Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization (33 page)

“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.

Z
od 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.

He staggered to his feet, reeling. He had been going nonstop for hours now, first against the World Machine, then the singularity, and now Zod. He needed a moment to recharge.

But Zod gave him no respite. He hoisted a stretch limousine above his head and heaved it at Superman, who dodged the car with only nanoseconds to spare. It smashed into the foundations of a looming multi-level carport, and exploded on impact.

A forty-ton propane truck was Zod’s next weapon of choice. He hurled the truck at Superman, but hit the carport instead. The fiery explosion undermined the parking garage, causing it to collapse, level by level. Dislodged vehicles tumbled from the crumbling decks like an automotive landslide. A falling SUV struck Superman in the back, jolting him face-forward onto the pavement.

Zod rushed forward to kick his foe while he was down, but the crazed general came too close to the disintegrating parking garage. The entire structure slid down on top of him, burying him beneath a mountain of concrete and crushed metal. A seismic rumble drowned out his cries.

A billowing cloud of dust obscured the entire scene.

Rising to his feet, Superman cautiously approached the hill-sized heap of rubble, wondering if the avalanche of steel and concrete had been enough to put Zod down for the count.

Not likely
, he thought.

Sure enough, Zod burst from the rubble, delivering an ultra-powerful uppercut that sent Superman somersaulting into the sky, far out of reach. Rising higher, Superman took advantage of his ability to defy gravity by hovering in the air. He soaked in what strength he could from the setting sun, hoping that would be enough.

The golden rays fed him their energy, as they had back on the island.

“There’s only one way this ends, Kal!” his enemy shouted from the ground. “You die—or I do. And you don’t have the will to make that happen.”

Zod sprang to the side of a nearby skyscraper. Digging his fingers into the building’s stone cladding, he scaled the façade at super-speed and flung himself outward. They collided in mid-air and fell to Earth together, crashing down onto a construction site.

A partially built skyscraper, its gigantic steel skeleton exposed, shuddered as the dueling supermen cratered the site. Zod seized a heavy steel I-beam from a stack of construction materials and swung it like a club. Heat-vision shot from Superman’s eyes, melting the beam to slag in mid-swing. Molten steel sprayed across the site as the weapon dissolved in Zod’s grip.

Furious, he flung the dripping red object away, and advanced on Superman with murder in his eyes. His face was flushed with anger.

“I was
bred
to be a warrior, Kal,” he said. “Trained since the moment of my birth, to master my senses.” He sneered at his opponent, contempt dripping from his voice. “Where did you train, Kal? On a farm?”

He dropped into crouch, placing his hand against the ground, much as Superman had done back at the NORTHCOM airfield. Veins bulged on his neck and brow as he fought to bend Earth’s gravity to his will. His armored body trembled with exertion.

Gravity waves distorted the air around him. Concentrating intensely, he absorbed and shaped the waves through sheer force of will.

“Whatever advantage you gained by growing up on this world—”

The ground rumbled beneath him. Dirt and rock and pools of cooling slag lifted off from the Earth, floating around him. His voice rose to a crescendo of hate.

“—it can’t compare to my experience!”

A concussive burst of energy blew his Kryptonian battle armor away from him, leaving him clad only in a matte-black skinsuit. Screaming in fury, his face a mask of vengeance, he took flight for the first time.

This isn’t good,
Superman realized.
Zod just leveled the playing field.

* * *

Mocking Earth’s meager gravity, Zod soared above Metropolis. His flight wasn’t as smooth as Superman’s, but what it lacked in grace and finesse it made up for in speed and power. He looped around in a wide circle, heedless of any obstacles in his path. He smashed headfirst through the upper stories of several unlucky skyscrapers, raining steel and glass onto the streets below, where terrified men and women again ran for cover.

Penthouse apartments and sky-level restaurants were razed by the his aerial rampage. Roofs were torn from buildings. Water towers toppled from their elevated perches. Neon signs exploded in showers of sparks. Billboards plunged like guillotine blades.

Superman launched himself, knowing fully that he had just lost his greatest advantage. The sky now belonged to Zod, as well.

Then it’s time to take it away from him,
Superman thought.

If I can.

They met head on—like opposing storms—in the dusky sky above Metropolis. The resulting thunderclap could be heard all the way across the city. The superhuman fracas literally rose to new heights as they traded blows in the heavens before tumbling to Earth like fallen angels.

Downtown streets cracked and cratered beneath the impact. Deserted cars and buses bounced into the air. A two-hundred-foot tall construction crane was uprooted by the tremors. Tons of metal groaned as the crane crashed down around them. A swinging boom came loose, smashing into the side of a luxury high-rise, before impaling a bus stop below. A wrecking ball bowled through the entrance of a popular nightclub.

Caught up in their never-ending battle, the combatants barely noticed.

Zod grabbed Superman’s cape and swung him around, flinging him into the air as though throwing a hammer. The Man of Steel barreled through the base of a landmark office building, bringing the entire structure down. The wanton destruction tore at his soul. At this rate, it would be a miracle if Metropolis had any skyline left when the fighting was over, one way or another.

This city doesn’t deserve this,
he though angrily.
Earth doesn’t deserve this.

Shaking off the blow, he zoomed back to the battle, determined to get them away from the city, if possible. A powerhouse punch sent Zod tumbling out over the river, where the Weisinger Bridge connected Metropolis to the mainland. He crashed beneath it, splashing into the river. Superman flew out over the bridge and scanned the turbulent water, peering beneath the surface.