The crumbs stick in my throat, so I take another swallow from the
bottle to wash them down. What a luxury to wake up to a breakfast of fresh corn bread, buttermilk, and peaches, instead of having to scrounge for stale leftovers. Maysilee had the food all laid out on a tarp, like a party. She folded a pair of handkerchiefs into flowers for napkins and even filled the bowl of the wineglass with some kind of pink blossom, likely poisonous, but undeniably decorative.
Day 6. Somehow I’m still alive. I have no idea why the Gamemakers, under Snow’s direction, have not destroyed me already. Could I possibly be so popular that they’re keeping me around to please the audience? Are they planning some particularly spectacular ending for me? I don’t know, but I do know the arena is still begging to be broken.
The parachute arrived while I slept, which was after Maysilee, as it turned out, because the brainworm cranked me up so I offered to take the first watch. If I can use the blowtorch to burn through the hedge, ladybug, ladybug, what will I find? Hopefully, a generator that’s susceptible to fire as well. Perhaps I can burn through the side to some kind of control panel
and —
“Do we head for the Cornucopia or search for Wellie?” Maysilee asks.
I help myself to a peach wedge, scooting the final one her way, as I determine the best strategy to get her to support my plan without actually telling her — and all the people watching us — what it is. Any way you
slice it, the Cornucopia’s no good, since it’s southerly. So I reply, “Wellie, don’t you think?”
“I do. We can get by on the fish and potatoes today.” “Sure. And thanks for setting out the breakfast so fancy.” “Thought I’d kick off the day with a poster,” she says.
I think about it. Her emphasis on manners, her pretty picnics. And I remember her words that first day on the train. “Listen, Louella, if you let
them treat you like an animal, they will. So don’t let them.” This morning’s poster says, We’re civilized. We appreciate beautiful things. We’re as good as you. It’s an extension of her whole campaign to show the Capitol our value. Will they know that she’s referring to rebellion? I doubt it. They
don’t know what Pa told me. A poster could merely be promoting us as tributes. And what harm is there in a few flower napkins anyway?
“Nice paint job,” I say, and actually get a smile.
After we pack up our belongings, we survey the woods. “Let’s head north again,” I say, and start walking. She follows me uncertainly.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got a feeling Wellie would want to get as far from that volcano as possible.”
“I don’t know. We’ve been all over that area with no sign of her.” “Exactly. It’s like Mags said. In the arena, you generally keep moving.
And she hasn’t been there yet. Let’s just give it a try.”
Maysilee looks unconvinced, but stays the course. For a mile or so anyway. “I don’t think we’re going to find her up this way,” she says finally.
“Really? I think we’re on the right track.”
“Why? The arena narrows to a point up north, right? Like it did in the south?”
Never underestimate her observational skills. “Well, not right away.” “But it does. Wouldn’t Wellie just feel trapped?”
“Which is exactly why the Careers won’t think to look around here.
Just what you said.” I can feel myself skating on thin ice, but I try to project confidence, adding a little bounce to my step.
Maysilee shoots me a look but trudges along for a while, thinking.
Then she stops cold. “No, you’re wrong. Wellie would stand a much better chance in the meadow than she would up here. Little thing like her, she could disappear into that grass. It goes on for miles. Lay low and look for food at the Cornucopia. They’d never find her. And even if she did come to the woods, she’s too smart to let herself get penned in like that. You know that. But you’re taking me north again, Haymitch. Why?” She folds her
arms and waits.
I’m going to have to tell her something or it’s all over. “The hedge. I think we should give it another look.”
She shudders. “Ugh. Even if I had a quart of blood to spare, why on earth would we do that?”
I hold out my hands to indicate the arena. “Because it has to end somewhere, right? The arena can’t go on forever.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use.” “You mean, like something mechanical? Electrical?”
“Maybe. Or if not that, maybe we can collect those ladybugs to use as a weapon ourselves. Make the maze into a trap for the Careers. Lure them in, drop a tarp of ladybugs on them, get them lost in there. It’s not easy to escape. I just think if we’re smart, we can use it for our own means.” I lift
my brows, trying to telegraph that I can’t tell her everything, but it’s imperative. “I swear, do this and I’ll never ask you for anything else as long as I live.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s a generous offer.”
“Come on, Sis. I need this for my next poster.” How quickly that’s become our shorthand for defying the Capitol.
She relents. “All right. But it better be a good one.” “Oh, ladybug, it will be,” I promise.
My ears feel better today, clearer and more dependable. As we move on, I’m the first to pick up on the high-pitched whine coming from the west, an area I haven’t explored this far north. “You hear that?”
“I do now,” Maysilee says. “I just thought it was part of the nature sounds here. Like the birds.”
“That’s what worries me. Think of the size of the mosquito that would generate that.” I imagine a four-foot-long bloodsucker that would make the ladybugs seem like pranksters.
“It’s a good way off. Let’s just keep our distance.” She takes a drink from a water jug and hands it over.
There’s a confusing moment when the jug bursts, splashing water over both of us, before we make sense of the knife, the fast-approaching boots, and the undeniable truth that we’re being ambushed. Caught off
guard, we bolt away from the Careers — for it sure isn’t Wellie — and straight toward the giant mosquito hum. I’m hoping we can scrape Silka and Maritte off on whatever produces it.
If we could outrun them, it might be worth turning to make a stand, but those girls are so close on our heels, it seems pointless. They’d be upon us before we had time to defend ourselves. At the moment, only the trees
we’re dodging between protect us from their deadly projectiles. It’s all I can do to pull my knife and hope for an opening.
Suddenly, my feet lose traction and I’m on my butt, sliding into a clearing like I’ve hit a patch of ice. In that moment, my brain tries to make sense of an incomprehensible image. Two young Gamemakers in their
signature white outfits hunch over an open berm covered in scarlet poppies. One wears a protective mask and holds some kind of drill, which emits the high-pitched whining. A third Gamemaker leans over a mop. By the look on their faces, I know the surprise is mutual.
I skid to a stop a few feet in front of them in a puddle of something that brings to mind the slime that results when you boil okra. Maysilee
whizzes right past the Gamemakers and latches on to a sapling at the edge of the berm, somehow staying upright. For a moment we all freeze, the shock universal. Then Silka bursts into the clearing and goes down,
overturning a large bucket and sending a couple gallons of slime back onto the forest floor.
The Gamemaker with the mop, who looks like he’s near our age, lets out an indignant “Hey! Watch it!”
I know from experience that mopping’s a bottom-of-the-ladder job, so finding a Gamemaker at it seems bizarre. Like watching Plutarch
Heavensbee peel potatoes or President Snow clean the hair out of a drain.
Maritte, who apparently sensed some weirdness, comes to a halt at the edge of the clearing. “What’s going on? Are you Gamemakers?” she exclaims.
The Gamemaker with the drill raises her mask and straightens up to her full height. “That’s right. And all four of you are in absolute violation of the rules. You must immediately withdraw or there will be repercussions.”
“That’d be a lot more impressive if you weren’t shaking like a leaf,”
observes Maysilee, fingering her blowgun. “You must be pretty expendable, you three, getting sent in here to tidy up for us.”
There’s a pause while everybody considers the truth of this. Then all three Gamemakers make a break for the ladder that leads down to Sub-A.
Maritte’s arm snaps back and I think I’m a goner, but the trident
whistles over my head and lodges in the mopper, sending him into a pillow of poppies. Almost simultaneously, the woman with the drill grabs at the
spot beneath her ear and comes away with a dart. She collapses as the final Gamemaker plunges headfirst through the open berm into Sub-A. It takes a few moments before we hear her skull crack on the concrete below. I can
picture that floor, having run for my life down it, and find myself preoccupied with imagining the scene.
Silka seems stunned into inertia as well. “What’d you do? Did you kill Gamemakers? They’ll never let us win now!”
Maysilee’s voice drips honey. “Still chasing that sad little dream,
Silka?” She deftly loads another dart and glances at Maritte. “I’m almost sorry to kill you now, Maritte. What’s the deal with District Four, anyway? Hooking up with a bunch of Capitol toadies? Seems like you should be on our side.”
Maritte hesitates, eyeing her trident with longing, then pulls her knife and begins to back away as Maysilee raises her blowgun.
The hovercraft appears out of nowhere, dropping a bomb into the clearing that explodes in a cloud of dirt and tear gas. I grab Maysilee and we flounder through the woods, branches snapping our faces, stumbling over logs, as we try to escape the stuff. More bombs rain down, releasing more gas, causing our eyes to burn and stream so badly, they’re useless. After a while, I can hear the explosions fade a bit. My guess is that the
hovercraft could only track one set of tributes, and the Careers drew the short straw.
Some inner compass leads me north and we outdistance the tear gas at the entrance of the hedge. I rip open one of the packs and alternate pouring water in Maysilee’s and my eyes.
She’s so furious with me she’s spitting. “What the hell, Haymitch!
Where were you? Why was Maritte the only one who had my back?” She’s right. I froze. Caught off guard by the unexpected encounter,
intimidated by the white uniforms, whatever. I choked.
“I don’t know what happened, Maysilee. Everything was coming at me so fast and I’m covered in slime and —”
“You’re supposed to be my ally! Not her! Not that fish-eating, bootlicking, wished-she-could-pull-off-pin-curls piece of trash! You are!”
Well, I feel terrible, and utterly lack a defense. My knife was in hand, the Gamemakers in easy reach. No one better positioned to kill them.
Plutarch’s voice taunts me. “The question is, why didn’t you?” I can’t say I’m not a killer anymore. That leaves brainwashed or cowardly. Boy, I sure hope Sid didn’t see that. No, of course he didn’t. That’s one bit of action the audience will never view. They’ve surely been following Wellie, wherever she is.
“You’re right,” I tell Maysilee. “You’re one hundred percent right and I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she sneers. “Maybe you should be the victor, Haymitch.
That would give you some time to grow a backbone.”
Hello again, meanest girl in town. It only hurts because it’s true.
She pulls out the can of sardines and yanks off the lid. “I’m eating this whole can. They’re mine.” She selects a fish and slurps it into her mouth.
Boy, she really is mad, to be eating with her fingers.
I let her hog the sardines, even though they smell delicious and my stomach’s growling. I’ve let her down and I need her help with the hedge. Would it matter if she knew about my bombing the tank and the mission to break the arena? Or would my feckless response to having the Gamemakers at our mercy erase it all? I don’t know, I just hope that once she has a belly full of fish, she’ll give me a hand.
After a few minutes, the slurping stops. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the can slide into view. Three fish remain. I shake my head. She
gives them a nudge in my direction. I’m so hungry I take them.
“Was it because of your poster?” she asks, her voice still tight.
She means, I think, was I avoiding confronting the Gamemakers
because of the fabulous statement I’m planning to make. “I wish I could say
it was, but no, I don’t think it was that. I don’t know what it was. Just programmed to be walked all over, I guess. You nailed it.”
“No, what I said wasn’t fair. You’ve done your part. With Louella in the chariot. Getting a one in training. And, I suspect, whatever it is you’ve been up to that you’re so cagey about.” She dampens a handkerchief and cleans her hands. “You know, if we’d started picking off the Gamemakers before we got in here, we might’ve stood a chance.”
I think of the moment with the knives in training, of the country as a whole, and how we just keep submitting to the Capitol’s rule. Why? It’s not a conversation I can have in front of the cameras, so I just concentrate on wiping the last bit of oil out of the can. Then I go about scraping the slime off my pants. At least it doesn’t smell bad, or burn my skin, or harden, which makes it one of the more benign things I’ve encountered in here.
Maysilee’s breathing has returned to normal. I decide to give her five more minutes to recover before I push for the hedge. I watch as she traces a spiderweb on a bush. “Look at the craftsman-ship. Best weavers on the
planet.”
“Surprised to see you touching that.”
“Oh, I love anything silk.” She rubs the threads between her fingers. “Soft as silk, like my grandmother’s skin.” She pops open a locket at her
neck and shows me the photo inside. “Here she is, just a year before she died. Isn’t she beautiful?”
I take in the smiling eyes, full of mischief, peering out of their own spiderweb of wrinkles. “She is. She was a kind lady. Used to sneak me
candies sometimes.”
Maysilee laughs. “You weren’t the only one. She got chewed out for that.” She cups the locket in her hands and examines her. “No one ever loved me more. I always hoped I’d look like her one day. Never going to see myself grow old, I guess.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, no. Not after today.” She bites her lip. “She used to say, if I was afraid, ‘It’s okay, Maysilee, nothing they can take from you was ever worth keeping.’”
“I know that song. Lenore Dove sings it.”
“It’s a song?” Maysilee smiles. “Well, your gal’s full of surprises.
Guess she got the jump on us after all.” “Doing what?”
“Doing nothing.” She snaps the locket closed and stands. “Let’s visit your hedge, Mr. Abernathy.”
“Well, okay, then, Miss Donner.” I break a branch that looks familiar off a nearby tree. “Hold this.”
“What do I do?”
I whip out the blowtorch, light her up, and nod at the hedge. “You’re my wingman. Anything with wings, you burn. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I charge through the hedge, making a beeline for the site of our
previous breakout attempt. Firing up the blowtorch, I cut a straight line from my shoulder to the ground. Ladybugs begin to swarm as the greenery catches fire. Maysilee steps right in, waving her torch over the infestation. The mutts ignite, inflate, and burst open like dried corn kernels in hot grease. I carve another line parallel to the first, a couple of feet to the right. More bugs emerge from along the hedge and fly at us. Maysilee circles her torch, singing as she exterminates them:
Ladybug, ladybug fly away home.
Your house is on fire, your children are gone. All except one, who answers to Nan.
She’s hiding under the frying pan.
I join in as I continue to burn a door in the bushes, sweeping the flame from side to side. The stench of fried insects, chemicals, and burnt sugar
surrounds us as the crackling of the holly leaves and bug shells underscores our song. The hedge puts off a prohibitive amount of heat, but we keep on,
carving a tunnel through it. A few yards in, daylight peeks through from the other side.
“Almost there!” I shout to Maysilee.
My flame has begun to sputter. I lay on the trigger and the last layer of prickly leaves dissolves into ash. I drop the empty blowtorch to the ground and step out onto an even stretch of parched ground that leads to a dropoff. Maysilee emerges beside me, running her torch around the interior of our tunnel and tossing it in to scorch the last handful of bugs. She beats out the sparks on her shirt.
“So, did we reach the end?”
I walk to the edge of what turns out to be a cliff. A sheer drop of around a hundred feet meets a carpet of pointy rocks. Nestled among them sits a gigantic machine, purring like a contented cat. The generator. Only a stone’s throw away, but it might as well be on the moon. A sound leaves my body, something between a moan and a sigh.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “This is the end of the road.”
