The Death and Life of Superman (70 page)

The Eradicator was being forced to his knees when Supergirl swooped into the chamber, with Steel hot on her heels.

The Girl of Steel struck at the Cyborg with a combination punch, both physical and psychokinetic, that twisted his head halfway around and flung him into the wreckage that littered the chamber floor. While Supergirl leapt after the Cyborg, Steel pulled Superman away from the reactor and crouched over him, blocking the radiation with his own armored body. The Eradicator lurched to his feet; in a rage he shot a stream of searing energy at the reactor’s containment vessel, melting the lead shielding and sending it flowing like lava down over the kryptonite fuel rods.

“No!” The Cyborg’s voice became a shriek. “This cannot be! He must
die
! You must
all
die!”

Supergirl hauled off and connected with a hard left to the Cyborg’s metal jaw, punching it loose from his head.

“Don’t stop!” The Eradicator struggled to speak. “Keep him . . .
dizzy
!”

In tandem, Supergirl and the Eradicator blasted the Cyborg. She literally spun him around, while the Eradicator fired an electromagnetic pulse that scrambled Henshaw’s neural functions.

The kryptonite was almost completely covered now, and energy crackled and flowed around the Eradicator. “The Cyborg must be destroyed, just as he destroyed Coast City! The city—our adopted world—must be avenged!”

Even through his pain, Superman could not miss the passion behind the Eradicator’s rage.
Did he say ‘our’ adopted world?
“Wait a minute, Steel.”

“Come on, man, we have to get you out of here.”

“No, I feel better now.” Superman grabbed hold of a railing, holding himself upright. “Radiation’s sealed off.”

The Eradicator was starting to glow as he lurched toward Superman. “I must make amends. I must atone.” He reached out his hands, and radiant energy washed over Superman.

Steel moved to block the Eradicator, but Superman waved him back. “It’s all right, John Henry. Feels good . . . like a day at the beach.”

Superman stood taller, and his chest seemed to swell, as the Eradicator poured energy into him. As Superman grew stronger, the energy flowed at an increasing rate, a steadily accelerating rate. He suddenly realized that the Eradicator wasn’t going to stop. “No. There’s no need—!”

“There is
every
need!” The Eradicator seemed to draw in on himself as he spoke. “The Cyborg has committed great crimes in the name of Superman. He has endangered this Earth, even as I myself once did. It is only now that I see the evil of what I attempted to do to you, what I attempted to do to your world.

“There is but one way I can fully atone for Henshaw’s crimes and my own.”

As the Eradicator began to falter, the Cyborg screamed incoherently, flung Supergirl aside, and charged headlong at the supermen. A final burst of energy erupted from the Eradicator; half was directed into Superman in a healing stream; the rest slammed into the Cyborg, leaving him singed and smoking.

Then the glow faded, and the Eradicator collapsed.

Supergirl grabbed hold of the smoldering Cyborg. He slumped over in her grasp.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then, the Cyborg pulled free of Supergirl’s grasp, pieces of him breaking away in her hands, and leapt again at Superman.

Superman met the Cyborg’s charge with a hard right, knocking him the length of the Engine Room. Superman was on the Cyborg like a shot. “It’s all over, Henshaw.”

Superman smashed his fist into the Cyborg like a pile driver, and the construct went down like a marionette whose strings had been snapped. The Cyborg’s cape came off in Superman’s hands and the rest of him simply fell apart, clattering to the floor in a million pieces.

Superman wheeled around. “The computer systems! We have to isolate them. If Henshaw shunted his consciousness in there—”

“I don’t think so, man.” Steel came running up. “I’ll run a sweep to make sure, but—well, Mongul had cut the main lines between the city’s systems and the Engine Room, and I’d already disabled the rest.”

They rejoined Supergirl, who knelt beside the Eradicator; all that was left of him was a lifeless husk. She looked up at Superman and Steel. “I think he’s gone.”

Steel removed his helmet. “He gave me a lot of grief, but I don’t know if we’d have been able to stop the Cyborg without him.”

“I still don’t understand.” Superman looked down at the fallen body in confusion. “The Eradicator once tried to kill me. Maybe he did help bring me back to life, but he used me to sustain himself. After all that, why would he sacrifice himself—why would he drain himself dry—to restore my power?”

Supergirl gazed back over the Eradicator. “What else did he know? He was created as the ultimate weapon of a warrior age.” She looked up at Superman. “I started out life in a laboratory, too, but I was lucky; thanks to you and some other fine people, I learned early on what it means to choose to
live
for something. I don’t think the Eradicator ever had that chance, did he?”

Superman knelt beside her and bowed his head. “No. No, he never did.”

Supergirl shook her head sadly. “He knew only what it meant to die for something.”

Steel nodded. “But he didn’t sacrifice himself just for you. I think that he sacrificed himself for all of us. After all, he did give us back our Superman.”

“Superman . . . how many terrible things have been done in that name?” Superman slowly rose to his feet and looked down at the cape in his hands. “The Cyborg used it when he wiped a whole city off the face of the Earth. The Eradicator used it when he played judge, jury, and executioner. I’ll be a long time removing those stains.”

Steel put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not your fault, man. And I hope we haven’t all done wrong by you. The kid was young and raw, but he came through for us and saved Metropolis, if Mongul was telling the truth. And as for me, well . . .” John Henry reached up and yanked the S-shield from his chest. “I think that only the
real
Man of Steel should wear this from now on. Same goes for that cape.”

“The cape?” Superman looked down again at the torn red cloth. “I don’t know. After what’s been done, I’m not sure I should wear it again.”

“Well, I
am
sure!” Supergirl stood up and put her hand on Superman’s shoulder. “And I know a way to make it right.” She reached out with the amazing power of her mind and gave a push. All the color—both in the cape and in Superman’s bodysuit—faded to a dazzling white. And then, as Supergirl’s brow knit in concentration, the cloth began to swirl and flow under her touch.

“Supergirl, what—?” Superman looked down to find himself again garbed in his familiar red, blue, and yellow costume.

“I got it right, didn’t I?” She smiled at him.

“You got it perfectly right.” Superman leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

“Thank
you
for coming back to us.” Supergirl looked around at the wreck of Engine City. “It’s really over now, isn’t it?”

Superman shook his head. “The battle is over, yes. But the hardest part is still ahead.”

29

Lois Lane awoke
with a stiff neck on the couch of her apartment. Her clothing was rumpled from having been slept in, and the floor around her was littered with take-out food containers and the morning’s edition of the
Daily Planet,
its headline screamed WAR OF THE SUPERMEN.

She was drowsily aware that her television was still on and tuned to CNN’s continuing coverage of the situation at Coast City. When Superman suddenly appeared on screen, she fumbled for the remote to boost the volume.

“. . . wish that I had been here. I wish that there was something I could have done to prevent this. I know that nothing I ever say or do can bring back the people of Coast City. To all the many people who lost friends and relatives here, I can but pledge my life to do everything in my power to see to it that such a terrible tragedy never happens again.”

The screen cut to a CNN field correspondent. “The words of Superman—the
real
Superman—taped just minutes ago. His statement had been expected to touch on his so-called return from the dead; as you saw and heard, it did not. Things are beginning to wind down here, in day five of what federal agencies are calling the Coast City Holocaust. Units of the army and National Guard have secured the disaster area, assisted by a special task force of the famed Justice League. The League, which recently returned from a mission in space, has removed and destroyed a vast store of dangerous and toxic substances—”

Lois hit the off switch and sank back into her couch.
Just “day five,” It seems like he’s been gone forever. Oh, Clark . . .

Suddenly there came a gentle tapping at the glass door of her balcony. Lois bolted up from the couch as if she’d heard a gunshot. She got to her feet and stumbled barefoot to the door.
If this is that stupid bird again—!
Then she yanked back the curtain and found herself at eye level with a red and yellow pentagonal S-shield.

All traces of drowsiness vanished instantly as Lois flung open the door and leapt into Superman’s arms.

Hours later, Lois finished dressing for work as Clark availed himself of her shower. “Have you talked to Martha and Jonathan yet?”

He came out of the bathroom, swathed in a towel. “I called them while you were showering, hon. I told them that we’d be out to visit as soon as we could.”

“Oh, good! This past month’s been such a nightmare for them—for all of us. And it’s still not completely over. I mean, people are starting to accept that Superman is alive, but to the world at large, Clark Kent is dead.”

“Yeah, that is a definite problem. We have to concoct some sort of cover story. This could be a tough one. I’ve had to cover absences before, but never one this long.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Hmm, how about this: I escaped being buried alive, but I was hit by some falling debris that induced a case of retrograde amnesia. I couldn’t find an ID and the last thing I could remember was working on a farm, so I drifted upstate and worked as a migrant laborer until my memory finally returned!”

“Oh, come on, Clark! You’re the most famous missing person since Amelia Earhart. Just about every place out in the country has a satellite dish these days. Even the
cows
would’ve recognized you!”

“Okay, then, how about I fell off a pier and was washed out to sea?”

“Uh-huh. And how did you survive? I suppose you just bobbed around in the ocean all month?”

“Yeah, bad idea.” He frowned. “Even though it’s partially true, I don’t suppose we should claim that I was abducted by aliens?”

“After Coast City?”

“Right. Forget that. Another bad idea.” He caught a glimpse of the clock out of the corner of his eye and grabbed up his costume.

Lois raised an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got a chopper to meet!” There was a blur of motion, and he was dressed. “Keep all this in the back of your mind, and we’ll talk about it later.” He gave her a quick kiss and leapt out the window.

Lois stared after him for a moment, then closed and locked her window. Her cat emerged from beneath a chair, warily looking about to see if anything else was planning to go flying by. Lois picked the cat up and scratched him behind the ears. “Elroy, ever notice how there’s never another Superman around when you need him?”

On the outskirts of Metropolis, a large cargo helicopter touched down at the rooftop helipad of S.T.A.R. Labs. Half a dozen technicians came forward on the run, sliding open the copter’s big doors and lifting out a long refrigerated case bearing the body of the Eradicator.

“Hey, you be careful with him, you hear?” Steel stepped down out of the copter as the technicians lifted the case onto a wheeled cart and rolled it into the sprawling research center. “He might have started out as some sort of alien artifact, but he died for us all!”

A slender woman in a white lab coat walked up to the copter as John Henry turned and gave Supergirl a hand down from the craft.

“Don’t worry, Mister . . . Steel?” The woman offered her hand. “I’m Dr. Karen Faulkner, head of research for S.T.A.R./Metropolis. I can assure you that the Eradicator’s remains will be treated with the utmost respect.”

“Hey, crew! Long time no see!” Superboy came sauntering over to the copter. He high-fived John Henry and gave Supergirl a wink. “No see for even longer in your case, babe!”

“Good to see you in one piece, kid.” Steel looked the boy over. “I heard you took a little pounding from that missile.”

“Yeah, a little, but I heal real good. Doc Faulkner and her lab rats want to put me in a cage with a wheel, though. Anyway, I’ve finished my gig on the ‘turn your head and cough’ circuit, and I’m ready to party! Hey, look!” Superboy pointed to the heavens. “Up in the sky!”

Superman dropped onto the helipad, smiling broadly. “Hello, everybody. Glad to see that all of you made it back all right.” He looked down into the grinning face of the Boy of Steel and felt a vague sense of unease.
It’s going to take time getting used to having a younger version of myself around.
Still, he put those feelings aside and grasped the boy’s hand. “I’m glad to see you, too, son. That was a brave thing you did.”