Go get that child! Me and Clove will go to the cornucopia and see what happened!!!” Cato screamed at Marvel. We were in such a rush. I sprinted like my life depended on it.  We reached the cornucopia and stood there, completely speech-less. We both looked around looking for anyone who could have been the victim. Then I remembered that if the bombs are really that strong, then the person who blew up the supplies probably died. I tugged Cato’s arm. “What Clove!?” I pointed at the sky.

                “Cato, the person who did this had to of died. There’s no way they could make it out alive.” He nodded and we waited for a cannon to go off. We waited and waited but one didn’t go off. I saw something move in the bushes and the boy from district 3 came out. I looked at Cato and he was out-raged. “You!” He pointed an accusing finger at the boy. “You did this! If you had been here, you would have stopped the idiot that blew it up. Thanks to you, they’re not dead.” The kid looked really scared. Cato walked up to him and put both of his hands on his head. He quickly snaps his neck. It made a gross cracking sound. The boy’s body went limp and tumbled to the ground. A cannon rung out loud. We walked around in the rubble, getting things that could possibly be resourceful. We found no food. We were going to have to do all the things the other tributes had to do.

                I was going to look for food, when I heard a cannon. I looked up at the sky and not to long after the first cannon went off, a second one chimed. I was suddenly scared and I ran back to Cato.

When the anthem started to play,  I laid completely still watching the sky. The first face to show was the boy from 3. The face disappeared and was replaced with Marvel’s. I flinched when his face appeared. He hadn’t come back today. We knew that one of those cannons was his. Cato wrapped his arm around me and squeezed me. We watched as his face transformed into the little girl from district 11. By then I was crying. “Clove, why are you crying?” Cato murmured. I sniffed and wiped my nose.

                “Cato, I know that we are supposed to be ruthless, killing machines, but that girl was only 12. She probably had a family back at home, maybe even siblings.”

                “Clove, you had siblings. You need to survive too. What about your family? How would they feel if you didn’t come back?”

                “To be honest, I don’t think they would care.” Cato tensed up.

                “Clove, they would care.” I shook my head and laid down on the make-shift bed we had made. “Clove,” he whispered. “We’re the only people left to defend us. Glimmer is gone, Marvel is gone, all of our allies are gone! We have to have each other’s back. It’s you and me against Fire-girl, Lover-boy, the boy from 11, and the girl from 5.” He gently kissed me on the cheek and lied down next to me. “As long as we make it through the night, we’ll be okay. We’ll strategize tomorrow.”

                “Goodnight Cato.”

                “Goodnight Clove.” He whispered.