“No,” he said. “They’re not.”
His headlong tear through the module had ripped open an escape path for the men to follow. A flashlight probed a busted bulkhead. Once they started along the cleared route, Clark trusted them to find their way to the lifeboats or helipad. There were others who needed him more now.
Without another word, he re-entered the smoky blackness, following the almost inaudible cries of those still trapped inside the burning module. His route took him rapidly through the drilling chamber at the center of the platform. The vertical drill string, suspended from the derrick, stabbed down into the erupting well. A high-pressure stream of oil gushed from a ruptured pipe.
Clark rushed through the stream, dousing himself in the flammable liquid. Flames ignited the oil, setting Clark ablaze. He kept on running, covered in flames, as his clothes burned away—but not his hair or skin.
Fire and smoke filled the pitch-black corridor outside the mess hall and galley. A red-hot fire door closed off the entrance to the galley. Clark’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he peered past the flames that were still engulfing him. His vision shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum so that he could see through the steel walls and into the chamber beyond.
Dozens of men, trapped inside, appeared to him as living X-rays. Even over the roar of the flames and the groaning metal, he could hear the despair as they wept and begged for their lives. Others made their final farewells to loved ones they never expected to see or hold again.
Clark figured differently.
He ripped the door off its hinges with his bare hands and tossed it aside. He rushed into the galley, eliciting startled gasps from the men. They stared at him with varying combinations of shock and wonder. A few backed away fearfully, and Clark realized how he appeared to them—like a fiery angel, burning brightly.
“What are you?” a man asked.
Clark didn’t have any good answer for him. Ignoring the question, he raced across the mess hall and hammered a wall with his fists, popping it free like the door of a bank vault. Open air showed on the opposite side of the breached surface, offering a way out.
“Go!” Clark bellowed, and he stepped aside to let the men through.
Diminished flames danced upon his bare skin as he hustled them out onto a swaying metal catwalk, hundreds of feet above the frothing sea. An exterior stairway led to the main deck and helipad. Clark was relieved to see that the landing area was still relatively free of flames. Scanning the sky, he spotted a Coast Guard helicopter hovering nearby. He waved his arms above his head to get its pilot’s attention. The endangered roughnecks jumped and shouted as well. The ’copter was their best shot at getting away from the burning rig.
The chopper pilot spotted them. Clark heard the pilot barking into his headset.
“I’ve got some guys on the helipad!” he said. “I’m gonna try for them!”
Braving the smoke and flames, the chopper came in for a landing. The wash from the ’copter’s spinning rotors temporarily dispelled the choking smoke. Clark shouted above the noise as he herded the men into the chopper.
“Go, go, GO!”
More explosions erupted from the engine rooms. The entire rig seemed on the verge of collapse. The drilling derrick, towering over a hundred feet above the main deck, listed to one side as its overheated steel trusses began to give. It leaned precariously over the helipad, threatening to crash down on the ’copter even as the last of the men clambered aboard.
In the cockpit, the pilot fought the control stick, trying to keep the chopper level amidst the explosions. The ’copter tilted sideways, almost dumping the rescued roughnecks back onto the deck. A hardhat called out to Clark, who was still standing on the rig, clothed in flames and smoke. He stretched out his hand to rescue his rescuer.
But an instant later Clark was gone. Dashing away from the helipad, he threw himself against the toppling derrick. He pushed back against the tower, fighting gravity and thousands of pounds of red-hot steel. Straining with all his might, he managed to halt the derrick’s momentum long enough for the chopper pilot to guide his craft out of danger.
Unable to hold the structure up any longer, Clark rode it down as it slammed into the helipad with the force of a giant’s hammer. The seismic impact in turn set off a volcanic explosion that sent the entire platform crashing into the sea, taking him with it.
Countless tons of steel and concrete drove him into the water, through thousands of gallons of burning oil. The flames licking his body, however, were doused as the sea swallowed him.
He sank beneath the waves. Compared to the fiery pandemonium above, it was surprisingly cool and tranquil down below. The curtain of flames spreading across the surface felt very remote and far away, almost as though they belonged to a different universe. Stunned, Clark basked for a moment in the peace and quiet. He found it tempting to just stop fighting, stop searching, and vanish into the endless depths.
Then a whalesong broke the silence of the deep. Complex vocalizations, punctuated by clicks, echoed beneath the sea. Three humpback whales, their sleek bodies gliding gracefully through the water, converged on him. The whales circled him in fascination, as though sensing something different about him.
The largest one nudged Clark with his snout and began pushing him toward the surface. He floated among the gigantic mammals, even as his mind drifted backward…
“Clark? Are you listening, Clark?”
It was the first day of school at Weisinger Primary. Ms. Rampling, Clark’s homeroom teacher, approached the boy’s desk while his classmates looked on.
“I asked if you could tell me who first settled in Kansas.”
Only nine years old and small for his age, Clark cowered at his desk. Wide blue eyes stared in horror at the thirtyish woman who regarded the mute child with confusion.
“Are you all right, Clark?” she asked.
The other children giggled at his discomfort. They couldn’t see what he saw—the inside of Ms. Whitaker. The teacher’s skin and clothes had gone transparent, revealing the bones, organs, and arteries beneath. He could see the blood coursing through her veins, watch her heart beat rhythmically. Her lungs expanded and contracted like fleshy balloons. Chewed-up food made its way through her digestive tract. She looked like the “visible man” model he’d seen in the Sears catalog, but life-sized and pulsing with animation. Exposed muscles, resembling strips of raw meat, covered her bones. Eyeballs rolled in the sockets of her skull.
He looked away from her, only to discover that his classmates had turned into living anatomy lessons as well. Even worse, he could hear all of their heartbeats, which were pounding like kettledrums—and growing louder by the second.
Clark threw his hands over his ears, but it didn’t do any good. He could hear everything. Even the ticking of the wall clock sounded like a jackhammer going off right in his ears.
It was unbearable.
Unable to stand it any longer, he shoved his chair back and jumped to his feet. The other children laughed thunderously, sounding like a million howling coyotes, and he ran in terror from the classroom.
“Clark! Come back here!” Ms. Whitaker called.
The skinless teacher chased him down the hallway, but Clark didn’t slow down. His own heart was racing in panic. He didn’t know what was happening to him. There was something wrong with his eyes—the world kept shifting in colors and degrees of perception. One minute, people were glowing red pockets of heat. The next, they were walking skeletons.
Steam pipes, hissing like giant rattlesnakes, glowed behind solid walls, which turned clear as glass, revealing the playground and sidewalks outside the school. He could see all the way across Smallville…