The Death and Life of Superman (18 page)

“Well, if you ask me . . .” Ralph Greenwood let the thought trail off. “What the hell is that?!”

Below, the surface of the bay began to swirl and churn. And then Doomsday erupted from the waters.

“Holy—! That’s our target down there, Ralph! Launch the Hellfires.”

But as the missile-launch cycle was triggered, Doomsday’s leap carried him straight up through the helicopter. The Apache lurched sickeningly to one side, sending the two army airmen tumbling helplessly Earthward. In a blur of motion, Superman suddenly dropped down over the bay, plucking the wayward Hellfire missile from the air and turning it back on course toward the soaring Doomsday. The Man of Steel then executed a perfect 180-degree turn and swooped beneath the falling airmen, gently slowing their falls.

The missile locked on to its intended target and shot across the sky. Some three miles away, its smart warhead hit its mark fair and true. The explosion caught Doomsday unawares, flinging him far from the bay.

In the Kirby County village of Griffith, Chief Ray Newton shook his head as he hung up the phone. “Turn on the TV, Rusty,” he called out to his deputy. “CNN. Lowell said a bunch of folk, including some of the Justice League, are being rushed to the hospital over in Ohio. Way he put it, sounded as though some kinda monster tore up a chunk of the Midwest and headed east.”

“Should I crank up the civil defense siren, Chief?”

Ray sighed. Rusty meant well, but he’d seen too many Saturday matinees in his youth. “I’m sure we’ll get a warning, if this whatever-it-is gets anywheres close—”

“Say, you hear that?”

Ray usually hated to have Rusty interrupt him, but there was something in the air. “What is that? Some sort of . . . whistle?”

“Yeah. Kind of a cartoony sound. You know, like a falling bomb makes just before it goes kerblooey!”

The building was suddenly rocked by a thundering crash.

“Mother of pearl! We
are
bein’ bombed!” Rusty grabbed at his holster, fumbling to pull out his side arm on the run.

Ray jumped up from his desk, bolting after his eager deputy. “Rusty, don’t go running off half-cocked.”
Durn fool’s likely to shoot himself if he isn’t careful.
But the next moment, Ray came to a halt on the doorstep of the village police station, just half a step behind his deputy.

Not more than five feet away, Doomsday arose from the ruin of their police cruiser.

“Uh, Chief?” Rusty’s voice had become a squeak. “I think I’m gonna need a bigger gun.”

A low growl came from the monster before them. Ray and Rusty each took a step backward. Then there came another whistling rush of wind. Three heads turned upward to see Superman dropping toward Doomsday feetfirst.

The pavement cracked and buckled as Superman drove Doomsday beneath the village street. Superman looked up at the two policemen.

“Get back! He’s too—”

Before Superman could finish his warning, Doomsday’s fist shot up from underground. The Man of Steel was thrown half a block away and landed hard, plowing up several yards of Main Street on impact.

And then Doomsday was on top of him, one huge hand encircling his throat.

Ray Newton was already back inside his office, cursing into his telephone. “Look, Mr. Vice-Lieutenant Governor, I’m telling you this is going to be more than ‘just’ a local emergency, if’n you don’t get the blasted National Guard down here ASAP!”

There was a loud thud outside, and the building shook anew. A huge crack appeared in the far wall of the station. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” Ray grabbed the phone and pulled it under his desk as Superman and Doomsday came tumbling through the station in a shower of plaster lath and masonry.

“Mother o’ mercy! You hear that, you tin-horn bureaucrat? This county’s in the process of losin’ its one and only police station!”

Aware of the chief’s danger, Superman feinted back and then drove into Doomsday with a double uppercut which knocked him back out of the building.

Out on the village streets, sirens were sounding and people were running for their lives. Overhead, the familiar whir of rotor blades heralded the arrival of another army helicopter.

“This is Blue Leader. Target sighted and we’re ready for a run. Over.”

“Blue Leader, approach with extreme caution. We’ve already lost one chopper to this thing. Over.”

“We hear ya, Control.”

The Apache cut loose with its guns, peppering Doomsday with high-caliber shells. Annoyed, the creature tore a lamppost from the pavement and rammed one end of it into the fuselage of the hovering copter.

“We’ve been hit!”

“No . . . we’ve been speared!”

Doomsday swung the Apache around wildly, using his end of the lamppost as a huge handle. Then he let go, and the craft veered drunkenly toward Griffith’s town hall.

“Backup systems are down! No time to bail! Mayday! Mayday!”

Moments from impact, two powerful hands suddenly ripped through the cockpit, grabbing the airmen and pulling them from the helicopter.

“Wha—? Who?”

“Relax, soldier. You and your copilot are going to be okay . . . though I’m afraid the town hall won’t be open for business anytime soon.” Superman set them down on the outskirts of town. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I can see a dozen people trapped inside that building who need my help, and I don’t have much time! If anyone comes by, warn them to stay off the streets!”

In his chambers within the Cadmus Project, Jim Harper pulled off his radio headset and frowned. For much of the morning, the special bands set aside for federal and defense department transmissions had been humming with scrambled emergency messages. A whole chain of incidents—some verified, others not—had been reported, starting in the Midwest and snaking their way east. If the reports were to be believed, there was some sort of monster on the loose in the northern part of Kirby County, less than fifty miles from the Project. And according to the latest communiqués, Superman himself was being hard-pressed to stop the creature from leveling the village of Griffith.

Harper punched up a code on his comlink. “Fitzsimmons? I’m going out. You’re in charge until I return. If the directors need to know where I’ve gone, it’s all on the board.”

Jim Harper fitted his golden helmet and headed for the motor pool. If Superman needed help, the Guardian would be there.

Maxima had been flying for over an hour, searching for the monster who had injured and humiliated her teammates, when she saw the smoke rising from the horizon. As she descended from the skies over Griffith, she saw Doomsday stride through the burning rubble, roaring his awful laugh to the heavens.

Revel in the destruction while you can, warrior.
She could not be certain of his motives, but if it was battle that he craved, Maxima would be pleased to oblige! Silently, she landed behind the seven-foot-tall behemoth and arrogantly tapped him on the shoulder. When Doomsday turned at her touch, Maxima struck him with all the physical might at her command, knocking the creature half the length of the town’s deserted Main Street.

The security guard at Metropolis’s Galaxy Communications Building was giving Lois Lane a hard time. “You can’t just barge in there like that, lady!” Specifically, he was blocking her entrance into Studio B.

“You don’t understand, this is an emergency!”

The guard crossed his arms. “Look, lady, that red light over the door means they’re taping. The mikes are live and the cameras are rolling,
capice
? You can’t go in.”

Lois silently counted to ten. “Can you at least tell me how I can get a message to someone in there?”

“Lois? What are you doing here?”

She turned. “Cat Grant! Thank God, a familiar face. Look, Jimmy Olsen’s somewhere behind that door, and I need to get to him. He has an assignment.”

Cat stared soulfully at the guard, and he shifted uneasily from one foot to another.

He coughed, and his voice grew plaintive. “They’re taping that Turtle Boy show in there, Ms. Grant. I got my orders.”

“Cat, Jimmy could lose his job at the
Planet.”
Lois was pulling out all the stops.

Cat gave the guard a sweet smile. “I’ll take the responsibility, Gus. Everything will be fine.” His resolve gone, the guard stepped aside, and Cat gestured for Lois to follow her.

“Just keep your voice down, Lois.” Cat dropped her own cheery tone to the barest whisper. “This has to do with Superman, doesn’t it? And all that destruction upstate?”

“How do you know about that?”

“This is television, darling! We know about everything—as it happens! Oh, good, it looks like they’re between takes. Good heavens, is that really Jimmy under all that makeup?”

At the far end of the studio, James Bartholomew Olsen stood atop a riser, his hair moussed into a strange variation of the classic ducktail. Two bulging prosthetic appliances were spirit-gummed over his eyes. He was wearing a green scaled skinsuit with red trunks and an ersatz tortoise-shell strapped to his back.

Lois gaped, her emergency momentarily forgotten. “How can he see through those things?”

It was all Cat could do to keep from cracking up. “Yoo-hoo!” She waved, wiggling her fingers in the air to get his attention. “Oh, Turtle Boy!”

Jim looked up past the camera, shielding his “eyes” to see past the lights. “Cat? Lois?”

“Jimmy Olsen, the Chief will have your hide! Your lunch hour isn’t three hours long, you know!”

Jim looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Sorry, Lois, but the taping ran longer than I thought. This
is
my first TV show. What’s up?”

“Perry wants us to cover this ‘Doomsday’ incident. They’re holding a chopper for us at the heliport!”

Jimmy turned to the director. “I’m sorry, but I’ve really got to go.”

All the color drained from the director’s face. “But we still have another setup to finish!”

Lois stepped between them. “I’m sorry, too, but he does have other commitments. It’s your call, Jimmy, what’ll it be? This . . . or your day job?”

“Sorry, Dave.” Jimmy handed his false eyes to a makeup man and began loosening the straps of his tortoiseshell costume.

Cat tried unsuccessfully to suppress a giggle. “Come on, you two! I know a shortcut out of here.” She led Lois and Jimmy through a maze of zigzagging corridors.

I hope she knows where she’s going,
thought Lois.
I’m completely turned around.

As they passed through the network’s master control, Cat called out to one of the men seated at the panel. “Hi, Leon, what’s happening?”

Leon shrugged. “Just got a call from News. Gotta interrupt
The Brave and the Bold
for an alert.” He shuddered. “The soap fans are gonna hate that. Glad I don’t have to answer the phones.” On one of the monitors a blank-faced man could be seen adjusting his toupee. Leon hit a switch, and the man seemed to come alive.

“This is a GBS Newsbreak. I’m Steve Lombard. The destructive force known as ‘Doomsday’ has left approximately thirty people dead in its wake, and hundreds more have been injured, including members of the famed Justice League. Doomsday’s path of destruction has cut across Ohio and through Pennsylvania, and authorities fear what will happen if it should reach the large urban areas of the Eastern Seaboard.”

In a penthouse office atop the LexCorp Tower, Supergirl stared intently at a wall of television screens where multiple Steve Lombards delivered the news in unison. “Reports at this hour place the monster in upstate Kirby County, only a hundred miles from Metropolis. More after this.”

Supergirl looked away as the Lombardses were replaced by multiple cherubs touting hamburgers.

“Lex, I should go. Maybe I can lend a hand.”

Lex Luthor caressed her hand and kissed it gently. “I don’t think that would be wise, love. I need my Supergirl here with me. We need a contingency plan in case this menace does make his way to Metropolis.”

“I guess you’re right.” She bit her lip.

“Of course I am. You’ll see.”

On the edge of the village of Griffith in the parking lot of a small supermarket, Maxima was breathing heavily. “By the House of Almerac, you still stand?” The beating she had given the monster would have killed a dozen warriors, but Doomsday was not even showing a bruise.

“You
will
bow down before me, creature!”

Just then Doomsday lunged at Maxima, but she ducked beneath him and rose to deliver a powerful blow to his lower abdomen. The low blow lifted the creature up and back through the plate glass window of the tiny local supermarket. Aisles of canned goods went flying as a handful of terrified shoppers scrambled for the exits.

With a rush of wind, Superman touched down beside Maxima. “Maxima? What on Earth are you doing? There’re bound to be people in that store.”

“There are always innocent victims in battle. I resent your tone.” Maxima started to elbow him aside, but Superman caught hold of her arm and held it.

“Just think before you swing, okay, princess? We don’t have time to argue.”

Doomsday had already regained his footing. With a low, feral growl, he charged from the store like an express train, barreling into both of them. Superman flipped about in the air, landing on Doomsday’s back and getting him in a throat lock.