Shattered Read Online Free Page B

under the netting and
dump the dirt somewhere out of the way.
    We mostly
worked at night so that nobody would be able to see the hybrids
moving around outside of the netting, and everyone turned out most
nights unless they had some other duty that they'd been assigned. I'd
taken a couple of shifts in the pit, but I wasn't strong enough to
keep up with the amount of dirt that the wolves were moving around,
so mostly I ended up manning the gas station.
    Between the
excavation project, keeping the gas station manned, and maintaining a
twenty-four-hour watch, everyone was staying pretty busy. Normal
humans probably would have mutinied under the same kind of workload,
but the fact that the shape shifters needed so much less sleep meant
that the schedule was almost perfect for Isaac's people.
    He kept them
busy enough that nobody really had time to get into fights, but not
so busy that people felt like they never got to unwind. The shape
shifters slept in shifts, scattered among the various dormitories
inside the bunker. There were fewer of us than the vampires Taggart
had killed saving me, but shape shifters seemed to need more personal
space than the average human.
    Everyone had
their own bed, but scheduling sleeping shifts like Isaac had done
meant that the dormitories were never packed too full, which I was
pretty sure went a long ways towards heading off the fights that
otherwise would have broken out.
    Moving out all
of the dirt necessary to add such a large expansion onto the bunker
was going to take weeks still, but even before then, Isaac figured
that the shape shifters would be able to use the pit to spar and
train during the daylight hours, which I was pretty sure would let
the last of the residual tension in the group dissipate.
    I looked at the
big digital clock on the wall inside of the convenience store for
what felt like the tenth time in the last five minutes, and then
sighed in relief when I heard someone moving around in the back room.
A couple of seconds later Dominic walked out into the main store
area.
    "Hi, Adri.
Quiet shift?"
    I nodded.
"Yeah, just like always. The second guy who stopped by for gas
pretty much cleaned us out of corn nuts though. I guess we should
probably start trying to figure out how to restock the stuff we're
running low on. I think I saw some invoices or something in the back
office, but I didn't want to go in and start poking around now and
then just have to start over tomorrow."
    "Oh,
that's a good idea. I'm not sure that I would have thought to look
for invoices. Do you want me to start doing some kind of inventory of
what we have right now?"
    I shook my
head. She was quite possibly the nicest person I'd ever met, but I
didn't want to take advantage of her kindness.
    "You don't
need to do that, Dom. I really was planning on getting to it
tomorrow—I wasn't trying to guilt you into helping or anything,
I just didn't want you to worry about the fact that the shelves are
starting to look a little bare."
    Dominic's eyes
went wide. "Oh, I didn't think that, Adri. I just thought that
since I'll be here for the next six hours that it makes a lot of
sense for me to get started, but I don't want to deprive you of the
chance to do it—it was your idea after all."
    Coming from
someone else, a statement like that would have been dripping in
sarcasm, but Dominic actually seemed to mean it.
    "Is that
really your idea of fun, Dom?"
    She blushed a
little as she looked away, but after a second she shrugged. "I
guess that fun isn't quite the right word. I would rather be
curled up on my bed with a good book, but taking inventory of a gas
station doesn't sound too bad. It's the kind of thing that I might
have done if I'd grown up here. I used to dream of doing this kind of
stuff, you know— having a part-time job, having friends I could
count on not to turn on me the first chance that they got. Stocking
the shelves and sitting behind a cash register is like realizing a
little piece of my dream. It's