NINETEEN -
Marvel and Peeta bring me wood from a clearing nearby and we stack it into a neat pile. We light the branches and begin to arrange our temporary camp around the flames. Meanwhile Cato is leant up against a tree a couple of metres away, one knee pulled up to his chest and scowling at the dirt. Leaving him alone is probably the best thing we can do for him at the moment, so I make a point to stop Glimmer in her tracks when she goes to try and speak with him.
Eventually he seems to calm down and re-joins the rest of us around the fire. Sunset slips into dusk as we struggle to amuse ourselves so far away from camp. Glimmer is rolling her eyes at Cato as he heats the tip of his blade until it burns, glowing luminous orange in the darkness. Marvel sharpens the same spear he has been sharpening for the last three days. I'm surprised there's anything left of the needle-like tip. A tiny lizard keeps scampering across the brush past my feet, and I make a game of trying to catch it out with my smallest knife. After a couple of throws, it pierces the creatures slender body, legs flailing in its last moments of life. As I smile smugly down at it, I notice Zafira is watching me.
"What?" I hiss, shooting the girl a death glare.
She shrugs, but the telltale curve of her lip makes me instantly uneasy. When she turns away, I scoot closer to Marvel on the other side of me. Everything about Zafira screams that she can't be trusted. The only thing stopping my next knife from finding a home in her chest is the fact that killing an ally would destroy any illusion we may be operating under that this Career pack is stable.
In our hearts we all know it, that at some point we will all turn on each other in order to win that crown. However nice both of my District 1 allies appear to be, they have been trained just the same as Cato and me. They may not have the same innate desire for glory, but you should never underestimate the lengths people will go to survive. But until that point comes, our purpose is to hunt and kill. To give the Capitol a good show as we pick off the weaklings in increasingly barbaric ways. And our next target is the girl on fire, trapped in the tree above us.
Cato agrees to take first watch as the rest of us settle down to sleep. He will exchange with Glimmer after a couple of hours. The thought of Katniss Everdeen, dead at our hands by sunrise, sends me off into a dreamless sleep.
° ° ° ° °
I am woken by Glimmer. Screaming.
My eyes jolt open as a cloud of violently buzzing insects engulfs the camp. My first and only instinct is to grab my jacket and run. I bat as many of them as I can away with the fabric, taking off after the only person I can see in front of me, merely a blur through my half-closed eyes. The screams are still there. It takes a couple of minutes for me to realise that some of them are coming from my own throat.
"To the lake! To the lake!" The figure ahead of me roars, and I'm vaguely aware of someone thrashing beside me, flailing their arms as they hit the ground with a thud. I'm about to stop, to see what's happened when an agonisingly sharp pain rips through my thigh. After that it takes all the effort I have left just to put one foot in front of the other, my leg throbbing with every step.
A cannon fires just as we reach the lake, still swatting away the remaining wasps who have managed to follow us. That's what they were, wasps, or at least they look like them. Knowing the arena, they're likely to be something far more sinister. Capital muttations. They called them Tracker Jackers, genetically engineered wasps designed to hunt down and kill anybody who disturbs their nest. The Capitol created them back during the war, to help fight the Districts, but now they're commonly used as an extra feature in the Games. And 12's girl on fire just dumped an entire swarm of them on top of our camp.
I managed to catch a few more stings on the way back to the lake, and now my shoulder, wrist and collarbone are screaming at me. I bite my lip against the pain, tasting blood as I attempt to pull the stingers out of the lumps of raised skin. My head is starting to spin, and I know what's coming next, but I try my best to scan the area around the lake before it happens, to see who might have fallen.
Marvel is collapsed a couple of metres away under the shelter, writhing in agony as the stings pop up across his skin. He doesn't seem to have caught many, and I'm pretty sure he must have been the one leading us away from the ambush. But Cato, where is Cato?
I stand up so quickly I almost pass out, dragging my sluggish limbs back in the direction of the woods. Cato is still in there. Cato. Cato.
What if he was the one to fall? What if the cannon I heard was for him?
"Cato!" I'm screaming, the effort of it coupled with the smoke inhalation from earlier ripping my throat to shreds. But I don't care. I have to find him. I have to find him. "Cato!" My thigh throbs torturously again and I have to steady myself on a tree trunk, but it explodes into a mass of crawling insects, my hand sinking into the surface as they clamber up my skin. I cry out, jumping away and tripping hard over gnarled tree roots. It's starting – the hallucinations are starting. Crawling now, I squint my eyes against the visions creeping up on me. But I don't want to go any further. The body. The one who fell.
Was it him?
"Cato!"
He comes crashing out of the brush in front of me with his sword dripping blood. A lump under his eye suggests he's been stung, but the body. It's not him. It's not him. A whimper of relief escapes my throat as I struggle to haul myself to my feet.
"Clove!" He rasps. "Come on! Loverboy's dead!"
I want to ask him what happened, but my mouth is struggling to form words and the branches on the trees are starting to reach out towards me, rotted limbs snagging in my hair until I squeeze my eyes shut, desperate to be rid of the visions. Cato grabs on to my hand and we run, him guiding me blindly through the brush. Every time I open my eyes the forest is preparing to attack, tiny animals growing vicious teeth as they growl at me from the trees, roots turning to venomous snakes beneath my feet.
By the time we emerge into the bright midday sun of the clearing I am shaking hard and there are tears welling in my eyes. But we are alive. We are alive. The cannon was not for him. I almost collapse to the grass as the ground begins to spin beneath my feet. Cato's hands come up under my arms to steady me, and I tumble forwards into them. My hands are wound tightly into the fabric of his jacket, clinging to him as I fight to hold back the dam on the hallucinations taking hold of my brain. If I open my eyes, everything in the arena will be out to get me. I'm sure of it.
It's Cato's voice, mumbling softly into my ear, that finally coaxes me to look. "It's okay Clove, we're gonna be okay." He tilts my chin to look up at him, but everything is blurred, and the bright sun overhead is throwing my vision off even more.
And then I notice her.
Staggering out of the tree line, covered in raging purple lumps which balloon beneath her skin, murderous grin twisting her face and spear poised to throw in her hand. Zafira, charging towards us. It doesn't take long for me to realise she's aiming for Cato. With his back turned, he will not have the time to evade this one. She's going to kill him.
It takes every last shred of strength to wrench myself from Cato's hold and draw the knife from my vest, and as I throw the blade seems to take three different paths under the effects of my warped eyesight. For a moment, I think it's not going to hit. She's going to kill him. And then her spear clatters to the ground as she stares down at my weapon protruding from her chest in disbelief.
Cato swivels on his heels just as the form of our District 4 ally sinks to the grass. He's saying something, pulling me back into his arms with crushing force, cupping my face in his hands but I can't hear any of it. Everything is fuzzy and blurred and I can't seem to keep my eyes open anymore.
Then the cannon fires and I black out.
AUTHOR'S NOTE -
Short little chapter but I'm going to post another one later don't worry! I felt like it worked making this a pretty short one because of how important it is to the story. As you can probably tell, I've recycled Zafira trying to spear Cato in her last moments from Sharp Objects but I think you could probably all tell she wasn't going to be one to trust haha! Either way hope you enjoyed this little but still stressful chapter of everyone getting attacked by tracker jackers :') Much love - Vee xx