He reached for her again, but before he could grab hold, a sonic boom thundered above the farm, rattling the decrepit windmill. Zod and his cronies turned their eyes upward, searching for the source of the boom. Lying on the ground, Martha spotted a red-and-blue blur streaking down from the sky.
Clark?
With the impact of a locomotive, Superman slammed into Zod at hypersonic speed. The force of the blow sent the Zod bouncing across the rural landscape. Superman zoomed after him, determined to carry the fight as far from the Kent farm—as far from his mother—as possible.
They crashed through a grain elevator on the outskirts of Smallville without even slowing down. A cascade of wheat poured from the breached concrete silo, while the heat of their passage ignited the highly combustible grain dust, triggering a chain of explosions that blew off the roof. A tremendous fireball shot into the sky, even as the warring Kryptonians kept on hurtling through the air, leaving the burning facility behind.
Momentum sent them sailing through a 7-Eleven at the edge of the main commercial strip. Glass shattered as they tore in through one wall and out the other. Terrified customers ran screaming into the street, spilling their Slurpees onto the pavement. The roof of the convenience store caved in. Sparks sprayed from broken neon lights.
A gas station was the next victim of their headlong trajectory, which had traversed dozens of miles in less than a minute. The filling station exploded into flames as Superman and Zod barreled through the pumps, ripping them from their foundations. Thick black smoke rose from the inferno. A gassy odor leaked into the air. Debris rained down from sky.
Panicked men, women, and children ran for cover, seeking the dubious safety of the surrounding shops and businesses. Old men fled their benches. Tires squealed as drivers hit the gas, speeding away from the war zone that the downtown had become. A siren wailed from the fire station, as though a tornado was approaching. People hid in barber shops and beauty salons, as well as the bank, drug store, and gym.
The combatants finally came to a stop in the middle of Main Street. Superman was the first to rise to his feet. Anger was written all over his face. He raised his fists.
“You think you can threaten my mother?”
Zod staggered to his feet, shaken and off-balance. Burning gasoline blazed across his cape and he yanked it angrily from his shoulders. His force-helmet was cracked and sputtering, deformed by its collision with Superman’s fists. Unable to maintain its integrity, it began to dematerialize.
Zod blinked as he tried to bring his vision into focus. He stared at his hands in bewilderment.
Superman could guess what he was seeing—the same shifting electromagnetic spectrum that had overwhelmed Clark as a small child, the world ablaze with disorienting colors, the deafening cacophony of a million amplified sounds.
Finally Zod’s helmet dissolved in a shower of sparks, leaving his face and lungs fully exposed to Earth’s atmosphere. Gasping, he reeled away. He threw his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to muffle the sonic barrage. He choked on his words as he glared furiously at his foe.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded, but his words carried little of the usual command.
“Found your Achilles heel,” Superman said. “My parents taught me to hone my senses, Zod. Focus on just the things I wanted to see, and tune out everything else.”
He advanced on his enemy. It was time to finish this, before anyone else got hurt.
“But without your helmet, you can’t focus. You’re getting everything. And it’s too much, isn’t it?”
A dropship flared in overhead, coming to Zod’s rescue. Plasma cannons fired at Superman, knocking him backward into a parked delivery truck, which crumpled when he hit it. Momentarily stunned, he pulled himself out of the demolished truck even as the ship touched down in the street. One of Zod’s lieutenants rushed out and hurriedly dragged his general to safety.
Forget it, Superman thought, determined to stop them from getting away. He started toward the ship, only to be blocked by Faora and another soldier, who suddenly leapt into the street before him.
Superman gaped at the sight of the woman’s comrade, who was at least nine feet tall. An opaque helmet concealed the giant’s features. Wide in the chest, with fists like anvils, he put any human bodybuilder to shame. He overheard Faora address the brute as Nam-Ek. They looked as if they were spoiling for a fight.
Smack dab in the middle of Smallville.
Superman was acutely conscious of his surroundings, and of the countless innocent lives at risk. He scanned the downtown area with his X-ray vision, noting dozens of scared and helpless people taking cover in the nearby buildings. Parents clutched their crying children. Clerks and customers cowered behind shelves and counters while calling for help on their cell phones.
Doors and windows slammed shut and were locked as quickly as possible. Gun owners sought out their weapons, never imagining just how futile they would be in the face of the Kryptonian threat. Sobs, curses, and desperate prayers reached Superman’s ears.
But he heard something else as well—the whirr of approaching helicopters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Six AH-6 gunships swept in from the east, ferrying Special Forces troops. Spinning rotors sliced through the afternoon sky. The smoke and flames rising up from the small Kansas town and its surrounding farmlands were visible from the cockpit of Colonel Nate Hardy’s own “Little Bird.”
His blood boiled at the rampant destruction. Before joining the army, he had grown up in a rural community much like Smallville. He took this unprovoked attack personally.
“All players,” he barked over the radio. “This is Guardian. I am Airborne Mission Commander. Stand by for words. I have previously encountered and observed the beings we are about to engage at close proximity. They possess technology and capabilities well beyond our own. In addition, at least one of these beings is capable of flight. They are extremely dangerous and we have been authorized by executive order to use deadly force.”
He hoped that he’d gotten his message across—that the Kryptonians were significantly more dangerous than any human combatants. But how could even highly trained Special Forces personnel really grasp what they might be up against here?
Hardy had seen Superman fly, witnessed it with his own two eyes. And even now, he could hardly believe it.
Who knew what these other aliens were capable of?
His radio crackled as the lead gunship called in.
“Roger, Guardian. This is Gunslinger 06. Sitrep, Over.”
“Gunslinger 06, request you put troops down in LZs One, Two, and Three. This operation is non-permissive.”
His order made it clear that they were flying into a hostile environment, presumably under enemy control. This was not how he had ever thought of Kansas before.
“Roger that, Guardian.”
The gunships weren’t the only birds under Hardy’s command. His radio crackled once more as the pilot of an A-10 Thunderbolt fighter jet contacted him for orders.
“Guardian, Thunder-One-One flight. Checking in and stand-by for A/O update.”
Hardy scoped out the scene below, spotting Superman, Faora-Ul, and a hulking Kryptonian bruiser. They were facing off in the middle of the town’s main drag. He couldn’t see any civilians, but they hadn’t had the time to evacuate. So he assumed they were taking shelter in the modest commercial buildings that lined the street. A two-story Sears department store made a workable landmark.