Greg Cox - Man of Steel

“Whoa,” he whispered. “It’s Superman.”

Searching the growing crowd for familiar faces, Lois was relieved to spot Perry, Steve, Jenny, and a few other scattered Planet staffers among the survivors. Perry and Lombard helped Jenny clamber over a heap of rubble. The plucky intern was limping, but managed to make her way toward Lois and Superman. She glanced up at the twilight sky, where the Black Zero no longer hung above the city.

“Are they gone?” she asked.

Perry peered at the empty sky, as well.

“I think so,” he said.

Jenny turned her gaze toward Superman and Lois. Blushing slightly, Lois wondered if Perry and the others had seen the kiss, and whether she could keep that part out of the papers.

“He saved us,” Jenny said.

Superman heard what the girl said. He smiled at her, pleased to get such a warm reception. He scanned her discreetly, making certain that her injuries didn’t require immediate attention. To his relief, she appeared to have come through the attack with only a few minor sprains and abrasions.

More survivors emerged from hiding. They milled about, gazing in amazement at the colorful hero and taking pictures with their cell phones. After keeping a low profile for his entire life, his first instinct was to flee all the attention, but instead he lingered among the people like a man with nothing to hide anymore.

He smiled warmly at the bystanders, seeking to put them at ease. It felt odd, but great, as well. Maybe he didn’t have to lurk in the shadows from now on.

Maybe the world was finally ready for Superman.

A tremendous boom wiped the smile from his face and threw the crowd into a panic. The noise came from the demolished building where the Kryptonian scout had crashed.

An armored figure burst from the wreckage.

Zod!

Apparently Zod had been too far away from the Black Zero to be captured by the Phantom Drive, which meant that the war was far from over.

“Everyone get back!” Superman shouted. He spotted injured people in danger of being trampled by the frightened crowd. “Move the others to safety!”

His urgent instructions had the desired effect. Courageous soldiers and civilians scrambled to assist the wounded as the crowd fled in terror. Lois tried to linger, but was dragged away by her friends.

Confident that no one would be left behind, Superman launched himself into the air.

It seemed that he and Zod still had business to settle.

Zod landed in an empty wasteland that had been flattened by the gravity beam. A circle of desolation surrounded him, bordered by the standing ruins of buildings partially sheared away by the column. The carved-up skyscrapers formed a sort of bowl around a blasted region several blocks across. Compressed matter, ground to a fine powder, blew across what had once been a thriving business district.

Superman could only imagine how many lives had been lost while he had been fighting the World Engine on the other side of the world.

Now it was Zod’s turn to be stopped.

The exiled Kryptonian looked up as Superman approached. Wet eyes betrayed his sorrow. He knelt and picked up a handful of dust. He let the gritty powder run through his fingers.

“Look at this,” he said. “We could have built a new Krypton in this squalor.” He flicked the last of the dust from his fingers. “But you chose the humans over us.”

Any doubts Superman might have had concerning that decision were dispelled by the widespread death and devastation that surrounded them. Zod and his people had brought nothing but pain and fear to the planet.

“Krypton had its chance,” Superman replied, and he gestured toward the humans. “This is their world. And we have no right to take it from them.”

Zod shook his head ruefully.

“On Krypton, I committed unspeakable acts of violence,” he said. “I waged war. I tortured people. I performed countless executions. But there was never any malice behind my actions,” he insisted. “I did them because my people asked me to. But now I have no people. And for the first time in my life, I find myself contemplating violence simply because I want to.”

He rose to his feet and leveled his gaze at Superman.

“I’m going to make them suffer, Kal. These humans you’ve adopted. I’m going to take every one of them away from you. One by one.”

This was no idle threat, Superman knew. Zod was serious.

But so was he.

“I’ll stop you,” he promised.

“HOW?” Zod bellowed. He lunged at Superman, sending him flying backward across the dusty wastes. He marched toward his enemy, continuing a blood feud that stretched across light-years of space. “Your father couldn’t imprison me. You think you can? There’s not a cell on this planet that can hold me.”

One blow wasn’t enough to knock the fight out of Superman. Spurred by the memory of his martyred birth father, he shot up from the ground like a torpedo, slamming into Zod and carrying them both into one of the looming ruins. The butchered edifice collapsed around them in an avalanche of sundered steel girders, rebar, drywall, stair rails, elevators, cables, furniture, pipes, and plumbing fixtures, all of which continued to crash down upon their heads and shoulders.

Tons of debris bounced off their invulnerable frames.

Zod snatched hefty chunks of concrete from the rubble and flung them at Superman, who batted them away with his arms and fists. But the barrage was just a diversionary tactic, distracting him long enough for Zod to deliver a flying kick that sent Superman hurling back out into the open, where he needed only a split-second to recover.

He shook his head to clear it.

You’re going to have to do better than that, Zod.

He launched himself again, hitting his target like a battering ram. Zod smashed into a thick support column that broke apart to expose more rebar. He rebounded from the column and whipped Superman’s cape over his head. Momentarily tangled in it, the Man of Steel was unable to stop his opponent from tossing him all the way into a neighboring building.

His indestructible body smashed through layers of brick and mortar before sliding to a stop in the lobby of a ruined office building. A security desk sat empty, wisely abandoned by whomever had once guarded the entrance. Plate glass windows had been blown out onto the sidewalk. A bank of elevators was blocked by fallen rubble. Superman wondered if the building’s occupants had been wise enough to take the stairs.

Too many innocent people had died.

Before he could catch his breath, dozens of broken lengths of rebar flew at him like javelins, hurled at lightning speed. The improvised spears failed to penetrate Superman’s suit or skin, but hurt like blazes as they jabbed him again and again. Zod’s arms turned into a blur of motion even as a berserker rage caused his eyes to ignite like twin supernovae.

Crimson beams leaked from his eyes indiscriminately, setting on fire everything around them. Within seconds, a raging blaze rushed through the crumbling structures. Twenty stories of burning floors and ceilings threatened to bury them.

Zod leapt instinctively from the inferno, seeking the open air. Wincing in pain, Superman attempted to follow his lead by taking to the sky, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. A toppling skyscraper clipped him on its way down, swatting him to Earth. He crashed into a deserted street a few blocks beyond the circle of destruction.

This can’t go on, he thought. The whole city is coming down on top of us.