Read Children of the Dust for Free Online Page B

them very long, and they were bound to eat the contaminated food, the milk and meat, leeks and cabbage from the garden. Either from sickness or starvation they were certain to die. But William munched contentedly on a crust of bread and jam.
    "What's in this box?' he asked.
    'Nothing for us,' Veronica said.
    Sarah opened it up. It was a gift for a world that would grow again, a world that she and William and Veronica would never see. Sarah stared at the packets of seeds . . . peas, beans, onions and turnips, carrots and swedes, every vegetable imaginable. There and then they could have grown the cress seeds on the metal tea tray in a bed of newspaper, but she carefully replaced them and closed the lid. This box was for Catherine, an inheritance for life in a world where money was useless, where gold had no value, where stocks and shares were just so much waste paper, and industry was gone.
    The rest of the day was spent in the kitchen. There was just enough light to see by, a dreary perpetual twilight with the nuclear ash falling like snow over the outside land. Veronica never said how bad things really were, but Sarah could guess from her attitude, brooding and silent as she cooked the evening meal. It was a feast that would kill them . . . beefsteak, potatoes and cabbage, with chocolate blancmange for pudding. But it was easier to know and eat it, than cling to the deprivation needed to survive. All Catherine ate were two cocktail sausages and a quarter of a tin of baked beans. She ate it from a tray in her house below the table and would not come into the kitchen, not even to play cards.
    Sarah peered through the gloom trying to distinguish hearts from diamonds, clubs from spades. There was no enjoyment, just a sense of duty, an obligation to keep William entertained. Growing cold and the evening darkness finally drove her inside and, all over again, after the comparative freshness of the kitchen, the stench of human excrement was foul in her nostrils. Candlelight flickered and the door closed her in, and the long hard hours stretched all the way back to the morning. It was nine o'clock, but still William was not tired. Sarah played more card games, fed him cocoa and dog biscuits, and read stories from the Bible. He was asleep in the armchair by the time she reached Noah but Catherine wanted her to read on.
    'And God looked on the earth and saw it was wicked, that men had corrupted His ways with their evil and violence, and He decided to destroy them with the earth.'
    'Is that what God's done now?' Catherine asked.
    'He didn't make the bombs,' said Sarah.
    'But he knew we were wicked," said Catherine.
    Maybe she was right, Sarah thought. Reports of evil and violence had appeared every day in the newspapers and on the television, and God had done nothing to stop them destroying themselves.
    'When I grow up,' Catherine said decisively, 'I'm not going to be wicked. And I'm not going to let anyone else be wicked either. Then God won't have to do this again, will he?'
    'It wasn't God's fault,' Sarah said doubtfully.
    'It wasn't ours either,' Veronica said.
    'I suppose it was the Government,' said Sarah. 'But who elected them, Veronica? People like you and Daddy.'
    'And now we suffer for it,' Veronica murmured.
    'I'm not going to have a government when I grow up,' said Catherine. 'I'm going to live in the Garden of Eden, like Adam and Eve. Only there won't be any serpents because they've all died in the nuclear war.'
    Catherine could still dream. But Sarah had to face the reality, words out of darkness, Veronica telling her what it was like outside before she slept. People were not even trying to survive, Veronica said. It was like one big party, terrible, tragic, everyone congregated together in the church, and the chapel, and the school. Some of them were sick already, and they were all half starved, yet they were willing to share what they had. Farmer Arkright, Joe Sefton at the bakery, the poultry farm on Winnow's Hill, were