Hunger games chapter 13

• This was no tribune's campfire gone out of control, no model occurrence. The flames that bear down on me have a natural height, a uniformity that marks them as machine-made, Gamemaker-made.
• Somehow, through the smoke and vomit, I pick up the scent of singed hair. My hand fumbles to my braid and finds a chunk has seared off at least six inches of it. Strands of blackened hair crumble in my fingers.
• The fireball grazes my right calf. Seeing any part of my leg on fire sends me over the edge. I writhe and scramble backward on my hands and feet, shaking, trying to save myself from the horror.
• it draws out the heat? But she means miner bums. Probably she'd recommend it for my hands. But what my calf? Although I have not yet had the courage to examine it, I'm guessing that it's an injury in a whole different class
• My mother says healers are born, not made. They did their best, but the man died, just like the doctor said he would.
• My hands are slightly less demanding. They can handle small breaks from the pool. So I slowly put my gear back in order. First I fill my bottle with the pool water, work on hydrating my body. After a time, I force myself to nibble on a cracker, which helps settle my stomach. I roll up my sleeping bag.
• And find me, they do. It's lucky I'm ready to move on because when I hear the feet, I have less than a minute head start. Evening has begun to fall. The moment I awake, I'm up and running, splashing across the pool, flying into the underbush. My leg slows me down, but I sense my pursuers are not as speedy as they were before the fire, either. I hear their coughs, their raspy voices calling to one another.
• This could be it, I think. What chance do I have against them? All six are there, the five Careers and Peeta, and my only consolation is they're pretty beat-up, too. Even so, look at their weapons. Look at their faces, grinning and snarling at me, a sure kill above them. It seems pretty hopeless.
• But then something else registers. They're bigger and stronger than I am, no doubt, but they're also heavier. There's a reason it's me and not Gale who ventures up to pluck the highest fruit, or rob the most remote bird nests. I must weigh at least fifty or sixty pounds less than the smallest Career.
• The girl from District 1 offers Cato the silver bow and sheath of arrows - my arrows! Just the sight of them makes me so angry I want to scream, at myself, at that traitor Peeta for separating me from having them.
• I give Cato time to hoist himself into the tree before I begin to climb again. Gale always says I remind him of a squirrel the way I can scurry up even the slenderest branches. Part of it's my weight, but part of it's practice. You have to know where to place your hands and feet.
• I'm another thirty feet in the air when I hear the crack and look down to see Cato flailing as he and a branch go down. He hits the ground hard and I'm hoping he possibly broke his neck when he gets back on his feet, swearing like a fiend.
• The girl with the arrows, Glimmer I hear someone call her - agh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous - anyway Glimmer scales the tree until the branches begin to crack under her feet and then has the good sense to stop. I'm at least eighty feet high now. She tries to shoot the arrows and it's immediately evident that she's incompetent with a bow. One of the arrows gets lodged in the tree near me though and I'm able to seize it. I wave it above her head, as if that was the sole purpose of climbing, when actually I mean to use it if I ever get the chance. I could kill them, every one of them, if those silver weapons were in my hands.
• Suddenly, I'm up on one elbow. Those are no possum's eyes, I know their glassy reflection too well. In fact, those are not animal eyes at all. In the last dim rays of light, I make her out, watching me silently from between the branches.
• My eyes follow the line of her finger up into the foliage above me. At first, I have no idea what she's pointing to, but then, about fifteen feet up, I make out the vague shape in the dimming light. But of... of what? Some sort of animal? It looks about the size of a raccoon, but it hangs from the bottom of a branch, swaying ever so slightly. There's something else. Among the familiar evening sounds of the woods, my ears register a low hum. Then I know. It's a wasp nest.
• Tracker jackers

  • Larger than regular wasps, they have a distinctive solid gold body and a sting that raises a lump the size of a plum on contact
  • Most people can't tolerate more than a few stings, some die at once
  • The hallucinations brought on by the venom have actually driven people to madness
  • They will hunt down anyone who disturbs their nest and attempt to kill them
• After the war, the Capitol destroyed all the nests surrounding their city, but the ones near the districts were left untouched. Another reminder of our weakness, I suppose, just like the Hunger Games. Another reason to keep inside the fence of District 12.
• When Gale and I come across a tracker jacker nest, we immediately head in the opposite direction.
• I'm wounded and trapped. Darkness has given me a brief reprieve, but by the time the sun rises the Careers will have formulated a plan to kill me. There's no way they could do otherwise after I've made them look so stupid. That nest may be the sole option I have left. If I can drop it down on them, I may be able to escape. But I'll risk my life in the process.
• Sawing off the branch


  1. Drag myself out of my bag

  2. Make my way to the branch

  3. Saw through the branch at the trunk

  4. Send the whole nest crashing down
• The best chance I'll have to do the sawing without drawing notice will be during the anthem.
• The seal of the Capitol shines above me and the anthem begins. I saw away, occasionally glancing at the sky to register that there were no deaths today.
• Now what! I could probably finish off the job by sense of feel but that may not be the smartest plan. If the wasps are too groggy, if the nest catches on its way down, if I try to escape, this could all be a deadly waste of time. Better, I think, to sneak up here at dawn and send the nest into my enemies.
• Setting on my sleeping bag is a small plastic pot attached to a silver parachute. My first gift from a sponsor. The ointment in the palm of my hand. What can it be? No food surely. I unscrew the lid and I know by the scent that it's medicine.
• I feel a second sting on the cheek, a third on my neck, and their venom almost immediately makes me disoriented.
• Removing stingers

  Rip the barbed stingers out of the flesh
• Only 3 tracker jackers had identified the narrator before the nest went down
• Tracker jacker attack

  Careers wake up to a full-scale attack
• Careers' reactions

  • Peeta and a few others have the sense to drop everything and bolt
  • Glimmer and the one from District 4 receive multiple stings
• The narrator experiences the effects of the tracker jacker stings - swelling, pain, oozing
• The narrator sees Glimmer's disfigured body
• The narrator tries to retrieve Glimmer's bow and arrows
• The cannon fires, signaling Glimmer's death
• The narrator tries to retrieve the arrows pinned under Glimmer's body
• The narrator sees the hovercraft arrive to retrieve the girl from District 4
• The narrator throws themself over Glimmer's body to protect the arrows
• Peeta arrives and shoves the narrator away, telling them to run
• The narrator flees, disoriented by the tracker jacker venom
• The narrator blacks out after the ants bore into their eyes
• Tracker jacker venom

  Carefully created to target the place where fear lives in your brain