The 76th Hunger Games

The 76th Hunger Games|Chapter One

I heated up the leftover potato I had stored with a little fire outside my family's home. I looked at the patches of forest that surrounded our district. District 7, lumber.
  
It's not like we're actually being productive at the moment, though. Radiation leaked from District 13, making a handful of us useless. It's strange that, that happened, though. District 13 is abandoned, right?
    
Anyway, those of us who aren't affected are busy taking care of the sick. We aren't even close to finishing our quota. 

"Alaina! " I perk up to the sound of my friends voice, Anastasia.

"Yeah?" I ask. Anastasia walks up to me and looks at my potato. 
  
"Can I get some of that?" She asks, embarrassed.
  
"Sure." I laugh.
  
"Anyway," She says through a mouthful. "I hear the Peacekeepers are going to take care of the 'situation' today." She nods towards a sick man and after a moment he coughs and sits down on a nearby ledge. I turn away and continue with my potato, listening to Anastasia. 
  
"Did you know that Mrs. Hankins from the bakery said that stuff was moving around her house the other day? She said she looked around and found that her kid, Tommy, was waving his hands like he was moving the stuff."
  
"Well that's weird." I said, wrapping up the rest of the potato.
  
I honestly didn't care, though. Most of the stories Anastasia told were fake anyway. She one time told a story that the Capital was cancelling the Hunger Games. Like that was ever going to happen.
  
I walked inside my house and buried the potato in a cold corner of our dirt floors. We definitely didn't have one of the nicer houses in District 7. Our walls were plain wooden planks and our roof was leaky and made of thin logs. Almost like a  barn, but grimier and smaller.
  
"Wait," Anastasia starts. "Do you hear that?" I stop and listen, still crouching on the ground. I lean my ear to the ground and listen. A quiet thoomp thoomp is heard through the padded ground.  A bolt up and look at my friend. We rush behind my cottage and peer around the corner of the back wall.
  
Interrupting my thought, a Peacekeeper practically slings the same coughing man I was looking at earlier over his shoulder. The man just lays limp and starts to drool a little. The troop takes the man's neck and twists it fiercely. I hear a crack and whimpers from the man. Annoyed, the troop pulls out his gun and points it toward the man's head. The shot rings through all of District 7 and everything goes quiet. The troop walks off towards a white dump truck wearing the Capital's symbol and throws the man. He knocks on Mrs. Hankins door and walks inside, coming out with a staggering Mr. Hankins. Mrs. Hankins stands in the door, crying, while her son stands beside her. He waves his hands and his father is lifted out of the troops arms. The troop is flung into the side of a brick bakery and starts to bleed through his cotton suit. Another shot is heard and little Tommy Hankins was on the ground being hugged by his thin, wrinkly father.