Free Heritage and Shimmer by Brian S. Wheeler Page A

resting her red locks of hair upon the shoulder of his
uniform. He looked so handsome in his Starwatch jacket, and Beverly
enjoyed imagining all the medals her fiancé would gather upon his
chest as his natural talents and hard-earned skills lifted him to
greatness. It had hardly been twenty-five years since those
fork-tongued aliens appeared from nowhere and attempted to wrestle
Earth away from humankind. Thanks to a small community’s sacrifice
and defiance, humankind had barely repelled the invasion, but the
carnage of that attempted conquest pushed the planet to the brink
of a collapse from which civilization might never have recovered.
The climate continued to warm due to the energy weapons the aliens
blasted against Earth’s armies. Oxygen continued to deplete from
the oceans thanks to the poison leaking from the alien warships
crashed onto the seafloor. Only a rare, sick crop grew on account
of the taint the alien bombs planted beneath the soil. Nearly all
of mother nature’s creatures, both timid and tame, neared
extinction thanks to the infertility drugs the aliens slipped into
Earth’s food chain. Beverly knew nothing about ecology, knew very
little about science at all. She didn’t understand how such poisons
kept harming her world after nearly three decades since the aliens
had arrived to harm it. She suspected such matters would forever
remain beyond the reach of her mind, and so Beverly placed her
faith in the good Lord and believed that the divine creator would
save them before the end ever came.
     
    Jayce grinned as the sunlight streaming
through the windshield forced his eyes to squint. “We’re so lucky
that the Patriot’s Memorial is along the way, Bev. I can’t think of
a better way to celebrate my graduation from the Starwatch academy
than to stop at that memorial and be reminded what it’s all about.
A visit to the memorial will be a wonderful way to bless our
marriage.”
     
    Beverly felt the tears rise into her eyes.
She felt her lips tremble, and she swallowed so that the sobs would
not escape from her throat. She needed to be strong. She would be
the wife of a Starwatch officer.
     
    Jayce smiled at her. “You’ll see, Bev. We’ll
share a wonderful life together, and there’s not a thing the aliens
can do to prevent from doing so.”
     
    “Do you think we’ll have children?” Beverly
whispered.
     
    “Of course. Three girls and a boy. Just like
I always say.”
     
    Beverly turned her face back to her passenger
window to hide her doubt. “I hope you’re right. It’s so hard for
anyone to have children these days on account of what the aliens
did to our water supply.”
     
    “You’ll see, Bev. Three girls and a boy.”
     
    “How much further do we have to drive?”
     
    Jayce peeked at his digital watch. “We should
get to the mountains tomorrow afternoon. But it looks like we’ll
reach the Patriot’s Memorial in the middle of the night.”
     
    Beverly shuddered. “Maybe we should camp in
the car and wait until the morning before we visit the
memorial.”
     
    “Come on now, Beverly Wilcox,” Jayce laughed.
“You’re a grown woman. You can’t afford to be an adult child prone
to superstition any more than the rest of us can, not after the
alien attack. Just imagine how all those holograms are going to
glow when we view them in the middle of the night.”
     
    “I’m sorry,” Beverly answered, “but just
promise me we’re not going to see any ghosts.”
     
    “I promise.”
     
    Both of them giggled, and that laughter
pulled Beverly’s thoughts away from aliens and wraiths as Jayce’s
dented car coughed along the miles down the empty interstate
cutting through the heartland. She entertained her driver by
singing the songs her grandfather once played for her on the old
stereo system he kept in the crowded apartment the government
assigned to her family following society’s reform in face of the
alien threat, and Jayce smiled as he listened to lyrics