Shelter 2014 Film Novels & Stories

Her face, pale and drawn, looked even more fragile in the faint artificial light spilling from the ceiling. Outside, there was nothing but blackness. No stars. No city lights. Just shadow and silence. Inside, the air was sterile. Too clean. Too still. The emergency shelter beneath Adriano’s Swiss estate wasn’t made for comfort. It was made for survival. Steel-reinforced doors. Hidden exits. Enough supplies to last weeks. Siena had never felt more secure — and more trapped. Her arms clutched the blanket tighter around her shoulders, but it did little to chase away the cold.

I almost cried out in relief when I saw the shelter come into view. It was a small little place, only ten to fifteen parking spaces in the parking lot. The paint on the walls was peeling and the window that looked into the shelter was tinted grey as if it hadn't been washed in awhile. Still, the pure joy on Axel's face made up for the shambles of the shop.

"You'll have a bed in the communal room tonight. Tomorrow, we'll work on finding you something more permanent. Job training, housing assistance, whatever you need." I nodded, fighting back tears. I'd gone from invisible omega cleaner to homeless shelter resident in less than a week. The communal sleeping room held twenty narrow beds, most of them already occupied. The woman who showed me to mine—bed fourteen—looked me up and down with calculating eyes. "First time in a shelter?" she asked. "Yes." "Keep your stuff close. People steal." She gestured to a small locker beside the bed. "That's yours. Bring your own lock tomorrow or someone will clean it out."

The shelter. Not just a building. Not just another point on a map. It was the first place she had ever gone where no one demanded she smile through pain. The first place where women with bruised mouths and broken confidence sat beside one another and did not pretend they were fine. The place where she first saw what survival looked like when it was shared. The place where she had begun, painfully, to imagine a future. Someone had chosen that place on purpose. They wanted a message. They wanted to remind her that no sacred thing was safe.

She then told Heath, "Let's talk outside. This is an area for she-wolves. It's not appropriate for you to be inside." "Of course, thanks." Heath led the way, and the two walked out of the shelter. The shelter wasn't small, but it couldn't accommodate this many people, so construction was underway to expand it. "What is it?" Adelaide stood under a tree, the sun filtering through the branches onto her face. Her eyes were devoid of emotion, and her expression was cool.

"Son, is there something I should know about? You seem nervous and the panic room indicator went off not too long ago for this room." How? How could I forget that I upgraded the system so that every panic room had a trigger on it? If opened, the room would send a silent notification to Papa and me. "Oh yeah, I was just showing her where to hide in case anything happens and her and baby have to hunker down." Dietrich Shields wasn't anybody's fool and he damn sure wasn't going to made one. "Did you fix your problems like I told you to?" "Yeah, we're working on it. Still a little turbulence but she'll come around. Told her about the maze...."

He stopped mid-stride on the trail and looked northwest, and the expression on his face was specific enough that I stopped without being told to. "How far is the nearest shelter?" I asked. "Twenty minutes," he said. "If we move now." We moved. The hunter's shelter was a permanent stone base with a solid roof, stocked for exactly this kind of emergency. Wood by the door, dry provisions on the upper shelf, two rooms divided by a heavy curtain. The outer room was larger, the inner one smaller, with a fire pit that still had ash in it from the last use. The storm hit fully about fifteen minutes after we got inside.

She leaned against the trunk of a massive oak, her eyes glazed as she watched dust motes dance in the light. "We are not alone." Sloane drew his dagger. The shadows between the trees shifted. From the woods ahead, Balthazar stepped into the clearing. Vane and Kael flanked him. "Seeing you so helpless is good to see." Balthazar's jaundiced eyes scanned the tattered remains of Sloane's shirt greasy stains, charcoal, dried blood. "To think I was replaced by a dog who looks lost searching for a bone." Sloane did not move. He held up his right wrist. The golden Shackle glowed with an angry, rhythmic amber light.

We're not living with other people. When Cyrus heard the word shelter, his eyebrow twitched. A shelter in Volaris City? This was the first time he had heard anyone mention it out loud. On second thought, it was not strange. Every city had contingency plans for floods, wars, and air raids. Shelters always existed. Those so-called hidden organizations probably operated out of places like that. Cyrus asked, "You know where the shelter is?" Jimmy stared at him, eyes wide. "You're asking me? You come all the way here and ask me? Then what the hell are you people doing? Aren't you the ones sent from the shelter to pick us up?"

And he ordered that I go to the shelter with the others. I hesitated, but I knew that it was for the best. And I also knew that we were down a lot of warriors right now. They were hours away and wouldn't get back here in time. So we started getting people to the shelter in the packhouse and I was guiding some to the shelter under the gym at the high school and another one that Jackson put in a couple of years ago under the meeting hall. I was just hoping that there was enough room for all the people that we had here. When I got down to the shelter under the packhouse I locked the door with the keypad and I turned on the vents to make sure that we didn't all suffocate. There were hundreds of