In one motion, the soldiers leveled their guns and opened fire on the crowd. Bright, green pulses of light blasted out of the high tech weapons, streaking through the air towards them. People fell as the charges burned through them instantaneously. The blasts tore up the concrete and shattered the marquee over head. Sparks rained down as the old, but still hot, electrical lines inside it were ruptured. A car parked in front of the Talon was perforated in moments. No one but Clark had a chance to move before they were cut down.
Just as the cry came to fire, Clark had pivoted and grabbed Chloe around the waist. As roughly as he dared, he’d hurled her through the boarded up windows of the Talon, hoping she’d be able to find some cover inside. Then the pulses struck him from behind, knocking him to his knees.
Clark had been shot before and knew what the punch of a bullet felt like. This was much worse. He gritted his teeth as he felt the skin on his back burn. Then he felt the familiar kick of nausea in his stomach and realized the green color of the pulses hadn’t been a coincidence. The meteor rocks were powering those guns, whatever they were.
Gasping for breath, he crawled behind the wreck of a car. The shock was quickly fading from him and he was already starting to recover. At least the effect of the meteor rocks wasn’t very strong, he thought grimly. One of the pulses punched a hole in the car a few feet from his head. But they didn’t have to be, he reasoned, not when they had so many of them.
He stared suddenly at the bodies lying around him. A woman looked back him vacantly, part of her neck sheared away by a blast. His stomach heaving, he looked away as another salvo struck the car. How could they open fire on the crowd like that? Who the hell were these people?
“Clark!” he heard Chloe call from inside.
At least she was okay so far, he thought. “Get down,” he yelled as another salvo tore the door to the Talon off its hinges. He grimaced and then stared through the car. The soldiers were advancing on the theater in pairs, weapons ready. He had to find someway to keep them back. Glancing around, he finally settled on the car itself. Reaching underneath it, he felt around quickly till his fingers touched the fuel line. Then with one jerking motion, he tore it open.
“Hope they get the message,” he muttered as he turned and braced his feet against the car frame. Clark kicked out and sent the car tumbling end over end into the street. The soldiers scattered as the car came to a screeching stop on its side. The ones furthest back shouted as they spotted him and started to raise their weapons. Too late, he thought and he focused his heat vision at the ruptured fuel line.
The car went up in a fireball, the explosion’s shockwave sending the massed soldier’s flying. Not waiting to see who was left standing, Clark dashed through the ruined doors of the Talon, destroying what was left of the frame. A few random shots smashed into the wood around him, but none came very close.
“What happened?” Chloe called out to him. She was huddled behind an overturned sofa in the remains of the lobby. Clark jumped over the ratty furniture and landed next to her. “I told you to run!” She clutched at his jacket.
“If I did that you’d be dead right now,” he hissed at her.
“My uncle’s a general,” she told him. “He works with Luthorcorp. They wouldn’t shoot me.”
“They didn’t care about the people out there,” he snapped. “Why should they start with you?”
She glanced towards the door and her face went pale. “You should have run,” she moaned. “You just should have run.”
Clark looked back suddenly as he heard the soldiers start to regroup. They’d be ready to storm the building in minutes. “We have to get out of here,” he told Chloe quickly. Taking her hand he dragged her up and towards the back of the lobby. “There’s a back door here to the alley way,” he said. “If we follow that, we’ll come out down the…” he stopped suddenly, brought up short at a mass of rubble. There wasn’t a doorway in sight.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“I guess Lana put that back way in when they rebuilt,” he muttered to himself. The soldiers were getting louder outside. Frowning, he stared around with his x-ray vision, looking for an opening they could get through.
“What now?” Chloe said. “How do we get through?”
Clark stopped and then stared downwards. “We don’t,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Bending down, Clark clenched his fist and then punched it through the cement floor. Chloe leapt back in shock as he pulled it out and then punched again, widening the hole he’d made. Finally, he stood up and kicked at the edges until it was wide enough for them to slip through. “There’s a sewer underneath that’s wide enough for us both to get through,” he said, staring down the hole. “I don’t know where it leads to, but it’s our only bet.” She just stood there, mutely staring at him.
Finally she managed to choke some words out. “How… how… did you…”
“We don’t have time, Chloe.” He took her hands and led her to the edge of the pit. “Trust me, I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?” She stared at him for a moment and then nodded. “Good,” he smiled at her. Then he pushed her over the edge.
“Oh, you son of a-“ she yelled as she disappeared down the hole.
“Sorry, Chloe,” he muttered, turning around towards the door. The soldiers were right outside the Talon now. One of them smashed in one of the windows and started to fire inside. Clark focused his heat vision on the wooden door frame and the ceiling above the door. In a moment, they burst into flame, sending the troops scurrying back once more. That would only buy them a few more moments, he realized, so they’d have to make the most of them. He turned back to the hole and jumped down through it.
He landed in knee deep sludge, brackish water, and who knows what else. He gritted his teeth as he felt something bump against his knee and float away. There was enough dim light from the hole above his head to let him see a few feet in front of his face, but that was all. Not that he wanted to see too clearly in here, he reasoned.
“You bastard!” Chloe yelled at him from a few feet away. She slogged through the water and shoved him. “This is your plan! This!”
“It beats getting shot up there,” he pointed out.
“Not when our other option is getting shot down here, it doesn’t.” He gave her a look and she switched gears. “But I’m all up for running now.”
“Glad to hear it.” He took her hand and started to slog quickly through the muck.
“How did you do that back there?” Chloe asked him. “You punched through the floor like it was nothing. I’ve never seen anyone do that.”
“Short explanation: I’m not from around here,” he said tersely.
“You already told me that,” she sniffed.
“It’s a little bit more complicated than that,” he yelled as they ran down the sewer tunnels.
The soldiers were swift and efficient. The wounded were carried out of harms way and swiftly bandaged up. Three of the soldiers broke out the mobile extinguishers and made quick work of the still burning car. The rest kept their guns trained at the Talon. The front door of the theater was a burning wreck, so they were forced to keep their distance for the time being.
“Get that fire out now,” their commander shouted, waving at the three soldiers battling the blaze. On the outside, she might have seemed cool and in control, but inside she was cursing herself roundly. There was no excuse for this. They were highly trained, motivated, had the best technology money could buy, and they had just botched things like amateurs. Damnit, they’d drilled for just this sort of situation and they’d still failed. She felt like screaming at something, but she did not. Instead, she keyed in her helmet radio with a touch of her fingers and looked skyward as an army issue helicopter roared overhead.
“Do you have visual?” she shouted into her comm.
“Nothing yet,” came the reply. “Switching over to infrared.” She waited tersely, staring at the blaze. He was so close now, she thought.
“Snipers, where are you? Any sign of the target?” she barked into the radio, growing impatient with the chopper.
“We’ve got two on the courthouse roof and another a block down,” one of her men radioed in. “So far, nada.”
“If you get a shot, go for the wound,” she reminded them. “Make it painful, we’ve seen how fast he can be.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“We’ve got something,” the chopper radioed back. “On the infrared; two signals. Heading southward from the Talon.”
“Snipers!” she yelled.
“We’ve got nothing!” they yelled back. “They’re not there!”
Snarling, she started towards the Talon doors. “Come on,” she barked at her men.
“What about the wall?” another shouted, gesturing at the Talon. “Shouldn’t we put that out first.”
In one motion, she drew out a hand gun and fired shot after shot into the top of the burning doorway. The gun wasn’t one of the special Luthorcorp models, designed with suppressing the alien in mind, but instead an old fashioned, fifty-caliber magnum. The high caliber bullets tore the door frame and upper wall to pieces. As it collapsed, the flames were buried under a pile of rubble and plaster.
“It’s out,” she told them, reloading the gun. Snapping the clip in, she took the point, leading them into the abandoned theater. Climbing over what was left of the doorway, she paused, scanning the room. Her men filed in around her, guns ready.
One of her men noticed her standing there, and nodded at her. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Fine,” she snapped out of her reverie. “You still following them?” she asked into the radio.
“Affirmative. Still heading south. They must be in the sewers; I can’t pick them up on visual.”
“Copy that,” one of her men yelled. “Found the rathole.” She followed him over to the gaping hole in the floor.
“We’re heading in,” she said to the chopper. “Keep us posted.”