Island In The Sand — James Strauss

There was no place on earth. No orphans, wandering toddlers or strange children of any kind would be allowed entry to any tribe. There was insufficient sustenance left for the surviving population to allow for even the most minimal relief or tender mercy. Stray animals were to be hunted for their flesh. Outsider adults were to be treated the same as the animals, except their flesh was never to be consumed. Outsider children were to be shunned, although not directly slain. No contact or communication was to be allowed. The tribes had mutually concluded that such a rare general agreement was to be honored as a pivotal compact in allowing humanity to rise up to a level of civilization once existing before the asteroid had struck.Star Black and her band of Orphans wander in a future world looking for a Safe-HavenStar Black Grew up in an orphanage which had been an exercise in brutal tolerance and crowded loneliness. The sand and the land were her real friends. She took to them like a tree leaf took to the sun. She felt the energy they radiated upward through her strong willowy legs propelling her smoothly around, or over, every obstacle in her path. The band of outcast children was headed West toward a place none of them had any good reason to believe existed. The State of Home. The more Star had learned, the more she had become skeptical of the place's existence.