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  Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.

  The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.

  Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.

  So That a Marigold Might Live Free

  Brian S. Wheeler

  Flatland Fiction thanks you for your purchase of this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoy this ebook, Flatland Fiction encourages you to send us a review at [email protected]. Unless otherwise instructed, Flatland Fiction reserves the right to post such reviews online.

  Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Celebrating Angels

  Chapter 2 – Digging a Grave

  Chapter 3 – Monster in the Grass

  Chapter 4 – A Kite Rising Above

  Chapter 5 – Undesired Science

  Chapter 6 – Pieces of a Plan

  Chapter 7 – Another Patriot Rewarded

  Chapter 8 – Achievement

  Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland

  About the Writer

  Other Stories at Flatland Fiction

  Chapter 1 - Celebrating Angels

  "Oh, I hope I put enough lotion on Maggie's forearms. I don't want her skin burning so bad that it peels and itches so she can't sleep during the few hours of dark we have each night."

  Hanson sighed before offering his wife Lacadia a stiff smile. Lacadia had not, like himself, known the fortune to have been born into a family that had kept Zeb's good book upon the parlor table. Lacadia had chosen to follow Zeb's tenets later in her life; and though Hanson was proud of his wife for doing so, he realized it would unfair to expect Lacadia to display the fortitude so prevalent in those who began practicing the ways of Zeb the moment they were born.

  "This world's grasses are not so terrible, Lacadia. Give Maggie some space. Sooner or later, her skin will itch from exposure to these grasslands. Let her itch now so that her skin grows some resistance. You can only rub so much lotion on a child."

  It took the followers of Zeb who hoped to settle the planet of Geralt eighteen Earth months to finish building the roadways, farms, cities and spaceports their contract with the United Systems required of them. Eighteen months after a golden shovel first broke ground, the settlers gathered upon several acres of newly cut grassland to lean back upon the ground of their new planet and watch the fireworks launched in celebration of their efforts.

  No trade union, no ethnicity, no religion or country built as quickly and as well as the followers of Zeb Griffin. The followers of Zeb Griffin, who more than all else taught that a man possessed no duty to follow any law but his own, built roads and walls straighter and stronger than any drone construction crew. Thus the United Systems happily offered the children of Zeb free journeys upon their glistening starliners to the furthest reaches of the explored galaxy.

  Zeb's followers promised to sweat and toil in order to build the settlements the waiting stars required, and the United Systems in return promised those followers that the worlds they worked to tame would belong only to them. The United Systems promised that none of their laws or regulations, none of their oversight and taxation, would infringe upon any settler who strove to live by Zeb Griffin's example. The United Systems vowed to leave the people of Zeb alone upon the completion of their construction contracts, and the United Systems promised to seek no compensation for any of the resources they freely provided to those who built upon a new world.

  Those promises between the followers of Zeb and the United Systems had been made thirteen times. On thirteen occasions, those settlements constructed by Zeb's workers perished not long after the United Systems' starliners drifted away. Those settlers who called Zeb Griffin their teacher, philosopher and messiah doomed themselves upon each of those prior, thirteen colonies. The United Systems never expected Zeb's children to survive. They expected them to perish. And so the Untied Systems simply waited to inherit the cities a lost people left behind.

  Hanson grunted as a soccer ball bounced off the side of his head. Lacadia giggled. Grumbling, Hanson scanned the field, and he frowned to see that his cherished, only daughter Maggie, his Marigold, scurrying away from him among a pack of children chasing the ball.

  "Leave her be, Hanson." Lacadia gripped her husband's forearm.

  But Hanson feared how Maggie's play might distract those gathered from watching the coming fireworks. Old man Zeb considered few offenses more dire than that of distracting the privacy of a neighbor, and so Hanson could not accept his Maggie playing a part in any commotion.

  "Maggie! That's enough! Get back here, Maggie!"

  Maggie suddenly stopped. Her bottom lip trembled. A breath before, she had laughed at how the soccer ball had bounced off of her father's head. A moment before, Maggie had been so happy. Her duties, like the duties of any child in a family that kept Zeb's good book upon their parlor table, rarely afforded her the opportunity to mingle with other girls and boys. Maggie thought that an evening of fireworks might allow her to do just that. Yet the tone of her father's voice told her she had been wrong, and so Maggie choked her sobs and did her best to show her father no disappointment when taking her seat upon the blanket her mother had quilted for celebrations.

  Lacadia glared at Hanson. "She was doing nothing wrong. You should let her play when she can."

  "It will be dusk soon," Hanson reminded himself not to grumble. "I won't have Maggie disturbing everyone's enjoyment of the fireworks. Even during a celebration as happy as this one, Maggie must learn to respect the privacy of others."

  "It was only a soccer ball," Lacadia shook her head.

  Hanson winked at Maggie. "I'll make it up to you. I promise, Marigold."

  Lacadia offered Maggie her popcorn. "We'll get you a soccer ball of your own before the vendors depart on the starliners. Your father can't stand to see his Marigold look sad. It won't be long until the fireworks start, and they're going to amaze you, Maggie."

  Suddenly, everyone in the field took a breath. Maggie pointed into the sky.

  "Are they starting?"

  Hanson peeked at his watch, his face creased in confusion. "It's too early for the show to start."

  Lacadia
chuckled. "Something's starting all the same."

  To the east, Geralt's purple sky darkened as dusk descended above the planet's tall and golden grasses. Streamers of silver, pearl and gold burned silently down from the heavens. They fell slowly at first, only a few of the streaming tails burning against the darkening night as the settlers turned their eyes upward. But then those javelins multiplied in number and quickened the pace of their fall, burning and blinking like falling stars towards the golden grasses of Geralt. The blinking rain proved too fine and fragile, and none of those motes of silver, pearl and gold reached the grasslands before burning out of existence. Thus the grasses remained safe though the sky filled with tails of fire.

  "It's incredible. It's beautiful." Lacadia swooned beneath the display. "I've never seen fireworks like it."

  Maggie smiled at the sight of those streamers, and her sorrow vanished.

  "I'm not sure what it is," spoke Hanson. "I suppose the starliners might be shooting those streamers into the sky to help us celebrate, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's just a kind of meteor shower. We haven't been on Geralt long enough to really know what this section of the galaxy offers."

  Maggie's eyes sparkled. "It's from the angels. The angels are celebrating with us by tossing confetti over our heads, like it's some kind of parade."

  Lacadia held her daughter's hand. "That's a lovely thought."

  Hanson was proud of his daughter's imagination. He was proud to have a daughter who still believed in the divine, no matter how the United Systems was always trying to suffocate faith.

  "It's a wonderful sentiment, Marigold." Hanson hugged his girl. "The angels are giving us good luck. They're blessing us because we've worked so hard. They're proud of us, Marigold. They're proud of us for following what good, old Zeb taught us."

  The silver, pearl and gold streamers shimmered, and their numbers dwindled. The last streamer fell. A handful of minutes passed while the settlers stared at the remaining stars in awe. Then, the first rocket shrieked into the sky to explode in blossoms of oranges and reds. The settlers had scrimped and saved for their celebration of pyrotechnics during their eighteen months of construction, and the booming color disappointed no one.

  But that unexpected shower from the heavens had stolen much of the magic. It was unfair to think that gunpowder might compete with streaming light delivered from the angels.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2 - Digging a Grave

  Smoke billowed into Geralt's purple sky six Earth months after the angels burned their stars across the heavens the night of the settlers' celebration. Death clutched the planet, a disease that inflicted both the native grasses of Geralt and the men and women who strove to live upon those prairies. It was a cruel sickness that through each spore fought to transform the planet into an alien landscape uninhabitable to both the native plant and Earth settler.

  Linda Wells leaned upon her shovel and watched the line of the control burn creep closer to her home. The winds had shifted upon her, but thankfully, such winds also turned weak, and so Linda hoped her home would remain in little danger of those flames she had set to cleanse her property from the grasses she feared had been compromised with the blight that would turn her lands bright orange and proclaim the arrival of the sickness.

  "All we can do now, Quantum, is pray to Zeb's ghost that we didn't wait too long before burning all that grass." Linda bent her stiff back and scratched the ear of her German shepherd. She trembled each morning as she checked her dog’s belly for the orange splotches that would mean the dog's infection and execution. "I should've burned those fields sooner, but it's impossible to trust anything the United Systems tells you. I waited as long as I could to try to determine the truth of it for myself."

  The blight moved silently. It was invisible. It left no trace until it was too late for any medicine other than flame. Linda had climbed each morning during the month upon the roof of her home, and through her binoculars she searched for the orange patches indicative of the blight. She had seen nothing amiss in the color of those golden grasses for most all of that time. The grasses remained as gold as they had ever been when she had first stepped upon Geralt nearly two years ago.

  But on that morning, seemingly overnight, wide patches of her fields had turned that dreadful orange.

  Linda immediately recognized what the orange forced her to do. No matter how badly she hated that the advice came from the United Systems' science division, Linda followed emergency protocol and set fire to her acres. She dug a fire line with her shovel, and with what water she could spare, soaked her home's roofing tiles.

  At least she had been cautious enough, smart enough, not to have walked through her fields in search of the orange taint. Many a follower of Zeb had ignored United Systems' advice and done just that, and now many a follower of Zeb were dead. Perhaps that caution would still save her skin from that orange everyone on Geralt feared.

  "It's terrible cruel, Quantum." Linda smiled at the dog panting at her hip. "All of us thought we had found someplace safe on this rock."

  How many of Zeb Griffin's children had been lost in their efforts to find freedom amid the stars? Thirteen settlements had been established before Geralt, and each of those settlements had been lost after the United Systems honored their promise and departed to leave those who followed Zeb alone on their new worlds. A shootout destroyed Griffin XIII when a gunfight in the street compromised the ecosphere. The radiation unleashed in nuclear warfare between rival colonists still poisons the ruins of Griffin IV. Linda lost a brother on Griffin IX when those settlers failed to protect their water supply.

  Yet Linda, like her neighbors who had penned their names upon the construction contract and taken a seat on a starliner bound for a new world, had believed Geralt offered a safer place amid the stars. They would live free of the United Systems' governance and bureaucracy that suffocated the rest of the settled cosmos. The biologists had discovered no life whatsoever upon Geralt other than that harmless strand of grass that covered the land masses. No predators hid anywhere in the prairies. Not even a microbe lurked to sicken the human body. The planet's soil would support a wide spectrum of crops, and the climate begged for human habitation. Geralt seemed like a paradise, like a sanctuary from the turmoil mankind carried to other stars.

  But the blight arrived all the same. Linda worried that they were unprepared to cope with the disease, that they too would perish like all the rest of Zeb's followers who attempted to call new worlds home.

  "Look over there, Quantum," Linda gazed down the narrow, dirt road towards her closest neighbor. "Hanson Potts is out in his yard with a shovel, no doubt scraping his own fire lines before setting his grasses to flame. Let's see if he needs any help. Even Zeb would forgive a neighbor for trespassing on another's privacy in times as trying as these."

  Hanson gave no indication of noticing Linda and Quantum as they moved down the dirt road towards his home. His shoulders remained focussed upon his work.

  That made Linda feel uneasy. Was Hanson doing something other than preparing to light his grasses? Had Hanson not received the electronic missive she had sent him first thing that morning informing him that she had found the blight upon her property? Had Hanson decided to ignore it? Linda could see as she approached that Hanson's shovel bit far too deeply into the ground for a fire line. She came to stand behind Hanson, and her heart rose into her throat as Linda recognized the dimensions of Hanson's work.

  "Forgive me for prying, Mr. Potts," Linda clutched Quantum's leash, "please tell me the blight hasn't slipped into your home. Is Lacadia alright? Oh, please don't tell me that orange hasn't gotten hold of Maggie."

  Hanson stepped back from the hole he dug into the ground. He didn't appear upset that Linda had taken the liberty to step upon his property without his invitation. Hanson only looked tired.

  "Lacadia and Maggie are fine. Thanks for asking, Ms. Wells."

  "Bless the ghost of Zeb," Linda exhaled a long breath, "but then why are you digg
ing a grave?"

  "I'm not sure the answer concerns you."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Potts, but I fear any business of this blight concerns us all."

  Hanson stared at that hole dug into the ground and hesitated before replying. "I aim to send a message with this open grave."

  Linda didn't move. She held her breath so as not to make a sound. Quantum whimpered.

  "My family received an electronic missive this morning from one of the thousand, wicked offices of the United Systems," Hanson continued, "a message from some office claiming to concern themselves with disease control, stationed on some rock of a planet or asteroid I've never heard mentioned. And that missive told me that they planned to send a doctor to my home to try and vaccinate my Maggie."

  Fear washed over Linda. Quantum sensed his master's unease and growled at the empty road.

  "Vaccination?" Linda stammered. "They have no jurisdiction. They break their promise we earned through our construction. They've no right at all. Do they even attempt to give a reason why they would hope to try?"

  Hanson nodded. "They're claiming it's all about the orange blight. They're claiming the children are most vulnerable to the disease, say the sickness festers in the children to grow strong enough to jump to the parents. The missive claims the Systems have the medicine for the disease, a simple shot to prevent the blight from festering in boys and girls. If you're willing to trust them."