Chapter 5
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I had always wondered how it would feel to take a life, people talked about that a lot in the early days of the war. I had wondered if I would break down in tears, or maybe dance over my victim's dead body. But in the heat of the moment, I just wanted to avoid getting caught. So we all went home. They would find the dead pilot's body before long. Given the state of war, and the high number of civilians carrying guns at this point, the police wouldn't be able to prove I had shot him. There were only four others who knew for certain I had shot him, they had no reason to turn me in. We just agreed not to talk about it. If the police asked, we would tell them what we had done that night. But we would also say that we heard a gunshot, and tried to avoid that specific area. But the police never questioned us about this dead pilot, I doubt they even investigated. A pilot like him, shot down over enemy territory, it was just blind dumb luck if he was captured by someone willing to take him alive. For better or worse I had gotten away with murder.
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Barely a week after my killing Chanukah began, and my mother received an unexpected gift. We were somewhat lucky that we had both survived thus far. There were many stories of parents who lost children in these air raids, and of small children whose parents had died. The state, as well as local religious and secular charities, tried to take them in or find them foster homes. If possible every efforts was made to place them with family members, but for obvious reasons that wasn't always possible. Mom and I usually didn't attend temple except for special occasions, and even now we typically avoided large gatherings all together. But mom still kept in touch with our rabbi. He and his husband had taken in three orphaned children since the war began, but they couldn't take in all of the orphans. He asked his congregants to do their part, including my mother. So in December of 2063, I got a seven year old foster sister, Willow. Willow was seven, her parents murdered by some enemy bomb. At this point mom was working at a grocery store. When certain items were rationed, she was the one who had to explain to the customers that she legally couldn't sell them anymore, had to hear complaints from idiots who thought she personally made this law. She got some hazard pay for working in the city during this crisis, and she got a certain amount of money for taking in Willow. Even so, taking in a foster child added some financial strain to our family. I've heard of some who took in foster children during the war solely for the money. But to make a profit it seemed like they would have had to give the child the bare minimum to survive. When I thought about this financial strain, or thought of poor Willow losing her parents, I blamed the aliens. I doubted that the one I killed had dropped the bomb that killed Willow's parents, but he still did his part to kill humans. And if four billion had to die before the war ended, I was glad he wouldn't live to see the end of the war. I was glad I had killed him.