He couldn’t even explain it to himself. One second, he was getting the children ready for bed, which meant him yelling, “Go to bed” the moment he walked through the door; the next he found himself in the kitchen preparing the bottles. He shouldn’t do this. It was a death sentence for him and the kids in the next room. He knew this. But he found himself popping the cap off the vodka bottle anyway. Searching in a cupboard for the two water bottles. Pulling the lighter out of his back pants pocket and taking the knife with the hollow hilt out of his go bag. Something in his reckless conscience told him this was really the only way he could help his friend, who’d become his brother. It wasn’t his fault if Davis failed in the process. He would at least get the hell out of there.
Shrugging his shoulder as he emptied the water into a plastic pitcher, he mumbled to himself. “I’ll just blame it on Robby. He’s a weasel anyway.” Planning to pass suspicion on to the guard, Ivan carefully poured the clear liquid into the emptied water bottles. Forever caught conning for favors of booze and goods, Robby was as incompetent as they came. He preyed on the troubled and the helpless. Ivan had no sympathy for the man. It didn’t matter in the end. He could give his old friend Davis a chance to avoid an imminent death and take care of a menace at the same time. He only hoped Davis succeeded. The man had a mangled left arm and he looked like hell. If he kept this up, he wouldn’t last much longer, no matter how Ivan intervened.
Holding his arm steady as he began pouring the second bottle, Ivan sloshed a little of the precious liquid over the rim when the girl walked into his peripheral view. He only caught sight of her dark brown hair at waist level. “What the hell are you doing? I said go to bed.”
He immediately concealed the bottle by his side, hiding his crime.
She had the tip of her right finger in her mouth. It annoyed him when she did that, partly because he knew she needed someone to care for her more than he ever could. There was no way that was ever going to happen. She was stuck with him and he was an inadequate caregiver. The only thing he could do for her and the boy was to give them shelter and food. That was all. The boy, especially, needed more right now.
The girl before him startled back a few steps at his rebuke. She pointed to the bedrooms at the back of the house.
“What?” he yelled. “Speak. What is it? I don’t have time for this,” he yelled louder.
She was a little thing, barely eight years old, if that, and tiny as a wisp. He’d taken her in because he caught Robby, the menace, leering at her in the lock-up one day. She was just a little girl, but had Ivan not walked in when he did, he was sure Robby would have violated her in some way. Just another reason he hated the creeper.
“He’s…wet,” she said and scrunched up her nose.
Ivan lowered his head. “Shit. All right, go to bed,” he said calmer. He was not a parent. Didn’t want to be a parent. Not in this world. Not in the last. But here he was, in charge of two children in the last month.
The girl scampered off and Ivan turned to watch her go. She was a delicate little thing, like a fawn that lost its mother. She talked to no one but him or Linda, the doctor. Perhaps instead of the boy, he should have grabbed one of the wives in those last few seconds. She needed a woman and Linda wasn’t available. There was no time to really consider the consequences then. There was never a good time for consequence considering. Those days were over. You just acted now. Acted on fear and instinct. He wasn’t sure why he grabbed the older boy over the younger. He wasn’t sure why he grabbed that boy over the others. He just did. Perhaps it was only because he was the nearest soul to save. The path of least resistance. That’s all life really was now.
He finished filling the vodka bottle and screwed on the cap. Then, he swirled the remaining liquid in the bottle and took a deep chug and let his boots fall loose against the wood floor as he walked toward the back rooms of the dark house and the boy with the pissy pants.