Last Orders: The War That Came Early by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

who ran Münster straight to heaven—or, more likely, to some warmer clime instead. A bomb hit on the
Rathaus
at any old time might destroy all the city records, including the ones of who was and wasn’t a Jew. Plenty of people in town knew, of course, but Sarah suspected few would squeal on her parents and her if they somehow found an excuse to take the yellow Stars of David off theirclothes. The National Socialist regime was less popular than it had been before it led the
Reich
into an endless, unvictorious war.
    Which was why a bomb hit on the square in front of the cathedral would bring few tears to anyone in town. Bishop von Galen had dared to protest against the Nazis’ policy of euthanizing mental defectives (though he’d said not a word about how they treated the Jews). The
Gestapo
had seized him, and the Catholics in town, backed by some Protestants, rioted to try to gain his release. They rose not once but twice. Sarah had almost got shot from accidentally being on the fringes of their second eruption.
    These days, armed SS men held the cathedral and the square. If the RAF sent them some presents, wouldn’t that be a shame? Sarah was sure lots of Münsterites were just as worried about it as she was.
    She really did worry about bombs coming down close to the house here. In their infinite generosity, the Nazis had decreed that Jews weren’t allowed in public air-raid shelters. They had to take their chances wherever they happened to be.
    Her mouth tightened. She’d been married to Isidor Bruck for only a few months when he and his mother and father had to take their chances in the family bakery and the flat above it. She would have taken her chances with them if she hadn’t been out. A direct hit leveled the building and killed them all. Now she was a widow, living with her parents again.
    This house had been lucky. Most of the windows still boasted glass panes, not cardboard taped up in their place. But the Brucks had thought the bakery was lucky, too. And so it was … till it wasn’t any more.
    The radio blared out saccharine music and Dr. Goebbels’ latest lies about how wonderfully things were going and how happy the German people were under the
Führer
’s divinely inspired leadership. Neither Sarah nor her mother and father felt like staying up late to listen to more of that. They slept as much as they possibly could, Samuel Goldman because he worked so hard in the labor gang and all of them because they didn’t get enough to eat to have much energy.
    Sarah didn’t think she’d been in bed more than a few minutes beforethe warning sirens began to howl. All the dogs began to howl with them. The sirens scared the dogs, and the animals had learned what happened after those sirens shrieked. They had plenty of reason to be scared.
    So did Sarah. Along with her parents, she stumbled down the stairs in the inky darkness and huddled under the sturdy dining-room table: the best protection they could get. Just because it was best didn’t mean it was good.
    “
Heil
Hitler!” Samuel Goldman said dryly. That was the punch line to a bitter joke the Germans made about air raids. If you’d grabbed some sleep in spite of the bombers, the next day you greeted people with
Good morning!
If the raid had kept you from getting any sleep and you desperately needed some, you said
Good night!
And if you’d always been asleep, you said
Heil Hitler!
    How many thousand meters up there did the bombers fly? Not far enough to keep the drone of their engines from reaching the ground. Searchlights would be probing for them, trying to spear them and pin them down in the sky so the flak guns could get at them. The cannons’ quick-firing snarls punctuated that steady industrial drone.
    Here came the bombs, whistling down. The first bursts were a long way off, but they kept getting closer and closer and.… 
Make them stop! Please, God, make them stop!
Sarah wanted to scream it. She swallowed it instead, all but a tiny