Countdown (2 page)

“Keep moving, Jones!” the guard ordered through his protective faceplate. Croc’s escort was decked out in full riot gear, for safety’s sake. An electronic cattle prod goaded the prisoner forward. “Give me any more trouble and you won’t get fed tonight! No raw meat for you!”

Jimmy considered snapping a picture, but then the Joker called out from his cell, distracting him. “So long, Jimbo! Be a sweetie and send me the obituaries!” He rocked back and forth upon the floor, convulsing with fiendish glee. His diabolical laughter echoed loudly. “Y’all come back real soon, ya hear?”

Uh-huh,
Jimmy thought.
Like that’s going to happen.
He fished his cell phone from his pocket.
Better touch base with Lois, and let her know this whole thing has been a dead end.. . .

A ferocious roar suddenly drowned out the Joker’s hilarity. The guard shouted in alarm. Twisted metal screamed in protest. Jimmy spun around to see Killer Croc break free from his restraints. The cuffs came apart, the leather straps snapping like rubber bands. Electricity crackled as the panicked guard jabbed Croc with the prod, but the high-voltage jolt only served to enrage the reptilian monster further. An immense green arm smashed the guard into the wall hard enough to crack the man’s body armor. Hissing furiously, his tail savagely whipping the air behind him, Croc took hold of the hapless guard and bit the man’s head off, helmet and all, in an explosion of blood and gore.

Holy cow!
Jimmy thought.

It all happened so fast. One minute Jimmy was calling the
Planet.
The next, he found himself alone in the dismal corridor with a bloodthirsty carnivore. His cell phone slipped unnoticed from his fingers. He groped frantically for his signal-watch, desperate to summon Superman, but Croc was already lunging toward him. Frozen in shock, Jimmy could only watch in horror as Croc’s blood-splattered jaws opened wide for him. Razor-sharp claws swiped at his face....

And then things got
really
strange.

At the last minute, right before Croc’s claws ripped off his freckles, Jimmy’s neck
stretched
out of the way of the monstrous claws, elongating like taffy until it was at least five feet long! Seconds later, as Jimmy threw himself backward, his arms and legs stretched as well, so that the charging crocodile-man missed him entirely. The elastic limbs, extending far beyond his sleeves and trousers, flailed about wildly as the startled reporter tumbled clumsily onto the floor.

Huh?
Jimmy thought. His tangled limbs looked like a pile of pink spaghetti.
Am I really doing this?

Croc’s momentum carried him past his intended prey. His claws and fangs meeting only empty air, he skidded to a stop and turned to look for Jimmy. A bewildered expression momentarily replaced the naked bloodlust on his bestial face. His slitted eyes blinked in puzzlement. “What the hell?”

Good question.

He lunged at Jimmy again, and the reporter kicked one leg up to defend himself. To his amazement, the leg extended halfway down the hall so that his heel connected with Croc’s chin. The blow, which seemed to startle the monster more than damage him, only slowed Croc down for a moment. He eyed Jimmy warily as he stalked toward the fallen reporter, whose elastic limbs retracted in fear from the advancing saurian. Scooting backward on his butt, Jimmy found himself trapped against the unyielding stone wall behind him. There was no escape....

“These people pump me so fulla meds, I can’t even trust my own eyes anymore,” Croc groused. Resentment permeated his gravelly voice. The creature’s slavering jaws were only a few feet away from Jimmy now. “But I’ll bet you taste fine. Maybe just a little rubbery ...”

Jimmy frantically pushed the signal button on his wrist-watch. In theory, the watch emitted a supersonic alarm that Superman—and only Superman—could hear anywhere on Earth. The Man of Steel would make short work of Killer Croc, but apparently he was occupied elsewhere.
Probably rescuing a sinking ocean liner,
Jimmy figured,
or saving the entire world from a killer asteroid.
Unfortunately, not even Superman could be in two places at once.

A vivid memory of the guard’s head exploding between Croc’s jaws flashed through Jimmy’s mind. Closing his eyes in anticipation of the end, he wondered if his gory demise would rate page one of the
Planet....

' This wasn ’t exactly how I wanted to make the front page.

A loud electric zap caught him by surprise, even as a bright blue flash penetrated his closed eyelids. Croc let out an agonized roar, only inches away from Jimmy. The reporter's eyes snapped open and he saw his attacker stiffening in shock as an entire team of Arkham security guards attacked him from behind with their stun rods powered up to the max.

Reinforcements,
Jimmy realized.
Thank goodness!

Multiple electrodes succeeded where that lone guard’s cattle prod had failed. Amazingly, Waylon Jones managed to stay on his feet for a few minutes, despite the relentless galvanic barrage. Fiery blue sparks raced across his scaly hide. He twitched spasmodically like a frog in a science experiment. Smoke rose from his head and shoulders. The unmistakable scent of ozone suffused the air. Tiny hairs rose up all over Jimmy’s body just from his proximity to the massive electrical discharges. Croc roared one last time before toppling face-first onto the floor. Jimmy had to quickly roll out of the way to avoid being squashed beneath the falling monster.

“Jeez Louise!” he exclaimed.

The guards ignored Jimmy as they hurried to secure the prisoner. “Cuff him before he recovers, boys!” their leader ordered gruffly. He scowled at the bloody remains of the unlucky guard. “And don’t be gentle about it!” “Jimmy? What’s happening?” An anxious voice emerged from his dropped cell phone. “Jimmy... !”

Climbing unsteadily to his feet, he quickly retrieved the phone from the floor. “Lois? I’ll have to call you back...He wasn’t sure he was up to telling her the whole story, even if he understood it himself. Now that the danger was over, he felt drained, exhausted, and more than a little confused.
What was all that freaky stretching about?!

The guards dragged Croc into a waiting cell. Satisfied that the monster was under wraps for the time being, their leader finally checked on Jimmy. A badge on his front ’ pocket identified him as Lucas Sevick, Chief of Security. Jimmy wondered idly if he let his men call him “Chief,” unlike a certain editor in chief he knew.

“Mighty brave, standin’ your ground like that,” Sevick commented. Glancing again at what was left of the unfortunate guard, he sounded surprised to find Jimmy still alive. “How’d you keep Croc from shredding you?” Jimmy fingered his neck experimentally. It seemed to be in one piece, and back to its usual proportions. “Uh, I kind of thought he did.” He glanced down at his arms and legs. They certainly felt like rubber at the moment, but they looked perfectly normal.
Did I just imagine them stretching like that? Maybe all that adrenaline was messing with my head....

He decided not to mention his inexplicable elasticity to Sevick. Jimmy was a visitor to Arkham, not an inmate, and he intended to keep it that way. The last place you want to sound crazy is a lunatic asylum. Jimmy couldn’t wait to get out of the creepy madhouse.

If he hurried, he could still catch the six o’clock train back to Metropolis.

NEW Till CITY.

“Shazam!”

Mary whispered the magic word. Once upon a time, this would have summoned an enchanted lightning bolt, transforming her into Mary Marvel, the World’s Mightiest Maiden, but now nothing happened. No thunderclap boomed overhead; no flash of lightning lit up her private hospital room. Her everyday clothes were not transmuted into a super heroine’s colorful costume. No symbolic thunderbolt adorned her chest. She was still just Mary Batson, an ordinary teenage girl.

Where did the magic go ?
she wondered for perhaps the thousandth time. Ever since waking from a coma a few weeks ago, she’d said the word dozens of times a day. Sometimes she’d even wake herself up by shouting it in her sleep. But always with the same dispiriting results.
Nothing.

She sat on the edge of her hospital bed, a small bundle of personal belongings packed by her side. With her auburn hair, blue eyes, and slim figure, she looked like the proverbial girl next door. She wore a bright red Wind-breaker over a beige sweater and blue jeans. Bernice, her friendly physical therapist, appeared in the doorway. “Time to go, kiddo,” she said cheerfully. “You must be excited, finally getting out of this place after all your recovery time.”

According to the doctors, Mary had been in a coma for nearly three months.
Ever since that big battle with Black Adam, in other words.
Adam, the evil counterpart of Mary’s brother, Captain Marvel, had declared war on the whole world, and the entire Marvel Family had joined forces to stop him. The last thing she remembered was Black Adam striking her hard enough to knock her all the way from Sydney, Australia, to northern India. She had crashed to earth in front of the Taj Mahal—and woken up in this Manhattan hospital ten weeks later. Her powers had been AWOL ever since, along with her friends and family.

“Yeah, sure.” Clutching her bag, she joined Bernice in the bustling corridor outside. Doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors hurried past them as they strolled down the hallway. Directional signs pointed the way toward Checkout and Radiology. A loudspeaker paged doctors whose names Mary didn’t recognize. Antiseptic suffused the air. A family of visitors, bearing flowers and gifts for a loved one, provoked a familiar pang in Mary’s heart. “I have to ask you again, Bernice. Are there any messages for me?” The physical therapist shook her head sadly. “We’ve been over that, honey.”

“I know,” Mary said. “It’s just that I was here so long. I thought one of them would have called.” She didn’t understand. Where was her twin brother, Billy, and their best friend, Freddy Freeman? Why hadn’t they come to visit her? The boys’ continuing absence filled her with anxiety. Had something terrible happened to them? According to the Internet, which she had searched from her hospital bed, Black Adam had been defeated eventually, but neither Captain Marvel nor Captain Marvel Jr. had been seen or heard from since. Had they lost their powers too?

Feeling lost and abandoned, Mary let Bernice escort her to the checkout desk, where a gray-haired administrator presented her with a sheaf of documents. A plaque on her desk identified the older woman as Helen Powell. “I have your release papers ready to go, Ms. Batson.” “Thanks.” Mary sat down opposite the older woman. She had been fretting about this moment for weeks. “But I—I’m afraid I can’t pay. I have no money or insurance...

“Don’t worry,” Ms. Powell reassured her. “Your bill was settled by your brother.”

“Billy?” Hope flared in Mary’s heart. She knew that Billy had survived their clash with Black Adam because he had apparently arranged to have her transferred from

Agra to New York, but she had started to fear that she was never going to see him again. “He’s here?”

“Not anymore,” Ms. Powell said. “He stopped by this morning just long enough to make the payment.”

“But he must have left
something
for me,” Mary insisted, more confused than ever. “A note, a phone number, anything?” She had already tried calling home to Fawcett City, only to discover that Billy’s old number had been disconnected. Ditto for Freddy’s. Both boys seemed to have vanished and left no forwarding address.

Helen Powell handed Mary a folded piece of paper, “Just this.”

I knew it!
Mary thought jubilantly.
Billy would never just disappear on me.
Her spirits sank, however, as she opened the note and read the terse message
ins
ide:

''
Mary. Don’t try to find me. B.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely. This wasn’t like Billy at all. She desperately wanted to dismiss the note as a fake, but she recognized her brother’s handwriting. Deep in her heart, she knew it was true. For some unfathomable reason, Billy had ditched her, perhaps for good.

I’m on my own.

Still in shock, she made it out of the hospital to the sidewalk outdoors. New York City rose up around her, huge and intimidating. The brisk fall weather was startling. It had been springtime when Black Adam had sent her crashing to earth like a fallen angel.
I missed an entire summer.
A cloudy gray sky vaulted above the towering skyscrapers. The lofty clouds called out to Mary, reminding her that once she had been able to soar among them. She couldn’t resist trying the magic word one more time.

“Shazam!”

A boom of thunder raised her hopes, but a sudden cloudburst doused them a second later. Rain poured down from the sky, soaking her to the skin. Mary chuckled bitterly at the cruel joke Fate seemed to have played on her. The thunder was just thunder. There was nothing magic about it anymore.

Just like me.

Wet, cold, and alone, she left the hospital behind and began walking.

36 and COUNTING#

■ HETHNIIS.

“lot
me get this straight,” Perry White growled. “I do a photographer a favor by sending him on a reporter’s assignment—I send you all the way to Gotham City—-and you come back with
nothing
?”

The surly editor in chief of the
Daily Planet
glared at Jimmy from behind his cluttered walnut desk. A fuming stogie was clenched between his teeth. Venetian blinds and a closed door concealed the interior of Perry’s office from the bullpen outside. File cabinets and bulletin boards lined the walls. A mug of black coffee sat atop the page layouts on the desk. An old-fashioned manual typewriter occupied a spare desk in the corner.

Jimmy winced at his boss’s irate tone. “Like I told Lois on the phone, Chief, there was nothing to get. The Joker just babbled like a crazy person.”