Faithful Duty

Faith sighed in relief as a cloud passed over the sun. The brief reprieve from the harsh glare was welcome after over an hour of hiking.

She hated walking the perimeter in the summer heat. When it was cooler, inspecting the patchwork of fencing—some portions chain-link, some tall, solid planks of wood, some a mishmash of wood hastily latticed together to create a barrier—was almost fun. She liked to think of it as a study of decades past, seeing where the original fence was erected from hard-won materials and where it had been repaired with scavenged bits of wood and metal.

In the summer, though, it was hard to concentrate on anything but the heavy humidity in the air and the mocking sun shining overhead.

Still, the work had to be done. Too many vandals, thieves, and worse roamed outside of their compound to risk not checking for any breaks in the fence line.

“Why does the fence have to be so far out from everyone?” George asked grumpily. “It’d be a much shorter walk if it weren’t.”

George was Faith’s first cousin and her aunt’s youngest (and only) boy. Today, though, he was her trainee. Faith was one of the compound’s prefects, who were entrusted with duties ranging from security to checking the food supply to venturing outside the compound on scouting missions. Faith had taken George on as a trainee at her aunt’s insistence, though she wasn’t sure if he had the right disposition for such a responsibility.

“So that any danger that might make it through our fence can be intercepted before reaching any of our people,” she answered, fiddling with the ring on her finger and scowling up at the sky as the bright sun came back into view.

They trekked on for a few more yards in the thick, overgrown grass before George spoke up once more. “But wouldn’t it be too late by that point? If someone or something got through the fence, how would we be able to stop them in time?”

“With these,” she said, tapping the six-shooter strapped around her waist. “Most of the nomads don’t have guns. The only long-range weapons they might have is a bow or maybe a spear if they throw it.”

It always seemed strange to Faith that humans could lose all industry and institutional knowledge by over-relying on computers, but they were able to recover a vibrant firearms industry within two decades of the loss.

“But why can’t we just make peace with them?” he pressed, naively in Faith’s opinion.

“Because we must protect our people,” she explained, speaking her words slowly and carefully so as to stress their importance to him. “We cannot trust outsiders.”

He fell quiet at her answer, and they walked in silence. By Faith’s reckoning, they were nearing the end of their inspection and luckily had not found any damage.

“Jimmy Thorton told me that they used to send people to the moon,” George said suddenly. The comment came out of nowhere and threw Faith off any thought of the fence line. In her confusion, she didn’t respond. “Years ago,” he elaborated, mistaking her silence for interest. “Back before the computers and the Internet failed.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, knowing him well enough to know he wouldn’t shut up unless she said something. “Why would they send people to the moon? All the books say you can’t breathe on it.”

“But what if they could make something so that we could breathe on it?” he replied eagerly. “If they could make something to get us to the moon, why couldn’t they make something like that?”

Faith made a frustrated noise as she pulled up the collar of her shirt to wipe at the sweat on her forehead. “I think Jimmy Thorton is overestimating how much smarter people back then were. They didn’t send people to the moon.”

“They made big metal tubes with wings to fly people around in the sky and take them from place to place! Why couldn’t they have sent people to the moon?” he reasoned with a starry-eyed looked in his eye, gesturing wildly at the sky overhead. “What if there’s a whole compound on the moon with all the information and technology we lost just waiting for us to discover?”

“If they’re up there, they obviously don’t want to help us or they’d have done it already,” she growled, her gait almost a stomp as she eyed the fencing with more attention than strictly necessary. This conversation grated on her nerves.

“Why wouldn’t they?” George asked in genuine confusion. “We’re all people, right? Why wouldn’t they want to help us?”

“The nomads are people, and we’re still out here making sure there aren’t any holes in our fence for them to get through,” Faith reminded him as the gate where they began their inspection came into view.

The gleam in his eyes dimmed as he considered that; it sharpened, though, as he caught sight of something as they approached the gate. “What’s that?”

Faith was on instant alert. From a distance, she had thought the faintly smoking blackness near the gate was a recently doused campfire. As they neared, it became clear the charred object was no stack of wood.

Her stomach roiled at the smell of cooking meat mixed with an unpleasant copper and metallic note. She heard George retching behind her as he finally caught on to what they were seeing, but she paid him no mind.

Faith crept closer to the blackened remains of the body, eyes open for any possible threat still in the area. She risked a glance to the gate, but it still had the thick chains sealing it shut from the inside. Since they had found no place where the fence had been breached, she was left with only one horrible conclusion.

One of their own did this.

She grimaced at the thought. She knew her people weren’t perfect. There was a reason the prefects had to monitor food supplies to ensure no one took more than their share. But this was different. She didn’t want to think any of the people she knew could be capable of something so monstrous.

Faith made to turn and check on George when she spied a gold glint out the corner of her eye. Her breath hitched as she stepped closer and realized what it was.

No.

A cold, hard knot settled in her stomach. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears but all other sounds seemed to fade away. A lump leaped into her throat, making it difficult to draw breath.

Not him. Please don’t be him.

She reached out with a trembling hand to touch the small golden necklace around the corpse’s neck. It took her five tries to flick open the locket with her thumb, too rattled to even attempt getting close enough to find the chain’s clasp, let alone release it. The inside engraving was unmistakable.

Two sets of initials on the left, STM and MED—Faith’s great-grandparents. And on the right, the date they were married, 8-23-56.

She fell to her knees next to Robert’s body, too numb for tears and still clutching the locket she had given him years ago as a promise.

Why? Why would someone do this?

Robert was one of their own. One of her own. Neither of them had done anything but work for the good of their people. So why was he dead? Why had someone killed him?

Faith took a shaky breath and allowed herself a brief moment of grief before standing. She wouldn’t do anyone any good by wallowing in self-pity. Robert would be the first one to tell her she had a duty to her people to find his murderer.

I will do my duty.

The sentiment rang hollow. Where an hour ago, the thought might have sustained her to weather any challenge the compound might face, now she felt only a bitter tiredness. Still, she had a job to do, and she would do it.

It was the only thing she knew to do.