That first evening was strange and special, as if it was someone's birthday, a change from the usual household routine. They ate by candlelight….fish fingers, chips and beans. Then they ate the thawing ice cream pudding for desert. The milk would also not keep for long, so Veronica mad custard and some coco that she placed in a thermos. The rest she placed in bowls of water to keep them from going sour overnight.
Afterwards they played guessing games and Sarah read fairy stories by Hans Anderson. They tried not to listen to Buster whining outside the window, his claws scratching at the woodwork, begging to come in. Veronica said he had to stay out there, so they all sang songs to help William forget, their voices drowning out the pitiful doggy sounds he made. But always, in the background, Buster remained. And the candle lasted only four hours.
Sarah had found one of her dad journals, empty never to be written in by it's intended owner. She had no idea of the time, the digital watch on her wrist that would normally glow with green numbers, had been rendered useless by the EMP that came with each explosion. She decided to write in the book, so people would remember what had happened to them. Plus it stopped her from bursting into tears. She took up the pen in the sitting candlelight and began to tell their tale.
The Day the world endedI found one of my dad's journals. Wish he was here, Veronica says if he is still alive it will take him at lest two weeks before he would be able to leave wherever he is. William is complaining already, but he's only a kid. He keeps wanting Buster to come in and wanting mars bars. He doesn't know that Veronica can no longer give him these things….
"We haven't washed," Catherine's voice interrupted her writing "Or cleaned our teeth."
"You can be excused tonight," Veronica said.
"Can we be excused tomorrow as well?" Catherine asked.
"Yes," Veronica replied with an exasperated sigh "now go to sleep"
It was a hot still night, windless and quiet; nine o'clock by the clock on the mantle piece. And old wind up device so the EMP would have no effect on it. It was probably still light outside. Unless it were dark, she thought, like the old tales of when Christ was crucified and the skies turned black reflecting the evil of mankind. She imagined the dust of fall-out blowing across the ruins of their civilization, burying buildings and people. It was a terrible punishment for a fifteen-year-old girl who had done nothing wrong.
Catherine and William whispered and giggled beneath the table, but then Buster returned to whine under the window again. He wanted his supper, William said, and demanded he be let in. Veronica tried to explain. One night without supper would not hurt him. He was too fat anyway. Maybe tomorrow they would let him in. But William went on asking, his small boy's voice growing querulous and tearful in the darkness. Finally Veronica shouted at Buster, loud and angrily, told him to go and lie down. Her tone must have reached him. For they heard nothing more….only William muttering and crying, saying how cruel and horrible Veronica was, but after a while he too fell silent.
"William's asleep," Catherine announced.
"So why aren't you?" Veronica asked her.
She wanted to use the commode. Veronica put a large saucepan lid over it but the smell was still there, strong and obnoxious, lingering in the room. They would not be able to live with it, Sarah thought. They would not be able to live in the stinking perpetual dark with nothing to do and only a few hours of candlelight a day, four people trapped in one room and two of them children. William and Catherine would not be content sitting still for the next two weeks, just thinking and talking and playing games with their minds. They would more likely drive each other mad.
"Veronica?" Sarah said quietly. "What are we going to do?"
"Go to sleep," Veronica muttered.
"I'm not a baby!" Sarah retorted. "We've got to talk."
"Not in front of Catherine.."
"She's asleep. I can hear her breathing. We'll never stand living like this, Veronica. We've got to have some sort of plan."
"What do you suggest?" Veronica asked her.
"I don't know."
"Then we'll have to manage as best we can. Live each day at a time and try not to think of it."
"We'd be better off dead!" Sarah said bitterly.
"Don't talk like that," Veronica begged.
"It's true!" said Sarah "There's only one thing worse than dying in a nuclear war, and that's surviving! We haven't started yet! Even if we live through the next fourteen days there will be nothing left at the end of it…. just ruins and radiation sickness…no one to help us, no means of living. Even the soil and water will be contaminated! We'll die anyway, so what's the point in trying to survive now?"
"What's the alternative?" Veronica asked quietly.
"We could get something from the chemist's."
"Commit suicide, you mean? Is that what you want to do?"
"Don't you?" Sarah asked.
Veronica sighed.
"If it were only myself I think I wouldn't hesitate. But I've Catherine and William to consider. It mightn't be as bad as we think, and they might still have future. I've got no right to take it away, Sarah."
"What about me?" Sarah asked.
"I can't answer for you," Replied Veronica coldly.
Sarah chewed her fingernails. A sick heavy feeling lodged in her stomach, a dull acceptance that was worse than fear. She sensed that the future held no hope, at least not for herself. But Veronica was compelled to live for the sake of William and Catherine, and so too was Sarah, because that was the only purpose she had left. She reached down and picked up the journal she had stared earlier. And continued to write..
.. " I can't believe it has come to this……"
888888888888
Rose shivered as she finished the first entry; this early the poor girl had contemplated suicide. This Veronica, her step mum, seemed to have little care for Sarah. Sarah must have felt so alone, so lost. She felt the Doctor move as he threw some more wood on the fire, the wind howling with the snow, passing under the door to create a chill draft. The Doctor pulled the quilt tighter round them, as she snuggled back to him.
"Poor thing," Rose sniffed. "She was so alone"
"Yes, but the entries continue. She must have been strong. So strong." The Doctor whispered in her ear. "Continue reading, let's see what happened.
8888888888
Day 1 after the bombs fell.
I woke up to the smell, clinging to everything……
Sarah awoke in the stinking stifling dark to the sound of buster howling around the walls and William asking to get up. It was not time, Veronica said. But the clock showed ten minutes past ten. It was Tuesday morning, the late beginning of another day, and Veronica was trying to delay the start of it.
"Go back to sleep!" she said curtly. But William had slept already for thirteen hours and would not sleep again, not with Buster yelping outside.
"He wants his breakfast!" William said angrily.
"And I do," said Catherine.
"We have to get up sometime," Sarah said.
Veronica switched on a torch. In her crumpled clothes, her hair dishevelled, she rose from the sofa an crossed the muddles of the floor. There were tearstains on her face and reflections shone on the blank television screen. A photograph of Sarah's father watched from the mantelpiece as she washed in a bucket of cold water and ran a comb through the tangles of her hair. The she lit the second candle, switching off the torch, and lifted the blanket that draped the table.
"All right, you can come out now. Wash your faces and hands in the end bucket and find something to wear,"
"You said we didn't have to wash," Catherine reminded her.
"So get yourself dressed then."
"I want to stay in my house."
"You can't stay in there all day!"
"I shall stay in here for ever and ever," Catherine said stubbornly.
"I'm going to let Buster in," said William
"You're leaving him where hi is!" Veronica snapped.
"You said he could come in!" William argued. "Tomorrow, you said. And it is tomorrow!"
"He can come in later," Veronica promised.
"I want him to come in now!" William stamped his foot.
"Do as I tell you!" Veronica scolded. "And come away from that door!"
"I hate you!" William screeched.
Sarah wiped her face with a wet flannel, pulled on her jeans and T-shirt as Veronica cooked bacon and sausages and sliced tomatoes over the camping stove. Already the situation was getting on Veronica's nerves. Catherine behaved well. She tidied her house below the table, made a tablecloth with a spread-out newspaper, and ate her breakfast with two slices of bread and a mug of tea. But William refused to change from his pyjamas. He sat and sulked in the corner by the sofa as Buster howled outside and the sausages and bacon congealed on the plate.
"I don't want no breakfast!" William said Savagely. "If Busters not having any then I'm not having any neither! So there! And you'll be sorry then when I'm starved to death!"
"Don't count on it!" Veronica said brutally.
Someone had to get through to William. Someone had to explain about Buster and persuade him to eat. But Veronica was in one of her moods, brooding and silent, eating her breakfast at the far end of sofa. It hand to be Sarah who put aside everything she, who dug deeper than grief or worry into the still quiet centre of herself, and did what Veronica could not.
She sat on the floor beside her small half-brother and took him in her arms. He was the only reason she would go on living and she gave him all she had…..her pity, her comfort and her love. And perhaps she had never loved William before, but she loved him now. And told him what he needed to know. Outside there was dust, falling like snow, and if they opened the door to let Buster in the dust would come in too, and kill them. He had to be brave and strong, do what Veronica asked, and eat his breakfast.
"Will the dust kill Buster?" William Inquired.
"Yes," said Sarah
"Why tell him that?" Veronica said angrily.
"Because it's true," said Sarah. "And he has to know."
It was odd how easily William accepted that Buster was going to die- how he could talk of it without tears or emotion as he eat his breakfast as he did so. And when the room snuffed back into darkness it was William who shouted, "Go away Buster! You can't come in!"
"Poor little Buster," Catherine sobbed.
"The Gods will look after him," Veronica told her.
The Gods would not give him food and water, Sarah thought. And nor could she and Veronica sit there and let Buster die. Not even Veronica could be that uncaring. Underneath she would be feeling it, suffering it, the slow sad lingering hours and days of Buster life. Sarah knew that in the end she would give in and go outside. For a gold cocker spaniel Veronica would die.
And then Sarah would be left alone to keep William and Catherine alive, foraging among the ruins of the village when their food supplies ran out. She tried not to think of it, but in the hot dark room there was nothing else to do but think. She could find in her thoughts no hope or consolation, but neither did she dread the time that was to come. Perhaps she was gone beyond fear. That moment when she had taken William in her arms had awakened something inside her…a calm and strength, as she had never known before. She felt there was something in her own being which nothing could destroy, that whatever occurred, however terrible, Sarah knew she could bear it.
She picked up the journal once more…
88888888
"Brave heart" the Doctor whispered in awe of this child, only 15 and ready to face the horrors before her. Rose was silent in his arms as the fire crackled, the log slipping a little sending up orange sparks that had a brief moment of life before they winked out of existence to join the sea of ash and dust.
They red on a bit more, the days following much the same pattern. At one point the Stepmother Veronica had gone outside, covering herself in bin bags in some kind of hazard suit the Doctor could imagine. She had found a farmer from this cottage, he had come over and shot buster. And given them some food. The kids all-staying inside. The entries told of how Veronica seemed to pull more within herself, breaking down finally. And Sarah had to hold it together for them all. They had found out that ash had been coming down the chimney, and contaminating the water in the bowls. Only the youngest Catherine had seemed to notice. Only drinking water that came from the bottles. And Veronica started showing signs of radiation sickness.
The Doctor felt Rose's hand seeking for his, he moved so they could join hands, fingers interlaced as comfort to them both as they reached an entry where they could see it all started to fall apart.
8888888888
Day 11 after the bomb fell.
William is sick…
"William has diarrhoea," said Veronica
"He's eaten too many plums," replied Sarah
"He's sick" Said Veronica, Sarah looked at her.
"I'll look after him," she said.
Maybe Veronica needed to hear her say it one last time, for that night when William and Catherine were asleep she said she was leaving. She was just a burden, she said, and no more use. Dumbly in the candlelight Sarah watched her take some pills from the bottle she had gotten from the chemist last time she went outside. It was better this way, Veronica said. Better for all of them. And she was no longer afraid of death. It would be a relief. And that the gods she believed in had no more plans for her.
Sarah nodded. This was the moment they had both faced up to long ago and she did not try to stop her. It was not even terrible. The women that had married her father had become in the end the only friend and Sarah would never see her again. But the time was right and there was nothing left to say, not even goodbye. Maybe later she would cry and feel grief but now she simply accepted the end of Veronica as soon she would accept the end of William's and her own. After so much suffering there could be no sadness in letting someone go.
"Will you be all right?" Sarah asked.
"I'll go to the temple," Veronica replied sickly and closed the door.
It was the last Sarah saw of her, blue human eyes and a face covered with sores, turning to her gods. She snuffed out the candle and lay on her mattress on the floor. The room seemed empty now, a dark space were once Veronica had been. She could feel the loneliness like a pain. But by morning it had receded to a dull ache and Veronica was just a memory, a person who belonged to a purple and green lost world and was nothing to do with now.
Mummy had gone for a walk, she told William and Catherine, and she did not know when she would be back. They had asked no questions. Perhaps they too had gone beyond grieving or caring. They had bog meat rissoles for breakfast and William said his tummy ache was better. But there were sores on his skin and his eyes watered in the gloomy kitchen light. Death seemed to stare at Sarah from William's face, as if it were the only thing left in this world that had once been full of life. She wanted to do something, say something that would make him happy. She decided she had to get Catherine to somewhere better.
"I'll take Catherine somewhere safe tomorrow, and them me and William can rest…"8888
The Doctor and Rose came to final entry. Tears stinging at Rose's eyes. Once more the Doctor placed wood on the fire, then retuned to sit behind Rose. He could tell she was growing tired.
"You should sleep Rose," he whispered. The wind still had yet to quieten in it's fury, the Doctor dreaded to think how deep the snow would be come morning. By his reckoning it was now ten at night.
"We need to finish this" And Rose began to read once more. The Doctor shivering momentarily, not from the cold. But Rose's voice making him envisioning her having to go through this.
"I took Catherine somewhere…"
888888
"..safe and now I will sleep"
"Catherine and I are going for a walk," She said. William nodded, not really caring.
"We might be gone for a long time," Sarah went on. "All day, perhaps, You'll have to stay here, William. I've opened a tin of Pineapple chunks. They're on the floor, right where you can reach them. Do you understand?"
"Will you come back?" William asked feebly.
"Just as soon as I can," Sarah promised.
Catherine stood in the doorway, unrecognisable in the torn garbage bag suit. She had a handkerchief tied over her nose and mouth and a plastic bag with air holes over the top. She did not yet know that somewhere out in the dark desolate world Sarah would abandon her.
"You can pull the shopping trolley," Sarah told her.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"We'll know when we get there," Sarah replied.
She turned the pram and heaved it through the doorway. Saucepans, dangling from the sides, rattled and banged, there were shoes and slippers and Wellington boots on the underneath rack, and seeds and rifles and tins of food were hidden inside beneath the jumble of Catherine's clothes. Blankets and a sleeping bag were piled on top and covered with polythene torn from the kitchen window. Nothing showed of any value except for the half-empty bag of dog biscuits.
"And that's all we've got if anyone asks," She told Catherine. "Just dog biscuits. Remember that."
"Are we going to look for mummy?" Catherine asked.
"No," said Sarah "We're going to look for somewhere better to live."
Dragging the shopping trolley Catherine followed behind. It was loaded with bottles of fruit that clinked in the silences, with a nightdress, sponge bag and a doll riding on top. Wheels made tracks in the sodden dust and a damp wind blew in their faces. The sky grew darker, an eerie gloom that swallowed the shapes of trees and houses, a wintry cold that chilled them to the bone. They were heading into it, a freezing journey that had no foreseeable end.
"I'm cold," Said Catherine. "I want to go home."
"We'll go home afterwards," Sarah replied.
She hoped they would not meet any people, but there was no one alive this side of the village so they had to go past the temple. There was a fire in the graveyard with dark shapes moving round it, and someone leaning on the lich gate watching them approach, a man coming towards them through the morning darkness and a women following behind. It was the first fear Sarah had felt since the bombs had fallen.
"What's in the pram?" The man asked.
"Things," said Sarah "We're looking for somewhere to live,"
"Food!" said the man
"No," Sarah said.
"Only dog biscuits," Catherine said fearfully. The women shuffled forward.
"I know you don't I? It's Sarah, isn't it? Sarah Haenden from across the common. You know Sarah, Ted? Veronica's daughter. She came to us the other night."
"Dead," said the man. "Veronica's dead."
"And I'm Mrs Porter," said the woman
Sarah remembered Mrs Porter. She had been fat once, but now she was thin, bald and shivering in the wind, dying like Sarah was. Catherine was crying because the man had said Veronica was dead, and Mrs Porter wanted them both to come into the church where everyone else was living. But Sarah had to get away from them. She had to take Catherine away.
"I'll wheel the pram," said the man.
"You don't understand!" Sarah said desperately. "My sister isn't sick! She's not sick at all! I have to find somewhere for her to live, a person, a place. She can't stay with us!" Mrs porter looked at Catherine's hidden face.
"I think we should let them go," she told the man.
"They've got food!" the man insisted.
"Didn't you hear what she said? The child isn't sick. That food is for her." Mrs Porter turned to Sarah. "You go my dear. Take your sister away. Ted won't stop you. H's not a bad man." Ted spat on the road as Sarah passed.
"He won't help you!" he said bitterly. "He'll turn you away, same as he turned us away. And all he'll give you is a lettuce!"
The saucepans jangled, and the fruit bottles chinked in the shopping trolley as Sarah and Catherine walked away along the street of abandoned houses. The fire in the graveyard faded behind them and the man's words echoed in Sarah's head. He would not help them, the man had said, and all he would give them was lettuce. Who had he meant?
"I don't want to go!" wept Catherine. "I don't want to go live with that horrible man! Don't make me go, Sarah! I want to stay with you and William!"
Johnson, thought Sarah. It had to be Johnson. She had remembered going there last summer with her father, driving along the track through the woods to Bad Wolf hill. His place was a forestry lodge, which had been converted to a farm.
Once off the road it was hard walking. The pram jolted over loose stones and the shopping trolley leaked crimson juice from a broken bottle of plums. Fallen trees and broken branches blocked the track and they had to detour through mounds of dusty undergrowth. Sarah was weak and sweating with the effort and twice on the way she had to stop to be sick. Then at the base of the hill behind the forest she saw the farm. Glasshouses bright with electrical light and pale smoke rising from the farmhouse chimney.
"I don't want to go there," Catherine said bleakly.
"I know," Said Sarah. "But there's nothing else I can do. And he'll look after you, you see."
Johnson came to meet them at the bottom of the track, the shape of a man in a navy blue overall, lean and tall in the twilight. An improvised helmet with a curved plastic visor concealed his face and he carried a shotgun. He had survived like Catherine because he took no chances, and the rifle was aimed at Sarah's head.
"I don't want to hurt you," Johnson said quietly. "But I'll kill you if I have to. I can give lettuces. Take them and go." Sarah pushed Catherine towards him.
"I'll go," she said, "But I'll leave Catherine here. We've taken good care of her. She isn't sick an she's able to work for her keep." Johnson stared and hesitated, then lowered the gun.
"I've been waiting for this," he said.
"You'll take her?" Sarah asked.
"I'm not much good with kids," Said Johnson. "Never had any of my own, but I'll take her. What did you say her name was?"
"Catherine," replied Sarah. Johnson nodded and opened the gate.
"Bring your shopping trolley in, little lady"
Alone, without Sarah, Catherine crossed the threshold of Johnson's land and stood forlorn beside him. Live Chickens scratched in a nearby glasshouse, and there were goats and sheep in another. Others contained lettuce, and cucumbers, and unripe tomatoes, trays of seedlings and bedding flowers. The blast had not damaged them. The glass was plastic and the bad wolf hills formed a sheltering amphitheatre all around. It was a good place in which to survive. Sarah parked the pram against the dry stonewall.
"You'd better have Catherine's things," She said. "There's seeds too, and all the tinned food we had left, and a twelve-bore shotgun."
"A gun," said Johnson. "You've got s gun?"
"One like yours," replied Sarah. Johnson laughed.
"This guns not real," he said, "It only works by fooling people. I carved it out of wood the week after the bombs went off, and painted it to look real. Real enough to frighten people away anyhow."
"They told us in the village," Sarah informed him. Johnson sighed.
"What else could I do? I had to turn those poor devils away. I don't have enough food to feed the whole wretched population. Enough for the living maybe, but not for the dying. If food would have saved them I would have given it willingly, believe me." Sarah did believe him. Johnson was a good man.
"Will you come and stay with your sister?" He asked her. Sarah shook her head.
"I have to go home," she said. "My little brother is sick. I see you have outbuildings here. There are five live calves at Crescent moon farm waiting to be collected. Nobody knows they're there. I barricaded the barn door to keep them safe but I think you should have them. You can use Farmer Arkright's Land Rover collectable. Think he kept some old carbon fuel."
A squall of icy rain cam down from the hills, rain like tears down Johnson's face as he lifted his eyes to the sky. He said if he ever believed in the gods he believed in them now. And this was the beginning of a brave new world. Sarah shivered and pulled the hood of her duffel coat. She had to go, she said, and looked up at the garbage bag figure of Catherine for the last time. Johnson rested his hand on the child's shoulder.
"I'll look after her," he said. "I'll teach her to grow. We'll build a world from the dust, she and I. It won't be easy, but we'll do it. We'll make it your sister and me"
Sarah coughed and smiled. Bright blood flecked the back of her hand and she did not worry. Johnson was part of the plan, a man with a vision, which she herself would never share. Her part was over, her purpose played out. She had lived for Catherine and now she gave Catherine to him. Finally satisfied, Sarah turned away, leaving man and child together in the rainy darkness.
"I'll call you Kate," she heard him say. "And you call me Johnson. There will be others, I expect, but it's you and I who have to make ready."
Johnson and Catherine, the pram and the shopping trolley, went rattling away towards the house as Sarah headed home up the long track. She had no reason now to go on living. Death would be a relief, Veronica had said, and in the sideboard drawer the bottle of pills waited. She would give half to William and take the rest herself, two lives ceasing together. It was better that way.
Pains gripped her stomach and she vomited blood, the hood of her duffel coat rubbed raw the sores on her scalp. In a world that was dark and ugly, where the wind whined through the silences, Sarah knew that she was ugly too…her youth and prettiness, her love and life and hope, laid waste by the holocaust of unknown war, But some things could never be destroyed….a child with her dreams…a man with his visions….and a gorse flower that bloomed in the dust. Sarah touched it, damp yellow petals, gold and fragile and strong. Alive and beautiful, it bloomed for the future, radiated the glory of the gods. In the end People turned to them, and Sarah could not be sorry..
"I have just given William the pills, and laid him down. I'll take mine in a moment. I just wanted to finish this in case my dad ever finds it. Or anyone for that matter. Do not morn us, we have fulfilled our part, and Catherine is safe..
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The journal ended there, the silence between the two companions at what those young ones had to go though. The Doctors confusion at this ever-happening at all. This was wrong. And Rose's sadness for those children, the eldest not much younger then her.
"Oh god Doctor" she managed as she closed the journal.
"They did what they thought they had to, they don't feel the pain anymore Rose" he tightened the embrace round Rosen the guided her to lie on her side, him still behind her. Then pulled her body in the curve of hers, trying to keep them warm. When they got out they would have to go back to the TARDIS and get her a warmer clothes at least. "Sleep Rose"
Rose closed her eyes, feeling the double heartbeat at her back, and the pulse under her fingers that were clasped in his hand. She drifted off to a light sleep, plagued by howling wolves and grating machinery…
TBC….
KITG : XX Gah that was a long chapter. hope you are all still with me...or are you dead?