The Death and Life of Superman (24 page)

One paramedic broke out an oxygen canister while another felt along Superman’s throat. “No discernible pulse.”

The Guardian paused between breaths. “I couldn’t find one, either. But I wasn’t sure if I was looking in the right place . . . his origins
are
of another planet.”

The paramedic with the oxygen moved in quickly, inserting an endotracheal tube through Superman’s mouth and down his throat. One of her partners slipped in to take over the chest compression from the exhausted Inspector Turpin. Another pulled away what was left of the tattered blue and red shirt and attached two round adhesive-backed electrodes to Superman’s chest.

Lois and Jimmy stood close by, helplessly watching with quiet horror as an ominous flat line appeared on the screen of the rescue team’s heart monitor equipment.

Paramedic Mark Spadolini’s voice broke slightly as he radioed their findings to the trauma center at Metropolis General Hospital. “Victim is asystolic. We’re administering epinephrine via the breathing tube. No, we can’t get an IV into him. No, we’ve already wrecked three needles trying. There’s a puncture wound, partially closed, on his lower right side, just below the ribs. Uh-huh. Okay . . . try to find a vein in the wound.”

The monitor was still showing a flat line. Mark shook his head. “We’ll have to try shocking him.”

There was a discernible crackle as voltage was applied to the Man of Steel’s broad chest. But he didn’t even twitch.

Dan Turpin stepped away, a tear welling up in the corner of one eye. He’d seen too many fellow officers cut down in the line of duty. He’d had to deliver the bad news to too many young widows. He’d never gotten used to it. As the big cop turned, he saw a brightly clad figure stumble from an alley and collapse amid the rubble. Turpin rushed up to render assistance. “Hey, are you okay?”

Supergirl rolled onto her back. Her jaw was slack and misshapen, her skin discolored to a sickening lavender. “Superman . . .” Her voice was a thin, reedy whisper. “Where is he? Am I near him?”

“Mother o’ mercy!” From the looks of her, Turpin could hardly believe that she was still alive, let alone able to talk. “Hold on, little lady, I’ll get a medic—!”

“They wouldn’t know where to begin with my Supergirl, Inspector.”

Turpin turned to find himself nearly face-to-face with Lex Luthor II. The LexCorp heir brushed past the old cop, pulling off his jacket and gently wrapping it around the battered young woman. Turpin looked back over his shoulder and saw a limousine with LexCorp vanity plates waiting less than half a block away. The fact that it had gotten through the police lines was proof positive that the name Luthor still carried a lot of power in Metropolis.

Supergirl looked up into her lover’s eyes. “I . . . tried to help Superman . . . but . . . hurt so much . . .”

“Shhh. It’s all right, love.” Luthor gingerly picked her up and headed for the limo. “He’s beyond help now—beyond our reach. But we can help you.”

As the paramedics continued to work on Superman, Lois stood clutching his cape. Her hands had nearly wadded one end of the cloth into a knot. Jimmy watched her worriedly, uncertain of what to do next.

“Lois?”

She turned with a start at the sound of her name. Cat Grant stood less than a yard away. She hadn’t even heard her approach.

Cat reached out to Lois, taking her by the arm and steering her away from Superman’s body. “Lois, are you going to be all right?”

“I don’t know if any of us will ever be all right . . . ever again.”

Cat caught Jimmy’s eye. “Where’s Clark? He should be with her at a time like this.”

“Geez, I don’t know. He was gone all morning, chasing down some story, but I’m surprised he hasn’t shown up here. He must have heard by now. The news has been all over radio and TV.”

Cat nodded. “I can guarantee that!”

“Maybe he couldn’t get through the police lines.”

“I doubt that. Nothing’s ever kept Clark Kent from getting where he wanted to go!” Cat looked around as if expecting to see Kent suddenly materialize. She shook her head. “He must have gotten tied up somewhere.”

“Lois?” Jimmy took her by the arm. “Let’s go inside the
Planet
.”

“No . . . we can’t leave him now . . . not like this . . .”

“Lois, listen to me!” Cat grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’ve got to snap out of it. We can’t do Superman any good by getting in the way of the paramedics. Look, I know he meant a lot to you . . . He meant a lot to all of us. But you’re a reporter—and a darn good one. This story needs to be told . . . by you.” She stared hard at Lois until the other woman blinked.

Lois brought up a hand and kneaded the bridge of her nose. “You—you’re right.”

Cat heaved a sigh of relief. She could see her cameraman waving to her from down the block. “Look, I have to run. Take good care of her, Jimmy.”

“Sure, Cat.” Olsen managed a weak thumbs-up. “We’ll get by . . . somehow.”

“No go.” The weary paramedic shook his head. “We’ve run the voltage off the scale, and we’re still getting no response. I’m beginning to think we’d need to hit him with a bolt of lightning to get a rise out of him.”

“We can’t give up!” The Guardian gripped the man’s shoulder so hard that he flinched. “We mustn’t!”

“H-hey, don’t worry! We never do. Once a resuscitation’s started, we don’t stop until an MD takes over.” Mark waved over one of his partners. “Back that ambulance over here. Metro General’s standing by for us. We’ll pack him and work on him en route.”

Mark looked back at the line on the monitor. It was still flat. “I just wish we could get
some
response. Anything!”

Halfway across the country, Jonathan and Martha Kent held one another as the horrible sights and sounds were played out and replayed on their television. A somber news anchor stared back at them from the screen. “This just handed me . . . Superman has been loaded into an ambulance and is at this moment being moved to Metropolis General Hospital, where GBS correspondent Martin Phelps is standing by. Martin, what’s the situation there at Metro General? Can you tell us what preparations are being made?”

“David, it’s still not clear what measures, if any, can be taken to revive Superman. We’re told that the alien nature of his body precludes normal revival techniques. We do know that Dr. Jorge Sanchez has been called to the hospital and is expected to arrive momentarily. Dr. Sanchez, it should be noted, has treated Superman in the past, the first time over two years ago, when the Man of Steel was shot with a kryptonite bullet by the sociopath Bloodsport. We’ll try to speak with Dr. Sanchez when he arrives.”

“Thank you, Martin. Again, for those of you just joining us, Superman has been loaded into an ambulance and is being moved to Metropolis General Hospital. His condition is unknown. We know that paramedics have been making attempts, heroic attempts, to revive him. There has been one report from the site of Superman’s battle with Doomsday—and again, this is unconfirmed—a report that no brain activity could be detected.”

“Please turn it off, Jonathan.” Martha clamped her eyes shut and hid her face in her hands.

Jonathan angrily snapped the set off, almost wrenching away the switch. “Damned fool doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

They stood for several minutes before Martha broke the silence. “What if they’re right? What if it’s true?”

Jonathan hugged his wife to him. “We keep on praying to the good Lord for our boy, Martha.”

“If only . . . I could . . . have helped him, Lex.”

As his limousine rushed through the darkening city streets, Lex Luthor cradled the battered Supergirl in his arms.

“Love, if I could turn back time, I would have sent you and Team Luthor in to help as soon as we heard about that monster. But who knew—who knew?” Lex stared numbly out the window.
I certainly didn’t— Not until the very end did I have the slightest inkling this could happen.
He had long looked forward to the day when he would successfully engineer the death of Superman. But now that moment had been forever stolen from him.
Unless they manage to revive him . . .

Supergirl began to sob, and Luthor clutched her to him tightly. “I know . . . I know . . . it’s a tragedy. We can’t ever forget what was, but we all must carry on. Show me some spirit, love. We need you—good and whole—now more than ever!” He kissed her mottled cheek. “You must try to pull yourself together now. Take it one step at a time. Use those wondrous shape-shifting powers of yours and mend yourself. You can do it, love! I know you can!”

“It . . . will be . . . painful, Lex . . . but for you, I would move mountains.” Her brow furrowed and her fists tightened. She shook, as if in the throes of a seizure, but the swelling of her face began to subside. Her color noticeably improved, and her jaw appeared to flow back into its normal position.

“Amazing. Simply amazing.” Lex stared at her, enraptured.

“How do I look, Lex?” Her breathing was labored, but she was clearly finding it easier to speak. “Am I . . . presentable?”

Lex ran his fingers through her hair. Once again, it glistened like spun gold. “You’re far more than presentable, love. You’re beautiful . . . my precious, precious gem. Together, you and I are going to make a new future for this city!”

Jimmy Olsen threw a stack of pictures down on Perry White’s desk in disgust. “Here they are, Chief. The photo editor’s still out sick, so I guess it’s up to you to pick the shots that’ll earn me my thirty pieces of silver.”

Perry got up from behind his desk. His hand went reflexively to his vest pocket. It was empty—had been so since he’d given up smoking three months before, but old habits died hard. “Jim, I understand why you’re upset . . .”

“Do you, Chief?” Jimmy looked back out through the managing editor’s open door. The City Room was unnaturally quiet, despite the fact that most of the day staff was still around. Every eye in the room was glued to the television monitors. “Superman—was the greatest. And look at the way the media reacts! The television crowd’s crawling all over themselves, trying to be the first to officially pronounce him dead. You’d think they were happy he died—he probably saved them all from a slow news day.”

Jimmy slumped back against Perry’s filing cabinet. “And they call it ‘journalism.’ It makes me want to puke! We lost a friend today, Mr. White . . . a good friend.”

“That we did, Jimmy. We owe it to him to honor his memory.”

“You know these pictures I took of Superman? When I saw them coming out of the developer, I couldn’t believe that I’d taken them. I wanted to rip them up, destroy the negatives. Using them to sell papers . . . I don’t know . . . it seems like a violation of my friendship with him.”

Perry sorted through the stack of pictures. There was no denying their power. “Olsen, one of these photos will serve to remind this city—no, the world—of the tremendous sacrifice one man made.” He placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Superman’s passing has left a great void in all of us. But we are still journalists. And we’ve still got a paper to publish. Think of what Lois is going through.”

They both looked across the City Room to where Lois Lane sat alone at her desk. She was staring a hole into her desktop monitor, tears sporadically beading up in the corners of her eyes. But her hands moved ceaselessly back and forth across her keyboard, as if trying to purge her system of some unbearable knowledge.

Perry shook his head. “She may have lost more than any of us. There’s been no word from Kent, and the area of town he’d gone to was hit pretty hard by Doomsday. Latest reports have at least a hundred buildings down. Thousands of people are missing, presumably trapped in the rubble. Kent could be one of them.”

Jimmy’s face fell. “Oh, no. He’s got to turn up, Chief. It’s bad enough that Superman died in her arms. What’ll it do to her if she’s lost Mr. Kent, too?”

SECTION TWO
FUNERAL FOR
A FRIEND

11

Ruby Mayer Stood behind
the large front window of her store, staring off down the street. For nearly forty years, she had been running Mayer’s Newsstand & Sundries, at first with her husband and then, after he’d passed on, by herself. Every day, year in and year out, in all kinds of weather, a parade of customers trooped through her door seeking the latest magazines and newspapers, and Ruby always did her best to see that they found what they were looking for. Often, in the evening, they’d linger over a cola or an egg cream at the old soda fountain and talk with her about what sort of day they’d had.