Finnick's Games - The 65th Hunger Games

Chapter Eleven

I just manage to block the blow by diverting his arm. While he's open I shove him against the nearest tree. He kicks my shin and manages to muscle his way out of my grasp. I make to grab my wooden club from the ground, and as I straighten his swing is a blur across my vision. I feel the rock in his hand connect fiercely with my brow, knocking me back into the trickling stream. The Earth tilts underneath me, like it's trying to shake me off its surface. Asher's bony knees dig into my flesh as he tries to straddle me against the streambed. The Earth might be tilting but there's no time to wait for it to straighten again. I lock my leg around his and roll him over onto his back. It happens without thought: the wooden club comes bearing down into his face. Not once, not twice, but three times. When the lights leave his eyes, a feeling of horror swells within me. Especially knowing that he isn't dead yet.

But it's hard to believe he's still alive. The skin of his face is no longer olive-colored - it's bright red. One of his eyes no longer sits properly in its socket. He's deformed, battered, beyond repair. And still he chokes on his own blood. It's a horrible, thick, gurgling sound. I press my thumbs against the middle of his neck until he goes quiet.

Boom.

The cannon sends a shiver through the trees. Afterwards, the jungle suddenly feels hushed. Like I've entered an alternate dimension where sound doesn't exist.

The body lying in the streambed is unrecognizable. I turn away from it before I retch. The fish are still lying limp on the stone. As I gather them up in a big leaf I see the skin on my hands - they look like Asher's face. The same tinge of red.

On my way back to the others, I cross paths with them in the jungle. Their eyes, once upturned at the sight of the hovercraft that appeared above the stream, now stare at me in shock.

"We thought it was you," Jem exclaims.

"You killed 'em?" Rhodes asks.

"District 9," I say. My mouth - it's abnormally dry. I try to cultivate saliva out of my glands but I've seemed to stop producing it. I talk through the discomfort. "He attacked me. Now he's dead." I hold the fish out to Tocara. She takes the leaf and opens it. Delight crosses her face.

***

We carry on diagonally through the jungle. Elasis grills me on my encounter with Asher. What he wants to know, mainly, is whether or not I'm sure that Asher was operating alone. I tell him I'm pretty sure - it didn't seem like anybody else was around. And definitely nobody came to save or avenge him. But Elasis seems to be pretty interested in another detail: how I killed him.

"With the club," I tell him as we duck under a group of swooping leaves. "And then I... strangled him."

"With your hands?"

"What else?"

"Did he put up a fight?"

"He put his all into it," I recall. I remember his weight feeling heavy against my body, his quickened hand smacking the rock against my face so hard it shattered the Earth around me. I've recovered from the blow now - at least, I think I have. I now know why the Careers looked so shocked when I crossed paths with them after the kill: my brow was spilling blood. All down the side of my face was a slick coat of red. Jem, with her first aid kit, stitched my brow together and washed my face. "He didn't know what he was doing," I continue. "But he knew he wanted to kill me."

"That's the danger with those eastern Districts. They don't know what the hell they're doing but they'll stop at nothing to do it. Those kids are all primal. I say we take them out first." He calls out to Jem and asks her who from the eastern Districts are still alive. As we walk, she reads from a notebook she carries in her bag.