A few hours after the Pulse, Tinga and Ben (who had had the good fortune of finding each other after they'd cleared the perimeter fence during the escape) were sitting in the back of their foster family's minivan and silently watching the streets crowding with rioters. They didn't like their foster parents, a middle-aged couple named Pres and Amy. Tinga was starting to get used to the idea of having people looking after them who weren't dressed in fatigues or lab suits, but Ben hated it. In his opinion, all adults wanted to control them and give them to the 'nomlies.
"Is your knee okay, Tisha?" Pres asked, turning around (as the car was in a dead stop in the traffic jam) to look at Tinga. Amy had had to pull Tinga out of the shower to get her into the car so that they could get out of town as fast as they could, and Tinga had scraped her knee accidently tripping over one of those horrible ("'Nomlie," said Ben) lawn gnomes. The whole town was becoming a zoo.
"I'm fine," Tinga said, looking at her knee which was already almost healed. Earlier, Pres and Amy had been talking about staying at Amy's sister's house in the "boonies" until the heat was off in the city.
"My sister's house is just a few exits away, so it won't take too long," Amy said.
"We've already been in the car for three hours," Ben said in a quiet voice. "It would be faster if we just got out and walked," he muttered to Tinga so that only she would hear. Tinga shook her head at him and concentrated on twirling her still damp hair. Tinga's hair had grown long in the months since the escape, so that it already reached her back. Ben said it was because the Blue Lady wanted Tinga to have hair like Hers.
"Right up there," Amy pointed out. "No cars on the mountain. We'll be able to drive right up."
"If the roads haven't been picked up and carried away by the fanatics yet," Ben said dryly to Tinga. Ben had a lot more fun than Tinga did making fun of the making fun of the people around them. On this "road trip" (although Tinga wouldn't call it that, it was more a "flee to the less populated areas" trip), he'd made almost three dozen cracks about the sector police force, the religious fanatics who were praying in the streets while their churches and temples were looted by thiefs, and the rioters who were fighting amongst themselves in a completely ill-fashioned way. Unfortunately, this time Pres heard him.
"Billy, don't talk that way," Pres scolded. "Everybody's just a little bit scared."
"A little bit?" Ben scoffed. "I've killed birds less jumpy," he whispered to Tinga, who nodded in affirmative.
"Hey, look at that!" Tinga pointed to a cross on top of the mountain that they were headed to.
"What's the T stand for?" Ben asked.
"That's the cross," Amy corrected. "It's a religious symbol. You know, Jesus on the cross?"
"Jesus?" Tinga asked.
"The son of God," Pres said. "Remind me to get you two into church sometime soon." Tinga and Ben shared a look. Like we'll still be around, it said. They'd been in and out of seven foster homes ever since they'd been in the program. The last one had been especially bad; the father had smacked Tinga around for sport, and Ben had punched him so hard that two of his teeth fell out.
Despite them being "a few exits off", it still took an hour and a half to get to Amy's sister's house. When they got there, ("Finally," commented Ben) Amy's sister ran out of the lone house on top of the mountain and hugged her sister hard as the two X5s grabbed their bags out of the trunk. The sister (apparently called Emma) invited them to put their things in the house, and Tinga followed Ben as he bypassed the sister's husband, who had come out to greet Amy and Pres as well, and walked into the house.
"Well, this should be fun," Ben said bitterly.
"Stop being so pissy," Tinga said.
"No electricity, Tinga," Ben said. "And no electricity means no television."
"Yeah, I know, television rocks your world," Tinga rolled her eyes. "But now, it's even better odds against Colonel Lydecker finding us. And, who needs television when we have this juicy soap-opera unfolding right in front of us?" she asked.
"What are you talking about?" Ben asked. Tinga nodded towards the window, looking out over the front yard where the two couples were still talking.
"Setting: a brother and a sister, in the middle of an economic break down, stuck in the foster system for who knows how long," Tinga said dramatically. "Their foster parents, the Aldersons drive them up to a remote mountain mansion to stay until the heats off in their city. The brother and the sister realize suddenly that they might have just walked into... I'm not sure, the setting of a slowly crumbling relationship sprinkled with adultery and lies, or The Twilight Zone."
"Twilight Zone," Ben said. "Definitely the Twilight Zone. You know, considering..." he trailed off.
"Right then, the Twilight Zone," Tinga finished, with a dramatic flick of her hand. "So what do you think?" she asked excitedly.
"I think we'd better pray to the Blue Lady about your sanity," Ben remarked. Tinga sneered at him and reached to smack him on the back of the head when the Aldersons and Amy's sister and her husband walked in.
"Tisha, don't hit your brother!" Amy said. Tinga retracted her hand and glared at Ben.
"Do you two want something to eat?" Amy's sister Emma asked.
"No ma'am," Ben said. "We're fine. Just a bit sleepy."
"If you want you could go claim a guest room," Emma said.
"Sounds good," both X5s said at the same time. They shared another look, then grabbed their bags and went off down the hall.
"Did she tell us where the guest rooms are?" Ben asked. Tinga shook her head.
"But I'm sure if we wonder around long enough, we'll figure it out," Tinga said, handing Ben her bag while she put her hair up in the usual high ponytail. "For example, this room," she opened the door to one room that turned out to be a bathroom. "Toilet, sink, this is not a guest room."
"What about that one?" Ben asked, nodding to the other door. Tinga skipped across the hall and opened the door.
"There are jackets, brooms and boxes," she said. "This is a closet."
"How about that one over there?" Ben asked. Tinga opened the next door.
"This one has a king sized bed, a vanity, a very large closet with clothes filling it, and pictures on the dresser," she said matter-of-factly. "This is the master bedroom."
"And the next one?" Tinga opened the second to last door in the hall.
"This room has a slightly smaller bed, with a slightly smaller closet, and fresh linen sheets," she said. "This is the guest room." Ben grinned.
"Excellent show of deductive reasoning, big sister," he said.
"The best," she corrected.
"The best," Ben agreed. He took another look around the room and something caught his eye. A framed picture of a woman standing with her arms out, and her heart showing. The Blue Lady. "Look at that," Ben said.
"She's here," Tinga said, smiling. Ben took out the card that Jack had gotten so long ago and compared it with the picture on the wall. The picture was different, but there was no doubt that it was her.
"Here," he viciously ripped a tooth out of his mouth, ignoring the pain, and placed it on the floor under the picture. Tinga did the same. "She's watching over us," Ben said, "all of us."
"All of us," Tinga repeated, remembering her other brothers and sisters.
"None of us are going to be hurt," Ben said. "We're all going to be together again, soon."
-
There was relative peace on the mountain for a few days, until the rioters stormed the cabin, screaming that they knew the Pulse was coming. Emma had had a generator, so the lights would stay on and they could cook. When the riot happened, they were right about to have dinner. The first shot that was fired by an angry rioter hit Emma in the back. It would have hit Tinga, who'd been behind Emma, bringing the dishes over; it would have hit Tinga if Ben hadn't seen the shooter with his night vision and shouted at her to get out of the way. Tinga dodged the bullet and blurred over to where he was taking cover behind the sofa.
"Why are they doing this?" she asked as another bullet caught 'Uncle Fred' in the chest. Ben shook his head, he didn't know. Four of the rioters burst through the door, kicking Fred in the chest on their way running through the hallway of the house. There was cursing, shouting, Emma's gasps of pain as blood seeped through her shirt and onto the clean kitchen floor.
Ben heard Amy screaming from where she was in the second guest room.
"Escape and evade," he told Tinga. Tinga nodded. "There's lots of forest, they'll never see us. She'll protect us, remember?" Ben asked.
"I remember," Tinga said grimly. Crashing through the window was easy enough. Ben held tightly onto Tinga's hand as they pushed through the crowd, throwing people off of them, punching and kicking.
"What is this?" one person growled, grabbing Tinga.
"No!" Ben yelled, as Tinga was passed from person to person. "Tinga!" Somebody grabbed him away, it was Pres. Pres pushed Ben into the minivan and got in himself. "Stop! We have to get her!" Ben yelled.
"Its no use now!" Pres said. Ben couldn't see Tinga anymore from the window of the van. What he could see was the cabin going up in flames and the rioters cheering insanely.
"Stop!" Ben said. "STOP!" he roared, hitting Pres. His head bounced violently off of the window and Ben pulled the emergency brake on the car and it screeched to a stop. When he got out of the car and looked up at the top of the mountain where Emma's house had been, the crowd was gone. And so was Tinga.