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It was a beautiful day 200 years after the end of the world, and Nora Lee was fighting for her life. Preston had asked her to make contact with a settlement some distance southeast of Sanctuary Hills, and her route had taken her through Concord. To her dismay, raiders had moved in since the last time she was there, and they were not exactly pleased to see her. As the firefight broke out, she crouched behind a burnt-out car and reloaded her pistol. Dogmeat was at her side, panting.
“Whoever kills her first gets half the caps!” someone yelled.
“Bullshit! Split it fair!” Bullets pinged off the car's hull.
“Come on out, little girl!” a third raider taunted.
Nora sucked in a quick breath, jumped to her feet, and sprayed lead in the direction of the first raider she saw. He crumpled to the ground while gripping his leg, and Nora turned her attention to another raider taking aim at her. VATS activated on her pip-boy, and her arm involuntarily shifted into a position to more accurately strike the attacker in the right leg. That one, too, stumbled while yelling in pain and holding their thigh.
As she caught her breath, a woman wearing scrap metal and a sack hood leapt over the hood of the car, slamming her foot into Nora's jaw on the way. She'd lost track of the third raider, and now she was paying for it. She heard the rasp of a pipe pistol being yanked from its holster and scrambled to grab her own gun before she found herself with some extra holes.
“Say goodnight, you littl—OW! Damn dog!” The raider shouted and pistol-whipped Dogmeat as he clamped onto her ankle and started to shake.
Nora squeezed the trigger on her pistol. It jumped in her hands and roared, and the raider's head exploded in a shower of gore. Dogmeat released his jaws and ran around to the other side of the car to look for any other enemies in range.
She looked at the messy remains of the attacker and sighed. Pointing a gun at another person and pulling the trigger was becoming easier, and she didn't like it. Up until only a few weeks ago, her only combat experience was scrapping on the playground as a girl. Now, it seemed like she killed someone at least every other day.
Dogmeat came trotting back to her, panting and letting out a cheerful bark. All the other raiders had either bled out or crawled away to nurse their wounds.
“Good boy, Dogmeat,” she praised him.
Speaking of wounds, Nora wasn't doing so hot, either. The wounds were survivable, but still painful. She needed to look for bandages and a stimpak, if she could find one. The raiders had been camping out in the hardware store, so she knew that place was picked clean, and most of the other buildings had chunks fall from them and block off the entrances, if they hadn't collapsed entirely. Her sight fell on the little white church building that she'd passed a couple times on other trips to Concord. She'd overlooked it so far, but maybe there was a first-aid box inside. If nothing else, it was a sheltered spot to catch her breath.
Whistling to Dogmeat, she pushed the church doors open. “Come on, boy. I think it'll be okay if a dog goes to church this time.”
Inside, sunlight filtered through dusty and broken stained glass windows. The structure itself remained sound, save for a few rafters that had fallen and part of the floor warping. Several skeletons in decaying Saturday best still sat in the pews, and one was draped over the pulpit. Her foot crunched on a partially burnt bulletin.
She picked it up and read it: Saturday, October 23 2077, Season of Pentecost, 9:00 AM.
Nora, Nate, and Shaun were supposed to go to church that Sunday after, in the little chapel just outside Sanctuary Hills. Needless to say, that hadn't happened. Maybe they wouldn't have gone anyway, even if the world hadn't ended on that wretched Saturday – their weekly visits had gone a bit spotty since about six months before Shaun was born.
“Hopefully all this—” she half-joked to Dogmeat, waving her arms around, “—isn't punishment for skipping church a few too many times, right?”
Dogmeat tilted his head and whined. Nora sighed.
“We hadn't gone since Shaun's baptism,” she elaborated. “And—“
The thought hung in midair, unfinished. Nora sat on one of the pews, absently muttering “Excuse me” to the skeleton next to her. She rested her head in her hands for several minutes. The air felt heavy. Running errands for settlements was a distraction from her hunt to find Shaun and bring Nate's killer to justice, and that was a distraction from the dark clouds hanging in the back of her mind. Nate was cold and dead, and Shaun? He might be dead too. If what the others were saying was true, it had been 200 years since she saw her baby ripped away right before her eyes. If he wasn't a shambling ghoul by now, then he was a corpse – maybe that of an infant, maybe that of a grown man. She kept up hope that somehow, by a wasteland miracle, Shaun was still alive and whole, but the longer things went on, the more ridiculous it seemed. Now and then, her quest felt like a stupid snipe hunt to keep from going insane with grief. To believe that she had a reason to go on.
Her nose prickled, and there was a painful tightness in her throat and face. Her eyes felt wet.
The pew creaked as Dogmeat hopped onto it. He lay next to Nora and rested his head in her lap. He always did that when she was upset. She glanced over at him, meeting his big, brown, soulful eyes. Her own eyes misting, she scratched behind his ears.
“I'll be okay,” she lied. “I just...sometimes, it gets to be too much. Knowing that Nate's gone, you know?”
She sniffled. Dogmeat thumped his tail against the bench.
“I wish you could have gotten to meet him. He was a great guy. He was gonna teach Shaun how to play baseball as soon as he could, because he played it when he was a kid. He always liked the Swatting Sultans. I thought that was the dumbest name I ever heard—“
A dry chuckle escaped her as she wiped her cheeks.
“—but it made him happy...You think we'll ever be happy again? Building the settlements with Preston, exploring with Piper, playing with you; that stuff's fun, it's nice, but it's not right, do you get me? Nothing feels right anymore. But why should it? We're in the apocalypse for God's sake.”
She looked up at the ceiling. Was that taking God's name in vain? There she goes, a once-perfect American girl killing raiders, taking chems, and swearing in church. It was a little funny, in a dark way.
Dogmeat took his head off her lap as she sat up. Maybe there was a first-aid kit in the back room of the church. Like if someone got a paper cut doing the Bible reading, or one of those dumb kids bonked another on the head with the acolyte stick. Hey, maybe that stick could work as a melee weapon in case more raiders showed up.
Her curiosity getting the better of her, she stopped next to the pulpit. She wondered what the pastor had been speaking about as the bombs dropped. Gently pushing aside his skeleton, she peeked at the Bible underneath. The text was faded, the page dirty, but it was still readable.
“The Gospel According to St. Matthew” scrolled across the top of the page. On the body text, she made out a large 5.
Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain. When he sat, his disciples came to him.
And he began to teach, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
A teardrop fell on the page.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Wanting your husband's murderer to face justice had to count for that, right?
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
One time, while traveling with Piper, they'd encountered an exhausted caravaneer who had asked them for water. Nora shared her last bottle of purified water with him. At first she wondered if that had been a dumb decision, until she saw the look of admiration on Piper. It felt good to do a good thing.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called God's children.
She'd heard about a group called the Followers of the Apocalypse. They were doctors who roamed the wasteland patching people up and distributing food and didn't ask for so much as a single bottle cap. If anyone was God's children, it had to be them.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing what is righteous, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are you when people hate you, persecute you, and tell all kinds of vicious lies about you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad. Your reward in heaven will be great, for in this same way they persecuted the prophets before you.
Exhaling, Nora gently shut the Bible. Her heart felt heavy, but not in a wholly bad way. It was that same way she'd felt after giving water to the traveler and seeing Piper's bright smile. And how she'd felt when she saw the big dumb grin on Nate's face after she said that yes, she'd marry him.
Dogmeat lay dutifully at her feet as she sat in the pew again. He whined softly, like he expected her to start crying again. Instead, as she leaned forward, she clasped her hands together.
Our Father, who is in heaven, your name is holy;
Your kingdom come and your will shall be done, on earth like it is in heaven.
Dear God, it's me, Nora Lee. Um...haven't prayed in a while, sorry about that. A lot has happened lately, and I hope you're still out there. I'm sure Nate's with you now, and Shaun might be too.
Thank you for the people who have helped me, like Piper and Preston and Nick. I don't know what they believe, but if you blessed them, that would be good. They're great people.
Please help me find Shaun. I need to know what happened to him.
Um...I know I'm supposed to pray for my enemies, so...help the raiders to stop being terrible, I guess?
Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil...and the radiation, and the frag mines, and the feral ghouls.
The kingdom, power, and glory are yours, now and forever.
“Amen,” she said out loud with a tense exhale. She looked up, meeting gazes with Dogmeat again. He tilted his head and wagged his tail.
“Why are you so cute?” she mumbled, patting him as she stood up. “Okay, buddy. Time for us to go. Shaun's waiting for us.”
On the way out, a plaque nailed to the wall caught her attention. It was pretty tarnished, but the words were still legible.
“FOR THE SAINTS WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE US,” it read, followed by a list of names and years. Members of the church who had passed away, it seemed. Nora got an idea. She picked up a piece of charred wood from the floor, and wrote two new entries on the plaque.
The victims of the bombs. 10.23.2077
Nathaniel Jacob Lee. 10.23.2227
That felt right. A stack of tarnished brass plates rested on a little table under the plaque. She recognized them as the offering plates. She dug into her pocket and pulled out two bottle caps. Clink, clink.
Then, Nora Lee exited her sanctuary and rejoined the Commonwealth. She had wanted to find salvage in the church, but found what she needed instead. And maybe, somewhere in the wasteland, she'd find her new place in this world too.