Fire Attack

The Gamemakers orchestrate a devastating fire attack to drive the scattered tributes together, forcing Katniss to flee through a burning forest, sustain a severe leg burn, and ultimately find water and refuge.

Causes and Background

After a day with no deaths, the Gamemakers judged the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games to be verging on dullness. The audience in the Capitol was growing bored, and the Games must never do that. The fire was no accidental campfire gone out of control; it had an unnatural height and uniformity that marked it as human-made, machine-made, Gamemaker-made. Its purpose was to flush the tributes out of hiding and drive them together, a device that was not the most original the Gamemakers had ever used but was very, very effective. The wall of fire descended on Katniss while she slept in a tree, having just found a pond and recovered from severe dehydration.

What Happens

Katniss was shaken from slumber by a stampede of feet. She saw the wall of fire descending on her and scrambled from the tree, still snarled in her sleeping bag. She fled, following the rabbits, deer, and even a wild dog pack, trusting their sharper instincts. The heat was horrible, but worse was the smoke, which threatened to suffocate her. She pulled her shirt over her nose, grateful it was soaked in sweat, and ran, her bag banging against her back, her face cut by branches that materialized from the gray haze. The tail end of her jacket caught fire, and she had to stop to rip it from her body and stamp out the flames. She took the risk of shoving the smoldering jacket into her sleeping bag, hoping the lack of air would quell what she had not extinguished. In a matter of minutes, her throat and nose were burning, and her lungs began to feel as if they were actually being cooked. Discomfort turned to distress until each breath sent a searing pain through her chest. She took cover under a stone outcropping just as the vomiting began, losing her meager supper and whatever water had remained in her stomach. The Gamemakers then escalated the attack with precision-launched fireballs. The first fireball blasted into the rock about two feet from her head. She sprang out from under her ledge, energized by renewed fear. She flattened on the ground as the next fireball hit a tree off to her left, engulfing it in flames. The third ball hit the ground where she had been lying, sending a pillar of fire up behind her. Time lost meaning as she frantically dodged the attacks, zigzagging, diving, and leaping to avoid the apple-sized fireballs that packed tremendous power on contact. A fireball crashed into the ground at her side, skidding across her right calf. Seeing her pants leg on fire sent her over the edge; she twisted and scuttled backward on her hands and feet, shrieking. She rolled the leg back and forth on the ground, stifling the worst of it, then ripped away the remaining fabric with her bare hands. Her calf was screaming, her hands covered in red welts. She was shaking too hard to move.

Consequences and Aftermath

The attack finally abated, and Katniss realized the Gamemakers did not want her dead yet; the real sport of the Hunger Games was watching the tributes kill one another. She made herself stand and began to limp away from the wall of flames. She stumbled into a spring-fed pool, ankle-deep, and plunged her hands into the shallow water, feeling instant relief. She lay on her stomach at the edge of the pool, dangling her hands in the water. When she finally examined her calf, she almost fainted at the sight: the flesh was a brilliant red covered with blisters. She forced herself to take deep, slow breaths, knowing the cameras were on her face. She cut the remains of the pant leg off at the knee and gingerly stretched her leg into the pool, propping the heel of her boot on a rock. The water offered some relief. She knew there were herbs that would speed the healing, but she could not call them to mind. Water and time would probably be all she had to work with. The fire attack had left her wounded, exhausted, and trapped in a tree by the Careers, but it also led her to the pool that saved her from dehydration and set the stage for her next confrontation with the pack.