Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set by F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, Jeff Strand, Jack Kilborn, J. A. Konrath, Iain Rob Wright, Jordan Crouch Page A

forward.
    The tunnel ended in the kitchen area of Loaves and Fishes.  He stepped inside.  Heat thickened the air.  All the ovens were going—donated by a retired baker—heating loaves of Carrie’s special bread: multiple grains mixed with high-protein flour, enriched with eggs and gluten.  A meal in itself.  Add a bowl of Carrie’s soup and you had a feast.
    Dan sniffed the air as he headed for the huge stove and the cluster of aproned volunteers stirring the brimming pots.
    “Smells great.  What’s the soup du jour ?”
    “Split pea,” Augusta said.
    “Split pea?  I ordered boeuf bourguignon !”
    A slim brunette at the center of the cluster turned and gave him a withering, scornful stare.
    “Don’t you be starting that again,” she said, pointing a dripping spoon at him. 
    “Oh, that’s right,” he said.  “I forgot.  This is a vegetarian soup kitchen.”
    The volunteers glanced over their shoulders and giggled.  This argument had become a litany, recited almost daily.
    “Hush up or we’ll be making a beef stew of you! ”
    Now they were laughing aloud.  The brunette tried to hold her scowl but finally a smile broke through and its brilliance  lit the room.
    “Good morning, Sister,” Dan said.
    “Good morning, Father,” she replied.
    Sister Carolyn Ferris fixed him a moment with her wide, guileless blue eyes.  Her normally pale cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove.  The rising steam had curled her straight dark hair, cut in a bob, into loose ringlets around her face. 
    She was in her late twenties, dressed in the shapeless, oversized work shirt and baggy pants she favored when working at the shelter.  Her lips were on the thin side, and her teeth probably could have done with a little orthodontic work in her teens, but she’d joined the convent at fourteen so they remained au naturel .  The way her smile lit up her face erased all memory of those minor imperfections.
    As often as he’d seen it, Dan never tired of that smile.  He’d enjoyed it in all its permutations, and sometimes he’d catch a hint of sadness there, a deeply hidden hurt that clouded her eyes in unguarded moments.  But only for a moment. 
    Sister Carrie was the sun and the Lower East Side her world; she shone on it daily.
    But for all her gentle, giving, girlish exterior, she was tough inside.  Especially when it came to her beliefs, whether religious or dietary.  No meat was served at the shelter—”We won’t be killing one of God’s creatures to feed another, at least not as long as I’m in the kitchen”—which was just as well because the food dollars stretched considerably further with the Sister Carrie menu. 
    And Dan, who’d always been pretty much of a beer-and-a-burger man himself, had to admit that he’d got out of the meat habit under her tutelage and no longer missed it.  At least not too much.
    “Sorry I’m late.  What needs to be done?”
    “Our guests should be getting low on bread by now.”
    She always called them “our guests,” and Dan never failed to be charmed by it.
    “Consider it done.”
    She smiled that smile and turned back to the stove.  Shaking off the lingering after effect, Dan gathered up half a dozen loaves and carried them out to the shelter area.
    A different mix of odors greeted him in the Big Room.  Split-pea and fresh-bread aromas layered the air, spiced with the sting of cigarette smoke and the pungency of unwashed bodies swathed in unwashed clothes.
    Dan squeezed past Hilda Larsen’s doubly ample middle-aged rump and dumped the loaves onto one of the long tables lined up against the inner wall that made up the serving area. 
    “Good afternoon, Father,” she said, smiling as she stirred the soup with her long, curved ladle.
    “Hello, Hilda.  You look ravishing as usual today.”
    She blushed. “Oh, Father Dan.”
    Thank God for volunteers like Hilda, Dan thought as he picked up the bread knife and began cutting the loaves into inch-thick