The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave by Jonathan Teague Page A

him. He’d sprinted the entire distance. Scott felt ashamed, believing his actions were indefensible.
    He skidded on a patch of gravel and stopped. The pace he had set over the last mile had left his body numb. He locked his knees and arched his back, interlacing his fingers behind him, extending his arms in a stretch. Queasiness hacked at his insides, and he attempted to throw it off by holding air in his lungs then whooshing it out.
    Scott had stopped in the middle of Smithfield. On his left side stood the tall Protestant church. Much of the glass was original, bubbles rippled the surface of the windows. The creative messages posted on the billboard by the church entertained and, occasionally, inspired him. The current one read, “To be almost saved is to be totally lost.” Clever.
    Next to the church sat a centuries-old cemetery crowded with tombstones, some as much as 300 years old. A sharply pointed wrought-iron fence framed the graveyard. The town had annexed the ancient burial place, did some restoration, and prominently posted a brass plaque on the archway over the entrance. “Our pro-active board has shown great concern in both managing Smithfield Cemetery and planning for its care in perpetuity.”
    Advertising, even in death, was inescapable.
    A rustic breakfast-and-lunch place sat directly across from the church. “Ruth’s Café” had been built in a large Victorian home, its white paint now peeling. Strings of unlit Christmas lights bordered a meticulously painted white billboard in the front, which read “OPEN SUNDAYS!” to attract famished parishioners as they left after long sermons.
    Behind the café, the road curved in a sharp right turn that then ran straight uphill at a steep thirty-five-degree angle to a newer residential neighborhood of about fifty homes—a perfectly bundled small New England town, ready to be scooped into a snow globe.
    Scott was still berating himself over Betty and Wilma. How could I be afraid of two little old ladies? What if they were hurt?
    His rational mind reasserted control. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he’d run away from the chance to help someone. When he’d gotten out of his van to help the stricken man in the parking lot the night before, it was as if a giant hand shoved him back into his car. He’d had the soul-thumping impression he must leave immediately.
    It had bothered him the entire way home. He wouldn’t forgive himself if he abandoned those little old ladies, too. He turned around, preparing his apology for jack-rabbiting away.
    Just as Scott took a skipping start from the Smithfield town center, headlights flared from the neighborhood above, seizing his attention. A Dodge Ram pickup truck exploded into view, rocketing down the steep grade with reckless speed. Scott watched as it approached the tight left-hand turn at the bottom of the hill. Its large tires screeched, somehow holding onto the road and miraculously avoiding the cemetery fence and the crumbling grave markers within.
    The Dodge swerved crazily from one side of the narrow road to the other. Bright beams from the headlights danced erratically around buildings and trees in a strobe-like effect that lengthened, shortened and shifted the shadows around him, revealing the silhouettes of several clustered people walking near the road between Scott and the truck. They walked in exaggerated fits, resembling misshapen marionettes, dancing and bouncing crazily toward him.
    Ear-splitting, mechanical wailing from the truck’s engine jolted him out of his nanoseconds-long reverie. The whine pitched higher as the behemoth hurtled at him. Adrenaline super-charged his senses. Tiny details snapped into focus.
    The truck was painted a dark red that contrasted starkly the bright silver of the chrome grill. Pale hands flickered behind the windshield, spinning the steering wheel to send the truck skidding in a deliberate effort to run him over. The metal-stamped figure of the ram