He woke from a anguished sleep, troubled by nightmares. He remembered little of his dreams; he never did. The only image that ever lingered was the face of a beautiful woman. A woman with deep brown eyes and wonderfully soft brown hair. Oddly for a dream, he could even smell her scent and hear her breathing and heartbeat. A pleasant image, but made terrible by the certain knowledge that she was in trouble, she needed him, and he was not able to help. He knew that for a fact, dream or not. He loved her, she had needed him, and he failed her. Those impressions were the sum total he could garner from his dreams.
The dreams he had experienced in fitful rests ever since the day the world had ended.
Wow, what a powerful opening. The world has ended. And Clark - because it has to be him, of course - is thinking so much of Lois, although he can't remember her name, or who she is at all. But he knows that she is in trouble and that he ahsn't been able to find her or help her. And he knows one more thing: he loves her.
So starkly melancholy, sad, horrible and beautiful. Clark suffers from complete amnesia:
If he knew just where he was, he'd have a better idea of what was normal weather for the area.
If he could remember who he was, he'd have a better idea of what to do.
He doesn't remember that heused to be Superman, and he doesn't understand that he still has powers. That shooting incident was horrifying and full of an underlying menace that didn't have much to do with the isolated incident in itself:
A open military-style Jeep containing four men stopped to his left, and all but the driver pointed weapons at him. He felt amazement at the fact that they had fuel enough to operate the Jeep, rather than any fear from facing drawn weapons.
“Give us any food you have. Any tools or knives, too. Now!”
He turned his attention to the guns as the driver now pulled out a weapon from where it had been stored beneath the seat, and wondered why they hadn't fired first and then simply stripped his body. Perhaps they worried about damaging any possible useful items he carried.
“I have nothing on me,” he replied. “My pocketknife is back at my camp.” He gestured in a direction well away from where his shelter was actually located.
Their apparent leader sneered. “Then you're of no use. Kill him.”
Have people like these taken over as civilization has faltered? What has happened to the world?
With no change of expression, something he'd have thought impossible of anyone about to kill another person, three of the four men opened fire. Shots rang out, and he grasped at his chest. He was prepared to stagger and fall, but failed to do so after feeling only slight stings. He felt small bits of metal slide down from where he'd been hit in the chest, but nothing else. No blood.
Why were they shooting him with bb guns? He looked up incredulously, thinking this some sort of macabre joke. He was surprised to see all four staring at him in wonder. One of the four fired again, with the pellet hitting him on his bare right arm. It had no more effect than before; it stung, but did no real damage.
Clark does not understand why their guns don't hurt him. He can only assume that their guns were just toys.
“It ain't no bulletproof vest, Doug! I hit him square in the beef on his arm!” exclaimed the shooter. All four men in the Jeep stared at him with expressions of awe, surprise and terror, as he remained puzzled at their bizarre actions. Trying to kill someone with a child's toy?
“He's some kinda mutant! A freakin' mutant!” the leader exclaimed. “Get us the hell out of here!”
Are there mutants out there for real, or have these disgusting gangsters just seen too many horror movies?
The Jeep spun its wheels, kicking up sods of soil from the prairie. The driver accelerated away quickly, while the other three held their weapons pointed at him. He could see a variety of emotions on their faces as they dwindled in size. The Jeep followed the course of the river downstream, and he grimaced. If this was indicative of the reception he'd receive at town, for surely a settlement of some sort lay ahead, then it was not for him. Shaking his head at the extremely odd behavior of his foolish assailants, he turned back upstream. Solitude was preferable to the company of that sort. Perhaps they'd been driven mad by Impact.
And because of this, Clark is going to continue his solitary existence.
Let me just say that I find it highly likely that Clark wouldn't be able to stop that asteroid. After all, the asteroid is coming at the Earth because it is being pulled at by the entire mass of the Sun, and the Sun contains about 330,000 times more mass than the Earth! And Superman is supposed to counteract that? He is supposed to apply a stronger force on it than the gravitational pull of the Sun?
And if he manages to do that, the asteroid is supposed to withstand the stress of two such mighty counteracting forces? Astronomers believe that most asteroids are loose collections of pieces that have collided and stuck together. But the gravity of an asteroid is puny, so its ability to itself together is not great at all. No wonder it broke apart when Superman tried to stop it! And no wonder Clark was knocked unconscious by the supreme effort it would have taken to try to stop that many miles wide chunk of rock from rolling down the "gravity well" caused by the Sun and continuing straight in the path of the Earth. Honestly, the idea of Superman doing something like that is like an ant trying to stop a boulder from rolling down a hill and colliding with an ant-hill!
Well, I'm so looking forward to the rest of this! You have really captured my imagination.
Ann