Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Snares - 5

“Fuck!” It rasps inside his throat, his voice hoarse. He kicks at a log and watches as the splinters jab through the air.

“Fuck!”

His head swivels. Was that an echo? No, the voice comes again, sliding out of the trees to his right. Someone else is out there, somewhere nearby too. It’s definitely a girl, which narrows it down to three. The squat, bulky girl from One with the coarse voice and the attitude. Abi, small and thin, who he remembers from watching the reapings; she’d pushed over the girl behind her and stormed up onstage as if she wanted to knock the whole thing down. Something tells him Carmen would have gone far away, if she’s still alive. The mutts are still prowling, somewhere.

His stomach twists and if there was anything left in it, he’d be sick.

The voice is getting closer, accompanied by the noise of someone punching the living daylights out of everything they pass. Immediately he rules out Carmen. It sounds too powerful to be Abi.

“Fucking trees, always in the fucking way; get lost!”

This is followed by a particularly vicious snap and a creaking sound. Above him, leaves rustle in alarm.

Definitely the girl from One.

Every single nerve in his body suddenly blazes into life, his mind screaming for him to run. The trees are so thick that if he peers in the direction of the voice he can only make out a vague shape, but that means that if she looks she can see him too. He casts around for somewhere to hide; the bushes are too small to hide all of him and he would need to be able to run away, because she’s almost certainly armed...hiding behind a tree it is. Heart in his throat, he scrambles for a thick, mossy trunk.

A loud cracking sound snaps from under his foot and the whole arena lurches and goes terrifyingly still. He can almost hear the sharp intake of breath from the girl. Every route is blocked by trees or vines or tangled bushes; no way out. Surely this is it now. Hopefully Brae isn’t watching, hopefully nobody is, but he doubts that. His shirt is sticking to him, his fingernails digging into his palm as if a fist will save his life.

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody!” he shouts back, mentally slapping himself. What sort of stupid trick was that? Now she knows exactly where he is and that he’s scared. Terrified. This is worse that the rush of the mutt attack, so much worse. Now he can hear her coming, little steps and chuckles, and the horrifying grating of some kind of weapon.

She’s trying to scare you. Don’t fall for it.

Too late.

He’s backing away now, feeling the branches pushing at his back, almost like they’re trying to hold him there. A stick jabs him in the small of the back, and he reaches back to snap it off. It’s just broken free when her face thrusts through the foliage a few metres from him, a cold, hard grin plastered all over it.

He runs.

Vines lash at his arms and legs; he bumps into trees, green twisting all around him as he tries to force more energy into his legs. Almost immediately a stitch tears into his side, bringing tears into his eyes, but he can’t stop because he can hear her close behind him, bounding along and occasionally swearing as a branch smacks her in the face.

What now?

He can’t run forever, especially not when he’s tiring already. He has a stick but what sort of weapon is that? He can feel it flaking in his sweaty palm. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide...all of Panem is about to watch him die. The certainty of it settles in his stomach but his legs keep going. If he keeps going he’ll find some way out, he has to. Somehow.

A sharp scream behind him makes him falter and his foot catches something; he hits the ground hard. Sparks burst across his eyes. His hands scrabble to get a grip on something, pull himself up because the girl must be almost on top of him right not, weapon ready. It feels like all the breath has exploded out of him and he knows that he can’t run anymore. May as well face it.

He rolls onto his back, wincing at the ray of sunlight. Morning. His last glimpse of sun. It’s pretty at least, delicate orange washing over the slices of sky. The trees seem to tower on forever, the remains of a building crumbling between them. Everything dies. This place was full, once, and now it is dead. It’s the way things go. The knowledge of it soothes the turmoil inside his mind.

Except the final blow that he’s expecting doesn’t come.

A torrent of cursing floods the air around him, words he knows, and a whole lot that he’s never heard before. Slowly, he pushes himself up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun.

She’s hanging by an ankle, the tips of her flailing hands just brushing the ground. He can see the rope now, a thin strand looping up into the trees, knotted cleverly. A memory stirs; a red haired boy in the Training Centre, his fingers flying over a length of rope. Thomas, maybe Tom or something similar.

Byron stands, brushing the dead leaves and crumbling soil from the seat of his pants. She spins in a slow circle in front of him, spitting expletives at him every time she faces him. He can see the veins standing out on her forehead, and her eyes are starting to bulge.

“Get me down!”

Her fingertips claw at the ground, reaching for her axe, which lies glinting in the light a few inches away. He moves forward cautiously, eying the rope as he does so, hoping it’s not about to give way and set her free again. Ruby swipes at him as he reaches for the weapon, and he jumps back nervously. She spits out a laugh.

“Still scared, cow boy?”

He just shakes his head, not trusting his voice. She can’t get him. The trap is solid. He repeats that to himself over and over again as he inches forwards. Something wet splatters his cheek; she’s spat at him. He wipes it off with a grimace, sneaking a glance at her. Her face is twisted, barely human, and bright red from the blood rushing straight into it. He won’t be sorry when she’s gone.

He darts, snatches up the axe and retreats a few paces, clutching the handle in both hands. The girl from Seven - Jolly? Jolie? - gave him some tips, a lifetime ago, but they’re all forgotten. He shuffles it around, trying to find the right grip. The girl glares at him, defiant but hopeless and with a slightly calculating look in her beady eyes.

“We’d make a good team, you and I.”

He shakes his head again, giving her an incredulous look. Not falling for that. She’s spat on him, less than a minute ago she was trying to kill him, and she still asks for an alliance?

Somewhere, someone will be screaming for him to kill her. How hard would it be? One quick chop, easy. Then it’s just one more down, one person closer to the rolling pastures of home. He lifts the axe, sees the alarm flash in her face, her hand going up to shield her face and neck.

He can’t do it.

She’s stuck. She’s going to die anyway, starve or dehydrate if she can’t get her way out. So he doesn’t have to do it. Clean hands. Clean hands mean a clear mind.

She knows it too, he can see it just by looking at her. Her life is in his hands, one way or the other. But she’s a Career, a mean one at that, and he’s certain that as soon as he’d cut her down she’d have him on the ground with a slit throat. Even the image of it makes his sick.

“Come on, you little...I mean, you know we would.”

His cheek is still damp with her saliva. She disgusts him, this warped excuse for a human being. Surely she deserves everything she gets. She does, he tells himself.

“No,” he says, and turns and walks into the trees, breaking into a jog as soon as her swearing dies away into the undergrowth. The axe dangles heavily from his hand, and it feels cold, and comforting. He’s not helpless anymore.

And there’s only four to go now.