Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins [100]
“Go to sleep, Finnick. It's my turn to watch, anyway,” I say.
Finnick hesitates, but no one can stay awake forever. He settles down at the mouth of the hut, one hand gripped around a trident, and drifts into a restless sleep.
I sit with my bow loaded, watching the jungle, which is ghostly pale and green in the moonlight. After an hour or so, the lightning stops. I can hear the rain coming in, though, pattering on the leaves a few hundred yards away. I keep waiting for it to reach us but it never does.
The sound of the cannon startles me, although it makes little impression on my sleeping companions. There's no point in awakening them for this. Another victor dead. I don't even allow myself to wonder who it is.
The elusive rain shuts off suddenly, like the storm did last year in the arena.
Moments after it stops, I see the fog sliding softly in from the direction of the recent downpour. Just a reaction. Cool rain on the steaming ground, I think. It continues to approach at a steady pace. Tendrils reach forward and then curl like fingers, as if they are pulling the rest behind them. As I watch, I feel the hairs on my neck begin to rise. Something's wrong with this fog. The progression of the front line is too uniform to be natural. And if it's not natural ...
A sickeningly sweet odor begins to invade my nostrils and I reach for the others, shouting for them to wake up.
In the few seconds it takes to rouse them, I begin to blister.
Tiny, searing stabs. Wherever the droplets of mist touch my skin.
“Run!” I scream at the others. “Run!”
Finnick snaps awake instantly, rising to counter an enemy. But when he sees the wall of fog, he tosses a still-sleeping Mags onto his back and takes off. Peeta is on his feet but not as alert. I grab his arm and begin to propel him through the jungle after Finnick.
“What is it? What is it?” he says in bewilderment.
“Some kind of fog. Poisonous gas. Hurry, Peeta!” I urge. I can tell that however much he denied it during the day, the aftereffects of hitting the force field have been significant. He's slow, much slower than usual. And the tangle of vines and undergrowth, which unbalance me occasionally, trip him at every step.
I look back at the wall of fog extending in a straight line as far as I can see in either direction. A terrible impulse to flee, to abandon Peeta and save myself, shoots through me. It would be so simple, to run full out, perhaps to even climb a tree above the fog line, which seems to top out at about forty feet. I remember how I did just this when the muttations appeared in the last Games. Took off and only thought of Peeta when I'd reached the Cornucopia. But this time, I trap my terror, push it down, and stay by his side. This time my survival isn't the goal. Peeta's is. I think of the eyes glued to the television screens in the districts, seeing if I will run, as the Capitol wishes, or hold my ground.
I lock my fingers tightly into his and say, “Watch my feet. Just try to step where I step.” It helps. We seem to move a little faster, but never enough to afford a rest, and the mist continues to lap at our heels. Droplets spring free of the body of vapor. They burn, but not like fire. Less a sense of heat and more of intense pain as the chemicals find our flesh, cling to it, and burrow down through the layers of skin. Our jumpsuits are no help at all. We may as well be dressed in tissue paper, for all the protection they give.
Finnick, who bounded off initially, stops when he realizes we're having problems. But this is not a thing you can fight, only evade. He shouts encouragement, trying to move us along, and the sound of his voice acts as a guide, though little more.
Peeta's artificial leg catches in a knot of creepers and he sprawls forward before I can catch him. As I help him up, I become aware