The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (2 page)

He was being herded to the end of the alleyway.

As he neared the exit, someone ahead of him hit something with a pipe, too. Santa was trapped. The noises behind him stopped. He froze and bunched up his shoulders, expecting a blow to his skull or the stab of a knife.

“We’ve got you.” the man behind him chuckled.

Santa couldn’t stand having his back to the man who had been herding him to the end of the alleyway. Just as he looked behind him, a powerful hand reached into the alley, snatching him off his feet. He started to scream but gurgled to silence when a thickly muscled arm hooked around his throat, and right next to his ear someone said, “Shhh”.

CHAPTER 2

D
EADLAND

T
om Park saw the three men forming an ambush when he stopped his Escalade at the intersection near Santa. They lacked a soldier’s skill at concealment, but they were more than a match for Santa. He clenched his jaw. Those who preyed on the weak enraged him.

He had been born in Korea and raised in Australia before emigrating to the U.S. as a teenager. Tom had dealt with bigotry and harassment his entire life. Kids could be cruel. White kids called him “canardly”, from “can hardly see”—a racial slur mocking the epicanthic fold that shaped Asian eyes. Even people of his own race referred to him as a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

The persecution didn’t stop at name calling. Kids tripped him, shoved him into walls and smacked the back of his head as they walked by him. The bullies pushed until Tom fought back—exactly what they were waiting for. Their abuse escalated to broken bones and concussions. By the time Tom was in grade five, he’d suffered three rib fractures.

Rather than defeating him, the beatings hardened him, made him more determined. That force of will and his burgeoning height later made him unstoppable in a fight and he kept his hatred for boys who tormented others.

Whenever he started a new year of school, the first thing on his checklist was beating down the largest kid he could find. After he (barely) graduated from high school, his favorite Friday night activity became looking for a big man’s skull to crack.

On a particularly bad rampage, Tom had sent two men to the hospital. One of them was a well-meaning bystander who intervened after an out-of-control Tom had battered the other one senseless and kept on punching. That bystander probably kept Tom from killing the first man, which would have sent Tom to state prison for at least three years. For the bystander’s trouble, Tom beat him into a coma that lasted more than a week.

Stricken with guilt, Tom visited the hospital every day, begging God to help both of the men he had attacked and promising to be a better person. He joined the Marine Corps with his head straight, and he pledged to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

His experience in the Corps brought out the best in him, forged him into a leader of warriors with self-discipline who honored the Marine Corps motto “Semper Fi”—”always faithful”.

Sitting in his idling SUV, Tom suppressed his urge to climb out and put an end to the men who were readying to attack the defenseless Salvation Army volunteer. The part of him that still hungered to inflict pain egged him on. In his youth, he would have given in to his fury. As a seasoned veteran of life and war, he had mastered that part of himself. He didn’t need to physically break these people to win. Besides, it was a huge day for his son and he was already running late.

He warned Santa to get out, watched him pack up, and then pointed his Escalade to the Interstate and drove away.

It only took two blocks for an insistent voice in Tom’s mind to make him go back, telling him that Santa wouldn’t make it away from the men closing in on him. Tom knew exactly where the attack would come.

Tom parked his SUV a block from the alleyway. When he opened the door, hot air rushed into his air-conditioned vehicle and gobbled up its coolness.

He glided across the pavement to duck behind a maroon Honda CRV. It was in rough shape. Strands of metal showed through threadbare tires. The badly battered doors were open, and the Honda discharged the stink of stale tobacco in heavy waves. Tom deduced that he’d taken cover by the vehicle of the men about to assault the man in the Santa suit. They’d left the doors open when they got out to prevent Santa from hearing them slam shut. Based on the condition of the doors, the possibility of closing them quietly defied imagination.

Glancing carefully past the front bumper, Tom saw a Neanderthal-like man sheathed in fat rather than muscle. Coarse black hair plastered his head, trailing off into shaggy scruff that covered most of his face. Dark, unintelligent eyes glared from underneath thick occipital ridges. Impatiently waiting for Santa’s head to come into view, he leaned forward, squinting into shadows.

The thug clutched a metal pipe in his doughy right hand. Bits of bone and blood dripped from the end of the metal. It had been used recently, and it was about to be put to work again.

In quick, silent strides, Tom was an arm’s length away from the killer still conveniently bent into the alleyway, off balance with his back exposed. Tom snatched the metal weapon from the caveman’s hand and cracked the back of his skull before he could turn around. His cranium was so dense that the pipe did little more than bruise. However, momentum carried him to the ground where four more strikes from the bar came with the power and accuracy to break his skull.

Tom threw the bar aside, grabbed the man by his thick ankles, and dragged him out of the alley. Out of sight, he dropped his burden with disgust. Less out of anger than caution, he raised his size-twelve booted foot and stomped squarely on the bridge of the goliath’s bulbous nose, pulverizing bone and cartilage. No one could play possum with that kind of damage. The bloodied man at his feet didn’t even twitch.

Tom heard Santa’s panicked breaths getting closer and, wanting to lure the other attacker, shot his arm out and pulled the terrified man around the corner into the bright sunlight.

When Tom loosened his arm around his neck, Santa seemed surprised to be staring into the eyes of the Korean driver who had warned him to get away.

With a stern glare, Tom tapped his finger against his lips in a command to be silent. They both listened for the other attacker.

After a moment, Tom again grabbed the bloodied body of the Neanderthal and dragged him just into view. He stared directly into the shadowy street and barked in an unmistakable Aussie accent, “You’re deep in the cactus, mate. I’ll give you one chance to show yourself before I pull you out and rip you to pieces.” Then, to emphasize his point, he delivered a vicious kick to the inert body at his feet.

A man with a sweat-beaded, bluish-skinned face emerged from behind a parked van. His snaggletoothed mouth and bulging eyes stood out against his pallid skin. He moved in a skittering, hesitant way as he stepped into the street. He extended a tremulous arm, pointing a large kitchen knife at Tom, and taunted in a hoarse, whispery voice, “I’ve stabbed this into more people than you can count. This is going to be very painful.”

It did hurt. When the man lunged with his knife, Tom glided out of the way, caught the attacker’s wrist and yanked it across in front of the man’s body. Driving his palm into the back of the now-extended elbow, he broke the radius and ulna.

The man stared dumbly at his crooked arm while his brain processed what had happened. Shock didn’t stifle the agony of shattered bone and a dislocated elbow. He gave a miserable screech that trailed off into a whimper. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could utter the first syllable, Tom’s fist blurred through the air, smashing through soft lip-tissue and fracturing teeth.

Spitting out blood and three of his front teeth, the would-be attacker staggered back into the alleyway and shouted a parting threat. “You are going to pay. I promise you.”

Tom’s expression was blank, as though he had done nothing more than cross the street, in spite of the abrasions across his calloused knuckles and the broken teeth lying on the ground.

Santa leaned against the wall, knees wobbling in aftershock. Tom put his hand on Santa’s shoulder to steady him. After Santa nodded, Tom returned to the Neanderthal lying in the street and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery. “He’s a goner.”

His knees cracked when he stood up. Though he felt no need to justify his actions, he wanted the man in the Santa costume to understand how dangerous the situation was, hoping it might do some good in the future. “I didn’t mean to kill this bugger, but I’m not sorry. He was a killer and I learned the hard way you need to put a dangerous man down quickly, with as much violence as necessary.”

Santa pointed to the shadowed corner in the alleyway. “There’s a woman down there. I think she’s probably dead.”

Tom strode toward the woman lying in the cluster of stinking garbage bags. He didn’t need to check for a pulse. If her heart had been beating, the punctures in her chest would still be bleeding. “She’s long gone, I’m afraid.”

He scooped up the red bucket lying near the girl and turned back to Santa. “You need to bail. I can’t stick around and it’s not safe here. There were three of them, and the third is either still waiting or gone to get more people. Let’s get you to your car. Where is it?”

Santa kept staring at the dead man on the ground, stunned. Tom sympathized; it was rare for a civilian to witness a violent killing. However, he felt no regret over the death of a man who had tortured and killed a woman. He snapped his fingers and said with more command, “Hey, get past it. Let’s go! Where’s your car?”

They hurried the remaining distance to the car. Santa had been prodded crisply and often by his rescuer-turned-drill sergeant. When they reached his car, he overcame his shock enough to stammer a fervent thanks.

Tom handed the red bucket to Santa. His tan face relaxed from the stone-cold expression of a soldier into a beaming smile. “Merry Christmas!” he said, slid a $100 bill from his wallet, folded it, and deposited it in the donation bucket. He clapped Santa on the shoulder—”Sorry, mate. Gotta run”—and sprinted away, vanishing around a corner.

CHAPTER 3

L
OLLING
H
EAD

S
anta sat shaking in his car. It had only been fifteen minutes since he’d first entered the alley. He struggled to wrap his mind around what he’d just experienced. He’d never seen anyone die before, and now he had seen two deaths, and almost witnessed an actual killing. Images of the lifeless woman flashed through his mind.

He added the $100 bill to the pitifully few coins inside the donation bucket. He believed he’d been a force behind the turnaround in Riverton and a conduit for the people of the town to help families in sore need But what good was the money he’d collected over the years if he couldn’t save a girl from being attacked and killed so boldly in the middle of the day, only a few blocks away from him?

Because of his bell ringing, his raspy singing or being lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t heard the slightest thing. She was dead and he lived. He’d failed her. The sour taste in his mouth from vomiting in the alley grew worse. His skin grew clammy and a shudder from his stomach pushed what little it had left into his throat. He tilted halfway out of the car to retch a concoction of saliva and stomach bile onto the ground. He wiped at a foul trail of drool, unintentionally rubbing it into his beard.

Despite the big Korean’s warning, he needed to see the alley one more time, to hammer into his brain that this had actually happened, that violence was part of the new reality of living in a time and place where neither nature nor humanity could be counted on.

He drove to the entrance of the alley, stopping short of running over the man that his rescuer had killed. The man’s legs were twitching, jerking his feet wildly on the pavement, as though he was thrashing in pain but at super-speed. What if he’d been faking? Could he have fooled the big Korean? And if
he
could have, maybe the woman was still alive as well! Shaking off the temptation to drive away, making it someone else’s concern, he grabbed his phone and dashed to the side of the injured man.

Before he could get close enough to check on him, all of the Neanderthal’s limbs jerked uncontrollably. His abdomen contracted, curling his body into a tight ball. Then his back arched, splaying his arms wide. His meaty hands clutched at air.

Santa backed away and dialed 911. “There is an injured man here at the corner of Main Street and the alley between Fourth and Fifth Avenue. Please hurry.”

“What is your callback number?”

“It’s my cell phone. The area code is…”

Movement in his peripheral vision made him look up. The woman by the garbage bags had propped her naked body against the grimy brick wall. Her arms were trembling, and her head shook back and forth as though she were trying to remember what had happened.

Shocked to see her alive, he choked on his saliva. He coughed out to the emergency operator, “She’s alive. She’s hurt. Hurry,” hung up, and rushed to the poor woman, kneeling as he put his arm around her bare shoulders. “It’s OK, dear girl. I’m here to help.”

She turned her ashen-grey face to his. Her eyes were flat and unfocused; her lips quivered as if trying to say something. He leaned in to hear what she wanted. With impossible strength, she gripped his head and pulled him closer.

CHAPTER 4

S
HADOWS
F
ALLING

T
hat fall, the temperature topped 109 degrees Fahrenheit, enough for asphalt to soften. Indentations and gouge marks blotched thousands of miles of roads across New York.

Data poured in and scientists posited a theory to explain the aberrant weather. The Chandler wobble of the planet’s axis had significantly increased and created more variation in its latitude. The change was too drastic for global warming to be the cause. Pseudoscientists and conspiracy theorists claimed governments and big corporations were using secret mining technology to plunder precious minerals deep in the Earth’s crust.