The Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark (1)

}11{ - Blood Bath

Sixty seconds.

That's how long they were required to stand on their metal circles before the sound of a gong released them.

Step off before the minute is up, and land mines blew your legs off.

Sixty seconds to take in the ring of tributes all equidistant from the Cornucopia- a giant golden horn shaped like a cone with a curved tail- the mouth of which is at least twenty feet high, spilling over with the things that will give them life there in the arena.

Food, containers of water, weapons, medicine, garments, fire starters.

Strewn around the Cornucopia were other supplies, their value decreasing the farther they were from the horn.

For instance, only a few steps from her feet laid a three-foot square of plastic.

Certainly it could be of some use in a downpour.

But there in the mouth, she could see a tent pack that would protect from almost any sort of weather.

If only she had the guts to go in and fight for it against the other twenty-three tributes.

They were on a flat, open stretch of ground.

A plain of hard-packed dirt.

Behind the tributes across from her, she could see nothing, indicating either a steep downward slope or even cliff.

To her right lied a lake.

To her left and back, spared piney woods.

Livia debated springing right for the woods- for any kind of distance she could put between her and the others.

But something caught her eye.

There, resting on a mound of blanket rolls, was a pouch- like the one she'd seen in the training center- one that held a dozen steel plated discs.

It was hers.

It was meant for her.

She was fast.

She could sprint faster than any of the girls in school although a couple could beat her in distance races.

But this forty-yard length, this was what she was built for.

Livia knew she could get it, she knew she could reach it first, but then the question was how quickly could she get out of there?

By the time she'd scrambled up the packs and grabbed the weapons, others would have reached the horn.

One or two Livia might be able to pick off, but say there was a dozen, at that close range, they could take her down with the spears and the clubs.

Or their own powerful fists.

Still, Livia wouldn't be the only target.

She was betting many of the other tributes would pass up a smaller girl, even one who scored an eleven in training, to take out their more fierce adversaries.