The Hunger Games

show.
    I don’t watch, but I can hear the snarls, the growls, the howls of pain from both human and beast as Cato takes on the mutt pack. I can’t understand how he can be surviving until I remember the body armor protecting him from ankle to neck and I realize what a long night this could be. Cato must have a knife or sword or something, too, something he had hidden in his clothes, because on occasion there’s the death scream of a mutt or the sound of metal on metal as the blade collides with the golden horn. The combat moves around the side of the Cornucopia, and I know Cato must be attempting the one maneuver that could save his life — to make his way back around to the tail of the horn and rejoin us. But in the end, despite his remarkable strength and skill, he is simply overpowered.
    I don’t know how long it has been, maybe an hour or so, when Cato hits the ground and we hear the mutts dragging him, dragging him back into the Cornucopia. Now they’ll finish him off, I think. But there’s still no cannon.
    Night falls and the anthem plays and there’s no picture of Cato in the sky, only the faint moans coming through the metal beneath us. The icy air blowing across the plain reminds me that the Games are not over and may not be for who knows how long, and there is still no guarantee of victory.
    I turn my attention to Peeta and discover his leg is bleeding as badly as ever. All our supplies, our packs, remain down by the lake where we abandoned them when we fled from the mutts. I have no bandage, nothing to staunch the flow of blood from his calf. Although I’m shaking in the biting wind, I rip off my jacket, remove my shirt, and zip back into the jacket as swiftly as possible. That brief exposure sets my teeth chattering beyond control.
    Peeta’s face is gray in the pale moonlight. I make him lie down before I probe his wound. Warm, slippery blood runs over my fingers. A bandage will not be enough. I’ve seen my mother tie a tourniquet a handful of times and try to replicate it. I cut free a sleeve from my shirt, wrap it twice around his leg just under his knee, and tie a half knot. I don’t have a stick, so I take my remaining arrow and insert it in the knot, twisting it as tightly at I dare. It’s risky business — Peeta may end up losing his leg — but when I weigh this against him losing his life, what alternative do I have? I bandage the wound in the rest of my shirt and lie down with him.
    “Don’t go to sleep,” I tell him. I’m not sure if this is exactly medical protocol, but I’m terrified that if he drifts off he’ll never wake again.
    “Are you cold?” he asks. He unzips his jacket and I press against him as he fastens it around me. It’s a bit warmer, sharing our body heat inside my double layer of jackets, but the night is young. The temperature will continue to drop. Even now I can feel the Cornucopia, which burned so when I first climbed it, slowly turning to ice.
    “Cato may win this thing yet,” I whisper to Peeta.
    “Don’t you believe it,” he says, pulling up my hood, but he’s shaking harder than I am.
    The next hours are the worst in my life, which if you think about it, is saying something. The cold would be torture enough, but the real nightmare is listening to Cato, moaning, begging, and finally just whimpering as the mutts work away at him. After a very short time, I don’t care who he is or what he’s done, all I want is for his suffering to end.
    “Why don’t they just kill him?” I ask Peeta.
    “You know why,” he says, and pulls me closer to him.
    And I do. No viewer could turn away from the show now. From the Gamemakers’ point of view, this is the final word in entertainment.
    It goes on and on and on and eventually completely consumes my mind, blocking out memories and hopes of tomorrow, erasing everything but the present, which I begin to believe will never change. There will never be anything but cold and fear and the agonized sounds of the boy dying in the horn.
    Peeta begins to doze off now, and each time he does, I find myself yelling his name louder and louder because if he goes and dies on me now, I know I’ll go completely insane. He’s fighting it, probably more for me than for him, and it’s hard because unconsciousness would be its own form of escape. But the adrenaline pumping through my body would never allow me to follow him, so I can’t let him go. I just can’t.
    The only indication of the passage of time lies in the