The pantry wasn’t much to write home about. It was never stocked to overflowing, but it never went empty, either. Someone in some big church far away saw to it that the little outposts and Homes and sanctuaries like these were kept in the bare essentials of food and medicine. It wasn’t a lot—any fool could see this was no prosperous private hospital or sanatorium for rich people—but it was enough to make Rector understand why so many folks took up places in the church, regardless. Daily bread was daily bread, and hardly anybody leftover from the city that used to be Seattle had enough to go around.

“They owe me,” he murmured as he scanned the pantry’s contents.

They owed him that loaf of bread wrapped in a dish towel. It hadn’t even hardened into a stone-crusted brick yet, so this was a lucky find indeed. They owed him a bag of raisins, too, and jar of pickles, and some oatmeal. They might’ve owed him more, but a half-heard noise from upstairs startled Rector into cutting short his plunder.

Were those footsteps? Or merely the ordinary creaks and groans of the rickety wood building? Rector blew out the candle, closed his eyes, and prayed that it was only a small earthquake shaking the Sound.

But nothing moved, and whatever he’d heard upstairs went silent as well, so it didn’t matter much what it’d been. Some niggling accusation in the back of his drug-singed mind suggested that he was dawdling, wasting time, delaying the inevitable; he argued back that he was scavenging in one of the choicest spots in the Outskirts, and not merely standing stock-still in front of an open pantry, wondering where the nuns kept the sugar locked up.

Sugar could be traded for some serious sap. It was more valuable than tobacco, even, and the gluttonous, sick part of his brain that always wanted more gave a little shudder of joy at the prospect of presenting such an item to his favorite chemist.

He remained frozen a moment more, suspended between his greed and his fear.

The fear won, but not by much.

Rector retied his blanket-bag and was pleased to note that it was now considerably heavier. He didn’t feel wealthy by any means, but he no longer felt empty-handed.

Leaving the kitchen and passing through the dining area, he kept his eyes peeled against the Home’s gloomy interior and scanned the walls for more candle stubs. Three more had been left behind, so into his bag they went. To his delight, he also found a second box of matches. He felt his way back to the kitchen, and onward to the rear door. Then with a fumbled turning of the lock and a nervous heave, he stumbled into the open air behind the Home.