Free The Hunger Pains by Harvard Lampoon Page A

friend. I turn around to thank her, but all that’s left is a leg and a blood smear. Hm … I wonder where she went. These games can be so unpredictable.
    I know I should escape into the woods, but I decide to take one last look at the battlefield the Cornucrapia has become. The bodies of fallen tributes haven’t been collected yet. The Rainmakers usually wait until the initial bloodbathdies down so that tributes can still trip hilariously over the corpses.
    Only a few living tributes have stuck around the battlefield. The theater district tributes are using bodies to re-create a tableau from Les Mis , and the boy from the moral qualms district is debating whether he should help the one tribute he has an 80 percent chance of saving or the four tributes he has a 20 percent chance of saving. I don’t see Pita anywhere, but that means he’s still alive, or at least died in a cool enough way not to leave a body.
    When I turn to leave, a sound blares over the intercom. BWOMMP BWOMMP. It’s the sad trombone used to announce the deaths of the tributes. BWOMMP BWOMMP. BWOMMP BWOMMP. BWOMMP BWOMMP.
    I count eleven sad trombones before they finally stop. If there’s one trombone for each dead tribute, and there were twenty-four tributes when we started, and twenty-four hours in a day, and the Games have been going on for less than an hour, and there are sixty minutes in an hour, and it’s taken me two hours to get this far in my equation, then there must be at least forty tributes left! Competition is heating up fast.
    As I hike into the woods, it becomes clear that I need to find something to drink. My backpack only contained saltines and a slab of pound cake, which I ate immediately to lighten the load. I think back to the gourmet root beer and artisanal sodas I had in the Capital and nearly collapse into the river I’m walking in. Buttitch, why won’t you send me something? Is it because you hate me? Or … or is it becauseyou know I’m right near something I can use? Oh my God! The river! I can use water from the river to make single-batch root beer!
    I set up a camp next to the river and start constructing a rudimentary still out of rocks and twigs. Now that I have water, all I have to do is find sassafras, cloves, honey, cinnamon, vanilla, cherry tree bark, and the other twenty-four flavors. My artisanal root beer is so close I can almost taste it, but the sun is setting and I need my rest. I’ll have to sleep first. I camouflage my still with some leaves and climb up into a tall tree to sleep. When I’m about thirty feet up, I loop my belt around the branch and then around my neck, so if I fall out, I won’t live to experience the shame.
    Just as I’m about to nod off, the Peaceland emblem lights up the sky and smooth jazz pipes over the intercom. Of course! How could I forget the evening announcements? Each night, the Capital informs the tributes about who died that day and other pertinent information.
    The smooth jazz gets softer as a sonorous DJ chimes in. “Hey there, this is your old pal Rusty Jams, and you cats are in the Hunger Games. This song is going out to my main man Archie, who’s taking it easy with a couple of his closest friends and a beautiful lakeside view. Damn, Archie. You know how to live it good.”
    I bite my lip with nervousness at the thought of finding out who died. What if something happened to Pita? What if I died but don’t realize I’m a ghost? I whack my head a few times to make sure it’s solid as the saxophones play on.
    “That last one was for my girl Sarah from District Nine, who’s already catching some Zs, and who can blame her? She sure does look sweet tucked away in that mulberry bush near the distinctly triangular rock by the lake. She doesn’t even seem worried that the Varsities have set up camp only thirty feet from her, much less that she’s directly visible from where they are standing. That girl’s tough as nails.”
    Another smooth jazz song plays for about