In two hours traveling, we pass through two apparently large cities. The first one gave us a lot of work because there were barriers, and we had to make detours, wasting fuel that we didn't have anymore. One thing I have to say about Canada: they are excellent at building and maintaining roads. The highways, even a year after complete abandonment, were in much better condition than American highways. The problem was the road network. In America, there were so many back roads that you didn't necessarily have to get on the big highways to get from one city to another. There were always one or two extra alternatives to go from point A to point B. Obviously, traveling on the highways was a shorter and safer route in normal times. In the apocalypse, most of the highways were blocked close to the big cities, leaving only the secondary roads to transit near these regions. But not in Canada. The number of secondary roads was much smaller, at least when it comes to the provinces we were crossing. Evidently, we were lucky that part of the country was sparsely populated. Even so: what a mess to not have the same options for traffic.
Just before we made it to Moncton, our truck began to sputter until we couldn't go any farther on the road. We honked and Mike stopped his car further on.
"The tank has dried up." Quinn said as soon as Mike walked over to us.
We got out of our truck and piled our stuffs into the other car, bringing our backpacks and bikes with us. Mike started to drive and, a kilometer later, we saw a gas station. We stopped there, checked it, to be sure. Like all the others, we checked along the way, it was dry. We entered the city without knowing exactly how long we could run on the remaining fuel. We had a quarter of a tank, a lot of weight (which consumed more), and to make matters worse, there were barriers in the city. We carried on because we didn't have many alternatives to taking long detours. If there was a militia there, well, whatever God wanted.
We carried on despite the warnings and a few meters after entering the city we saw a series of traffic barriers on the avenue that forced us to zigzag the car until we actually stopped at a barrier that blocked the avenue completely. It consisted of a gate, which entered an area delimited by a barbed wire fence. We could see that inside the fence there were at least ten people in military uniforms wielding assault rifles.
Two soldiers with rifles approached us.
"Vous ne pouvez pas vous déplacer ici." One of them was emphatic. My heart raced, because I had bad memories of situations like that. Even worse because the guy said something in French, and I didn't know anything but "merci" and "sa va bien" in this language. From Mike's reaction, he didn't understand French either. I looked at Quinn. She was the only one of us who took French classes. She started to react to answer, but Mike said it first.
"Sorry sir. I don't speak French." Mike replied.
"I said." The soldier repeated with more irritation, showing the strong accent of someone who wasn't used to speaking English. "You aren't allowed to be here. Turn round and leave this town or suffer the consequences."
"Sorry sir, but we're just trying to get to the coast." Mike explained still without getting out of the truck. "May I get out this car to talk?"
The soldier who approached us looked at his mate, who was pointing his gun at us, and nodded to a third, who also approached. The two of them whispered to each other and I could see that the soldiers who were just walking nearby already had their rifles pointed at us.
"You can get out of the car and explain yourself." The first soldier ordered.
Mike got out of the truck with his hands up and headed towards the soldiers for a conversation that was once again inaudible to the rest of us. I was nervous, because my previous experiences had been horrible and we had almost ended up murdered on the side of a road. I was sitting on Quinn's lap, and I squeezed Rachel's hand, who was half-squeezed between the seats.
"What can we do?" Sam was clearly scared.
"Nothing." I said. "Our only option now is to trust Mike's judgement and hope that these guys aren't mercenary slavers."
Two soldiers ordered us out of the car with our hands up. As Mike also had his hands up, but was apparently safe, we didn't react. The soldiers lined us up and searched us one by one. They took my revolver, and that was the first time I'd had my gun taken without my authorisation since I bought it in the early days of the apocalypse.
After searching us, it was the truck's turn, and more of them turned up for the task. As we stood there with our hands up, we could see the soldiers making three piles of our things. Clothes and personal utensils in one pile, weapons or anything that could be used as one in another, and food in a third. The bicycles were left on top of the truck.
"This is Mocton." One soldier explained. "This city is part of Edward-Brunswick, and we serve that country."
"Right." I said. "But wasn't there a country called the United States of the North or something?" I asked, hoping I wouldn't take a bullet.
"Where did you get this story?"
"Sir, we come from Ohio. A neighbor gave us this information." Mike explained.
"Yes, there is an island that is inviting survivors to form a new country, but I hope you have a full tank and reserves to get there. Because you access this island from New Scotia, not New Brunswick. Unless you have a boat."
"What?" I said loud. My heart raced in such a way that I thought I would have a stretch right there. "No... it's not possible... it's not possible that we did everything we did and still took the wrong path!"
"You better calm down, lady." One of the soldiers threatened me and Quinn held me back.
"Please sir, we are genuinely lost here." Quinn pondered. "And we need a shelter."
"We've survived the apocalypse so far by suffering many losses, and as you can see, we have two people injured." Mike negotiated.
"It's not that we don't accept immigrants. The issue is that a somewhat rigorous triage system has been worked out that is done in Cape Jourimain. No one enters the island and no one enters Charlottetown without a license. Not everyone gets that license. What I can do for you is take you to the triage center when our change shifts, or you can turn around and look for another place to shelter."
"What about our stuffs?" I asked.
"We'll keep the weapons and ammunition, but you can take the rest."
"What if we decide to try this triage?" Quinn was anxious.
"You can come in with just a few personal belongings and we'll put them in the lorry. There's no guarantee that you'll be accepted, but if you have the skills, there's a good chance."
"Sir?" I said already more calmed down and controlled. "What would you do in our place?"
The soldier looked at me and what he said sounded sincere.
"If you are not accepted into the triage, you can still try your luck in New Scotia or another place. But if you are accepted, you can go to the island and be part of the community. The work is hard, but we work for our own safety and survival. In the condition you're in, maybe this opportunity is like winning the lottery. What do you have to lose?"
We had nothing more to lose. I had nothing more to lose. The only thing that really moved me was the promise I had made to my mother and which Brittany had reinforced: that I should fight to live and die old in a warm bed.
"Is there anything we need to know for triage?" Mike asked.
The soldier thought for a moment and said.
"Don't lie. They will know if you do."
"We will be together?" Tina asked.
"I don't know. Maybe not. Probably not. But you will be safe."
Mike gathered us together for a brief moment, excusing himself from the soldiers.
"This is no longer a vote-on-or-off decision." Mike spoke in a choked voice. "I have Tina and my kid to think about. I will do this triage, I will submit to whatever they ask if it means Tina and my kid will be safe."
"What about the rest of us?" Rachel grew restless. "I don't want to do a triage to go to a supposedly safe place but far from you guys."
"We're a family. We can say that." Blaine said with hope.
"We are a family, but they don't know about it. We don't know these people."
"I'm tired, guys." Tina sighed. "I need to stop and feel safe for a day. Just for one day."
"Santana." Mike approached me. "I've made a lot of mistakes in judgment over all this time, and you've been the one to keep things in perspective, most of the time pointing out what an idiot I was. The truth is, you've always been a much better leader. I don't know what's going to happen, but without you around, things aren't going to make much sense. I'm staying with Tina. But if you take this risk, everybody else will."
I looked at Mike and then at the others. I was tired too. Honestly, we needed this break, no matter how stressful it was. Even if those people separated us, we needed a place to sleep safely. I had to do this for myself and for them.
"Okay. Let's stay and take our chances."
I was hugged by my friends. Honestly, I needed that sweet, loving moment, typical of a movie scene designed to make the world a cuter place. I needed this because Brittany's death was so recent and I was really depressed. Even if I didn't want to face such triage, I wouldn't have the strength to go on alone, I simply didn't have the strength anymore, and that's why I needed to let them be strong for me.
Mike walked over to the two soldiers and accepted the terms. We couldn't take it anymore, anyway. We were surrendered.
The soldiers allowed us to take our rucksacks and put a piece of clothing, a personal item and nothing else in them. I chose a very practical outfit and Brittany's notebook. I could see that my friends were struggling to decide what to take, but for me it was a very easy choice. After that, they allowed us to enter the space protected by barbed wire. The impression we had was that the area was huge, that it covered at least an entire neighbourhood of that city. I also realised that this was the industrial area. There were soldiers and some people in civilian uniforms walking around, but nobody stopped to talk to us.
We sat on a lawn, still very close to the barbed wire fence, with two soldiers watching us with guns pointed at us. We were so tense that we couldn't even talk to each other. All I know is that Rachel held my hand and never let go. I could see that our truck and bikes had been taken inside, as well as food, weapons and ammunition. But our things, our knick-knacks were left outside, forgotten there in a pile, like rubbish waiting to be burnt.
I think it took a couple of hours for a lorry to park next to us. The soldiers ordered us to climb into the lorry, and our luck with destiny began. The journey in that truck was much longer than our first experience, and that's why I thought we gonna be okay. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it by now. The soldiers were leading us along a road that had moments that showed the Canadian coast, and we had the image of the sea.
The last time I saw the sea was the summer break before senior year, when the apocalypse happened. I had gone to Florida, as usual, and everything seemed to have happened in another incarnation. My parents were together, they were living a good moment in their marriage after a period of crisis. They took me to a Cuban bar, I was able to officially have my first drink with their supervision, despite the fact that I used to drank at parties without their knowledge. I danced with my father, and then with a guy who had invited me. Obviously, I had already come out to myself at that time, Brittany and I were starting to date for real, so it was nothing more than a dance and a few laughs with this guy, who was about 21 if I remember correctly. It was just fun.
"You stay here." The soldier said when, an hour later since we started travelling, we stopped in front of a fenced building.
The highway was also interrupted there by that fence. We got out of the car, the soldier drove the truck beyond the protected area and the fence closed in our faces. The fence was guarded by two more soldiers. There was a tower that looked like it was recently built with one more soldier, who should have been the sniper on duty. We could see people circulating outside and inside the building. Just like in the city, there were people in military uniforms and there were people in civilian uniforms, which were very similar to those overalls from Lost's Dharma project.
The impression it gave was that there was a whole security and bureaucratic unit at work right there. We also could see that the road led towards the sea. We could feel the Atlantic winds. But there was a closed fence right in our face. I looked at the space, we were in a typical coastal region without a coastal hill: sandy terrain, wide space, there was a kind of marsh formed by the sea surf there. It was like one of those mangrove regions, only without significant vegetation.
"And now?" Blaine looked like he was about to cry.
"We have nowhere to run." Tina was also very nervous.
"There's only the sea to run." I said. "If there are any reapers around here, which I doubt, we'll have to run out to sea."
Fortunately, it wasn't necessary to run into the sea. Two women wearing a uniform with a white coat over it, implying that they were health workers of some kind, and a female soldier appeared at the railing, carrying a small doctor's bag.
"Sergeant Morris said we had candidates for the triage." The woman with the briefcase who looked like a nurse tried to be friendly. "I'm Lieutenant Rosenberg, in charge of the medical staff for today. Did someone explain to you about the process?" Upon seeing our denial, she continued. "Okay, first we start with the blood test. If you are contaminated, in five minutes we will know. No one get into this compound without taking the test."
"Did you develop a test to detect the virus?" Quinn was delighted. "This is great!"
"Yes, it's been more than a year since we were able to detect the virus in blood tests, and another two months since we managed to do this in express tests. That was the easy part, but the most important one, the cure, or a vaccine, we are still a long way from that."
"Do you do research to try to find a vaccine on the island?" Quinn was still interested.
"Not on the island." It was all that Rosenberg said.
"Please line up for tryouts." Rosenberg's assistant organized us from there by the grid.
Tina was the first to have her finger pierced. Lieutenant Rosenberg placed the drop of blood on a piece of paper, the kind that look like tissue, and dropped a drop of the reagent on top. The liquid turned blue. To save time, I'll just point out that everyone passed the test. There was no suspense about it, and I confess that the only person I feared for a false positive was Quinn, because she was the one closest to Brittany at her final moments. And I also feared a little bit for Rachel, in a way, because she was the first one to try to treat Brittany. But it was okay. We were all clean of that contamination, at least. I couldn't be sure about the rest of the diseases. We could have developed dozens of other health problems without knowing it, as we had been almost two years without setting foot in a doctor's office.
Anyway, that was our license to get into the paddock. We were escorted towards the lady soldier, Rosenberg and her assistant. Inside the building there were a few more people who directed us to two separate rooms. One for women only and the other one for men.
"We need to check your physical condition, don't be alarmed if we shave your hair for head lice." The soldier warned and I thought it was reasonable, because we could have lice, anyway.
We took off our clothes, got naked, and the soldier examined us one by one.
"What is the nature of these injuries?" The soldier asked Rachel.
"I was shot."
"Where did you get treatment? Those spots look pretty good."
"Quinn and Santana treated me." Rachel pointed at Quinn and me. "They are our doctors."
"Actually, Quinn's the doctor." I corrected Rachel.
"Did you treat your own wounds?" The soldier asked about Quinn's scars, especially the one on her hand.
"Santana sutures better than I do. She also knows how to take care of wounds and do first aid." Quinn explained and I found it a relief that the soldier didn't ask where those scars came from.
"Okay." The soldier said after poking our hair for lice. "I won't shave your hair. Still, you will be sanitized and you will have clean clothes. It looks like a prison outfit, but don't worry. That is not the meaning."
The soldier took us to a third room, where we found the boys. It was a shower room, with a tiled floor and pipes with holes above our heads. We were given pieces of soap and a very small sponge. They warned that we would have ten minutes to wash ourselves as best as possible and so it happened. We were all naked in the same room, bathing. It was nothing new to see those people naked. I believe the only one I hadn't seen completely naked yet was Mike. And I must say, Mike was the most gifted among the guys.
It was impressive how much we were looking like marathon athletes. We had strong and apparent muscles, yes, because we moved all the time with our daily jobs throughout our entire post-apocalypse trajectory. But my god in heaven, all our baby-teenage fat was gone.
The water was turned off, we were given three towels to share, and we lined up to receive the clean clothes, which indeed looked like prison uniforms. We had slacks and a shirt, no underwear, which wasn't unusual for us, but I never liked that feeling. We were directed to another room at the back of the building, and we came across bars. My heart began to race with the bad feeling of being caged, trafficked and even enslaved.
"You will be trapped like this for the night." The soldier explained. "The interviewers aren't here, but we already called the base to request their presence. They will be here in the morning."
"Interviewers?"
"The people who will tell us whether or not you can be accepted into our community. They are the ones who will seal your destiny. Either you go in, or you go out through this base and you'll be at the mercy of your own destinies "
"Do you know how this interview will go?" Mike was a little apprehensive.
"I know they will ask you questions and even give you a test to answer. I'm not really familiar with this interview system."
"Did you never experience this?" I was curious.
"No, I didn't. I was already in the army when it all happened."
"What exactly happened here?"
"If you are accepted, you can even have classes about it!"
The cell we were in was like one of those big, collective ones in certain police stations, which brings together all the drug addicts, drunks, prostitutes and people who caused disturbances during one night in a city. There was nothing different. I'd never spent a night arrested, but I had gone to the Lima's police station to bail Puck out once. He was already 18 years old and he was caught graffitiing a house owned by a guy who didn't pay him to clean the pool after he found out that Puck had sex with his wife. We thought Finn was an idiot, but the truth was, Puck was even more of an idiot.
There was a barred window in the wall to which the cell was bolted. I looked outside and it was night. Suddenly, I was in a solidly constructed building, in the middle of a cage, protected by people with a bunch of weapons. Even with all the discomfort of the place, I felt safe for the first time since I left the bunker. At least there was zero chance of a reaper attacking us.
Mike hugged Tina and the two of them tried to get comfortable on that cold, hard floor. Blaine struggled to sit up. Quinn took a look at the wound on his leg, and it was very red, as if it was going to become infected. Rachel's arm was fine. The bandages came off in the shower, but the outermost part of the stitches was dry, and that satisfied me.
"We need to ask Blaine for something." Quinn was worried. "Would they at least have some anti-inflammatory?"
"Don't worry about me, Quinn. I'm fine." Blaine tried to reassure. "I just moved around more than I should have with that injured leg."
Quinn didn't look very confident, but there was nothing we could do. We just settled down in those uncomfortable conditions and tried to rest.
…
"Full name?"
"Santana Maria Lopez."
"Age?"
"20 years, completed on the 27th of August."
"Birthplace?"
"Lima, Ohio, United States of America… or the former USA… I don't know anymore."
"What are your parents' names?"
"Juan Lopez and Maribel Lopez."
"What did they do?"
"My father was a doctor and my mother was an accountant."
"Did you have a privileged financial background?"
"You could say that."
"What kind of school did you go to?"
"I went to public school all my life."
I was in front of the interviewer. I thought I would be interviewed in that triage by a Bertha, with the face of someone who never had any friends in life, or one of those people who seemed more sociopathic. But the person interviewing me was a guy who looked friendly, even if serious. He was a black man, probably in his 40s, thin, no beard, short hair. We were told that two interviewers came from the island, this fellow, whose name was major Thomas, and a red-haired woman, also with the appearance of being experienced. Mike and I were the first to leave for the triage and I confess that even going with the major Thomas' face, I was a little nervous. He led me into a small room with a computer. I don't think that machine was connected to something that was once the internet, but certainly there must have been software and data storage conditions there.
"Did you ever complete high school, Lopez?"
"No, I didn't. But I had an acceptance letter to the University of Louisville when it all happened."
"Did you have any idea what you wanted to study?"
"At first, business. Maybe a minor in liberal arts. But that was before."
"Before?" The interviewer glared at me. "What has changed?"
"Well... with the experience I gained in this apocalypse by force of necessity, if I had the opportunity to go to college, this time it would be for engineering."
"Really? This is interesting. How exactly did you come to that conclusion?"
"Rachel Berry insisted that we should all study something, because we are in the apocalypse and it's not like we had the luxury of calling a plumber to fix the cistern in the bunker where we lived for nine months. Or when the battery died, or when we needed to fix the electrical system. Mike and I dug into engineering books, and I got a kick out of learning systems, as well as using my creativity to solve problems. We lived in a bunker that had electricity and, in the end, I was already planning to install an auxiliary wind energy system and build a small mill to take advantage of the current of the stream that passed nearby."
"So you think you majored in electrical engineering by force of necessity? To survive?"
"Basically."
"Today, if you had the opportunity to study at a college, this is what would you do?"
"Exactly."
"It's rare to see women engaged in this area."
"I think it had more to do with the kind of society we were in than with women. I was always good at math and hard science subjects, but I didn't have much encouragement at school to continue down that path. I always liked to dance and sing, to write, and they strongly encouraged me in that area. I was a cheerleader and I was in the school's choir. I attended the advanced English class. My social environment was pulling me towards these areas, whereas in reality, I could do very well in liberal arts."
"Do you believe that apocalypse, as you call it, was liberating in that sense?"
"It was by force of necessity, but yes."
"Do you speak any languages other than English, Lopez?"
"Spanish."
"I imagined. Some more?"
"No sir."
"If you're selected, you'll have to learn to speak French too. How easy is it for you to learn languages?"
"I don't know, I never really tested myself in that area because I learned Spanish the same way I learned English: naturally at home with my parents and my family. As these two languages have always supplied me..."
"I understand." Major Thomas smiled discreetly. "You, as a Latina, must have had a big family, right?"
"That is relative."
"Why?"
"Because my mother's family was huge, and spread across the country. I only saw them all together once every two or three years at my maternal grandparents' house in Florida. So, I didn't have closeness with uncles and cousins on my mother's side. My father's family was small, but closer. Abuela was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, my father was born in the United States and my uncle too... it was just them in Ohio, so I became closer to Abuela, to Alma Lopez."
"Is your mom Latina too?"
"Yes, of Cuban origin. She was Cuban, naturalized American. My maternal grandparents had seven children, but only two were born in Cuba: my mother and her older brother."
"You speak of your blood family in the past tense. What happened to them?"
"The apocalypse has happened. My father was a surgeon and he died in the hospital right at the beginning of the contagion. My mom, me, Abuela and all my friends who are here are exiled to an island in Indian Lake, Ohio."
"Was there a special reason you exiled yourselves to this place?"
"My uncle, my father's brother, lived and worked on this island."
"Did they die there?"
"Abuela had comorbidities like diabetes and high blood pressure. There came a time when she could no longer take her daily medication and she ended up dying of a heart attack. My mother killed herself after being infected, when the contagion reached our island after about six months. My uncle and his family fled to Canada during this purge."
"Why didn't you accompany your uncle?"
"Because I chose to stay with my other family. The one that is here."
"What did you do after that? Where did you go?"
"We followed a rumor that a military group was sheltering people in West Virginia, on the border with Ohio. It was a trap. We had to run and entered by chance in a forest reserve that had an unoccupied bunker. We lived there for nine months."
"Why did you leave the bunker?"
"Tina is pregnant, Mike is the father, and they didn't want to raise a child like Mogli. We had some neighbors who left at the end of the winter. They came to Canada too, but I imagine they went to New Scotia. Mike kept this information from us. When Joe died and days later Tina found out she was pregnant, they wanted to find that Canadian colony and we accompanied them."
"Because you are a family?"
"Exactly."
Major Thomas was a guy who typed very fast. It was impressive that I was talking and he was typing in a crazy way. I had never seen anything like that.
"There are a few more questions I need to ask before I send you on to the written and practice tests."
"Tests?"
"You need to somehow substantiate what you told me, right?" The major tried to reassure me. "Did you have any health problems?"
"No."
"Did you have surgeries?"
"Appendicitis."
"Have you ever had a sexually transmitted disease?"
"No."
"Have you been tested yet?"
"Yes, in the set of exams at the annual check with the gynecologist. I had been doing this since I was 15, when I became sexually active."
"Have you ever been pregnant or had children?"
"No."
"What is your sexual orientation?"
"Homosexual."
"How would you rate your marital or relationship status?"
"Single/widowed… I guess. My girlfriend who was my fiancée died a few days ago."
"I'm very sorry. How she died?"
"Reaper."
"What?"
"She was contaminated on the way here. She was scratched and the wound became infected. My friends did their best to save her. They took me away from her, first of all, they watched me so that I didn't get close, and at the same time they tried to treat the scratches, gave her the medicines we had at our disposal. It didn't help. In the end, Brittany, while she still had a conscience, asked to end her life because she didn't want to transform."
"Did you do this?"
"No. I couldn't. Mike Chang did it."
"Do you have any bad feelings towards him because of that?"
"Yes and no."
"Explain better."
"I think of Mike as my brother. He was our leader all this time, and I was always second in command. We disagreed on many things, but we were accomplices. When he did, it was because Brittany asked for it to happen. In a way, he and Quinn are the only ones of us cold-blooded enough to do that kind of thing."
"Has this kind of situation happened before?"
"Something similar…yes. Joe was our honorary farmer and pastor. He was almost like a hippie preacher. Even among reapers and zombies, I don't remember him killing any of them. One day, he fell and had an open fracture. Quinn tried what was possible, even proceeding a surgery to put the bone in place, even without having that kind of experience. It was a disaster, obviously, and the wound turned gangrenous. We had no way to treat Joe anymore, and he asked to die out of Quinn's sight, because they were having a relationship, and he didn't want Quinn to have this memory of him dying. He was romantic like that. We took him out of the bunker and Mike shot him."
"Tragic."
"Yes, it is a little."
"What is your greatest quality and your biggest defect?"
"My greatest quality is my ability to protect my people. I think my biggest fault is that I'm very emotional at times. I always make the wrong decisions when I'm under a lot of stress and emotionally fragile."
Major Thomas looked at me and led me towards someone else. It was just a woman with the rank of sergeant that I had seen moving around the building. She sat me down at a table, and I took a general knowledge test. Then I answered a second test and then another. I must have spent more than four hours taking tests. I saw when they put Mike, and a while later Quinn and Rachel to also answer these tests in the same room, but we couldn't even communicate with each other. They gave me a pistol and tested if I knew how to shoot. Then they showed me a generator, and asked if I knew how to fix it. Fortunately, I quickly identified the defect. I think Quinn must have said something about me during her interview, because Lieutenant Rosenberg gave me surgical scissors, forceps, needle and thread and told me to suture. Just to show off, I did a Connel and Donnati suturing technique that my dad had taught me, and that I'd taught Quinn. Eventually, I was offered water and a medium potato to eat. Mike was with me in this cafeteria and we sat together. We stayed silent, because we were afraid of starting to chatter and being scolded. I wasn't that worried about staying or getting kicked out, but I would never do anything to hurt Mike.
Finally, they took me back to the same cell in which I had slept the night before. I noticed that Mike Quinn and I were the first to be interviewed and the last to be returned. We spent the whole day on this triage.
"Were all of you interviewed?" I asked everyone.
"I think I will be purged from here. I was the last one out and the first one back." Sam frowned. He was really worried.
"Didn't you be asked to prove any skills?" Mike was shocked, and I was scared too.
"I did a test."
"Only one?" I asked.
"Yes. Did you do more than that?"
"I answered two tests." Blaine grew uneasy.
"I answered two tests as well." Rachel said. "They ordered me to shoot."
"I answered two tests." Tina said. "I didn't take up arms, but they asked me a lot about farming."
"I answered three tests." Quinn informed. "Then Rosenberg asked me a bunch of questions about medicine."
"I answered three tests." Mike said. "And a bunch of practice tests."
"It was the same with me." I said.
"That's it, folks. I'm out." Sam sat on the floor and hugged his legs. He was heartbroken.
Given the complexity of the tests and the time they took to do the interviews and confirm the skills we said we had, these people obviously weren't like those militiamen at the hydroelectric plant who almost killed us. There would have been no point in spending so much time and energy simply killing people on the side of a road. No. Obviously that city or new country was for real and we were going through the migration process.
As we presented ourselves as a family, even though we weren't by blood, I don't think they would have the courage to separate us, in the sense of sending one of us away and letting everyone else in. That wouldn't be humane. My guess was that Sam was safe. On the other hand, I didn't think he would stay with us.