Calder scratched his chin and looked over at Xander who was slowly standing up. "Three hours maybe?"
Xander kept looking in the direction of the city and then back at Calder. "You carried me all this way?" he asked, his voice very quiet.
"Yeah," Calder said, looking over at him. "You'd have done it for me, too."
Xander just studied him for a minute, his eyes filled with emotion. "Yeah," he said, the word sounding slightly strangled. "Yeah." He looked back out to the city, seeming to get his emotions under control.
"How's your back?" Calder asked.
Xander moved a little as if testing it. "It feels like a million bucks," Xander said. "Too bad we can't sell it for cash."
Calder grinned and then without speaking, we all turned and began to walk again. I had been exhausted, almost falling down with tiredness before we'd come upon the houses. But now I felt energized. We were so close.
We briefly told Xander what had happened with Hector and why I'd called them. His jaw was hard and he said, "You did the right thing, Eden."
After that, we walked silently again, Calder leading the way and Xander in the rear, the only sound our flapping sandals. When I glanced back at him, Xander still looked slightly out of it, like he was trying to clear the fog in his head. But his legs were working just fine and I was thankful Calder didn't have to bear his weight anymore.
Again we stuck to the areas next to the road that provided the most cover. Luckily, even though the large rocks were few and far between now, the vegetation had increased, so we moved between groves of trees and behind brush where we could.
When we had been walking for a couple hours, we saw bright lights moving closer to us in the distance and all stopped and moved behind some large, flowering bushes. The red and blue lights on top of a fast-moving car shot by us and as we watched it move away, the lights turned off, but it continued to drive in the opposite direction. I let out my breath.
"Police," Xander said.
I nodded. "It was going toward Acadia. Do you think Hector called the police?"
"Maybe," Calder said, standing up and taking my hand.
About three miles from the edge of the city, Calder's sandal gave out. He made an angry, frustrated sound and threw the broken straps into some brush. He dropped the useless sole onto the ground and turned around, putting both hands on the back of his neck and looked up at the sky.
"Here," I said, ripping off the hem of my skirt.
"What the hell are you doing?" Calder asked. He moved around me quickly to block my suddenly bare legs from Xander.
"I'm making you a shoe," I said. "My legs aren't going to get torn up on the road for being bare, but your foot is."
Xander chuckled. "She's right, Calder. Sit down. I'll use it to attach the sole to your foot so you can walk. We're so close."
Calder sat down on the road and let Xander tie my skirt hem around the sole and over his foot and around his ankle. When he stood up and tried it out, he shrugged. "This one feels better than the other one now."
I smiled. "Well good, I've got enough skirt to go around if we need more."
"Oh no you don't," Calder said, but a corner of his lips quirked up. He took my hand and we started walking again. Holding hands hadn't been something we could do before that moment. It made the sense of freedom that much sweeter.
The dirt road turned onto a highway and we walked along it for a while, keeping as far away from the actual road as we could so we were mostly out of sight by drivers passing by. Very large trucks went by with different names written on the sides in bold, bright lettering, their engine noise swelling and then receding as they passed by us in what seemed to be a flash.
We made it to the edge of the city just as the morning sun crested the horizon, shooting out golden rays as if in welcome. We'd walked all night long, but we had enough energy to grin at each other and grasp hands tightly as our feet stepped onto the first sidewalk I'd walked on since I was a small child. I supposed Xander and Calder had never seen a sidewalk, but I was too tired to ask at the moment.
After another half hour or so, Calder pointed. "There," he said. I followed his finger to a sign that read, "Holiday Inn" and the word "Hotel" beneath that. I wanted to weep with relief and happiness.
We stopped and Calder pulled me in to a large doorway and Xander followed, groaning softly as if in pain and leaning back against the wall.
"Listen," Calder said softly. "I think Xander should go in and try to buy us a room. He knows the most about money and talking to people. Plus, he's in regular clothes and his shoes look better than ours since he didn't walk for as long in them." Calder looked at Xander. "Eden and I will walk inside in twenty minutes or so and you wait somewhere where we can see you. We'll follow you from there."