The explosion knocked Clark back thirty feet and it caused his skin to sting slightly. Fragments of the missile were already falling to earth and Clark grimaced as he realized that his suit, already abused, had been mostly burned away.
Only the parts of the gray business suit which had been closest to his skin remained unaffected. The rest was already drifting to earth along with the fragments from the missile. This left him wearing an undershirt and a pair of ragged pants. Even his shoes were singed.
A quick glance showed that the fragments were going to land in a field, away from anyone who might be hurt.
A glance in another direction showed two of the new lethal looking fighter planes heading in his direction. They’d obviously spotted him on radar and had come to take a look.
It stunned Clark to think that they’d launch a missile without even visually confirming that he wasn’t some sort of a passenger plane. Of course, if their radar was more sophisticated than the radar back home they’d realize that he wasn’t large enough to be any sort of a civilian plane.
As long as the pilots didn’t see him, or worse, get pictures of him, he’d be fine. There wasn’t anything in the air that could keep up with him.
He put on the speed before pulling up short. Other planes were coming from several different directions. While he’d be able to easily outdistance them, h wasn’t sure just how far their cameras could penetrate the cloud cover.
Allowing himself to drop straight down, Clark fell at a speed just short of supersonic.
By the time the planes broke cloud cover, he was already on the ground and stepping into a building which was warm and filled with sound. They wouldn’t be looking for a man, and even if they were, by the time anyone attempted to catch up with him he’d be long gone.
Maybe in the company of strangers he’d be able to find out what had happened to the city that he’d loved.
At the very least he’d be out of the rain until they stopped looking.
***********
“They actually launched in U.S. airspace?” Lois asked, speaking into her cell phone. “Do we have any confirmation of that?”
She handed her money to the barista behind the counter and gratefully took her Café Mocha. It was difficult to get good coffee in Iraq, which was ironic considering that coffee had been cultivated in the Middle East for more than a thousand years.
Of course, when going out to a place with decent coffee could get you shot, you made do with a military grade brew.
So whenever she was in the States, she splurged on expensive coffee. Three months of carrying a forty pound pack in hundred degree weather meant that she wouldn’t have to worry about her weight for a while, and the caffeine helped her deal with the jet lag.
“Get someone who is willing to go on the record.” She said as she left the counter. “It’s no good to us unless we have some sort of proof.”
Grabbing napkins to go with her cruller, Lois headed back outside. The rain was only sprinkling now, so a mad dash brought her back to her car.
“Get me the location. I’ll see what I can find.”
A moment later she was back in her car. She switched the engine on and put the heater on full blast. After months in the desert heat, cold weather seemed to bite a little more strongly than she remembered.
She stared at the windshield as the rain began to fall harder, absentmindedly taking a bite of her cruller.
Nothing about this made any sense. Her sources in National Intelligence admitted that there was no sign as of yet of any sort of weapon on board the plane, but the passengers had been quarantined in an undisclosed location. That spoke of fears of a biological attack, but it didn’t make sense.
If terrorists had wanted to use germ weapons, all they would have had to do was infect selected people and send them through ordinary air travel. They had to have known that an unknown airplane would raise all sorts of flags.
It was an enormous effort for very little return. If the plane had held a nuclear weapon, it might have been a different situation, but as it was…Lois couldn’t make sense of it. It bothered her and left her with a feeling that they were all missing something.
National security was a business where you couldn’t afford to miss anything.
Her cell phone rang and Lois realized that she’d eaten most of her cruller without even tasting it.
“You have the location?” she asked. Grabbing a pen she wrote quickly on a napkin. “I’ll go check it out.”
***********
Stepping into the bar, Clark was acutely aware of his appearance. Wearing only an undershirt and a pair of pants which were scorched up to the ankles, he was soaked to the bone. He could have gotten rid of the water easily, but that might have made him stand out even more.
The first thing that he noticed as he entered the bar was the lack of smoke in the air. He couldn’t recall having been in a bar when the smell of cigarette smoke hadn’t permeated the joint. In most places, even when he’d gone during the day he’d been able to smell the smoke rising from every surface.
This place, though, had been painted over and from the smell of it, no one had been smoking there for at least a year.
Clark found a seat in the back of the room and slipped into it. The place was thankfully dim, and so his unusual attire might not be as glaringly obvious as it had been.
Two men in the table beside him glanced over at him dismissively, and then returned to nursing their drinks.
Several large televisions were hanging from the ceiling. On one was a football game. Statistics from a dozen other games scrolled by beneath it.
On another screen was a grainy greenish picture of a woman standing in front of a chain fence. Behind her was the commercial jetliner he’d left behind, with large lights having been set up to illuminate every inch of the plane with the brightness of the sun. Men in environmental suits were going over ever inch of the plane, including two who had climbed up on the wings and were going over it with some sort of device.
“What’s going on?” he asked, leaning toward the men in the table beside him.
People in bars were usually at least a little more likely to talk to strangers than the general population. Alcohol might have been a factor in that.
The men were both wearing business suits and both looked red faced and bleary.
“Another plane attack,” the first said. “I always knew the bastards were gonna try again.”
“They didn’t get very far,” the second said. “The Feds are going to have everybody locked up until they get to the bottom of it.”
“What, everybody on the plane?” Clark asked. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“You want another 9-11?” The first man shook his head. “It’s a dangerous world.”
Glancing up at the screen, Clark saw the reporter stumble a little as the wind swirled around her.
“She’s a real looker,” the first man said. “Probably would have made anchor already if it wasn’t for her name.”
“Her name?”
“Lois Lane. The networks didn’t think anyone would take the news seriously if it was delivered by a comic book character.”
At Clark’s look of incomprehension, the man leaned forward and said, “Lois Lane. You know…Lois Lane…Superman?”
Clark shrugged. “I don’t follow the comics.”
His own life was fantastic enough that he had no need for fantastic tales. Also, when he’d been old enough to want comics, his foster parents hadn’t wanted to spend the money.
“Four major movies, three or four television series…guy in a blue suit and a red cape? None of it ring a bell?”
Clark shook his head.
“Super strong, he flies, pretends to be a mild mannered reporter during the day, grew up in Smallville?”
Frozen, Clark said, “My parents didn’t let me read comic books.”
The older man leaned forward. “Maybe you saw the credit card commercials on television with Jerry Seinfeld, or saw people wearing t-shirts. Songs on the radio?”
Clark shrugged uncomfortably, while his mind raced.
Was there someone else out there able to do the things he was? Or was it all a coincidence that these people seemed to dream of someone who could do what he could do.
“Have you heard of Tarzan? Mickey Mouse?”
Clark nodded.
“Well, add Superman and you have the three most recognizable icons in the world.”
He felt a hand touching his shoulder and he jerked slightly. An older woman was standing beside his table. “What will you have?” she asked.
“Um…whatever’s on tap.”
Nodding shortly, she left. Clark turned back to the two men, who were already discussing upcoming elections.
Clark frowned. The elections had been over for two years. Charlton Heston had beat Garner in the last election. So unless the President had been hurt of killed, they shouldn’t be having another election for another two years.
He felt his gut clench suddenly as he realized that things were even more alien than he’d thought at first. Pictures of presidential candidates flashing on the screen confirmed it. He’d never heard of any of the candidates, and he’d been following politics in his work as a reporter for years.
Presidential candidates didn’t just appear out of whole cloth. They were already known, governors, senators, businessmen.
He could come to only one conclusion. This wasn’t his world.
If cities were disappearing, it would be all over the news. If these people made such a big deal about a plane landing, they’d be all over the disappearance of millions of people.
The only conclusion he could come to was that it wasn’t the city of Metropolis that had disappeared…it was him and the plane he had carried.
Which meant that Lana was still going to be angry about the missed dinner date.
It was funny the thoughts that came to mind when you were feeling overwhelmed. Clark felt numb a little as he realized that he didn’t know of any way to get home.
He didn’t have any way to get the people he’d brought from Metropolis either, which meant that the families would have to go through the whole grieving process without ever really knowing what had happened to their loved ones.
The waitress set a frothing mug of beer on his table, and Clark reached for his wallet. He grimaced as he realized that it was missing, as was part of his back pocket. He was lucky he hadn’t felt a breeze.
He’d stuffed a few bills in his front pocket earlier in the day, so he pulled out a ten.
He took a sip and then froze as he noticed the waitress taking the bill over to a better lit portion of the bar.
She spoke to the bartender, who also stared at the bill. He picked up a telephone, and Clark decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
By the time they looked up, he was gone.
