You Think This Is Hard? - A Hunger Games/ Glee crossover fanfiction

Chapter 35: Tribute Hunt

[Warning: This chapter contains rather strong violence]

Chapter 35: Tribute Hunt

She was hungry, hungrier than she could ever remember being. Her stomach growled like an angry animal as she trudged through the thick forest. She was of course also thirsty, but she had drunk from the river not an hour ago, so the mild scratchiness in her throat was nothing compared to the ache in her midsection.

She was used to hunger, having grown up in a district whose food supplies were far from hearty, but she had always eaten two semi-substantial meals each day. District 8 was not a pleasant place to live, with the dank stone textile factories blotting out the horizon and erasing any speck of nature for miles. Then there were the rats. Rats were everywhere in eight, spreading disease and corrupting food supplies, eating through cloth that was meant to be sold to the Capitol and earning those who produced it a firm punishment – usually a beating in the town square. Despite their feral demeanour and obvious heath issues, rats had become an accepted part of life and few took more notice of them than was wholly necessary.

She was one of the only people she knew who would still scream at the sight of one.

A cold shiver ran down her back, even with the effulgent sun warming her far more than she would like. A sudden chill came over the forest, and the sun suddenly became luminescent, providing no heat despite its dazzling brilliance. She thought she could hear the click of rat’s toenails against the tree trunks, but everything remained still. Eerily still.

She spun around, a sheen of sweat appearing on her brow. She frantically scanned the area for the source of the sound. She no longer knew if it was a figment of her imagination or if there were actually creatures climbing about in the trees. She could not see anything. The only movement was the soft sway of branches in the breeze.

Her heart was now pumping and her eyes shone with a panic induced madness. Not taking her eyes off of the trees around her, she leant down and picked up a large stick, gripping it firmly in her hands.

“Who’s there?” she called to the emptiness. In the back of her mind she realised that she had made a mistake revealing herself as so, but all rational thoughts were being rapidly overridden by fear.

The urgency of the scuttles increased and she let out a whimper, her mind conjuring images of thousands of rats swarming about her. She thought she saw a tail quickly flash into view, and then a single yellow eye, and then a sharply-clawed foot.

She turned and ran as fast as her legs could carry her, through the dense trees and prickly underbrush. Sticks ripped at her clothes and left gashes in the exposed skin of her face. Leaves and burrs stuck to her hair and got caught on her pants. At every moment a loose root or fallen branch threated to trip her, but on she ran. The pain of her hunger had disappeared into a dull ache, completely overridden by terror.

How, she wondered, that the Gamemakers had known that rats terrified her she did not know, but the thought only popped into her head for a second before it was swept away once again.

Finally she broke through the line of trees into the vast field where the Cornucopia sat. She collapsed down onto her hands and knees, her chest heaving and her eyes misty with tears. Adrenaline still coursed through her blood, heightening her senses, and it was that that alerted her of the figures dashing toward her.

She had three options: she could seek cover in the forest, she could fight the approaching tributes – by the looks of it Careers – or she could run up toward the cliffs. She chose the third option, the thought of the forest terrifying her and the thought of fighting Careers armed with nothing more than a stick nearly making her laugh out loud.