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AND SCREAM
BLOOD IS VERY HARD TO WASH AWAY. Especially when it is not your own. It knows a guilty hand when it sees it.
WE START HERE: The Beginning of Kaz Alekseev.
─── THE HUNTER AND THE FOOL
His father was a hunter. We will call him Hunter. He was leaving to go hunt when his mother went into labor. We will picture him standing in the open doorway, puffy in camo jackets, arms full of guns and bullets. We will try not to picture his frustration.
There were no hospitals nearby. You had to cross the river to the banks on the other side to get assistance. But all those plans were foiled as they came. First, they were only a few in the weeks before ─ thought to be tourists and adventurers in need of rest, shelter, and food. The village had been happy to help. Then they came in hordes, masses of men wielding weapons and threats ─ holding the string of fate and life of the whole village in their hands. Twisted and knotted in their fingers were the strings of the lives of Maria Alekseev and her unborn son.
They shot her neighbors first. It was a threat and a warning to everyone else: try to run and you will die.
We will try to imagine the incomparable interest of these men in Maria's unborn child. A soldier to be bred ─ a wolf to be born and raised.
Maria tried to run. She tried. She would have loved to live to tell her son that she tried. Two hours into labor and she was running barefoot, crossing the dense forest and fleeing towards safety. She forgot how long she'd been running, bare feet sinking into the damp forest soil. Blood running down her legs ─ First Blood, twisting around her thigh and pale skin like painful scarlet vines ─ the sign of exhaustion and the bestial nature of the life supposed to enter this world any moment. Every step through the winding tree labyrinth was as heavy as lifting a cement foot and every breath of the air was like a fire raging in her lungs ─ running, running, still running.
