Chapter Sixteen – Grey Everywhere

The Careers, thought Hamish immediately, frozen in shock as Betty screamed in horror. Surely they had hunted these two down to avenge their betrayal. He watched, still motionless, as Betty withdrew a long knife and twisted and turned her head wildly to find the intruder. Hamish heard footsteps from somewhere to his left.

BOOM! The cannon blast seemed louder than usual and kicked Hamish's senses into life. When the footsteps became faster, Hamish darted from the building, his heart racing, and pelted down the road, slinging his rucksack over his shoulder –

Clang! He spun on his heel and saw his metal flask of water bounce down the road, having fallen out the exterior pocket of his pack. He hesitated for a second, but there was no time to retrieve it, for Betty had spun her head round to face him.

'You!' she shouted, her face masked with anger and she started running towards him, knife aloft. Hamish bowed his head and ran on, losing himself in the streets thick with skyscrapers, which again began tumbling in his wake. He just had time to hear a plunk as the flask dropped into the river. He turned a random corner and chanced a glance behind him. He looked just in time to see the murderous, insane face of Betty before her body tumbled forward and lay motionless in the middle of the road, an arrow wedged in her back. The cannon fired.

Hamish had hardly opened his mouth in shock when the killer emerged from behind a building. And it wasn't a Career. It was – and Hamish should really have guessed – Crossbow Boy from District 9, the male cousin. Still running, Hamish kept glancing over his shoulder. He briefly saw him go to reload the crossbow but Hamish lost sight of him as a skyscraper came crashing down; for once, it didn't collapse in on itself, but tipped forwards onto the road. Crossbow Boy skidded to a halt and was lost in a cloud of dirty smoke – alive or dead, Hamish couldn't tell.

Hamish ran on, taking the chance to put as much distance between him and Crossbow Boy as possible. There was no third cannon blast. Not yet, anyway. Images of the arrows stuck in Kid's and Betty's bodies flashed through his mind and he knew he would have gone the same way if he'd acted any slower. One thing was sure: he didn't have a hope of returning to home base: the fear of being chased and killed had blurred his sense of direction and even the river was out of sight.

He continued to trot along the straight roads. His thirst was starting to creep in at an alarming rate, made worse by the knowledge that he had lost both his backpack supply and the river source. After fifteen minutes, he slowed to a walk, breathing deeply through his nose. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. His mouth was drying horribly quickly. He needed water. The river would surely meet his eyes again soon.

Perhaps it will rain, thought Hamish hopefully, gazing up at the layer of clouds. But it was useless. Not a drop was falling.

Hadn't Aberforth taught him a spell that produced water? Back in District 12? If he had, Hamish couldn't recall the name of it, which heightened his frustration. What was it? It began with A, he knew that much. But his brain was tired and wasn't working well. So were his legs. He tried to picture himself in Aberforth's hut in District 12 ... there had been a bowl on the table that Hamish had been firing jets of water into for practise ... the thought of that cold, clear water made him thirstier ... but he couldn't remember the spell ... perhaps Aberforth was yelling the spell at him on some screen miles away ...

He didn't seem to be making any progress. The roads were all the same. The buildings were all the same. Grey everywhere. He wondered dimly if he would end up visualising everything in black and white for the rest of his life, if he somehow did win this thing. The thousands of colours of the Capitol seemed impossible and he couldn't even picture a colour other than grey. Grey roads. Grey towers. Grey skies. He actually had to remove his green backpack and gaze at it for a while to keep his colour sight in tact. Green. Grey. The two words merged together in his head. They sounded too similar, so he swung the bag on his back again and kept walking.

He had no fear to spare for other tributes. Crossbow Boy was a long way away now. Hamish had a distant feeling he was nearing the edge of the arena, because he been walking in more or less a straight line for a couple of hours now. He tried to count how many tributes were left, but he'd forgotten all the numbers already. There were voices from afar, not close enough to trouble him. He speculated whether the Careers knew about the deaths of the District 4 tributes. They would have certainly heard the cannons. But perhaps Kid and Betty hadn't betrayed them at all.

He stumbled. He was afraid his body wouldn't last much longer. He envisaged the river, how long it was and wondered how on earth he hadn't seen it again since the morning. He was moaning slightly with every exhale. A grey dog darted from a building. Grey rats scuttled everywhere. Grey clouds. Grey light. Grey ocean.

Ocean. He'd found it at last. Water. Miles and miles of water. He broke into a jagged run towards it. The road opened up onto a thin stretch of beach, followed by the soft, silent lapping of the waves. Hamish's boots sunk into the soft sand and he fished out the empty plastic bottle from his pack. He dunked it into the sea and filled it to the brim. He was about to down the lot when he remembered the water-purifying tablets. Popping one in, he shook it well – the tablets worked quickly. He took careful sips, followed by deeper gulps. The lot was gone in ten seconds.

He refilled and took a seat on the beach, gazing out at the huge ocean. It made him wonder how much editing the Gamemakers had actually done to this place. He turned his head. Perhaps they'd just got rid of all the boring buildings and left the skyscrapers standing. This must have once been a fantastic coastal city. It was easy to visualise cars rolling down the road with their loud, rumbling engines, the streets compact with shoppers and businesspeople. After the great wars of pre-Panem, Hamish hadn't thought much about other places that may have survived, because it looked as though this arena was outside of Panem. It was very tempting to fashion a raft and see what lay beyond the other side of the ocean, but the Gamemakers would easily shunt him back here and force him to kill some tributes.

Hamish frowned at the bottle of water, slowly moistening his lips. The water had quenched his thirst, but for some reason, he now had a headache. And a powerful one at that. It was growing on him every second. His heart sounded like a bass drum, slow but loud. His head also started pounding.

This was wrong. He'd taken the tablet, hadn't he? Surely the water had been fine, yet it was the only direct link with the headache. With enormous difficulty, he pushed himself to his feet and turned to face the city. The skyscrapers were swaying and the height of them made him extremely dizzy.

The bottle dropped from his numb hand. He felt sick. He could feel the pool of water swishing around in his stomach innocently. What on earth had he just drank?

That question remained to be answered, as Hamish's legs gave way and he fell to the sand, unconscious.

...

'Now, this could get interesting, very interesting indeed – what do you make of this, Claudius?' said Caesar, turning to face his fellow commentator.

'Well of course, as we heard from his interviews, Tarky was particularly careful not to disclose information about the ocean,' said Cluadius. 'I'm sure many of you watching have noticed by now that the rivers have been temporarily drained, shortly after our tributes from District 4 were courageously picked off by Leon. The ocean is the only other source of water, but since it's at the edge of the arena, perhaps not every tribute will reach it in time. Caesar.'

'That's right, but it doesn't stop there, ladies and gentlemen,' continued Caesar. 'The ocean, in fact, has a twenty percent alcohol content, though without the taste. Very powerful stuff – remember, there's still a twelve-year-old from District 10 who could be drinking it shortly.'

'Yes, you won't want to miss anything here, viewers. We could see a side to your tributes that you never knew existed. Young Hamish from District 12 has been the ocean's first victim. He's very exposed out there, but no tributes have got near him as yet. He'll be out for a few hours, I expect: that was quite a dosage he took. Not many could survive a bottle and a half of such strong alcohol.'

'Oh, I'm not sure Claudius, I've seen you do it many times at the Capitol parties,' said Caesar, and the two of them boomed with laughter.

'And on that inspiring note, here's a quick break for adverts, don't go anywhere.'

...

The boom of a cannon woke Hamish up. His eyes snapped open and the pounding in his head returned worse than ever. The ground itself seemed to sway and he had to clutch onto the sand for a few seconds, feeling he would simply fall into the sky if he let go. He pushed himself to his knees, and vomited over the sand, coughing and spluttering. He knelt there, breathing deeply, but it was hopeless. He felt half-dead. His eyes couldn't focus on anything. Everything was one, huge grey blur.

He heard voices. Voices from far up the coast. Laughter. There was a group of them, strutting down towards Hamish, their faces fuzzy. More laughter. Shouts of triumph as one of them spotted him and pointed.

A one-word instruction hit its mark in the depths of Hamish's foggy brain.

Go.

'Go,' he repeated dully, the word nothing more distinguishable than a grunt. He climbed to his feet, the world swaying before him. He did something impossible, something extraordinary: he put one foot in front of the other and walked.

I'll be dead soon, he thought, as a skyscraper crashed to the ground, the noise barely passing through Hamish's malfunctioning ears – the only noise that mattered to him was the voices behind him. I'll be dead and all this pain will go.

The next few hours passed in a haze. He could only remember snippets of what was going on. He might have imagined half of it, he couldn't tell.

There had been a second cannon blast ... the voices and chasers stopping ...

Walking ... walking ...

Lying down in the middle of a road ... a rat sniffing loudly in his ear ... more vomit ... more walking ...

Leaning his face against a skyscraper ... feeling the cold glass on his steaming forehead ...

Walking ... walking ... walking ... falling to the floor ...

Open space. Black shape. Sitting inside the Cornucopia. Getting stabbed by Bruce. Waking from the dream ...

Walking ... walking ...

Getting a leg trapped under a fallen skyscraper. Aching. Blood. Girl's shriek. Being dragged out by hands ... soft hands ... they must be his mother's hands ... their warm, caring touch. Then she went back in her bed and started knitting. She looked younger and was talking to him ... then his father walked in. She and his father argued until they were both shouting and Hamish had to cover his ears, and suddenly he was shouting too –

'Hamish! Hamish, wake up!'