The Circadia Chronicles
OMNIBUS
The Complete Trilogy Books 1-3
Including:
Grow, Govern and Gun
Heather Heckadon
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
THE CIRCADIA CHRONICLES: GROW, GOVERN, GUN
First edition. April 24, 2018 through November 13th, 2020
Copyright © 2018 Heather Heckadon.
Written by Heather Heckadon.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Circadia Chronicles: Omnibus
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
GUN | CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GROW
Chapter One
TRUDGING THROUGH THE night, my group came upon a pod. It was even larger than the second group’s. We were prepared with ladders as we had expected such. This time we waited much longer for the door handle to turn and the hatch to open, accompanied by the screeching sound of metal-on-metal. When it finally lifted and fell onto its hinges, we watched as the moon lit the pair of hands grasping for the way out.
The first woman that appeared looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Her face was plump and her hair was well-groomed. Her eyes were wide and scared. Garrett hollered up to her, “Hey, welcome to Circadia! We have a ladder to help you get down over on the left of the pod.”
She looked around quietly and began to climb down. At least twenty people, maybe more, climbed out of the pod after her, and then I saw him. Leslie Marshal. That son-of-a bitch! My blood boiled as I watched him emerge from the craft and make his way down the ladder. No one else around me said anything, so I wasn’t sure if they had noticed or recognized him, but I had. I walked around the pod with purpose.
As soon as I watched both his feet fall from the ladder, I caught him by the shoulders and slammed him up against the pod with one arm while my other fist slammed into his fat face. “You asshole! You knew, didn’t you? You fucking knew!” I screamed through tears. I kept going. My knuckles felt warm with blood. It wasn’t his, it was mine—my fragile skin burst upon impact and got worse with every hit.
My tears obscured my vision, but through the blurriness I could see his eyes grow wide when my fist withdrew and went in for yet another shot. My knuckles burned and ached, but I didn’t care. I kept going. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done! You mother—” My hand was caught.
I turned to see who’d stopped me. It was Smith. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. “Aella. Enough.”
I WASN’T ALWAYS A VIOLENT person. I never knew such a rage could work its way down into my soul and make itself at home, but it did. Of course, it didn’t happen all at once.
THE YEAR CIRCADIA ENTERED our solar system, things were kind of crazy. A new planet, one Earth had never seen before, entered into our range of sight. Said to have drifted from another galaxy, it was flying straight towards us. Some scientists insisted it would narrowly miss us and just keep floating by until it exited our solar system and moved on to the next. Some argued it would hit head-on and kill us all.
It took about three months after the planet was spotted for it to get anywhere close to us. During that time, preppers and doomsdayers went crazy, churches assembled every day for months, and many people quit their jobs. A sense of doom hung in the air, and everyone prepared to die once Circadia’s approach trajectory was calculated to be directly at Earth.
“From now on, all we can do is wait,” a newscaster announced in grave tones facing the camera. The same message was echoed across nations as hundreds of news stations replayed the scene. It was the finality in their voices that sent people over the edge.
People reacted terribly. Footage of hope and togetherness was replaced by scenes of violence and looting. Men and women alike ran back and forth, hurriedly scrambling to grasp onto anything that was left in the hopes of survival in the face of imminent doom. Laws no longer applied to man, and the masses did as they pleased.
Walking down the steps of my apartment, I encountered a man who instantly cleared the heavy thoughts from my mind.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
I hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“Can I stay here?” he pleaded. “I have nowhere else to go.” The man’s hands trembled and his eyes darted back and forth. His disheveled clothes told a story, but not one I wanted to hear. The street I lived on was filled with screaming people in a similar state running this way and that. Car alarms sounded everywhere. It was chaos.
I stood there in shock. I didn’t know what to say. He began crying, and it was too much for me. “I can’t. I can’t, I’m so sorry,” I said as I pulled away from the grasp of his hands. Dashing back into my apartment, I locked the door behind me as he pounded his fists on the other side, begging. I wept, then started boarding up the windows. Each board I put up was a barrier between me and the world, which wasn’t so different from the way I had lived before. Why was I always so distant from people? I estimated for the time being, that trait would work in my favor.
A day before the projected arrival, everyone held their breath, waiting. Then something strange happened. Circadia stopped. I remembered watching the news and hearing
