The Perfect Plan

Glancing around himself with nothing less than blind terror, Timothy Rivers hurried down the darkened alley, ushering his hobbling wife along. She tripped on a stone and nearly lost her balance, but righted herself at the last minute, steadying the two bundles cradled in her arms.

“Come on, Melissa,” he muttered, tapping his foot impatiently on the pavement. “We have to keep going.”

“I know, I know,” she murmured, picking up the pace as they continued to their destination. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t reply; he was too busy making sure they weren’t being followed. They didn’t speak until the high-rise skyscrapers melted away, morphing into council estates. Scruffy, tumbledown and graffitied to within an inch of their lives, the houses - if you could call them that - were barely recognisable as part of the great, pristine city they had just left.

But nobody cared about this side of the city. This was the slums, the wreckage of a long dead civilisation, salvaged by people who couldn’t afford to care that they were infested with rats and all manner of diseases. This was the dark side of town, the place where the sun doesn’t shine, and the place Timothy and Melissa Rivers were going to leave their newborn babies.

He paused at the edge of the road to glance down at the scrap of paper gripped in his fingers, and read the address scrawled there in barely legible handwriting. He glanced up again at the house in front of him, a sigh caught between his teeth.

“This is the place,” he said softly, more to himself than anyone else.

Melissa halted in the middle of the pavement, her babies clutched to her chest like she would never let them go. Her face betrayed the weariness she was too strong to show, the tears she so badly wanted to shed.

“Tim, we can’t do this. Please, we can’t,” she beseeched him, her voice quivering. “We can’t just leave them here.”

He turned around, his face fixed into a stony mask. “We have to. They’ll kill him if we don’t. Kieran isn’t safe, and neither is Kendra. Not so long as they’re together.”

“But we could run, we could hide-” she said, her voice rising with every word.

“No,” he said harshly. She flinched, as if he’d slapped her, and his face softened. He studied her carefully, as if she was one of his specimens. “We agreed, Mel. We can’t let them kill him. And we can’t separate them. We have to do this. We have to.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, biting down hard on her lower lip to keep back the tears. After a few long seconds, she opened them again, meeting her husband’s hard stare.

“Okay,” she managed. She hugged each baby hard, and kissed the top of their heads, before holding out the bundles of cloth.

With a weak smile of support, he took the babies in his arms, thumbing away the cloth to see their peaceful, sleeping faces. Kieran’s tiny thumb was in his mouth and he was sucking away at it gently. Kendra, virtually identical to her twin, was breathing heavily; they’d suspected she might have a cold, but they were helpless to do anything about it. They couldn’t go to the hospital. Not with Kieran. That would be suicide.

“Timmy?” His wife’s voice broke him out of his daydream and he shook his head violently.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, mustering up a smile from the depths of his misery. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Melissa only nodded mutely. Licking his lips, Timothy ducked into the garden of the house just in front, peering around to check he hadn’t been seen. He broke into a sprint to reach the door, and set the two bundles down on the doorstep.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, though he knew they couldn’t understand. “We never wanted this. I love you, both of you.”

Blinking rapidly, he rapped sharply on the door a few times before dashing down the path and shutting the rusted gate behind him.

“Let’s go,” he muttered to his wife. “We’ve been here long enough as it is.”

They didn’t look back. They couldn’t. The temptation to turn back and take back what they’d done would have been too great to control.

If they had looked back, even momentarily, they would have seen the door to the safe house open and a muttering, grumbling old woman stumble out. They would have seen her do a double take when she caught sight of the rags lying on her doorstep. They would have seen her crouch down, pick up the note set neatly on top of Kieran’s rising and falling chest and read it.

To whom this may concern, it read, in Melissa’s cursive script, this is Kieran and Kendra Rivers. Please look after them, and don’t let them get split up. When they’re old enough to understand, tell them their parents love them and will find them one day.

The old woman snorted. “Poor bastards,” she muttered. With a wheezy cough, she stooped to pick up the babies and turned back to her house.

“Rio, get your ass downstairs,” she roared, kicking the door shut behind her. “We got more guests.”