Chapter 21 Chapter Twenty-One

A sudden pain hit me, as long as the water mist touches the skin, it will sting, both like needle pricks and fire. "Run!" I yelled at the others, "Run!" Finnick woke up immediately and jumped up to meet the enemy.But when he saw the wall of fog approaching, he picked up Mags, who was still asleep, and ran away.Peeta was on his feet, but not very mobile.I grabbed his arm and followed Finnick, half pushing him forward. "What's the matter? What's the matter?" he asked in bewilderment. "It's a fog, a poisonous fog. Come on, Peeta!" I urged him.I could see that, despite his denials, the electric shocks during the day had done him a lot of damage.He was running very slowly, much slower than usual.The vines and undergrowth underfoot were densely packed, and although I occasionally lost my footing, he tripped every step he took.

I looked back at the wall of fog, which was moving forward in a straight line, visible on both sides behind me.I had a strong urge to run, to drop Peeta and run for my life.Escape was easy, I ran at full speed, and even climbed up trees, where the fog seemed to end at forty feet, and I could climb as high as the fog could not.I was reminded of the last Hunger Games, when Dingo showed up out of nowhere, that's what I did.I didn't think of Peeta until I got to the Horn of Zeus.But this time, I'm going to suppress my fear, push it down, and put it aside.I sensed that across the precincts, eyes were glued to the television, watching me—whether to get cold feet, as the Capitol wanted it to be, or to hold my ground.

I grabbed his hand tightly and said, "Look at my feet, where I step, you go." It worked.We seemed to be moving faster, but we couldn't rest.And the mist always followed us closely.The water droplets in the mist drift away from the fog wall, eroding our bodies, burning like chemicals, causing skin stinging.It starts to stick to the skin and then penetrates into the deeper layers of the skin.Our rompers were like a thin layer of paper, and they did nothing to keep the fog from attacking. Finnick rushed out first, but stopped when he realized we were in trouble.But this fog is not something to fight, you have to run away.He shouted words of encouragement, urging us to move fast, his voice a guide.

Peeta's prosthetic leg hits a clump of climbing plants, I fail to grab him, and he falls to the ground.When I helped him up, I discovered something more terrifying than blisters and burning skin.The left side of Peeta's face has shrunk, as if the muscles inside have died, and the eyelids have drooped, covering almost the entire eye.His mouth is tilted to one side. "Peeta—" I was about to say it when I felt a twitch in my arm. The chemicals in the mist not only cause a burning sensation, it erodes the nervous system.An inexplicable fear grips me, and I jerk Peeta forward, only to stumble him again.When I pulled him up, my arms were uncontrollable and throbbing.The wall of fog was behind us, less than a yard away, and Peeta's legs were gone, and he tried to walk, but his legs were cramping like a marionette.

I felt that Peeta was having a hard time walking, Finnick turned around to help us, and he also pulled Peeta hard to move forward.My shoulder seems to be working, and I use it to support Peeta's arm, trying to keep up with Finnick's pace.We ran ten yards from the fog when Finnick stopped. "That's not good, I'll carry Peeta, can you carry Mags?" he asked me. "Yes." I said firmly, even though my heart was sinking.Yes, Mags doesn't weigh seventy pounds, but I'm not tall either.But I've definitely carried heavier stuff before.If only my arm didn't twitch!I squatted down and she lay on top of me like Finnick had carried her.I slowly straightened my legs, tensed my knees, and carried her on my back.Finnick puts Peeta on his back and we move on.Finnick leads the way, pushing aside the vines, and I follow behind him.

The mist is still relentlessly and silently following behind us, except for a small wisp of mist like a rolled tongue licking people trying to approach it, most of the mist is a neat vertical plane.Even though my instincts told me to run straight, Finnick was running diagonally down the hill.While staying away from the fog, he was leading everyone towards the waters next to the Horn of Zeus.yes, water.I thought to myself, the bead of acid penetrated deeper into my skin.Thank goodness I didn't kill Finnick.How could I get Peeta out alive without him?Thank goodness there are people by my side, even if it's temporary.

It wasn't Mags' fault that I started to lose my feet and stumble.She has tried her best to make herself a light "passenger", but the problem is, I can carry such a heavy weight, especially at this time my right leg seems to be stiff.The first two times I fell down, I tried to get up, but the third time, my legs just wouldn't cooperate.When I tried my best to stand up, my legs gave way again, and Mags was thrown out, and she fell to the ground before me.I flailed my arms wildly, trying to grab hold of vines or tree trunks to prop myself up. Finnick comes back to me, Peeta still on his shoulders. "No." I said, "Can you carry them both? Keep going, and I'll catch up." I didn't really know what to say, but I tried to look sure.

I saw Finnick's green eyes, like cat's eyes in daylight, with a strange reflection in them.Perhaps it was because of the tears in his eyes. "No," he said, "I can't carry them both, my arms won't work." Yes, his arms were twitching around his body.His hand is also empty, only one of the three harpoons remains, also clutched in Peeta's hand. "Sorry, Mags, I can't!" What happened next happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I didn't even have time to stop it.Mags struggled to her feet, planted a kiss on Finnick's lips, and stumbled into the mist.Her body twisted wildly immediately, and then she fell to the ground.

I wanted to shout, but my throat was on fire.I had barely taken a step in the direction of where she had fallen when I heard the cannon.Knowing her heartbeat had stopped, she was dead. "Finnick?" I yelled in a hoarse voice, but he was already gone, continuing to escape from the poisonous fog.I staggered behind him, dragging my disobedient legs, not knowing what else to do. The poisonous fog eroded my brain, and my consciousness began to blur. Everything around me became unreal, and time and space had no meaning.However, the animal desire to survive in my heart forced me to stumble behind Finnick and Peeta and keep going, even though I might be dead by this time.Yes, a part of my body is dead, or dying.And Mags was dead.That's what I was able to consciously realize, or thought I was conscious of; but it didn't make sense anyway.

The moonlight shone on Finnick's golden hair, shining brightly.Beads of painful sweat soaked my whole body, and one of my legs was completely numb like a piece of wood.I keep following Finnick, and eventually he falls too, with Peeta still on top of him.I couldn't control the pace I walked forward, and I fell on top of them all at once, and the three of us were stacked on top of each other.Right here, just like this, we will die.I wonder.But thinking is abstract, and it is far less real than the pain in the body.I heard Finnick groan and managed to move my body away from them.Now I see that the poisonous mist has turned into a pearly milky white, maybe my eyes are deceiving me, maybe it is because of the moonlight, the poisonous mist seems to be blocked by the glass window and is being compressed.I squinted my eyes and looked hard, only to find that those curled tongues were gone.In fact, it has stopped moving at all.As with other horrors I've experienced in arenas, it's over with this one.Or maybe the Xtreme race organizers decided to kill us first.

"It stopped." I tried to speak, but what came out of my swollen throat was a horrible grunt. "It's stopped." My voice must have been clearer this time, and Peeta and Finnick turned to look at the fog.The poisonous mist was rising, as if sucked into the air by a vacuum.We watched as it was sucked away bit by bit until the last wisp was completely gone. Peeta rolls off of Finnick, and Finnick is also on the ground.We were all lying on the ground, panting, convulsing, our brains and bodies eroded by toxins.After a few minutes, Peeta points up and says, "Monkey." I look up and see two animals, which I assume are monkeys.I've never seen a real monkey before - there are no such animals in our woods back home.But I've probably seen pictures, this was seen in The Hunger Games, so when I saw this animal, the word immediately came to mind.Although difficult to see, the monkeys appeared to have orange fur and were half the height of an adult.I think the appearance of monkeys is a good sign, which means that the air is non-toxic, otherwise how could they be here leisurely!In this way, we quietly observed each other, man and monkey.Afterwards, Peeta struggled to get up and headed down the hill.We all got up, and walking now was like flying, an impossible feat; we climbed until the vine-strewn ground became a narrow strip of sand.The water around the Horn of Zeus slapped us in the face, and suddenly I bounced back as if on fire. Sprinkle salt on the wound.For the first time, I really understood the meaning of this sentence. The salt in the water caused me so much pain that I almost passed out.But at the same time there was another feeling, as if something was pumping out of the skin.Cautiously, tentatively, I reached into the water.It's hard, yeah, and then it's not too bad.Through the blue water, I saw a milky substance oozing from the wound on my skin.When the white matter disappears, the pain stops.I took off my belt and my jumpsuit, which was nothing more than a rag, and my shoes and undergarments didn't seem to be damaged at all.Little by little, I put my arm under the water and let the venom slowly drain from the wound.Peeta seems to be doing the same.But Finnick backed away the first time he hit the water, lying face down on the sand, maybe unwilling, or maybe not able, to soak himself in the water to cleanse himself of the toxins. Finally, I washed the most painful wounds, opened my eyes under water, soaked some water in my nostrils, and then sprayed it out, and even rinsed my mouth repeatedly to flush the toxins from my throat.I got better a little bit, so I went to help Finnick.My legs are slowly gaining feeling, but my arms are still twitching.I couldn't drag Finnick into the water, and the pain would probably kill him.So I scooped up water and sprinkled it on his fist.Because he was not in the water, the poisonous mist that invaded his body slowly floated out again, and it was also a cloud of mist.I was careful not to let the poisonous mist come near me again.Peeta recovered, too, and he came to help me.He ripped off Finnick's clothes and found two shells somewhere, which were much better than our hands.We wet Finnick's arm with water first, where the damage is done the most.A mass of white mist precipitated from his skin, but he didn't feel it.He lay there with his eyes closed, groaning only occasionally. I looked around and felt more and more how dangerous our position was.It's night, yes, but the moonlight is too bright to give away our position.We're lucky that we haven't been attacked yet.If they attack us from the direction of the Horn of Zeus, we can see it too.But if four pros attack together, their strength will outweigh ours.Even if they didn't see us first, Finnick's moans were enough to draw them in. "We've got to drag him into the water," I said softly.But we can't immerse his face in the water first.The two of us lifted him, turned him 180 degrees, and dragged him into the water.Only drag a few inches at a time.Soak his ankles in the water first, wait a few minutes, it's his calves, wait a few more minutes, the water reaches his knees.Clouds of poisonous mist were released from his body, and he groaned.We continued to detoxify him, bit by bit.I find that the longer I'm in the water, the better I feel.Not only the condition of the skin, but the brain and muscles are also improving.I see Peeta's face returning to normal, his eyelids opening, his crooked mouth slowly returning. Finnick is also slowly recovering.He opened his eyes, saw us, and understood that we were helping him.I put his head in my lap and soaked it from the neck down for about ten minutes.When Finnick lifted his arms out of the water, Peeta and I had knowing smiles on our faces. "It's your head now, Finnick. It's the hardest part, but if you get through it, you'll feel fine afterwards," Peeta said.We made him sit up, grabbed our hands, and dunked his eyes, nose, and mouth in water.His throat was still swollen and he couldn't speak. "Let me go get some water from the tree," I said, reaching for the cannula attached to my belt. "Let me go punch a tree first," Peeta said. "You stay here with him, you're the healer." This is a joke.I wonder.But I didn't say it out loud because Finnick was suffering.He has the most toxins in his body, I can't say why, maybe because he is the tallest, maybe he has the most energy.And Mags.I still don't understand what happened there, why he gave up Mags to carry Peeta.Why did she have no doubts, but rushed to death without hesitation.Is it because she is old and the days before the end of her life are numbered?Did they all think that Finnick would have a better chance of winning if he allyd with Peeta and me?Finnick's haggard look tells me that it's not time to ask yet. I try to pull myself together.I took the brooch off the jumpsuit and pinned it to the underclothes.That buoyant belt must have been acid resistant too, still looking like new.I can swim, so a buoyancy belt isn't much of a necessity, but Brutal uses it to block arrows, so I buckle it up too, figuring it might provide some sort of protection, too.I parted my hair and smoothed it with my fingers.The poisonous mist ruined my hair and it fell out quite a bit, then I put the rest of it in a braid behind me. Peeta found a nice tree about ten yards from the edge of the sand.We can't see him, but the sound of him carving a tree with a knife is clearly audible.I wonder where the awl went.Mags must have lost it, or taken it into the poisonous fog with her.Anyway, can't find it. I swam a little farther, face down for a while, face up for a while, floating on the water.If water works for me and Peeta, it works for Finnick as well.He started moving slowly, trying to lift his arms, move his legs, and eventually he could even swim.Of course, he wasn't swimming rhythmically like I was, but the twitching of his limbs was much like seeing an animal come back to life.He dived down suddenly, came up again, spouted water from his mouth, and kept flipping in the water, like a strange corkscrew, which made me dizzy.Then, after he had been in the water for so long that I almost thought he had drowned, he suddenly popped up beside me and startled me. "Don't do that," I said. "What? Don't come up or stay down?" he said. "It's okay, it's okay, what, soak in the water and stay there. Or, if you feel better, let's go help Peeta." I said. Within minutes of walking to the edge of the woods, I felt a change around me.Maybe it's the keen sense acquired from years of hunting, maybe it's the special function they gave to my ears, I feel that there are many warm objects hovering above us.They don't need to speak or shout, just breathe.I touch Finnick's arm and he follows my gaze up, I don't know how they can approach us so quietly.Maybe they are not very quiet, but we were concentrating on recovering our physical strength just now, and they approached at that time.Not five, not ten, but dozens of monkeys gathered on the branches of the jungle.The two we saw when we first emerged from the poisonous fog were just greeters.These monkeys look very evil.I put two arrows on the bow.Finnick also has a harpoon at the ready. "Peeta," I said as calmly as possible, "I want you to do me a favor." "Okay, wait a minute. I think it's almost done." He said, still digging the tree hole intently. "Okay, okay, where's your cannula?" "Here it is. But we found something new, you'd better take a look." Still in my calm voice, I said, "walk gently towards us, don't disturb them." Somehow, I didn't want to let He saw monkeys, even looked in their direction.Some animals use eye contact as a provocation to attack. Peeta turns to us, out of breath from digging a tree hole.The tone of my speech was very strange, which already made him move a little unnaturally under the shock. "Okay." He said casually.He came towards us.I know he's trying to be as quiet as possible, but he's making a lot of noise, even with two bells on his legs.But fortunately, the monkey was not disturbed when he moved towards us.He felt their presence when he was five yards from the sand.He only looked up, but it seemed like a bomb had gone off.Crowds of monkeys screamed, turned and jumped, and surrounded him all at once. I've never seen an animal move so fast.They slipped down from the vines, as if the vines had been lubricated, and hopped long distances between the trees as if they were on the ground.They bared their teeth, their neck hair stood on end, and their sharp claws were like sharp blades.Maybe I'm not familiar with monkeys, but animals in nature don't have such characteristics. "Monkey mutants!" I blurt out, and Finnick and I attack them in the bushes. I know every arrow has to be used.In this treacherous night, I aimed at their eyeballs, hearts, and throats, and the arrows shot out of my hand, killing monkeys one by one.Finnick thrusts the harpoon into their chests, then swings it aside, and Peeta stabs the monkeys with the knife.The fight would have been overwhelming without Finnick and Peeta fighting it together.I felt the monkey's paw grab my leg and jump on my back, and then the monkey was killed by someone else.The air was filled with the smell of vines, blood and monkey smell, and the atmosphere was tense.Peeta, Finnick, and I are a few yards apart, standing back to back in a triangle.My heart sank as I shot the last arrow, and then I remembered that Peeta still had a quiver, and instead of a bow, he was hacking with a knife.At this time, I also pulled out my knife, but the monkeys were too fast, they jumped around, and it was too late for people to react. "Peeta!" I yelled, "your arrows!" Peeta turned to see my position and was about to take off his quiver when a monkey jumped out of the tree and threw himself on his chest.I have no arrows and cannot shoot.I heard Finnick kill the monkey and knew he had nothing to do right now.Peeta's hand was going to pick the quiver, so that too was occupied.I threw the knife at the jumping monkey, but the guy did a somersault, dodged the blade, jumped high and jumped at Peeta again. With no weapons and no protection, the only thing I could do was to run towards Peeta, throw him to the ground, and use my body to block the monkey's attack. Even so, I was afraid it would be too late. At this time, she did what I failed to do.She rushed out from nowhere and stood in front of Peeta.She was already covered in blood, screaming with her mouth open, her pupils dilated, and her eyes were like two black holes. Like a maniac, the drug addict in District Six stretched out his scrawny arms as if to hug the monkey that swooped on him, and the monkey's sharp teeth plunged into her chest.