No Place Like Home

Part 12

Once the plan was settled and sorted, they decided to stick to the plan of luring a group of tributes into a section.
And if the plan worked, they would do it again with another group of tributes until there were only 4 left.

It was now the middle of the morning, just before noon when they decided to head off again, after they had warmed up and calmed down. They also decided to ditch the plan of going around the outside of the arena.

"Have you got everything?" Phil asked as he picked up his bow.
Dan nodded and settled his axes back in his belt, "Yeah, let's go."

They walked out of the clearing, East, away from the beach.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to head around the centre of the arena?" Phil asked. "Wouldn't it be easier to head around the beach end?"

"I thought about that," Dan said. "But if we head around the outside there's less chance of getting away from the dangers, and if we head around the beach end then there's more chance of running into blood-thirsty tributes at the beach, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do here."

Phil paused for a minute after Dan said that, "Wait,"
"What's wrong?" Dan asked, but Phil held a finger to his lips.

That was when he heard the breathing. Dan and Phil looked around and saw three pairs of eyes in the bushes.

As soon as their eyes met, the tributes let out a battle cry and leaped out of the bushes, weapons in hand. It was three boys this time.

Dan was in the mood for another bloody fight today, so he yanked the axe from his belt and ducked as a big, muscly tribute swung an axe at his head.

He swung his axe back, but the tribute mirrored Dan's moves.

Whilst Dan was fighting off the guy with the axe, Phil had already shot down one of the lads and was in a knife fight with the other one.

Dan was surprised Phil had the knife, but was too focussed on trying to kill the guy with the axe who just wouldn't die.

Dan eventually managed to get the guy on the ground and slammed his axe into his chest several times to make sure he was dead.

After the 8th axe to this guy's chest, Dan decided he was dead enough. A cannon went off for Macho-man.

Dan exhaled and rested his axe on his shoulder, looking down at the muscle guy.

Phil was breathing fast and he hung his bow around his body. Two cannons went off for the guys Phil killed.

"Hey, where'd you get that knife?" Dan asked, as Phil wiped the blood off the blade.
Phil smirked and lifted it up, "Your belt. When you were fighting that guy, I snatched it."

Dan smirked back and felt the back of his belt, where the knives were nestled, only 2.
He had 6 to start with but had given 3 to Alyssa and Phil had snatched 1.

Phil went to hand it back, but Dan turned it away, "No, keep it. You need it more than I do."
"Why don't we just do that with the other tributes?" Phil asked. "Just kill them then and there?"
"Because we were just out-numbered by 3," Dan said. "That means the remaining tributes are more likely to be in groups of 6, and our chances of winning 2 to 6 are highly unlikely."

Phil nodded, and slid the knife into his thin belt.
Dan breathed out and slide his axe back into his belt.
"You ready to go again?" Phil asked.

"Yeah," Dan said, and they set off walking once more. "Let's just hope we don't run into anybody else."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had been walking far into the afternoon.

"Strange," Phil paused and looked around.
"What?" Dan asked and stopped ahead of him. "Oh God, not another tribute, I've just spent at least 20 minutes killing a man made of muscle and steroids, I can't do that again—"
"No," Phil cut in. "We've been walking for 2 hours straight, and there's been no danger, it's just... strange."
"Well maybe we're in the section where somethings already happened," Dan said. "Or we're in that section where the game-keepers realize how much of a sh*t time we've had, and a flood of pizza is gonna arrive soon."
Phil laughed, "If only."

They carried on walking for about another hour, when the worst thing Dan could have thought of happened.

Phil died.