Smallville, Kansas, Autumn 1935
With her super-hearing, Clara heard her father getting out of bed and going downstairs. She turned down the radio and returned to her books. Her father came into the kitchen looking tired.
"Can't you sleep, Bunny?"
"No, Pa."
Joe Kent sat down heavily across from her.
"Well, that makes two of us. Do you mind if I join you?"
"No, not at all..."
Joe turned up the radio again.
"I thought the sound of the radio bothered you, Pa…"
"No, don't worry, Bunny. I just can't sleep."
"Why, Pa? Are you all right?"
"Yes, don't worry."
Clara used her X-ray vision, which she barely knew how to control and which still confused her so much. Her father's heart was weak and labored, worse than most hearts she knew. A pang of pain squeezed her own heart, and tears flooded her eyes.
"What is it, Bunny?"
"Why don't you go see a doctor?"
"I already did. It's fine, don't worry."
"No, it's not fine. I know it's not."
"I just have to be more careful, that's all."
"Why don't you... go to a sanatorium? Fred Danvers's father spent two months there and recovered... I can take care of everything... and Mom. You know I can take care of what's left of the crop and the housework really quickly, and Mom can take care of the sales."
Joe smiled.
"I don't think so. I'd rather not leave you two alone. What you need to do is study and finish high school. As far as I know, you still want to be a teacher."
"But it's not hard for me. I can do both. You should rest."
"Clara, we don't have money for a sanatorium, and it wouldn't change anything. It's not about rest; it's about taking care of myself. Doing nothing in a sanatorium would make me nervous, and that would be worse."
"We have the money from my college savings."
"No way. Your college money is your college money, and nothing else."
Noticing his daughter's tears falling beneath her glasses, Joe reached over, hugged her from behind, and kissed her on the cheek.
"What are you drawing?"
"A map of Ethiopia."
"This war is a bad business. We'll see horrible things closer to home soon."
"I want to go there and help when the war is over."
"You don't have to go that far to help others, Bunny."
27 May 1949, Metropolis Bay, 17.30
With a precise punch to the monster's skull, Superwoman sent the creature flying several thousand feet through the air. At super speed, she reached it again and struck it a second time. The blow hurt her, and she felt her shoulder go numb, but the creature flew another three hundred feet and fell into the sea. With her X-ray vision, she could see it sinking like a stone deep underwater. The creature could not swim, but it seemed to leap along the seabed, approaching the city. Her heart was pounding. She felt intense pain in her chest and stomach... What the hell was that creature? Where was that damned Luthor? Fear and apprehension gripped her. Louis, oh Louis!
The Woman of Steel returned to the devastated remains of Meredith Island, now enveloped in smoke, flames, and rubble. With every fiber of her being, she focused on Louis's heartbeat. It was still beating at a normal rhythm. He was close. She began clearing the debris at super speed. In the distance, she could hear the creature still moving underwater, jumping, sometimes becoming tangled in fishing nets or sinking into the silt on the bottom, but she had little time. Soon it would be back on Meredith Island… or worse, approaching the city.
Superwoman returned to the ruins where Luthor's experimental chamber had been. Where the dome had stood, there was now a gaping hole open to the sky. She began to cough heavily. Among the debris were lead plates, which were thirty times more toxic to her than to a human, and alloys of earthly metals mixed with kryptonite. She felt feverish and exhausted as she coughed. To her, exposure to kryptonite for more than five minutes was like a human playing barehanded with enriched uranium. In a fit of rage, he punched the debris and metal plates into the air.
The pipes had burst; water was trickling down a darkened hallway that descended into the basement. Louis's heartbeat sounded closer, and the interference was weaker. She ran at super speed through the flooded, debris-filled corridors, clearing them as she went. Finally, Louis's heartbeat sounded very close.
"Louis! Louis, my love! It's Clara! Where are you?" she cried.
She repeated the cry several times.
Help me! I'm here! I'm okay! Come closer!
Louis had heard her. He seemed to be right. Clara began to sob.
"Keep shouting! I can hear you!"
Superwoman immediately realized where Louis was. She anxiously kicked down a metal door and found herself in a nearly collapsed room, filled with debris and flooded up to her knees. There he was, in a corner, safe from the collapsed ceiling, chained to a pipe and submerged up to his chest in water.
Clara rushed to Louis and kissed him passionately as she checked him over to make sure he was not hurt.
"Are you all right? You're not hurt… Did they do anything to you?"
Louis looked confused and exhausted, but he kissed her back.
"I'm fine, Superwoman... Clara... I'm fine… What the hell is going on?"
Clara gently tore away the steel handcuffs that held Louis to the pipe.
"It's Luthor... And a mutated creature from my world. What did he tell you?"
"I saw him. I saw that thing. Luthor said it would be your doomsday."
A tear, born of exhaustion or anguish, ran down Clara's reddened cheek. Louis hugged her tightly.
"Have you finished with this creature?"
"No, and it's too close. I have to get you out of here."
Clara covered Louis with her bright red cape and carried him at super speed through the flooded corridors she had already cleared of debris. She flew through the large hole that had been Luthor's experimental dome, and soon they were a thousand feet above Meredith Island.
Clara kissed Louis again, holding him with passion and fear, careful not to hurt him.
"Louis, I have to take you back to the city. Please take your daughter and stay away from the bridges and the docks… I will try to contain and destroy this creature. Don't cross any bridges. If you can, get to Oyster Bay… Warn anyone you can: everyone at the Daily Planet, my neighbors... If you can get Krypto, he's at my house, my neighbor will open the door for you. You need to get away from…"
"Clara, calm down."
"Louis, I don't know what it is or if I can handle it. You have to get away. You have to get out of town. You have to warn everyone…"
They flew over the skyscrapers to Louis's balcony, where they descended carefully.
Louis looked at her closely. He had not noticed before, but Clara's face and hands were covered with bruises, and her supersuit and cape were scratched and torn. There were bloodstains on them.
"Clara... Are you okay?"
Superwoman floated closer and kissed him again as she hugged him.
"Please listen to me... I must go."
Louis caressed her.
"Louis, are you angry?"
"Please forget it. It doesn't matter anymore..."
"I love you."
"I adore you, Clara. I adore you."
Clara stifled a sob and kissed Louis again.
"Louis... Forgive me... Everything is explained... No matter what happens... I love you. You are my world. You have made me so happy all these years... Neither of us has had an easy situation. I adore you, you and Emily... I will always love you, always, no matter what... Please don't forget that... No matter what happens."
"I adore you, Clara. I…"
With her super-hearing, Superwoman heard that the creature had finally managed to leap out of the water, although it had fallen back in again. It was only a few hundred feet away from jumping onto Meredith Island.
"Louis, I need to go... If anything happens to me, there is a series of letters in the third drawer of my desk at the office. I have written them to you over the years... Too many things to say and explain. I love you. Please don't forget that."
Before Louis, soaked and covered in dust and debris, could say anything, Superwoman took off at super speed. He saw only a red-and-blue blur streaking out toward the sea.
***
Barry Allen was having lunch in his small apartment in Chicago. A few minutes earlier, he had been rescuing people in Canada, and only seconds before that, he had been in his office. He was gorging himself on Coca-Cola, sausages, and buns... Clara Kent, also known as Superwoman, was always telling him that he had a disgusting diet.
The phone rang.
"Mr. Allen, you have an urgent conference call from Magallanes, Chile. Will you accept it?"
"Is it a collect call?"
"No, the charges will be billed to the caller."
Oh, Chile. It must be Bruce.
"Yes, please, put it through."
The operator connected him, and after a couple of seconds he heard a familiar voice.
"Barry! Where have you been? I've called you a dozen times at home and at work!"
"Hello to you too, Bruce. Well, I was in Canada, and Texas, and, well... moving around, doing my job... I don't have super-hearing. I'm not Superwoman. Have you been able to reach Arturo Curry?"
"Yes, I have spoken to him... Listen to me, that doesn't matter right now."
"Why? Is something wrong? Do you want me to call Clara?"
"Barry... There's something in Metropolis. I just got a phone call from Alfred... A creature, some kind of monster, is in the harbor. Superwoman is fighting it. You must go to Metropolis."
"A monster?"
"Yes, Barry, a monster."
"But is it a sea monster? Maybe Arturo Curry can help us."
"I don't know whether it's a sea monster or what it is, Barry. Just get over there. Clara needs you... Arturo Curry won't help us. I had a very unpleasant exchange with him. He hates Kryptonians for what they did to his Atlantean ancestors, and he has no intention of leaving Chile. He would never team up with Superwoman. I'll try to convince him again. We must forget about him for the moment."
"Okay, I'm on my way to Metropolis." Before Bruce could say anything else, Barry Allen, now the Flash, was already dozens of miles away.
***
Clara realized that, after the beating she had taken, she could barely move at super speed without feeling as though she were suffocating. The faster she tried to move, the more blood she tasted in her mouth and the sharper the pain that spread through her chest, back, and stomach. Her hands, cut and bruised by the creature's jagged body, were beginning to fail her. She could still fight, but not as she had only minutes before. For the first time in a very long while, Superwoman felt the shadow of physical defeat drawing near.
At last, the creature hauled itself onto Meredith Island in a spray of seawater and mud. Its bulk was already larger than before, its outline more misshapen, as though every blow and every wound had only helped it become something more monstrous. Superwoman launched herself at it, trying to seize one of the protrusions…horns, almost, that jutted from its back. The edges sliced into her palms at once, opening fresh wounds, but she gritted her teeth and managed to lift it off the ground for a brief moment. The monster howled, twisting in her grasp. Then the horns snapped off in her hands with a sickening crack, and the creature crashed back to the ground.
It answered with instant fury. Half crawling, half leaping, it hurled itself at her with terrifying speed.
Superwoman tried to get to her feet, but she was too slow. The creature, Luthor's promised doomsday, caught her by the leg before she could recover and began swinging her like a rag doll. Again and again, it smashed her into the ground. The impacts themselves did not injure her; she was Superwoman, after all. Concrete shattered beneath her body, steel twisted and tore, rubble burst outward with each blow. But the violent wrenching of her spine and limbs was another matter. Each savage jerk sent excruciating pain shooting through her back and hips. Her vision blurred. For a second she thought she might lose consciousness.
The monster drew back, preparing to pounce on her again, when Superwoman saw movement in the sky. A squadron of military planes was flying over Meredith Island. The creature noticed them too. It roared with such rage that the air itself seemed to vibrate, then crouched as if preparing to leap at them. Clara could not identify every aircraft, but among them she clearly recognized a B-29, one of the great flying superfortresses. Their engines thundered over the ruined island, circling in formation.
Then the planes scattered and climbed higher. One by one, they began to make their runs.
Bombs.
Clara was suddenly engulfed in explosions and fire. The air filled with flame, smoke, and the roar of bursting ordnance. The heat did not truly harm her, nor did the blasts themselves, but she was too battered by the monster's assault to rise at once. She lay amid the inferno, half stunned, after the wave of explosions tore through the island. About thirty bombs fell in only five minutes. The earth shook beneath her. Metal screamed. Concrete vanished in fountains of dust and flame.
She could not see the creature through the smoke. She could hear it, however, roaring somewhere inside the bombardment, a deeper and deeper sound, not of pain alone but of something almost exultant. When at last the bombing slackened and the smoke began to thin, Clara forced herself upright and looked.
What she saw filled her with horror.
The monster seemed larger than before… broader, heavier, more terrible. With each explosion it had not weakened but grown. It seemed to absorb the force of the blasts, to feed on them. Its swollen limbs looked even more powerful; its whole body seemed to pulse with stolen energy as it bellowed amid the flames.
Then one of the B-29s came in again, this time far too low.
The monster moved instantly. With a single bound, it launched itself into the air and reached the aircraft.
Superwoman screamed and tried to take off, but her battered body failed her. She managed only to lurch upward before her strength gave out, and she plunged into the water below. As she hit the sea, she caught a glimpse of the flying Superfortress breaking apart in flames after the creature reached it. Fire, burning metal, and twisted debris rained down alongside the monster into the dark water.
***
Luthor watched closely from an inconspicuous freighter a few miles from Meredith Island. He could see the monster growing in size and the bombs having no effect on it. By radio, he knew that panic had spread through the city and that thousands of people were rushing across the bridges and onto the roads leading out of Metropolis. He sighed. Superwoman had been missing for several minutes... Was she dead? Was she injured? There was no way to know.
A private TELCORP plane, piloted by four mercenary ex-prisoners of war whom Luthor had bribed and deceived, was waiting for his order to take off, loaded with the refined Pathogen. If that did not work, he would turn himself in to the military, whom he knew were at a nearby checkpoint, and ask the President to authorize a nuclear bombing. According to his calculations, this would destroy the monster. The blast radius of the bombs was about twelve miles. If the bomb were dropped now, the destruction would be very severe in Staten Island and southern Brooklyn... But there would not be many casualties beyond a few hundred thousand. No more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He himself had tried to make a bomb, but had not had access to enough uranium, although he knew exactly how to build one.
Luthor sighed and looked at the map. If Superwoman had really been eliminated, the monster's containment capacity was zero, and it would be in the city in no time. The bomb would have too many effects there, but perhaps there was no way around it.
In any case, there was still the possibility that the bombardment with the refined Pathogen would injure the monster, slow it down, or even kill it. The main target had not appeared; no doubt, in the worst-case scenario, she was wounded and therefore unable to escape the atomic bomb.
I think I'll make it.
And then what? His career was already over. The Soviet extraction order was almost a death sentence. Perhaps he would not be so exposed in America, and the capture of Karla's network did not truly put him in danger, but he had already crossed the Rubicon. The official version he had prepared would cause a monumental scandal and a political earthquake. Luthor would be tried or executed. He had considered suicide and kept several cyanide capsules in his jacket, but only if he was certain that Superwoman was dead.
The official story was in the hands of Mercy Graves, who was on a forced vacation in Virginia. The order was to send his confession to newspapers and officials the next day, but he could still stop it. If Superwoman died, he could say that the monster had come out of nowhere, or that he had mixed the Pathogens unwittingly, or even that he had been following government orders. He had thought about it. That way, he might be merely negligent, save the company for his shareholders, and receive an honorable prison sentence. The scandal would be enormous, but he would live for years. Perhaps he should try that option first when he spoke to the President. But the most important thing was Superwoman's death; the rest was secondary. Luthor was willing to sacrifice himself and thousands of others.
***
Flash arrived in Metropolis, and all he could see around him were traffic jams, panic, and planes flying over the city. He stopped several traffic accidents and muggings. Then, at super speed, he ran across the water and approached the island where the monster was supposed to be.
Superwoman was nowhere to be seen. There was only an island covered in smoke and fire, with a terrible sound coming from it. Soon he saw a terrifying shape moving through the smoke. It had a humanoid form, but it was thick and deformed, covered with horn-like protrusions or broken bones growing out of its body. Its skull was similarly riddled with deformities and horns.
The monster could move fast, but not at super speed. It had not seen him.
Suddenly, Flash saw the monster leap toward a B-29. He could do nothing as the creature crashed into the plane, splitting it in two in an explosion before falling into the water amid the burning debris.
Clara, where are you?
***
Superwoman sat up on the shore of the island, coughing, with excruciating pain in her chest and back, surrounded by fire and smoke. She realized that she was bleeding profusely from the mouth and that it was hard to breathe... This can't be. This can't be happening to me. Despite the headache, she could hear the monster leaping beneath the sea again. This time, it was not heading toward Meredith Island, but toward the middle of the channel, toward the construction site of the bridge that would connect Brooklyn to Staten Island. She could not stop it in that condition. At any moment, she would lose consciousness.
She could still fly, so she began to float slowly despite the pain, rising above Meredith Island while the monster leapt over the sea and sank again, getting closer and closer to the narrow strait between Brooklyn and Staten Island. It was dusk, and there was little sunlight left, but she managed to rise above the clouds and position herself where the sun's rays were strongest. At super speed, she would have reached them much faster, but she could no longer move very quickly. The sunlight entered her body like a balm, and the pain diminished. She could see some of her wounds beginning to heal.
She remained there for several minutes, praying and thinking of her parents, of Jor-El and Lara, and of Joe and Martha... You don't have to go that far to help others, Bunny... Live like one of them, Kala-El, to discover where your strength and power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage… They can be a great people, Kala-El. They wish to be. It is for this reason, above all, their capacity for good, that I have sent them you, my only daughter… Above all, love each other deeply, for love covers a multitude of sins...
It was not enough. The cries of thousands of people warned her that the monster had almost reached the city. She still felt sore, but she was stronger now and could move with some speed, though much less than she normally could.
Thousands of people watched as a thin blue-and-red blur descended through the dusk clouds and launched itself at the monster destroying the bridgeworks, while another red blur moved around the area, dragging people to safety.
***
Superwoman fell upon Doomsday at full speed, still sore and weakened, but she managed to ram it from behind with both fists and throw it back into the middle of the channel, along with debris from the bridge. There seemed to be no one left at the construction site, and she was about to dive into the water to face the monster when a familiar voice stopped her.
"Oy gevalt, Clara! What is that thing?"
"Barry!"
Superwoman hugged Flash, but he was not joking as usual. His face was full of utter amazement.
"I managed to get thousands of people out of the construction site and the docks... Are you all right?"
"Not really... This thing… this thing is from Krypton... That devil, Luthor, mutated it... I must bring it down. It's really powerful. Please, keep getting people out!"
"What are you going to do?"
"Try to push it as deep into the ocean as I can, to buy time. Then I'll regain my strength in the sunlight, come back for it, and throw it into space, far away from here..."
"Good luck, Clara!"
Superwoman kissed Flash on the cheek and plunged into the sea. The monster was now heading toward Brooklyn, moving beneath the surface in brutal leaps, striking the seabed and launching itself forward again. Superwoman rammed it from the side and drove it deeper, away from the docks and the crowded shore. Pain returned at once to her hands, chest, and back. The water softened nothing. Every impact against the creature felt as if she were striking jagged stone. The monster moved underwater with more difficulty than she did, but it was unharmed, still fighting, still growing, still trying to turn back toward the city.
Superwoman had an idea. She began circling the monster at her highest possible speed, forcing herself faster despite the burning in her lungs and the blood in her mouth. Around and around she flew through the dark water until the sea itself began to twist. A vortex formed around the creature, dragging mud, wreckage, bubbles, and broken pieces of metal into a widening spiral. The monster thrashed inside it, clawing at the water, unable for a few moments to gain a hold.
Trying to lift the whirlpool out of the ocean proved too difficult; she did not have enough strength. Her body screamed in protest, and the vortex nearly collapsed. Still, she managed to keep the creature trapped within the swirling water as she gradually drew it away from the channel and out toward the open sea. Inch by inch, then yard by yard, she pulled the storm with her, praying that distance alone might buy the city a little time.
Then a series of explosions erupted around her. Bombs again.
The underwater detonations, like depth charges, left her mostly unscathed, but the shock waves tore through the vortex and shattered its rhythm. Worse, the beast seemed to thrive on the blasts' energy. The monster not only grew larger, but also gained enough speed to launch a sudden attack on Clara. It broke through the collapsing whirlpool and struck her with a focused blow that sent her tumbling into the mud of the seabed.
For a moment, there was only darkness, silt, and pain.
Meanwhile, the creature propelled itself out of the water
***
Luthor watched in stunned silence for several minutes as Superwoman reappeared, flew into the sky, and then returned to fight the monster. He punched the table. Superwoman and the monster disappeared underwater, and a kind of whirlpool began to form. Seaplanes appeared, dropping depth charges into the center of the whirlpool.
"Damn it! No! Noooooo! Noooooo! No!" Luthor screamed, pounding on the table.
A group of men armed with machine guns guarded the room. Luthor made a decision. He immediately radioed the New Jersey airfield where the pilots and the TELCORP private plane were awaiting his orders. He gave the command to take off and bomb the place where the monster and Superwoman were fighting with those strange glass warheads filled with black liquid. He had no more time to waste. Now the refined pathogen would have its turn
He had barely finished giving the order when the sound of machine-gun fire rang out all around him. Bullets were flying, and the window of the freighter's wheelhouse cracked. Luthor dropped to all fours and hid behind the wheel while his henchmen exchanged fire with an unseen enemy. No, no, no, it couldn't be. NOT NOW!
He was trying to scramble down a ladder into the hold when the butt of a rifle knocked him down. He turned around in pain to find a U.S. Army lieutenant looking at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief.
***
The monster jumped ashore in Brooklyn in front of Fort Hamilton, moving with increasing speed. The troops retreated, and several tanks and portable batteries fired continuously at the creature. Each cannon shot seemed to pierce the creature, but it regenerated and swelled. The monster roared in rage and, to the soldiers' surprise, fired a thick, hideous laser beam at them.
Superwoman, moving faster than her physical condition allowed, managed to block the laser beams with her cape, saving several soldiers from certain death. The fabric, already torn and blackened in places, flared red under the impact, but it held long enough for the men behind her to scatter. Clara felt the force of the blast travel through her arms and shoulders like a hammer blow. For a second, she thought she might collapse where she stood.
The monster gave her no time. It lunged at her with terrifying speed, crossing the distance in a blur of deformed muscle, bone, and rage. Before she could react, it struck her in the back with a brutal blow. Superwoman was sent flying, her body smashing through the walls and ceilings of the fortress, tearing through stone, brick, and iron beams as if they were paper. She ended up buried beneath a mass of rubble, dust, and broken masonry, the world around her reduced to darkness and ringing pain.
Freed from Superwoman, the creature threw itself at the tanks and portable batteries. It smashed and shredded them in seconds, overturning one tank with a single blow and tearing the gun from another as if it were a toy. Then it turned on the fleeing soldiers, crushing them with its claws or disintegrating them with its heat vision. Men scattered in every direction, firing uselessly as they ran. The monster killed about a hundred of them in a matter of minutes.
Planes passed overhead at high altitude, bombing the coastal strip of Fort Hamilton. Fire rose along the shore, and the ground shook under the repeated impacts. But the pilots did not know what Superwoman had already learned in horror: the bombs were not weakening the monster. They were making it stronger.
Superwoman, half buried in the rubble, could hear only a beeping sound. The monster's blow must have broken one of her bones. She was unable to stand. All the energy she had regained from the sun's rays was gone, and she was injured again. She felt like crying bitterly, but she sat up. She sank to her knees, trying to relax and forget the pain. You must do it, Clara… You can't give up now. You must do it… Thousands of lives depend on you… You can't fail now. You can't fail them.
Letting out a scream that was a mixture of pain and hope, Superwoman took off.
Flash ran as fast as he could, clearing civilians and soldiers from the Fort Hamilton area. He managed to move ten people per second. In about ten minutes, he had taken six thousand confused and disoriented men, women, and children to the other side of the channel, on Staten Island. Meanwhile, the monster was busy demolishing buildings around Fort Hamilton and Baker Beach Park and smashing cars and tanks. Most of the people had been rescued by Flash or had fled, but a few hundred unfortunates had perished beneath the rubble. The monster's roar could be heard for miles around.
Superwoman had barely made it fifty or sixty miles. She was hovering above the stratosphere. The Maid of Might had arrived almost bleeding to death, with excruciating pain in the middle of her body, and she could barely move one of her arms. Below her, she could see the blue of the ocean and the green of the earth. The clouds blurred beneath her like small waves of vapor under her feet. She flew into the path of the sun's rays and closed her eyes.
Superwoman tried to clear her mind and let herself float in space. Again, she felt strength returning. Again, some of the pain disappeared. Again, the bleeding stopped. It was not enough. It would take hours before she could fully recover, but the world could not wait. As soon as she could move both arms and hands despite her weakness, the Woman of Tomorrow knew she was ready.
A memory from her childhood flashed through her mind: the first time she had felt physical pain, the first time she had seen her own blood, the look of surprise on her parents' faces as they healed her. The memory seemed miraculous to Clara.
She finally understood.
27 May 1949, Metropolis Bay, 19.40
The small but powerful tanks under Colonel Brewster's command had stopped firing. Each shot only seemed to enrage the monster further, driving it closer to the military lines. If they left it alone, the creature amused itself by destroying the buildings around it. The area had been evacuated. The Army had a few minutes, perhaps a few hours, before it moved toward populated districts again.
Panic gripped the entire city. Planes flew incessantly overhead, but High Command had concluded that the bombing was somehow, inexplicably, strengthening the hated monster. But where was Superwoman? She kept disappearing and reappearing, again and again… Everyone wondered how it was possible that she was not defeating the monster, or at least carrying it away.
In the basement of a small house, Benjamin Parker, a bus driver, held his wife and sons, Ben Jr. and Richard, tightly in his arms. They had tried to flee the neighborhood, but the monster had cut them off. They had returned home and locked themselves in the basement of their tenement with another family and an old woman. They were sitting in the dark. The monster's roars and the crashes of collapsing buildings sounded close and terrifying.
At Ben's direction, everyone had placed themselves in the corners of the room, where they would be less likely to be injured if the ceiling gave way. Some people were praying, but Benjamin told them to pray quietly. They did not know what the monster was doing to people, or whether it could hear them.
The monster sounded closer and closer as he hugged his wife and children tighter and tighter. A crash and a roar sounded as if hell itself were beneath their feet… Or rather, above their heads. Another collapse thundered far too close, and a shower of wood, plaster, and bricks came crashing down into the center of the basement.
"Don't move!" Benjamin cried to those sheltering in the other corners.
An ominous roar swallowed his voice, and a red light seemed to flicker among the ruins above them. A fiery sensation, lasting barely a second, startled Benjamin, but vanished almost at once. Some kind of translucent red cloth had wrapped itself around him and his family, shielding them from the falling debris. Then he felt himself being pulled away, swiftly and disorientingly, by a pair of impossibly gentle hands. A second later, he was dropped onto the ground.
When he managed to sit up, he found himself beside his wife and children, surrounded by his neighbors, on a distant street. Superwoman floated in front of them, injured and exhausted, her cape torn and covered with dust, but still smiling at them.
"I'm so sorry about your house. Really, I am. Please leave now. The military lines are just around the corner… I'll take care of the monster."
Superwoman landed and helped the old woman to her feet, with the assistance of ten-year-old Ben Jr., who stared at the superheroine in open-mouthed awe.
"Thanks, buddy. Take care of your parents and your little brother. We have to take care of one another, right?"
Superwoman winked at the boy while Benjamin straightened his own clothes and then his wife's, still too shaken to speak properly, his gratitude showing in every trembling movement.
Superwoman lifted a car in both hands and flew back toward the cloud of dust and fire where the monster waited.
"Come on, everybody!" Ben Parker shouted. "Let's go! "
***
In the Oval Office, President Truman bowed his head in despair, surrounded by key members of his administration and the Army.
"Mr. President..."
"Mr. President, Luthor is a monster, but he is right."
"Mr. President, the destructive event began three hours ago. It appears that the speedster Flash and Superwoman are managing to contain the monster on the south shore of Brooklyn, but the military reports are confusing. Superwoman appears and disappears and doesn't seem able to do anything except contain the creature momentarily. Every bomb we drop makes it stronger."
"We've evacuated nearly half a million people from Brooklyn and Staten Island to Manhattan and New Jersey. Right now, of the ten million people in the Metropolis area, all but one or two hundred thousand are out of bomb range."
"If the monster reaches Manhattan or New Jersey, it will be a massacre. We don't know how to stop it. We can carry out the bombing in an hour and a half. It's our only chance."
"Luthor assured us..."
"Luthor is a traitor."
"We don't know that for sure. Maybe he was working alone. He hates Superwoman. He's always hated her. He took advantage of her security clearance and her cooperation with us, but I don't see..."
"We must summon the Soviet ambassador immediately."
"Luthor claims it was negligence. He tried to take his own life with a cyanide pill."
"Mr. President, I don't think Luthor is a spy. I think what he's done is unforgivable and creates an unprecedented political crisis, but we must listen to him about the bomb."
"Oh, please, MacArthur. Negligence... We found a TELCORP-owned plane full of the damn Pathogen."
"As chief scientist, I refuse to let us use the Pathogen. We could make the situation worse or hurt Superwoman."
"Luthor has already explained that he prepared the plane as soon as the monster appeared. They spent hours trying to contain it at the Meredith Island facility."
"He gave his employees the whole week off. He took his wife and daughter out of Metropolis... We're looking at a monumental betrayal. He's gone insane..."
"Mr. President!"
President Truman spoke for the first time.
"Send the bomber with the nuclear bomb. We can't waste time. Once it's over the area, we'll decide. I want a direct line to the pilot and to the military commander on the ground. I will make the decision. If Superwoman succeeds in containing the monster or taking it away, we'll wait a little longer. But if the monster breaks free again, we'll drop the bomb. We've got an hour and a half, right? That's the minimum. Let's pray that woman can get this thing out in time."
***
Superwoman threw the car at the monster with all the strength she had left to test her plan. The two-ton vehicle struck the creature and pushed it several feet, knocking it to the ground. For the first time in hours, the monster did not seem stronger. It simply staggered. The creature sat up and lunged at her, but she dodged in time. She grabbed another abandoned car and began hitting the monster with it at full speed. The car bent and broke in her hands, but the monster recoiled and seemed confused. The bombs, the fire, the explosions had strengthened it. But weight, steel, impact, brute force… Those things still hurt it.
Superwoman threw the ruined car aside and attacked with her fists. She flew just inches above the ground at full speed and, with all her strength, struck its deformed knee. The blow sent terrible pain through her arm, the monster fell back to the ground and rolled several hundred yards, through houses, fences, trees, and telephone poles. It stopped in a cloud of dust and splinters. The monster was back at the water's edge.
The Woman of Steel flew at it before it could stand up again. She hit it in the chest with both fists and pushed it backward. The creature dug its claws into the ground, tearing open the pavement and the mud, but she kept pushing. It roared in her face, deafening and furious, but she did not let go. With one last effort, she struck it again and managed to push it into the ocean. A huge wall of water rose around them. Superwoman disappeared under the surface, grabbed the monster again, and tried the whirlpool tactic once more. She swam at super speed around the creature, faster and faster, until the sea began to spin violently. Waves crashed against the piers and loose boats were dragged into the current. The monster thrashed beneath the water, trying to reach the shore, but Superwoman managed to pull it into the center of the canal.
The monster tried to emerge from the sea as the superheroine flew into the sky. She climbed as high as she could, exhausted, injured, half-blinded by dust and salt water. Below her, the creature roared in the middle of the whirlpool, still trying to return to the city. Superwoman looked down, clenched her fists, and flew away...
Colonel Brewster watched the battle through binoculars, holding his breath. He saw Superwoman come out of the water and vanish into thin air. Now she's gone again. What's happening? Damn it. What's wrong with that woman? Is she hurt? Night was beginning to fall. From the disturbances in the water, it was clear that the monster was moving toward the shore again. The canal boiled and twisted in the half-darkness, and something enormous was forcing its way through the current.
Then a very strange, hard sound startled him. It was not an explosion, not a shell, not the roar of the monster. It was the scream of strained metal and rushing air. Above them floated the huge hull of a freighter, twenty or thirty thousand tons at least. The ship was flying at full speed, like an airplane.
What the hell?
Superwoman breathed in and out, trying to stay conscious. Twenty or thirty thousand tons would not have been a big deal for her under normal circumstances. But injured and exhausted, with her arms shaking and her vision blurred, she was making one of the greatest efforts of her life. She had flown to Manhattan and lifted the biggest empty freighter she could find. With her X-ray vision, she knew where the monster was in the canal, even though night had already fallen. The creature was still moving, still trying to reach the shore, still trying to return to the city. Superwoman carried the ship higher, turned it in the air with terrible difficulty, and let it fall.
The huge freighter dropped onto the monster like a mountain of steel. The noise was deafening on both sides of the canal. Windows shattered. The ground shook. Water rose in a black wall, and for a few seconds no one could see anything except spray, smoke, and darkness. When the water fell back, the monster was trapped beneath thousands of tons of metal.
Superwoman hovered above the wreck, breathing heavily, her cape hanging wet and torn behind her.
Well, this will keep that thing entertained for a few minutes.
Superwoman flew to Meredith Island, recalling her early teenage years. She had been engulfed by a wave of furious emotions when her adoptive parents disclosed her unknown origins and revealed the pod that had brought her to Smallville. Joseph had dug around the mysterious craft and built a small barn over it . Clara despised that pod deeply. She was overwhelmed with confusion, unable to discern whether it was the creation of a deranged inventor, a mysterious artifact from a foreign land, or proof that she was an extraterrestrial being like those in H.G. Wells' stories. The revelation was excruciating. One day, in a fit of rage, Clara attacked the pod, striking it repeatedly in a futile attempt to shatter it, only to dent it while severely injuring her hand. Yes, metals with traces of Kryptonite could injure her. It had happened many times before.
Superwoman descended through the gaping hole that had been Luthor's experimental vault. There were metal plates with Kryptonite in them. Those plates had to be somewhere in the rubble. If the monster was Kryptonian, it was possible that the Kryptonite could hurt him. She had to try.
Superwoman searched among the rubble at super speed and found three metal plates made with a Kryptonite alloy. She recognized them by their strange greenish color and by the stinging in her eyes and mouth, as well as the headache that struck her when she approached them. Then the Maid of Might set her plan in motion.
Kala-El, my child, this is your home. You are human. You grew up with them. It is a miracle that we are so much like them. When the first Kryptonians arrived on Earth, they were ecstatic. It was like a larger, more fertile version of Krypton, populated by beings so similar and yet so primitive.Krypton brought its long history, beautiful and terrible, to an end. It reached the highest summits, and it failed all the same. Your father and I want you to be proud of our sacrifice, and of what our civilization was or could have been. But you are also human. Understand yourself as human. You owe it to them. You must be as Kryptonian as you are human. No matter how detached you may feel from them, you must be one of them. That is our advice. We sent you to Earth to live, to live a full life. As a woman from Earth…
Her hands burned, and she continued to cough. Tears flooded her eyes. With her super strength, Superwoman tried to bend and compress the metal plates. She tried again and again, pounding the metal with her fists and heating it almost to its melting point with her heat vision. The Woman of Steel punched, melted, and then blasted the plates with her freezing breath. The process was exhausting, and she kept coughing, sometimes having to stop because she was choking. Her hands were swollen and covered with burns.
Clara, I beg you, for God's sake. You must understand. We love you. We are your parents. We're not doing this to hurt you, or to spite you, or out of fear. You can't show your abilities. You can't. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. I don't mind you helping those who need it. I couldn't. It wouldn't be Christian. But you must do it quietly, and in the dark…
One of the plates had already become a thin, irregular cylinder with a sharp tip. Clara repeated the operation with the other plate, using her feet and elbows because she could barely feel her hands.
Miss Clara Kent, best graduate of Mary Ann Day Brown High School... Clara, you must come with me. Your father is seriously ill. Your mother is with him... Clara, I can't marry you. I don't know who you are. It's too much. It can't be... Do you have experience as a nurse, Miss Kent? Yes? We need good girls in the Navy Nurse Corps. I'm glad you have experience…
Superwoman had already created another cylinder. The pain in her hands was unbearable. She had to stop to vomit. The Maid of Might joined the two cylinders with her heat vision. She had to use a third plate to give it thickness.
Miss Kent, believe it or not, I appreciate you as a reporter, and I don't dislike your company excessively, so much so that I'm willing to overlook your continued rudeness and indiscipline. If you think this is charity work, you can leave the Daily Planet and tell your acquaintances that you resigned because you couldn't stand Louis Lane... Look, up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's Superwoman!... Miss Superwoman, my cat has climbed a tree and doesn't know how to get down…
She managed to bend and melt the third metal plate with Kryptonite. She lay on the ground on her back in exhaustion. Next to her was a spear made of crumpled metal with greenish traces.
***
The monster that would later be known as Doomsday had once again leapt onto the south shore of Brooklyn. It was more rabid than ever, more frenzied, more uncontrollable. It bounded over buildings and collapsed them with a single blow. It had trouble walking upright, so it moved at full speed on all fours, like some hideous ape, dashing toward any place where it detected movement. Its claws tore open the streets, its shoulders smashed through walls, its roars shook what was left of the neighborhood. In a matter of seconds, an Army battalion was wiped out. Men, trucks, tanks, barricades… everything dissolved before it in chaos. The monster was crushing a tank between its arms when it received a hard blow in the middle of its back and turned around furiously.
A weeping, exhausted, wounded Superwoman hovered before it, looking at the creature with open defiance. Her cape was torn, her face streaked with soot and tears, and her hands were covered in burns, but she still held the spear. The monster answered her challenge by throwing terrible beams of heat from its eyes. Without letting go of the weapon, the superheroine shot upward and, at super speed, swept the soldiers who had survived the monster's attack away from the scene, dropping them behind the military lines one after another before the creature could finish them off.
The monster chased her at once, roaring and crawling, half-leaping, half-galloping, razing buildings and crushing abandoned cars in its path. Chunks of masonry flew in every direction. Fire spread through the ruins. Fortunately, the entire neighborhood had already been evacuated. No cries came from the houses now, only the sounds of collapse and the monster's maddened howling.
Superwoman stopped and stood in front of it, holding her spear with both hands. The thing lunged at her at once, jaws open, claws outstretched. She took off and flew slowly, just slowly enough to let it keep following her. She was luring it, drawing it away from the remaining military positions and toward an empty esplanade that, only hours earlier, had been a public park. Now it was a flat wasteland of broken earth, uprooted trees, twisted benches, and shattered paving stones.
There she turned and faced it.
For a brief moment the monster did not attack. It stared at her. Its eyes were like two jagged sockets filled with fire. Then it let out a roar, an almost tearful roar, then another. Clara felt a sudden pang of doubt, or strangeness, something she could not quite name. There was agony in those sounds, and rage, and something else, something broken and almost pleading. After several roars, she seemed to distinguish a phrase within the noise. Something like Teke-Li-Li.
The creature roared again, more hoarsely, more desperately.
Teke-Li-Li... Teke-Li-Li...
Within those howls one could almost discern that eerie, subterranean phrase, Teke-Li-Li. Clara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
Is it Kryptonian? she wondered for one terrible instant. Is it trying to say something? Is there someone inside that thing?
Then she clenched her jaw.
Well... it doesn't matter. It is not a thinking being anymore. It is a monster. I don't have to pity it. I can't.
Superwoman brandished the spear, which burned in her hands, and hurled herself at the creature. The monster sprang forward at the same time. For one instant they met in the air like two projectiles. She managed to drive the spear into its head, between its eyes. The weapon sank in with horrible resistance, as if she were forcing it through layers of iron and stone. Then it broke through. A dark acidic liquid gushed out, fiery and fetid, splashing over her arms and chest. The stench was unbearable.
The monster let out the loudest roar it had ever uttered.
The sound was so violent that it seemed to shake the esplanade itself. Then one of its massive arms struck Superwoman with terrible force. The blow threw her off the spear and sent her rolling several hundred feet across the ruined ground. She crashed through the remains of a bandstand, tore through a row of blasted trees, and finally came to a halt in a shower of dirt and broken stone. For a moment she could barely breathe.
Still, she got back up.
The monster staggered blindly, the spear still jutting from its head. It shot bolts of heat from its eyes in every direction, burning the ground, cutting through the remains of nearby houses, setting wrecked cars ablaze. It howled in pain and fury. The air around it shimmered with heat. Dark liquid ran down its face and chest.
Superwoman flew at it again.
She seized the spear with both hands, yanked it free, and at super speed drove it into the monster's chest. The creature convulsed. She pulled the weapon out and stabbed it again. And again. Each thrust drove deeper into its torso. Each blow made more of that hideous black-red liquid gush out in acrid-smelling bursts. The monster tried to strike her, but it was slower now. It clawed at the air, hit the ground, tore up mounds of earth, but it could no longer follow her movements with the same speed.
Superwoman did not stop.
She darted around it, stabbing from one side and then the other, from above, from the front, from below. The spear flashed again and again in the darkness, each strike followed by a roar, a spray of acrid fluid, a shudder of the monster's body. The creature stumbled, fell to one knee, then to both. The ground trembled beneath its weight. Its roars began to lose volume. Its struggles became less coordinated. But that strange phrase grew clearer.
Teke-Li-Li! Teke-Li-Li! Teke-Li-Li!
Clara heard it distinctly now. The sound no longer seemed accidental. It was there, buried within the cries, repeated with horrible insistence. The monster's mouth gaped, and for one sickening instant she had the impression that it was trying, in its own ruined way, to speak.
Something broke inside her.
Whether it was pity, horror, fury, or simple exhaustion, she no longer knew. The pain in her hands, the memory of the dead, the hours of battle, the fear of failure, the unbearable strain of carrying the spear, of using Kryptonite against another being from her world, all of it burst inside her at once.
With a cry of her own, Superwoman lost control. She began stabbing the monster again and again and again. She drove the spear into its chest, its throat, its shoulders, its sides, hundreds of times, in a frenzy of grief and rage. The esplanade echoed with the wet impact of metal entering flesh, with the diminishing roars of the creature, with the ragged sound of her own breathing. Dark liquid covered her, the spear, the ground, everything around them. Still she went on, as if she could not stop until every movement had ceased.
At last the monster stopped writhing. The bolts from its eyes ceased. Its claws opened and fell limp against the earth.
Only then did Superwoman stop. She remained crouched over the body for a second, trembling violently, the spear still buried in the thing's chest. Then her strength left her. She pulled the weapon free, staggered back a step, and collapsed to the ground in utter exhaustion beside the dead monster.
***
"Mr. President? This is Colonel Brewster."
"Colonel Brewster… How are you?"
"I've been better, Mr. President... I've been better. I've lost two battalions almost completely."
"It pains me deeply to hear that."
"We've had no contact with the creature or Superwoman for several minutes... There has been no sound of destruction, no roaring. Two reconnaissance planes have passed by, but we can't see anything because of the darkness and the ruins."
"Could they be underwater?"
"No, they both came out of the water."
President Truman wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and turned to the others in the Oval Office.
"They lost contact with Superwoman and the monster minutes ago... No sight or sound... Order the plane to land at the nearest base immediately, but be ready to take off and drop the bomb. I'm ordering a total evacuation."
"Mr. President."
"Tell me, Colonel."
"I think I see something."
Colonel Brewster gave the order to turn on the anti-aircraft lights without hanging up the phone. The beams illuminated, in the darkness against the stars, a familiar flying female figure in a tattered red cape, carrying some kind of monstrous, shapeless corpse over her head. Both soared skyward, beyond the reach of the spotlights. A huge round of cheering, clapping, and wailing drowned out Colonel Brewster's voice.
"Colonel?"
"Mr. President, Superwoman did it! We just saw her! She flew away with the creature… The monster seemed motionless. I think we're safe!"
A wave of joy swept through the Oval Office as Truman slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes in exhausted relief.