THE SPIDER-City of Doom (45 page)

These criminals were organized like an invading army!

Wentworth laid the truck close against a building wall and waited. All about him the street was crowded with men and women who ran in shrieking terror. Buildings spewed out their inmates by dozens, by scores. But they ran away from the scene of carnage. Wentworth thought they would be safe.

That was before the first of the trucks trundled past the intersection. As soon as it reached the corner, the machine guns opened up. Men and women fell in screaming windrows of death!

With a harsh curse, Wentworth pumped gas into the motor of his captured truck. He laid his automatics on the seat beside him and braced himself against the wheel. He had no weapons that would penetrate those steel bodies, no weapon save one!

With desperation, Wentworth drove straight for the side of the truck that carried a cannon!

The driver of the truck saw him coming and tried to swerve aside. That was perfect! Laughter was on the
Spider's
thin lips. He drove for the cab of the swerving truck. A slide opened in its side, but the machine gun bullets bounced futilely off the armor.

The truck seemed to leap forward as if it felt the surge of Wentworth's hatred. There was a rending crash, a slamming jar of heavy metal. The front wheels mounted the side of the truck, towered toward the heavens. For that single instant they poised . . . . Then the rammed truck pitched over on its side.

Wentworth's truck settled astride the fallen juggernaut. Other trucks were slamming toward him. Bullets beat a constant tattoo against the cabin. The bullet-proof glass was shattering. Wentworth reached across to the far side of the truck, and slid toward the ground. There was one weapon which these fiends in armor could not oppose, one barrier they could not pass!

Wentworth crouched low and his automatics spat twice in his hands. From the gas tanks of the overturned and wrecked trucks fluid leaped. The stench of it was strong in the air. Wentworth's laughter rasped in his throat, the fighting laughter of the
Spider!

He flung a match into the gasoline!

Ahead of him, the street had been swept clear of the police. Behind him was the incessant chatter of machine guns . . . but the wrecked trucks formed a barricade. Behind that shelter, Wentworth fled. His black cape streamed out behind him with the speed of his running. Yellow flames towered upward above the armored cars. Little leaping tongues of fire ran across the street. The buildings hooded the glow, beat it back upon itself. The illumination grew!

Wentworth flung through the doorway of a house, whirled with his guns ready.

He was just in time. As he whirled, the doors of the overturned truck were flung open and men spilled to the street. They jumped up and began to run. The illumination was excellent. The
Spider's
lips were cold and hard against his teeth. He lifted his automatic and let it drop into line.

The man was running when the bullet struck his spine. He doubled backward in mid-air. His body sailed like a loose-legged doll through the air. It fell and did not rise. Wentworth's second bullet caught a man in the doorway of the truck and the quarter-ton impact of .45 calibre lead drove him back upon his fellows.

They lost precious seconds throwing him out and Wentworth nailed a second fugitive. His bullet drove the man against a lamp-post and the killer grasped it with both arms, swung around it. His legs went limp and he groveled on the pavement.

And the flames reached the gas tanks!

Fire vomited toward the heavens. The trucks leaped upward and fell to earth in twisted masses. The fire settled, died for an instant, then leaped higher than ever. It danced weirdly over the wreckage of the truck. Wentworth stood for a moment with his guns ready . . . and there was no target.

Behind the flames, the other trucks were blocked. The air was alive with the yelp and scream of sirens. But Wentworth's face was pale. They could do nothing against those trucks. He had destroyed their cannon, but they carried other terrible weapons. Swiftly, Wentworth whirled and raced through the dark hallway. Moments later, he emerged in the next street. His reinforcements should be here by now.

He flung his eerie signal whistle into the night, and two cars spurted from a dark side street. One was his heavy limousine, and behind its wheel was Ram Singh and in the rear, Nita van Sloan was hunched forward with a sub-machine gun in her lap. The other was a coupe and the man who drove it wore a black mask over his face.

Wentworth ran toward them, sprang into the limousine. "Get to the fire station," he yelled at the black-masked man. "Tell them to rush chemical equipment only! Ram Singh!"—he whirled to his turbaned driver—"Get me to police headquarters. Gas is the only thing that will work against these criminals. Gas and flame!"

He ripped at his disguise. "Nita," he said fiercely, "you should not have come. This is Armageddon. I have never seen such an attack by criminals. Modern warfare methods applied to rackets! And such a petty little racket. It is like a dress rehearsal for hell!"

Nita's face was pale. She shook her head. "I knew from your message that the danger was terrible. I wanted to be at your side."

Her hands, gripping the sub-machine gun, were fully competent. Her smile was faint upon her lips, but there was worship in her eyes as she gazed upon Richard Wentworth. He had stripped off the disguise now. His guns were in his fists.

Nita gasped, "Look, Dick!" she cried. "There they are!"

Nita pointed ahead and Wentworth's head whipped that way. The trucks were streaming across the street where two gasoline filling stations threw a deluge of light. They were in full retreat, but as they went, they were destroying. A police car, rocketing toward them, was smashed with bullets and crashed wildly against a building. A bomb wobbled into a doorway and blew out the front of a tenement.

Suddenly, Nita screamed. Out of the street, ahead of the trucks, rolled a gasoline truck!

Even as she cried out, the trucks raced past. From the last one, two bombs were tossed. They struck the street and wobbled eccentrically over the pavement toward the gasoline truck, small, bobbling, black objects in the street. They looked like lopsided baseballs. They were horror!

"Quick, Ram Singh!" Wentworth cried. "Turn around. Get away!"

Ram Singh wrenched at the wheel, and Wentworth saw that it would not be in time. He reached across and seized the wheel, sent the limousine slamming, head-on, toward a broad doorway. A uniformed doorman shouted, waved his hands, and leaped aside.

The nose of the car struck the glass door, flanked by ornate panels. It drove through. The top caught, crumpled. Wentworth had an arm around Nita. He flung her down upon the seat, protected her with his body . . . .

Suddenly, the air was sucked from his lungs. His head expanded, all his body was expanding. Then his ears were driven inward. He was aware of being lifted, of floating, of falling. The air was crushing him, constricting every inch of his body. He tried to cry out, and there was no sound. No sound in all the world. There was only darkness. It swarmed in upon his brain and curled there. It exploded . . . .

There was a weight of horror upon Wentworth's consciousness as he fought slowly back from the dark depths into which he had been plunged. He struggled upward through nightmare memories of wanton slaughter, wholesale destruction . . . . Good God! The gasoline truck!

With that recollection, and the knowledge that it was its explosion which had blasted out his senses, Wentworth burst the last bonds of darkness . . . and once more became conscious of his surroundings. About him was a bedlam of terror. The scorching odors of superheated masonry and metal seared his nostrils. Wentworth realized drunkenly that he lay in the wreckage of his car.

"Nita!" he said hoarsely. He groped out blindly.

All about him lurid light danced in waves of brilliance and shadow over the lobby of the apartment house into which he had charged his limousine in a desperate effort to escape. The fire-dance showed a white flood of faces. It glistened on terror-stretched eyes as people poured toward the wreck of the car, and over it, fighting their way from the apartment building toward the presumptive safety of the streets. But there was no sound at all. None that Wentworth could hear.

He shook his head violently, called once more for Nita. Suddenly, he could hear . . . and wished that he could not! The night was horrid with screams, agony and fear and desperation, in a blended cacophony out of hell. There was the crackle and roar of the flames; the omnipresent wail and shriek of sirens; the shouts of men.

"
Nita!
" Wentworth cried again.

Frantically, he peered about him. Nita was not in the car!

Desperately, Wentworth fought his way out of a shattered window of the car. Against a column, he saw the limp body of Ram Singh. A leg was doubled grotesquely, where there was no joint. Wentworth reached him in a plunge through the streaming fugitive crowd. The plucky Sikh was unconscious.

Wentworth swung the heavy, inert body into his arms and let the pressure of the escaping people push him to the street. His eyes swept about. Nowhere in the wreckage was any sign of Nita! But where, in the name of God, had she disappeared?

For an instant, stark terror shook Wentworth. Was it possible that the butchers who were responsible for the holocaust had carried her away? But if that were so, surely he never would have liked to know she was missing! They would not have left the
Spider
alive . . . . and stolen away the
Spider's
mate—without some special purpose!

An ambulance racketed to a halt and Wentworth staggered toward it with Ram Singh, while horror still raced through his brain. He turned the Sikh over to the doctor, saw the man start his ministrations. He swung away then, and let his eyes quest over the horror of the street. An entire block of apartment buildings had been deluged with flame from the explosion of the gasoline truck. Flaming tatters of burning liquid had been hurled through crashed windows. A great pillar of living fire that writhed and twisted in a gargantuan dance lifted above the corner where the filling station and gas truck had been. Even as Wentworth stared, another minor blast thrust out an arm of flame toward a new building. Bricks were crumbling in the heat. The asphalt of the street had melted and was burning in thick, odorous clouds.

Wentworth was beaten physically backward by the incredible heat. But there was no work here for the
Spider.
The people already had taken alarm and were fleeing their homes. A dozen, a score of fire trucks had catapulted into the area. Men in asbestos suits were using chemicals on the gasoline.

But Nita! Where was she?

Wentworth reeled drunkenly away from the fire, used a steaming wall as a shield to regain the lobby of the apartment. The last of the residents had fled, and the place was wrecked. But nowhere in the ruins was there any trace of Nita. Wentworth shook his head, moved heavily away.

Was it possible that, stunned by the blast, she had arisen and roamed off in a daze? It must be that. What else could it be? Wentworth began to run. He doubled the corner, his eyes questing everywhere. There were fleeing hordes, in every stage of dress. There were women with streaming hair and men with blackened faces and staring eyes. Somewhere amid this multitude . . . was Nita!

Wentworth reached another corner, saw a woman swerve suddenly into a dark doorway. For an instant, he thought that it was Nita, and the manner of her entrance puzzled him. It was almost as if she had been . . .
yanked
into that dark doorway! Wentworth bounded forward . . . and heard the woman scream!

As he sprang forward, a gun stabbed flame at him. He felt the bullet pluck at his clothing, then he plunged into the darkness! The woman screamed again. She staggered out into the light. Her hands were holding together tattered clothing. There was a bloody tear on her throat.

"My jewels!" she gasped. "My jewels—he took them!"

It wasn't Nita.

But Wentworth saw that only in a glance as he sprang to the attack. Dimly, he could see the man crouched in the darkness. His left hand slapped out and the second gunshot lanced past him, beneath his arm. His right fist smacked against the man's jaw solidly, drove him out of the doorway into the street. The gun was on the pavement now. The man crouched . . . leaped fiercely toward Wentworth!

The suddenness of the attack caught Wentworth off guard. He was driven backward; he tripped and fell. But the swift co-ordination of his powerful body stood him in good stead. As he pitched backward, he seized the lapels of the man's coat. His feet stabbed upward at the man's belly. It was a quick, shrewd fall; a jiu-jitsu throw. The looter's body arched through the air. He screamed, terribly, just before he crashed head-on into the wall of the building!

Wentworth pushed wearily to his feet. The woman had fled. The looter was dead. Wentworth stood staring down at him. It was a filthy crime, looting in the wake of such horror. His lips drew thin and cold against his teeth. From his vest pocket, he slid out his cigarette lighter, stooped over the slain man and ground into his forehead . . . the seal of the
Spider!

When he straightened again, and looked around, he uttered a glad cry.

A score of feet away, staring at him, was Nita!

His joy faded instantly. There was blood on Nita's face. It had scrawled a crazy pattern across the silk of her dress. Wentworth sprang toward her.

"Nita!" he cried, anxiously. "Where have you been? Are you hurt?"

For a heartbeat of time, Nita stood staring at him. Her eyes were wide with shock and horror. Then, as Wentworth reached her, she screamed! She turned and ran!

Wentworth caught her by the shoulders, whirled her into his arms. "Nita!" he cried. "It's Dick! Don't you understand?"

"You murderer!" Nita gasped hoarsely. "Let me go! You—you killed that man! I saw you . . . ."

Wentworth seized Nita by the shoulders, gazed into her wide eyes. They were glistening with fear. Her lips were awry with loathing and fear. And there was utterly no sign of recognition in her face!