Chapter Thirteen
Karen.
Karen.
'Go away.'
Karen.
'No. Leave me alone. I can't *do* it anymore.'
Karen. Save my babies.
'Can't you understand? I don't know *how*. I lost *you*; now I'm going to lose *them*.'
She felt a shuddering sigh coming from the child at her right, and realized that the children's sobs had ceased. She tried to force herself to stop the recrimination-laden dialogue which was playing itself out in her imagination. Or -- was it her imagination?
'Lois --' Now she was willing to put a name to the voice in her mind. '-- I can't do anything else. Our air supply has stopped again, the kids are emotionally exhausted, the light's getting dimmer. What's left?'
Don't give up. I wouldn't have.
'But you were *Lois Lane*. I'm just a...just a dumb nurse who doesn't know anything...who didn't even know how to save you.'
Karen. Help is here. You just have to look for it.
She took a deep breath, and attempted to push the imaginary voice from her mind.
Look up. *Now*, Karen.
She opened her eyes, startled at the sudden intensity of the imaginary voice.
"Emma, can you see how much rock is on top of us now?"
Emma glanced up, and her dull voice responded, "Lots more than before. Maybe twice as much."
"Could we dig through the hole again?"
"No. It's lots higher than my arm can reach. And this time it's got big rocks all through it. I couldn't push 'em out of the way, or fly 'em out." She heaved a sigh. "Besides, I don't care anymore. I just wanna die and be with Mama."
Karen took another deep breath. "Please, Emma. Just one more try. Is the fire still going?"
Emma glanced toward the windscreen. "Yeah. It's still going." Her eyes seemed to follow the tree upward. "And...and Daddy's here." And then, "Daddy's here! With Walter!"
"Huh?" said Gracie.
"Look! Up in the sky! It's...it's..."
"It's Daddy!" yelled Gracie. "Daddy, Daddy..."
Suddenly all in the rear seat were yelling at the top of their voices; the children were waving their arms wildly; they were pounding on the padded roof of the Jeep; Karen was shouting for Walter and Clark. Then she realized their mistake, and began yelling "Help, Superman!" and the children's cries changed to match hers. Karen grabbed a fist-sized rock from the front seat and began banging it against the roof.
Gradually their cries and blows faded as they realized that the figures circling the top of the tree above them simply were not hearing them. The heart dropped out of each of them as the figures began to move away toward the north.
'*No*! thought Karen. I'm *not* going to lose this one!' She lunged forward.
* * *
Don't think. Don't feel. Just start the next scan -- begin a mile to the left of the flight path, sweep your gaze across the terrain below you, and end a mile to the right. Miss nothing; x-ray everything from the ground up. Now start the sweep in the other direction. Don't think about the loss, the emptiness, the aching for someone who can never be here again, who you can never -- NO! Don't think. Don't feel. Start another scan...
"How can you see when it's so dark?" Walter asked. There was no response. "Clark..."
Superman sighed, and responded, "Um -- sorry, Walter. What?"
"Uh, nothing really important. I was just wondering how you can see where we're going, let alone anything on the ground below us."
"Oh. There's enough moonlight and starlight leaking through these storm clouds that I can see well enough." He glanced again at the map in his other hand.
"If we flew above the clouds, wouldn't you be able to see a larger area at once? You know, with your x-ray vision?"
"Yes, I would; but I don't want to go up and down through the clouds."
"Why not?"
"Well, storm clouds and I don't mix. Not when I'm carrying a passenger."
"Oh, right. I forgot about the lightning danger. You're invulnerable, but I guess I could get pretty dead." Then Walter cringed as his mind played back his tactless remark.
Superman didn't seem to notice. "Well, yeah, there's that. But there are other considerations when I'm carrying someone."
"Like what?"
"Well, I'm not really free to go into them. Suffice to say that I can see plenty by staying at this altitude." The bottoms of the clouds were only a few hundred feet above them.
They flew in silence for a while, Superman carefully scanning the terrain below for any sign either of the Jeep, or of the girls and women.
Walter said, "Clark? I'm really sorry. Could there be any doubt? Could she just be unconscious, for example?"
"Lois has been unconscious before, on several occasions. I nearly lost her when she delivered Gracie. She's been locked in bank vaults, buried in a cave...I've always felt her presence, even during those times. The only time the sense of her presence ever stopped, was when she was transported to another dimension. Then the sense of loss was instantaneous."
"Another dimen..." Walter looked incredulous.
"Trust me; it happened. Then, when she was brought back, I felt her return instantly. But this time it was different. It was as though she just...faded away." He sighed. "She's gone, Walter. The love of my life, the other half of me...she's not here anymore."
"Buddy, how can you stand it? How can you stand to go on?"
"A few years ago, I couldn't have. But somewhere out there, two little girls may still be alive. I have to stand it, for them."
They flew on, Walter silently wondering if Karen had shared Lois's fate. He glanced ahead, into the darkness. "Clark, what's that sort of glow against the clouds in the next valley?"
"I don't know; I guess we'll see when we get there. It appears to be on our way." Superman resolutely held his course and speed.
A couple of minutes later they topped a ridge and were able to peer down into the valley below. They drew to a stop, and stared. A mighty, solitary finger of fire was pointing up at the sky. With a *whoosh* they descended, and began orbiting the top of the roaring inferno -- for roar it did. Eighty linear feet of dry forest wood was spewing out incandescent gases, to be ignited by the omnipresent oxygen and add their energy to the upward-racing holocaust.
"Could they have started this?" yelled Walter.
"I don't know; it's possible," Superman yelled back. "But I don't see anything near the tree that would indicate that they were ever here."
They slowly circled the tree several more times, Superman carefully extending his senses to scan the area for any sign of either mechanical or human disturbance. But, except for slight signs of a recent shift in a rockslide below, there was nothing.
"I don't see any sign of them. This must have just been caused by a lightning strike. We'd better keep going." They renewed their course toward the north, gradually climbing to regain their lost altitude.
Then Superman drew to a halt. "Listen. Can you hear it?" A wide smile creased his face.
"Hear what?" There was no sound but the now-distant roar of the fire.
Then Walter heard it -- the very faint, but insistent and repeated honking of a car horn.
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
With a *whoosh* he and Superman were back at the tree. Walter found himself unceremoniously set down a dozen feet down the slope from the tree. There was a blur, and a cloud of dust and debris as Superman ploughed underneath the bottom of the slide. With a grating and grinding which rivaled the roar of the fire, a portion of the slide between two gigantic boulders began to rise into the air. As the debris poured off the front and sides of Superman's burden, it resolved itself into a battered, scratched, hammered version of Lois's beloved Jeep Grand Cherokee. The windows were a shambles of broken and pebbled glass, miraculously intact; the sides and top were covered with dents and ragged tears large and small; the driver's-side front wheel had blown and shredded; a two-foot-diameter area including the front of the driver's door was mashed inward more than a foot.
The car was carefully set down on level ground a dozen feet from Walter, and in a blur, the passenger door behind the driver was suddenly ripped from its hinges to the sound of rending metal, and tossed aside. Superman was reaching inside, helping a young woman out of the car. She spied Walter and, with a cry, she was in his arms.
Superman turned back to the car -- and witnessed a scene straight out of *Peter Pan*. Two young children came swooping out the car door through the air, hand-in-hand, and lighted on the ground near Walter and Karen. Emma dropped Gracie's hand, and with a yell of "Daddy!" launched herself at him, catching him around the neck. He hugged her fervently to himself, and then glanced back at Gracie.
Gracie was staring at the imposing figure in the garish uniform and billowing red cape, with a look midway between timidity and fright. Instantly, Superman set Emma down by his side, and then slowly and purposefully reached back into a pocket in his cape and removed a pair of glasses. Putting these on, and mussing his hair with one hand, he dropped to his knees and held out both hands.
"...Daddy?"
"C'mere, Cupcake."
Gracie gave a whimper, and then was running into his arms, sobbing as if her heart would never mend. Clark held them both a moment or two, caressing their hair and whispering comfort to each of them. "...so scared...rocks came down... buried us...thought you were going away..." Walter and Karen, as they clung to one another, could hear these and other scraps and snatches as the children poured out their tale to their father.
Then Karen could wait no longer. She walked over and, reaching past Emma, placed a hand on his shoulder. "Clark...about Lois...she's..."
He looked up at her. "I know, Karen. Twenty-five minutes ago. I felt it when it happened."
"Daddy...what're we gonna do about Mama? We can't leave her there..." Emma's pinched face looked into her father's eyes.
Clark took a deep breath, and let it out. "No. We can't. We shouldn't."
"Daddy, Mommy died." This solemn pronouncement from his youngest daughter came closer to unnerving the Man of Steel than anything ever had. He carefully released each child, and stood up. Karen led the girls over to stand between her and Walter as Superman strode slowly over to the battered Jeep, took hold of the driver's door and, in a sudden motion, wrenched it off. He carefully set the door to the side as rocks and debris spilled out the doorway from off Lois's lap. With two practiced bursts of heat-vision he quickly severed the seatbelt and shoulder restraint; then, with infinite tenderness, he lifted the still form of his wife from the car.
Turning to face them, he surveyed the parched ground for a suitable site. Finally settling on the only spot of grass within reach, he walked over to it, knelt, and carefully arranged her on the ground, taking a moment to correct the angle of her broken arm. He gazed at her face, and then slowly reached out a hand to cup her cheek. He heard a small sob from behind him, and he turned to see Gracie's eyes riveted on her mother's body. And his carefully-maintained control snapped.
"NnnnnnnnnnnOO..." He began to rise, slowly accelerating upward beside the burning tree.
"Daddy, no!" Emma's hand was yanked out of Walter's as she shot upward after her father, her flight tracked by Walter and Karen. Only Gracie's gaze remained fixed on her mother.
Clark reached the top of the pillar of flame, and in a fit of rage against nature, against circumstance, against the universe at large, he altered his course directly into the flames, his fists flailing.
There was a flash, and an ear-splitting *BANG*.
* * *
Outdoors people know. Campers, hikers, Forest Service personnel...these people know the danger of building a fire under a high-voltage power line on a calm day. They know that, as the smoke trail rises, the ionized smoke particles provide an ideal electrical conductor from the overhead wires to the ground. Those who don't know this have occasionally lost their lives.
Likewise, the tremendous volume of combustion products released by the burning shaft of wood, and rising through the still air toward the storm clouds above, provided the perfect conduit for the enormous charge of static electricity building within those clouds. Once the critical voltage threshold was overcome, a hundred and fifty thousand amperes of electric current flashed down the conduit in a microsecond, further ionizing the air to produce a brilliant flash, and heating and expanding it to create a tremendous burst of sound. Less than two inches wide, the trail continued downward until it entered -- and passed harmlessly through -- the invulnerable body of the Man of Steel. Finding below it a fiery column of plasma -- an almost perfect conductor -- it continued down the outside of the tree, flashing harmlessly past the smaller living form in the air nearby, and carrying with it a pattern, which had been imprinted on it when it had passed through the living body above it. The passage of so much electric current forced the erection of an unthinkably powerful magnetic field surrounding the conduit.
Then it stopped, stymied, and the pattern rapidly began to dissipate. The associated fields re-adjusted themselves, seeking a path through the insulating air below the column of flame to the ground fifteen feet below. Only one path proved suitable. There was a tiny underground spring which leaked out into the soil a few feet out from the base of the tree, providing just enough moisture to sustain a patch of grass several feet across, a patch on which lay the body of a young woman. This would do.
The charge, by now bereft of its imprinted pattern, leapt the gap, producing a fresh plasma column between the fire and the ground, completing the circuit with the cloud above. It passed through the woman's body, and was received by the welcoming ground below. The horrendous voltage driving the current quickly dropped to zero, and the current attempted to follow suit.
But the built-up magnetic field, surrounding the plasma column along its entire length, had other ideas. As the magnetic field began to collapse, it poured its energy back into the electron stream, forcing the stream to continue its flow far longer than if driven by voltage alone. Thus, when the flow finally exhausted itself, there was an enormous excess of charge deposited in the ground beneath the strike.
In a phenomenon which scientists refer to as the "return stroke," this charge originated a lightning strike of its own, somewhat less powerful, flowing back *up* the column, until much of the charge was restored to the cloud above. And the process again began to reverse.
Down-and-up, down-and-up the flow oscillated, for more than a thousand microseconds -- a millisecond -- gradually weakening with each passage. But on the latter passages, the plasma trail had already been established; and so the pattern re-imprinted on the electron stream was not lost, but was carried undiminished from the body of the man above to the still body of the woman below.
All of this took place in much less time than a single eye-blink. So the single pair of eyes which witnessed the scene on the ground, only saw the woman's body jerk violently as the lightning struck it, and then lie still.
* * *
