Silence

We stared ahead at the water. In the distance, I could just about see land, but getting there seemed almost impossible. In District 10, it wasn’t as though we were taught how to swim. My father made sure I knew the basics, but I wasn’t sure I was strong enough, and Logan didn’t seem to think himself capable either.
“We can’t go back,” I said firmly.
“No,” Logan replied simply. It was decided. We were going to attempt the swim. Logan was about to slip in to the water, when I remembered what Sophia had told me.
“Wait! Take your boots off. They’ll slow us down and become really heavy when we swim.”
“I can’t, there’s no space.”
“See how deep the water is. If it’s not too deep, take them off there and hand them back to me. I’ll put them in one of the rucksacks.”
Logan tested the water, and found that there were several rocks just beneath the surface of the water. He slid himself in on his stomach, gasping at the chilling liquid, and took his boots off as fast as he could. He also removed his jacket, not wanting it to get wet if it could be used to keep us warm at night. I retrieved one of the rucksacks, and checked the contents. I was ecstatic to find that it contained a mask so that you can breathe under water, and also covered your eyes so you were able to see. Handing both to Logan so that he could put them on, I emptied the rest of the bag out. There was a torch and a packet of dried banana. I put them back in the bag for later, stuffing them inside Logan’s boots to make more room. The bag seemed to be made of the same material as our outfits, so I hoped it would also be waterproof. I made a mental note to check the other bag later on. Logan offered to carry one, as we hadn’t really had time to sort that out earlier, so I gave him the one with his clothes in, and got in the water too. After stuffing my clothes in my rucksack and putting it on my back, we were ready.
“Good luck,” I said.
“You too,” Logan nodded. Then, we dived in the water and began to swim. It was immediately clear that the swim would take a very long time. Both of our arm movements were clumsy and unskilled, resulting in a very slow pace. Five minutes in, and already I was growing weary. It was easier for Logan, with his special mask, and I wished selfishly that I hadn’t been so quick to offer it.
Twenty minutes passed. I’d say we were probably a third of the way across, but I felt as though I couldn’t go on. I signalled to Logan to stop, and to swim to the left, where there was a cluster of rocks, just big enough to sit on. He sighed, but agreed. It would lengthen the swim by quite a bit, but I really needed a rest, and despite his huffing, I knew Logan did too. By the time we reached it, I was so out of breath, that it took a great deal of effort to pull myself up on to a rock. I then had to help Logan up, as he was a lot more fatigued than he let on. We sat together there for several minutes, gasping for breath and rolling our aching shoulders. I tried to lighten the situation.
“Fancy a massage?” I teased. Taking me seriously, Logan nodded, wiping his face as he took off the dripping wet mask.
“Yes please. That was horrible.”
“Then why did you want to carry on?” I asked, squeezing his shoulders. He relaxed considerably.
“To get it over with.”
“It was easier for you, you had the mask.”
“Have it. I don’t want it. Seriously, you don’t want to see some of the stuff that’s under the water.”
“Why not?”
Logan shook his head “I don’t know what they are. See for yourself.”
I thought perhaps he was overreacting a little, so I ignored him. I unzipped his bag and had a look inside. A sleeping bag. A bottle of water. A knife. A first aid kit. Remembering Logan’s arm, I inspected the damage. I was no expert, but he didn’t seem to be injured badly. He said he couldn’t even feel it anymore. Still, I applied some of the medicine in the first aid kit to stop infection, and bandaged it up. I turned to look behind us, and realised in shock that the tunnels had disappeared.
“Logan, look!” I said, pointing. He swivelled to look, and looked puzzled.
“The water must be rising,” he said. Sure enough, when we inspected the rocks, the water had risen almost two centimetres while we’d been sat there. As quickly as possible, we packed the bags and continued swimming, this time with me wearing the mask. I couldn’t understand what Logan had been talking about. I thought it was beautiful under the water. There were groups of brightly coloured fish swimming, and plants so exotic that I was sure I’d never see them again outside the arena. As we swam, the water got gradually deeper, and I began to have to strain my eyes to see the fish nearer the bottom. It was, in itself, quite frightening, as I’d never swam in water so deep.
I bobbed my head out of the water to inspect our whereabouts. We were making much better progress with me with the mask, as it turns out Logan was the better swimmer, and with less required effort on my part, we were well over half way. In fact, I’d say we were less than ten minutes away from arriving on the land. And I still hadn’t seen the thing that had made Logan so worried.
The land grew ever closer, and my fear of the water lessened. Until I saw something move. It was the way it moved that made me stop and inspect closer. It moved like it had wings. It flapped. All of a sudden, it shot upwards, straight towards me. I shot out of the way, just in time to see it fly in to the air. It was a bat. It wasn’t black, however. It was blue, and it had fangs like a sabre toothed tiger. They were huge.
“Go faster, Logan!” I shouted, throwing myself back in to the water, and swimming with all the power I could. I heard the bat creature screech, and it swooped down over my head and towards Logan. This was the least of our worries. Below, a creature that resembled a monkey with gills appeared, and grabbed Logan’s leg. His head went under water, and I resisted the urge to scream. I knew it wouldn’t help. Making sure the mask was secure, I dived downwards. There were several of the monkey creatures at this point, and they were all pulling on Logan. I drew a knife from my belt and slashed at the throat of one of them. The action was slow and clumsy, being under water, but its blood seeped from the wound and turned the water red. It lunged for me, but it was already weakening, its dying body sinking to the sea bed. Meanwhile, Logan was slipping further and further from me. He was now at least five metres under, and it was beginning to get harder to retrieve him. To make matters worse, a whole colony of the sea bats were swarming in my direction. One collided with me, and though I didn’t feel the full force, it knocked me off course, and Logan wasn’t getting any closer. Then I felt a searing pain in my arm. One of the bats had sunk its fangs right in to my arm. I couldn’t scream, or I wouldn’t be able to breathe, but the pain almost made me pass out. Trying to blot it out, I swam and managed to grab Logan’s leg. I tugged hard and the monkey creature let Logan slip through his fingers. I swam hard with my good arm, kicking my legs to propel both of us. From what I could see, we were only about twenty metres away from the land. I knew the monkey creatures were pursuing us, but the bats seemed to have disappeared.
Ten metres. I felt another set of teeth tear a chunk of skin from my leg. In even more agony, and trying to pull an unconscious Logan, I finally struggled up to the shoreline. With the only energy I had left, I dragged Logan on to the grass. He was soaking wet, and didn’t appear to be breathing.
“No, no, no…” I moaned, slapping his face half-heartedly “Wake up, Logan, please wake up…”
Suddenly, his body shuddered and he sat up abruptly, spitting out water and gasping horrendously. But the entire scene around me was growing faint, confused in a mixture of panic, pain and blood. The world went black and what happened there, I will never know.