Breaking Their Hold

For the next three days that Mel and Pierre walked into Minnesota and closer to Canada, all she could think about were her cousins Gianna and Gavin. Both of them were dead now, and their deaths were at least in part because of her. She knew that they wouldn’t want her to blame herself; that their mother and father wouldn’t blame her, either. But she did, nonetheless.

If she hadn’t actually run away from Haverly Hospital like Sophia and the others had convinced her to, none of this would be happening. Everyone would be safe and that was something she seriously wished had happened. But they were past that now, and Mel knew she needed to be stronger.

It was time for her to do something she’d always been afraid of doing; ever since Schlagger’s regime had put her and her brothers and sister into the Hospital. She needed to grow a backbone. She needed to find a way to defend not only herself, but her friends and her family, and the country.

She needed to be strong.

Strength wasn’t something that Mel had ever had before. She had always been weak; always let others take care of her. It was why she’d been so drawn to Jimmy, or at least, she thought it was. He took care of her and loved her for who she was. In this world, of course, one couldn’t be picky about who they were with. It wasn’t a world in which real love was easily found. But she knew that with Jimmy, what she had was true love.

He was the only man she was ever going to want to be with for the rest of her life. She really, truly cared about him and she knew he felt the same way about her. She sighed as she let those thoughts travel out of her mind when she felt Pierre shaking her shoulder, trying to wake her up. She hadn’t even fallen asleep yet. After all, how could one sleep when so many lives were depending on her?

“You ready to get going for the day?” He asked her, a small smile on his face as he helped her to carefully move onto her feet. They were leaving yet another small, abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere, and she knew that they had to be getting close to a city or at least, a reasonably large town because there were so many more cars driving on the freeway nearby.

“Yeah, I guess,” Mel muttered under her breath, reaching down to grab the small bag that she’d been using as a pillow for herself.

Pierre gave her a somewhat apologetic look before he frowned as they walked out of the barn. Mel knew that any day now; perhaps even today, he would tell her that they were getting close to where his friend was going to meet up with them. That meant they’d be one step closer to getting to Canada, where she would be free.

It meant they’d be one step closer to finding Matt and Jimmy and making sure that they were safe too. It meant they could get Zack out of Haverly Hospital and into Canada too, if that was what it took to make sure he was safe. It meant the start of a new world, their being close to Canada, but Mel refused to let her hopes get up too high.

A part of her was actually terrified that something was going to go wrong between now and Pierre’s friend finding them. What if Schlagger was on their trail now? Would he reach them before Mel had a chance to get to Canada with Pierre? And what about her companion’s friend? Could he be trusted? Mel didn’t know him at all, and she had learned that in this world, she couldn’t trust easily. Even if Pierre trusted this David person, how was she supposed to be able to if she didn’t know him?

She sighed and then shook her head, deciding she wasn’t going to worry about it. She was stressing far too much about everything right now, and even though she knew that it was because of the fact that they were getting closer and closer to the end of this crazy journey with each day that passed, it wasn’t an excuse.

The fact of the matter was, Mel needed to breathe. She needed to stop worrying that everything was going to go wrong. Pierre had done what he was doing for her many times before, and he knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t put her in a situation to get hurt. That, she knew very well. He’d quite literally put his life on the line for her, and if he hadn’t gone to Denver, she probably would have been caught by now.

“Hey, I just thought I should let you know something,” Pierre murmured under his breath quietly as they walked along the dirt path a half a mile or so away from the highway. She turned her head to the side so that she could face Pierre as they walked, and he smiled when he saw that he had her attention.

“Let me know what?” She asked him, arching her eyebrow. “That we’re almost to Canada? That we don’t need to cross through anymore states now?” She asked with a small smile.

There was no denying that she was pretty happy about not having to walk very much further. Mel was completely and totally exhausted. The last few months had been some of the most challenging and difficult that she’d ever lived through, and she was thankful that soon, it would all be over.

“Well, there is that,” Pierre smiled softly at her before he shook his head. “But that’s not what I was going to tell you.”

Mel arched her eyebrow, feeling her curiosity rise as they continued walking. She stopped automatically when she heard the sound of an airplane above them, and allowed herself to instantly fall to her knees, letting the tall prairie grass of the ditch camouflage herself.

Once the plane was gone and showed no signs of turning around, they both moved back to their feet and Pierre cleared his throat before he turned to smile at her.

“By the end of tomorrow, we should be sitting somewhere in Canada. If we walk a little bit longer than we have been today and tomorrow, we’ll be able to reach the liftoff point and David will be there to pick us up.”

A part of Mel wondered how Pierre knew this if he didn’t have a cell phone or other way to communicate with him, but then she recalled that he still had a small calendar in his backpack that he used. She figured he must have been keeping track of the progress they made every day, and that somehow or other, he had estimated that they’d be here around this time. She smiled at that thought. He really, truly had thought everything about this through.

“I knew that’d make you smile,” Pierre told her as they continued walking before he stopped, turning to face her once more. “I have to warn you, though. It’s been awhile since I’ve had intel on anyone. If…” He stopped for several seconds before he continued, his voice a little quieter. “If something happened to Jimmy and Matt, David will know.”

Mel nodded and then sighed softly, letting her eyes drop to the ground. She didn’t want to think about her boyfriend and their friend right now, because she knew that if she let herself worry about them, she was going to get distracted from what her main goal was right now. And her main goal at the moment was to ensure that she made her way to Canada and that she got there with Pierre on time.

If they didn’t, everything could go wrong. David might not be there, which would mean they’d have to walk further. Walking further would not only further exhaust her, it would give them more of a chance of getting caught. And that wasn’t something that she wanted to have happen under any circumstances.

All she could hope was that they were alright. She needed to pray and believe that even if they were caught by now; that even if Schlagger had found them, he was keeping them alive for the simple purpose that they knew where she had been headed. As long as she thought about that, Mel thought to herself, she could get through everything.