Dead or Alive pt 10
Lois managed to open her door while carrying the awkward box in her arms. She kicked off her shoes, and then padded over to the video player where she dropped the box on the floor.
She went over to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was empty, except for the open carton of milk. She took it out and drank from it before putting it back.
The freezer held a bit of chocolate ice cream. She pulled it out, opened the drawer, retrieved a spoon and headed back over to the box. Fumbling through the videos, she found the one that would show her retrieving the kryptonite from the floor. She'd start with that one.
It could hardly be called interesting to watch a real time video of an empty hallway. She figured out which door led into the morgue and stood close to the television to see if the piece of red kryptonite was on the floor. It wasn’t. According to the time on the tape, they should be arriving soon to investigate the stolen body of Superman.
She'd tried speeding the tape up, but found that she couldn't see anything on fast forward.
Just as she finished scraping the bottom of the ice cream container, she noticed movement at the far end of the hallway. She peered at it closely, recognizing herself and Clark walking toward the morgue with the coroner.
Just then the phone rang. She jumped up and pushed 'stop', then reached over to answer the phone.
"Lois, turn on the television!" It was Jimmy.
"Hi Jimmy. What's on?"
"It's about Superman. He's giving an interview.”
"Why that dirty rat! He’s not giving the interview to the Planet?”
“No. It’s LNN.”
“Good grief.”
She turned off the VCR and waited while the news images came on. There he was. Her heart melted as she watched him. He stood with his arms crossed, tall and stately answering the questions as best he could.
“What happened to you Superman?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you and the rest of the world. I’ve been told that I fell on the sidewalk. After that all my body functions were reduced to a deathlike state. I was told that one of the Daily Planet’s star reporters, Lois Lane found a piece of kryptonite in the casket just before it was lowered into the ground. Several days later I was myself once again. When I regained my strength, I was able to break out of the grave.”
“Some people are speculating that you were resurrected from the dead like Jesus Christ.”
“No, I must not have been entirely dead. I didn’t have any near death experiences either.”
“Why didn’t the coroner realize that you weren’t dead?”
“I can’t answer that, Ms. Lewis. Perhaps because of my foreign metabolism he wasn’t familiar with what my body signs would be.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I'm going to restore order to the streets of Metropolis and hopefully the rest of the world.”
“That’s quite a lofty goal, Superman. Do you have anything you’d like to say to the world before I let you get started?”
“I want the underworld to know that I'm glad to be alive and that I won’t rest until justice and truth prevail.”
Ms. Lewis turned to the camera as Superman lifted off in the background. “And that’s the way it is in Metropolis right now. Superman is alive. I repeat, Superman is alive and well and pledges to restore order to the streets of our fair city.”
The camera followed Superman as he flew upward and out of sight. Soon another camera was picking him up as he landed in front of the rioting looters that were emptying the stores along Waterfront Street.
He stood in front of a group of them, his arms crossed defiantly, a look of no nonsence on his face, his jaw set firmly. He tilted his head as he addressed the four men in leather jackets removing computers from the store.
“I think it’s time for you to put that back, unload the truck and clean this store up!”
“Oh yeah?” The looters ignored him, turning and walking away.
Superman appeared in front of them, his arms crossed, the look on his face sterner than it had been. In moments, they’d replaced the equipment and were unloading the truck. When the store was clean, he flew them to the booking office at the police precinct.
He flew police cars in to block other streets, then corralled looters, removing weapons. Flying back and forth amongst a few dozen of them, the scene was repeated. He flew overhead, in some cases simply removing the looters holding the stolen merchandise and took them directly to the police station. It seemed to work more efficiently.
As the jail filled up, it became evident that he’d need more room to hold them. The police selected a large conference center and set it up for booking and holding suspects. Superman herded up the delinquents and flew them over, reading them their rights as he apprehended them.
It didn’t take long before he’d cleaned up the problems in the entire downtown area. He’d moved on to the malls and the smaller business districts of the large city. When he’d finished working in Metropolis, he moved westward with the sunlight, continuing to restore order that the national guard and the army hadn’t been able to accomplish.
Three days later, a weary Superman landed on Clark Kent’s balcony. His parents had returned home to Smallville to take care of the animals. He entered the quiet apartment, glad to be alone. He showered, then fell into bed.
He’d done all he could before his body and his mind had needed a rest. He’d followed the sun for the entire time, working his way around the world three times, then moving back again to work in the night when yet more lawlessness was carried out.
Everywhere he went people were relieved to see him. If he’d thought he’d been loved and appreciated by those who had paid their respects to him, it was nothing compared to the number who waved and cheered wherever he landed.
He lay in bed, thinking about all that had happened over the past few weeks. It had been quite an extraordinary time. As he looked back on it all, he thought he must have been drugged to have acted in such a shady manner, to actually pretend he was dead when he landed on the sidewalk. Even before that, in the clouds with Lois, he certainly hadn’t been himself. It was like remembering a drunken stupor that had encased his mind. He didn’t know that man who had been Superman for those days. He disapproved entirely of the charade that he had pulled off. It was highly distasteful to him.
He hoped that somehow he could make it up to the citizens of Planet Earth. That is what he’d been doing since he’d broken out of the coffin where he’d been buried alive. It had certainly been an unusual experience. He could barely remember how he had justified the entire thing to himself. It was a blotch on his life that he wondered if he could ever remove. The reputation of Superman had been tarnished. He’d tried to minimize the effects of it as much as possible with the story he’d told to LNN on that first day.
He was very glad he’d not done anything worse, that he’d not harmed anyone. The only thing that remained from the experience was his feeling that Lois Lane, a good woman though she was, was not the person that he should be with. She, too, stood for truth and justice. She too devoted herself to uncovering the truth and to bringing criminals to pay for their crimes.
She was quite the woman. But she was sarcastic, unyielding and egocentric. She was far less than honest herself, frequently breaking and entering and using all sorts of underhanded means to get to the bottom of a story. Her vanity and self-serving means left little to be desired. Yet she was basically a good person.
He was quite willing to admit that he too had his failings. However, he could at least blame red kryptonite for what had happened over the past while. She was simply like that normally. She thought nothing of lying to him. Although he’d had to lie to her and to the world to protect his secret, lying was abhorrent to him. They were far too different in their moral codes to be together as a couple anymore.
He lay in bed, realizing it was the first time that he’d laid his head on a pillow since the satin one in the coffin. How strange the memory was. All those things that people had left in there for him…the little flashlight…the candy…the cell phone…the ring…the religious symbols. He mustn’t forget the kryptonite, either.
Scenes from the endless faces of people stopping to say something to him, to touch him, or to simply look at him came back to mind. He began to recall the many criminals who taunted him with confessions of crimes he’d never caught them for. He tried to replay it in his mind, to picture those who had given him such blatant leads. He was falling asleep, though. It had been a very long time since he’d slept.
