Out of the Ashes Read Online Free PDF

started, bleating on and on, like he’d never stop. It was muffled, but I could still hear him, and if I could hear him, so could they.
So I put on my CD just loud enough to drown out his bleating and left him there. All I had to do now was to be sure that I kept my CD going.
    Later, more slaughtermen in white arrived – ‘Angels of Death’, Mum called them. She came in and told me the shooting would begin very soon, that I mustn’t on any account
go outside from now on. She didn’t have to tell me. Nothing and no one could have made me go out and watch what they’d be doing. Just thinking of it was more than I could bear. I stayed
in my room behind my closed curtains, cradled Little Josh on my lap, put on my earphones and turned up my CD so loud that I couldn’t hear the shooting, so that I couldn’t feel or know
anything except the thunder of the music in my head.
    But then I had to change the CD. I took off my earphones without thinking. That was when I first heard the shooting, not loud, not near, but the crack of every shot told me that this was really
happening. They were killing out there, killing Dad’s family of animals.
    Suddenly I thought of Ruby. She’d be fright­ened out of her mind at all the shooting. I put Little Josh back in the cupboard, turned up the CD, ran downstairs, and out across the yard
to her stable.
    Ruby was in a real state by the time I got there, all lathered up and terrified. I went in with her, closed the top of the stable door and hugged her, smoothing her, calming her all I could.
After a while when the shooting stopped, she relaxed a little and rested her head on my shoulder. Even then I could hear her heart pounding as if she’d been galloping.
    Then I opened the door. I wish I hadn’t. Dad was there. Mum was there, her arm round his shoulder. The men in white were there. There was blood on their overalls, blood on their boots. One
of them was holding a clipboard and he was the one doing the talking. ‘There’s no mistake, Mr Morley,’ he was saying. ‘I’ve checked this list a dozen times now and
we’ve counted the bodies. We’re one lamb missing, one ram lamb, a Suffolk.’
    It’s not their fault, I know, but if Mum and Dad hadn’t seen me in the stable at that moment, if they hadn’t looked at me like they did, no one would ever have guessed. Even
Bobs was looking at me. Mum knew what I’d done the moment she caught my eye. She came over and explained that I had to give Little Josh up, had to say where he was, that every cloven-hoofed
animal on the farm had to be killed. There couldn’t be any exceptions. I buried my face in Ruby’s neck. I was sobbing too much to say anything. I knew it was over, that it was hopeless,
that sooner or later they would find him. So I told them I’d fetch him out myself. And that’s what I did. I carried him out. He didn’t struggle, just bleated a little as I handed
him over. The man in white who took him off me had a face. It was Brad and his eyes were full of tears. ‘It’ll be very quick,’ he said. ‘He won’t know anything. He
won’t feel anything.’ And he carried him away around the back of the shed. A few moments later there was a shot. I felt it like a knife in my heart.
    This evening the farm is still, is silent. The fields are empty, and it’s raining.

 
Thursday, March 15th
    Our farm isn’t ours any more. People I don’t even know come and go everywhere. They’re all over the place, like ants. There’s been lorries coming in and
out all day, bringing in railway sleepers and straw for the fire. And there’s diggers, two of them, digging the trench in Front Field. I can see them now from my window, waving their arms
about like great yellow monsters, doing a hideous dance of death to the thunderous music of their engines.
    The phone rings all the time, but we don’t pick it up and we don’t answer messages unless we have to. Auntie Liz left a message, so did Jay, so did Gran, all