Ouch! {Short One}

6. So Close Yet So Far From Death

Katniss sat with her bow loaded, watching the jungle, which was ghostly pale and green in the moonlight. After an hour or so, the lightning stopped. She could hear the rain coming in, though, pattering on the leaves a few hundred yards away. She waited for it to reach them but it never did.

The sound of the cannon startled her, although it made little impression on her asleep companions except Percy who sat upright. Another victor dead. She doesn't allow herself to wonder who it was. The elusive rain shut off suddenly, like the storm did last year in the arena.

Moments after it stops, she saw the fog slide softly in from the direction of the recent downpour. She thought to herself that it was just a reaction, cool rain on the steaming ground. It continued to approach at a steady pace. Tendrils reached forward and then curled like fingers, as if they were pulling the rest behind them. As she watched, she felt the hairs on her neck begin to rise. Something was wrong with the fog. The progression of the front line is too uniform to be natural.

And if it’s not natural . . .

A sickeningly sweet odor began to invade her nostrils and she reached for the others, shouting for them to wake up. In the few seconds it takes to rouse them, she began to blister.

Tiny, searing stabs erupted wherever the droplets of mist touched her skin.

"Run!" she screamed at the others. "Run!"

Finnick snapped awake instantly, rose to counter an enemy. But when he saw the wall of fog, he tossed a still-sleeping Mags onto his back and took  off. Peeta was on his feet but not as alert. Katniss grabbed his arm and began to propel him through the jungle after Finnick.

"What is it? What is it?" he said in bewilderment.

Some kind of fog. Poisonous gas. Hurry, Peeta!" Katniss urged. She can tell that however much he denied it during the day, the after effects of hitting the force field have been significant. He was slower, slower than usual. And the tangle of vines and undergrowth, which unbalanced her occasionally, tripped him at every step.

She looked back at the wall of fog extending in a straight line as far as she could see in either direction. A terrible impulse to flee, to abandon Peeta and save herself, shot through her. It would be to simple, to run full out, perhaps to even climb a tree above the fog line, which seemed to top out at about forty feet.

She remembered how she did just that when the muttations appeared in the last Games. Took off and only thought of Peeta when she'd reached the Cornucopia. But this time, she trapped her terror, pushed it down, and stayed by his side. Now her survival wasn’t the goal. Peeta’s was.

She thought of the eyes glued to the television screens in the districts, seeing if she will run, as the Capitol wishes, or hold her ground. She locked her fingers tightly into his and said,

"Watch my feet. Just try to step where I step."

It helped. They seemed to move a little faster, but never enough to afford a rest, and the mist continued to lap at their heels. Droplets spring free of the body of vapor.

They burned, but not like fire. Less a sense of heat and more of intense pain as the chemicals found their flesh, clinged to it, and burrowed down through the layers of skin.

Their jumpsuits were no help at all. They may as well be dressed in tissue paper, for all the protection they gave.

Finnick, who bounded off initially, stopped when he realized thet they were having problems. But it wasn't a thing you can fight, only
evade.

He shouted encouragements, his voice and Percy's feet guided them from the fog. Katniss felt spasms ran up her arm. The places where she was blistered began to act involuntarily.