Aberrant: 2011 - Don't Be Afraid to Run [Completed]

[Sascha]

A short burst of AK fire blasted the cement bricks of a tenement house to powder. They missed his head by inches. The boy could hear the kettle drum thumping of his heart raving against his rib cage, see the heaving of his chest as his lungs desperately grasped at the evening air. The blood in his veins ran cold as ice, and his eyes, those of a boy forced to do man things, bolted wide, his senses piqued to any sign of threat. The boy knew with startling, almost placid calm that meant one of the Abkhaz. There would be at least a section of them.

If he didn't find a way out of Grozny soon, not even Ivan could protect him long enough. Crawling on hands and knees into the crumbling, shell-shocked husk of the once living structure, the boy scurried into a dark corner, concealing himself beneath a collapsed upper story, hid his face beneath his long, dark hair, hugged himself, and did his best not to cry. Ivan hugged him, his huge, hairy arms comforting the boy as best as they could. In a moment, both of them had faded away. The commander's dogs would hunt all night, but they would not find him.

[Sascha]

Dawn broke evenly the following morning. Even with Ivan at his side, the child shivered nervously. Early morning in November was no time to be sleeping outside in Chechnya. It didn't help that the boy was so gaunt and undernourished; he awoke to an ache in his stomach that he recognized from several times before to be the first pangs of starvation. He knew he couldn't risk another night running without finding shelter and food, or the next time the Abkhaz caught up with him, he might not have the strength to flee or the energy to hide. As it was, he knew, if not for Ivan and his new body, he'd have been dead a dozen times over already.

Reluctantly, the boy warily crawled from the wreckage to greet the pale, grey light of day. Ivan helped him to his feet as the two scanned the vicinity for any hint of threat, and finding none. "Is it safe, Ivan?" the boy asked, craning his neck impossibly upward to meet the giant's stony features.

"As safe as it looks", his voice boomed. "The commander's dogs have moved on. We must find shelter and food soon, little one."

The boy hugged the man's massive arm lovingly, appreciating its strength and its warmth.

Ivan patted the boy on the head, smiling. "Come, young soldier. Let us continue to run while we are free."

With a last, nervous glance to the eerie stillness of the bomb-blasted streets and skeletal trees, the boy drew his jacket up around his shoulders tightly and ran bare-legged and boot-footed into the wind, hoping he'd reach anywhere but here soon.

[Sascha]

The noon siren pealed out over the crisp air, setting the boy's teeth on edge. Where he lived, that noise precluded an air raid, not midday. He wasn't alone in this; bombing runs were all too common to the citizens of Djovkhar Ghaala, called Grozny, "terrible", the wars of the last decade that reduced swathes of the city to vacated rubble teetering on the brink of collapse still fresh in the collective mind.

Ivan and his charge had made it from Oktyabrsky that morning to Zavodskoy, where the medical college was located. Of all the areas of Grozny that remained, safety in obscurity was to be found only here, amongst the few youths who had not yet left. Even now, the citizens of Grozny were human analogs of the streets they walked on: crumbling, listless, sunken, and weary. The young all deceptively seemed a decade older than their age, and children made sad games of the rough work forced on them by the weight of responsibility. Girls no older than the boy sold themselves on most every street, the five American dollars they can coax out of a tourist or backpacker being more than their fathers would make in a week.

"Over there", Ivan pointed his massive finger to a storefront with cracked-glass and a crudely hand-painted business name that announced itself as an internet cafe.

The boy looked up at his protector, confused.

He looked back down at the small boy, smiling warmly. "To ask for help, little soldier. Bring Mr. Pax here to deal with Basayev! Or Mr. Mal!" The huge man jokingly balled up his fists and swung them harmlessly against his own shadow. "And then", he patted the boy on the shoulder, "we will find food, yes?"

The boy nodded his assent wordlessly and took off across the street.

[Sascha]

The lady at the counter in the internet cafe was most helpful. Ivan had to stay outside as he was too large to fit through the shop's tiny door, but the woman saw the young man who entered her cafe and his mess of long hair hanging in matted clumps over his boyish face, and immediately, her mothering instincts took hold of her. He sent a distress call in the best english he could manage to a few different places, stopping only after Ivan urged him to make haste from behind the glass. The woman supplied the dirty little boy a sip of her tea and a bite of her plain toast, for which he thanked her before leaving to rejoin his guardian.

"Did you find help, little soldier? Is someone coming?", the large man inquired, more worried and curious than the boy, who had long since become blunted to simple anxiousness.

"I have put out a message", he told his companion, "but nobody has written back yet."

The bear nodded grimly. "We will continue west, and check again soon. For now, we will find you food. You look as skinny as a dog!", he laughed, attempting to lighten the mood. It did not seem a queer joke to either, who had only seen dogs starved and half-mad, roaming the streets and attacking any who dare come too close. He patted the boy on the shoulder, and they moved closer to the medical college so as to dig through trash bins for scraps and to try to steal or beg for a little food.

They found enough not to starve that night.

[Sascha]

The next day's sun greeted the little one with a bolt of sun to his bleary eyes. He awoke inside a dumpster in back of an office building, where he and Ivan had made their beds for the night in a pile of styrofoam peanuts and cardboard boxes. It was by no means ideal, but the boy and his companion had slept in far less comfortable, under far more stressful conditions. At least in this dumpster he could be virtually assured that no men with guns would find him, and he slept very soundly until the light of day roused him to wake.

Ivan had already woken, and was now outside, sitting on a piece of cement rubble, watching out for his charge as he slept. The boy drew up, shakily finding his footing amidst the debris, and slipped the jacket he'd used as a blanket back over his shoulders, the assorted medals that decorated it reflecting rays of light and making metallic tink-tink noises as he did. He hadn't taken his boots off in two days, and was a little worried about the sticky, pasty lack of sensation he had in them, but at least he had boots at all. His trousers had been taken from him before his escape, and only the length of his button-down shirt covered him below the waist now, extending mercifully to just above his knees. His jacket was seven kilos of grey wool and cotton, and at least it kept his upper body warm. His knees had gone white from the cold, so he rubbed them, striving to bring sensation back to his legs.

Ivan heard the rustling from behind him and turned, drawing a bourbon cigarillo away from the long, gruff hairs that grew from his moustache to halfway over his upper lip. He smiled reassuringly, "I'm glad to see you awake, little soldier. Are you ready for the day?"

The boy rubbed his eyes and leapt out of the dumpster, his legs managing to support him as he landed. He yawned and nodded, "Yes, Ivan. Where do we go?"

The man scratched his chin, his sausage fingers bristling through the two inches of wirey red hair that grew there, and looked pensively westward. "We should go through Georgia, to Turkey", he said with certainty. "If we make it to Turkey, we are within the EU, and will fear less from the commander's dogs." He turned down to his young companion, adding "Maybe even make it through to Duetschland, huh? Or even America!"

The words nearly brought tears to the boy's eyes. He'd only dreamed of such places; he could barely even conceive of them. He wondered if all the people in those places had enough to eat. He wondered if people were shot in the street like at home, if children lived like he did. He hoped they did not. And Ivan's words had given him the hope and strength he needed to keep moving, as tired as he was. It had been almost three days since he left the camp near Buynaksk, in Dagestan. It would be at least two weeks to Tbilisi, two more to Artvin, unless he and Ivan could find a ride.

The boy was reminded of the call for help he had made the day before. He would check back soon, but despite Ivan's hopefulness, he was sure that help would likely not be forthcoming. At this point, the boy only hoped he could live long enough to see a world outside of Chechnya.

[Sascha]

It was nearly two days before Ivan and his charge reached Nazran, and then only by a fortuitous stroke of luck Ivan had hit upon as they made their flight from the terrible city's west side. The pair had spent their time using the cover of darkness as a shield against detection while they traveled, sleeping and foraging during the day. The inconspicuousness of night travel had its own price, however; the light of day, as pallid and cheerless as it was, took with it on its descent into the underworld all hope for finding smiling or trusting faces, any chance for charity or kindness from a stranger.

The boy and his guardian managed to secure enough food to see them through the first day, then killed and prepared a stray cat on the second, spent on the Baku-Rostov highway that yawns across the republic from east to west. It wasn't the first time either had been forced to eat an animal that may have been somebody's pet, and the meat was greasy and unfulfilling. They ate it with their fingers, in mildly singed bites that were cooked over one of any of the fires that dotted the landscape, and did so in total silence. Ivan took less than he needed, and the boy knew it. They had slept that day in a pockmarked section of road that had been blasted by mortar, inside the torn remnants of the vehicle that had been the target and eventual victim of the mortar barrage.

It was here that serendipity struck, as night chased away the sun and the pair had begun to walk hand-in-hand along the lowered shoulder of the roadside. Ivan spotted a vehicle in the distance. Not a military convoy, but a civilian vehicle, a bullet-riddled hulk that announced its arrival with slow, mechanical coughing.

"Little soldier", the man addressed his charge earnestly. "I think that we may be able to use this man to help us."

The boy was as confused as ever, but slowly realized what Ivan had intended. The thought of doing so filled him with dread and loathing, but he knew that his guardian was correct. Even in his sorry state, the driver would probably be fearful enough to not ask questions. He sighed and slumped out to the road, Ivan following close behind.

"I have no uniform", Ivan reminded him. "You will have to speak."

The boy drew up his coat and attempted to look stern and official, something that he was so accustomed to that the disguise was only marred by his lack of proper trousers, something that was not unheard of if a garment become too torn or soiled to wear. Standing near the middle of the round, he raised his chin proudly and held out an outstretched arm, palm flat against the wind. The engined sputtered to a halt a few meters away, and the child ran to the driver's window, a look of forced contempt on his face.

"You!", he spat at the driver, a whithered, worried looking man older than Ivan and only somewhat smaller than the boy who now stood yelling at him. "I am commandeering your vehicle for official purposes!"

The driver looked terrified even of this small boy, with decorations on his chest and epatulets that anybody who had lived here long enough could read. The boy himself may be no threat, but if he refused, what then? Shot in the head? He tried to plead, "But please, sir, I need--"

"Shut up!", the boy cried, scowling. "Neither I nor my companion are accomplished at such tasks. You will escort us, and we will permit you your vehicle once we have reached our destination. Am I clear?"

The man nodded, saying yes, yes, of course, eager to hold on to his meager property while not drawing the ire of this potentially murderous child and his certainly murderous comrades. Ivan came from off the road attempting to look like he had been looking out, perhaps waiting to extract or kill the driver if he refused, and he and his ward slumped into the back of the man's truck, where they sat and rode as far as Nazran.

Nazran was an uncomfortable place to be for either traveler. In 2004, the commander brought over two hundred men to this town where they killed over fifty of the Interior Ministers security forces, including Abukar Kostoyev, the minister himself, his deputy, and others, as well as looting a treasury and a police armory. The town still crawled with his men.

The boy wanted desperately to go in to the city to see if his distress call had reached anybody's ears, to find food and possibly shelter for the night, but his clothes marked him as one of the enemy by the civilians and as a target by the other soldiers, and as much as he wanted to discard them, they were the only warmth he had. Ivan touched the boy on the shoulder as they stood on the outskirts of the city, obviously pensive about their next step.

"I know, little soldier, I know. We cannot."

The boy cried a tiny bit, a clean tear running the length of his grime-stained cheek. "Yes", was all he said.

Ivan's massive hand turned him aside from the sight of the city in the distance; as decrepit and uninviting as it was, to them it seemed a paradise oasis. Motioning south, Ivan hugged the boy around the shoulder and consoled him, "We are near Georgia now, little soldier. The commander's dogs will have less hold there, and we can rest. Keep heart."

The boy hugged him back, walking forward automatically, without the strength of will to open his eyes with the city still in sight. "Thank you, Ivan."

Interminable minutes passed as the two trudged onward to the border, a silence that seemed to last much longer than it did, when the boy spoke up again, "Ivan?"

"Yes, little soldier?"

"Will things be better in Georgia? Will we make it?"

Ivan set his jaw and grimaced, squinting back tears of his own. "We will", he affirmed. "We must. We will survive. For now, we must be strong and brave. We must not be afraid to run."