English/ASHS Year 12 - The Hunger Games/District 13 Rebel's Audio Diary

July 5th
Things are looking good on the planning front. Last week Erol managed to recruit both the Parkinsons and Fannings. Both families have teenage children who will be able to help with the fighting, they're all strong and should be able to handle the march over the mountains well. The Fanning's two younger daughters will also serve well as messengers. I'm going to inspect one of the training camps in the forest tonight with Captain Campbell. We'll see how well Camp Bracken is coming along with the recruits.

July 10th
The two day march to the training camp took longer than expected. The weather is unseasonally bad for this time of the year. Campbell was particularly paranoid about jabberjays this time too. He reckons they're harder to spot when the sky is grey. The trainees in the camp, some of them are just kids and I've started to wonder about whether or not this whole thing is a good idea. Margo says we'll be lucky to make it over the mountains without being spotted and is surprised the Capitol hasn't found at least one or two of our training camps yet. It was so damn cold tonight that I woke with frost on the end of my nose.

July 15th
Things at the camp looked to be coming along well. Campbell says the mortar teams are doing adequately but still worries about the rifle training. He says we don't have anywhere enough rounds to get them as good as we need to. Getting the potassium nitrate in particular from whichever other district it comes from is almost impossible. Campbell won't tell me where it's from. Not to mention the trek to get it to out munitions factories. Hah, factory might be a bit of an exaggeration. I went down to the trade quarter to show Rabbit how to use the press. The 'factory' is just a hole in the ground behind his workshop. He sure got good at turning out bullets and cartridges though. Pity we can't keep him stocked up enough with materials. I'm damned if I know where they get the lead from, let alone the brass and sulphur.

July 16th
We had another lock-down in town today. I'm sure Campbell and I made it back through the fence without being spotted but no one is sure why they did it. Apparently old man Quinn was dragged into the square for a beating. They didn't even say what he'd done wrong. Poor sod. His heart stopped beating before they were even half-way through. I doubt we'll be able to get any more recruits from the lower quarter after that. We only go for the ones who we're pretty sure about anyway. If they say no, the best we can do is to make it quick for them. Can't have people wandering around who know too much. The Capitol dogs are more than willing to torture anyone they think might have information. And everyone will talk eventually, it's just a matter of time.

July 21st
This old box recorder is starting to play up. I hope it keeps working. Course, I'd probably be better off if it broke. If anyone found this tape I'd be done for. Hiding it under the floorboards probably isn't the most original idea. Lisa keeps giving me grief about the racket every time I put it back down there. She thinks I'm repairing the floor. Haha.

July 22nd
We've lost contact with one of the camps and Campbell says it's too dangerous to leave town right now. Sergeant Slater thinks we should move soon. The snow will start to melt in a few days and the passes should be easy enough when we get there over the mountains. We're splitting into three columns, hopefully we'll be able to hit the outlying districts of the Capitol from all directions. I don't know which passes the other two groups are taking. It's safer if we don't know what the others are doing. Lisa says she hasn't seen any Jabberjays near the fence lately. I wonder where they've all gone.

July 24th
Campbell says he's received orders that we're moving out in three days. We're going to get up to Camp Dusty as quick as possible tonight to make a few last minute preparations. We'll need to finish the camo nets so we've got some way of hiding from the hover patrols. The microwave sensors they use only work below a hundred feet and they don't get that low in the mountains very often. We've got a few portable stingers if any of em do. Soon we'll be able to hold our heads up high and say, District 13, yeah. We stood up to the damned Capitol. We made a difference. I just hope we can pull this off.

Morning - July 25th
I can feel the heat from here. Bastards are still hammering the camp, we didn't even hear the bombers overhead. Campbell says you can't when they're flying at 30 000 feet anyway. The MIRV plasma bomblets starting landing just after we left. The smell... They always said it was something else.

Evening - July 25nd
We were still a couple of hours away from town when the blast knocked us flat. If we hadn't have been in the gorge we would have been roasted for sure. I could see the fire slide across the top of the gulley. Funny thing, I couldn't hear anything when it was happening, just saw this sheet of yellow and red above, looked like the surface of the stream when I used to lie on the bottom as a kid, holding my breath and looking up. Not the same colour but it moved the same way.

July 26th
Campbell's dead. He started to look sick an hour or so after the blast. I probably should have stayed in the gulley. My gums started bleeding and now my teeth and hair are mostly gone. It took me the rest of the night to reach the town. Well, where the town used to be. There's nothing left. None of the buildings are standing. It's like a big bulldozer came in and just brushed them away. I can't even find our house. The ground, it's covered in grey stuff, it keeps falling from the sky. I don't know if it's fallout or ash from the firestorm. Probably both. I think I'll just sit down for a bit.

July 27th
The old man always said I was a tough son of a bitch. I've lasted nearly 24 hours longer than Campbell did and I always thought he was hard. I can't see so well now and I've been vomiting up blood for the last few hours. Damn the Capitol. I guess it doesn't matter how they figured we were coming for them. Campbell said we were doing more important work here than just the resistance too but he couldn't say what. Guess I'll never find out what it was. I'm sure glad Lisa couldn't have babies. This would have been twice as bad. Wow, what a... what a sunset. It's amazing. These rays of red streaking through the grey bands in the sky. Not very bright but sure is crazy looking. In between these weird lightening strikes but it's not even raining. It's like Travis' delta disco on dancer. I might put my head down now, I'm so tired...