Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization (9 page)

Clark listened harder. He heard what the other men couldn’t. An explosion knocked out the lights, plunging the hallway into darkness.

“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...

He tried to hide from the world in a janitor’s closet. Huddling among the mops and brooms, he locked the door from the inside right before Ms. Whitaker caught up with him. She knocked on it loudly enough to make him cover his ears again. Her knuckles rapped against the unyielding wood. It sounded like a tractor ramming into a barn, over and over again.

“Clark!” she called, her voice raised. “Come out of there!”

She tried the knob, wiggling it noisily.

No!
Clark shouted inwardly.
Leave me alone!

Panicky eyes turned red as hot coals. Incandescent beams shot from his pupils to the knob, raising its temperature. Through the door, Clark saw his teacher yelp and yank her hand away. She stared in shock at her scorched fingers, then backed away from the closet.

Ms. Whitaker ran to find the principal.

For a time, Clark had the closet to himself, but its cramped confines provided little refuge from the clamorous world outside, which continued to bear down upon his overwhelmed senses. His hands still over his ears, he squatted in a corner, squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he could. There was too much to see, hear, smell—and all of it louder or more intense than he could possibly handle. It was as though someone had turned up the volume on the entire world.

Make it stop!
he thought frantically.
Please!

The booming racket made it hard to pick out individual sounds, but eventually, after what felt like forever, a familiar voice broke through the din. He heard his mother rushing down the hall.

“Clark, it’s Mom,” she said. “I’m here.” She didn’t shout. She knew she didn’t have to.

A crowd of teachers and students, gathered outside, parted to let her through. She knelt in front of the door. Her gentle voice penetrated the fragile wood that stood between them.

“Will you open the door?” she asked.

Clark hesitated, afraid to let in the scary world. He tried to focus on just his mother’s voice, but he could hear every other word being whispered out in the hallway. His classmates’ voices ganged up on him.

“He’s such a freak. He’s always doing stuff like this.”

“His parents won’t even let him play with other kids.”

The hurtful words were almost worse than the avalanche of noise. Only his mother’s voice, soft and soothing, provided any comfort.

“Clark, please, sweetie. I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.”

His longing for his mother helped him overcome his fear, at least a little. He slowly cracked the door open. His heart sank as he saw through her skin, too. All he could recognize was her caring brown eyes.

Tears filled his own.

“The world’s too big, Mom.”

She nodded, understanding.

“Then make it small.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you
can,”
she promised. “Just focus on my voice. Pretend it’s an island. Can you see it? Out in the ocean?”

He closed his eyes and tried to do as his mother said. It was hard, with all those living skeletons screaming at him from all directions, but he forced himself to imagine an island, far out in the water, where strange horned beasts roamed and giant dragonflies buzzed beneath a huge red sun. There was something oddly familiar about it.

“I can see it...”

His mother’s voice encouraged him.

“Then swim toward it.”

He visualized himself swimming out to the fantastic place, leaving all the jarring sights and sounds of the world behind. His own heart slowly settled, and the overpowering din began to fade away. He opened his eyes cautiously, ready to squeeze them shut again if he saw too much. But, to his relief, his mother looked more like Mom at last. Tanned skin covered her face just like it was supposed to. The shifting colors stabilized, going back to normal. The world became reassuringly solid again. The volume got turned down.

It’s over,
he realized.
For now.

He rushed out of the closet, into his mother’s arms. She held him tightly as he sobbed on her shoulder. Even though he was better, he couldn’t forget what had just happened. Or what the other kids had said.

“What’s wrong with me, Mom?”

C
lark awoke underwater, surrounded by whales. He found himself drifting naked beneath the sea, his clothes having been burned away by the inferno. The humpbacks nudged him toward the surface, their lilting songs echoing in his ears. They, at least, seemed to want him to keep going.

Fair enough,
he thought.

He shook the cobwebs from his mind, and poked his head above the waves. The burning platform was now several miles away, spewing clouds of black smoke into the sky. Eavesdropping on the Coast Guard and other first responders, he got the impression that the worst was over. Everybody who could have been evacuated from the collapsed platform had been. Numerous survivors, many seriously injured, had been fished from the water and were now receiving medical care. All that was left was the cleanup—and mourning the dead.

I couldn’t save everyone,
he realized.
But I made a difference.

Bobbing upon the waves, he knew that he couldn’t return to the
Debbie Sue.
There would be too many questions he couldn’t begin to answer, questions that had haunted him his entire life. The words of that dumbstruck roughneck, back in the galley, echoed in his memory.