Spiderman 3 (19 page)

Peter Parker
, thought Mary Jane.
Peter Parker, who always has time to be the guy you're here to worship, and never time for me… and I'm such a creep for being upset about that
…

"
Spider-Man
!" bellowed the crowd.

Atop a nearby building, Peter Parker—clad in his red-and-blue costume—listened to Gwen Stacy's introduction and decided that it was a hell of a lot better than the quick
here he is
that he'd suggested.

The crowd shouted Spider-Man's name, and he murmured to himself in amazement, "They love me."

"And who," Gwen was saying, "with astounding courage puts his life on the line every day for justice and fairness?"

"
Spider-Man
!" they screamed yet again.

"Then let's hear it," said Gwen, expertly playing to the crowd, "for the one, for the only, for the fabulous, the sexy…
Spider-Maaaaaan
!"

The music swelled; the crowd roared. Had there been a roof, the energy level would have been through it.

And all that from people who still didn't know if Spider-Man was actually going to show up. It was a celebration of more than just the hero; it was all about the city's appreciation for him.

Well, then… how could he possibly let down his adoring public?

Firing a webline, Peter swung out high over the crowd. It took only seconds for people to spot him, and if the cheers had sounded loud before, they were now positively thunderous, spectators just out of their minds with glee.

He drank it in hungrily, greedily, like a man dying of thirst coming upon not simply an oasis, but an Irish pub. He was giddy with the adoration; it was intoxicating.

And like a man who was genuinely drunk…

… he went further than he should have.

Gwen Stacy clapped her hands in delight as she saw Spider-Man hurtling down toward her. She had prepared an entire second half of the speech in the event of his being a no-show, although she hadn't been looking forward to it. She knew what the crowd wanted, and it wasn't a longer speech. They wanted their hero, in person, live, large and in charge.

Now they were getting their wish.

Spider-Man swung high above, twirling his body as he soared in an upward arc. It was pure showing off. Not that it mattered in the least; the crowd was eating up every moment. Someone had written a catchy little song about Spider-Man that had been in heavy rotation on the local radio stations. The marching band struck it up, and Spider-Man now dropped down at dizzying speed. There were gasps, some of shock and fear that he was going to hit the ground like a rock, and some in excitement as they anticipated his pulling out of it just in time. The second contingent were naturally correct as he fired a webline behind him that snagged the top of the City Hall archway.

Spider-Man lowered himself so that he was upside down and facing Gwen. Face-to-face, Gwen put her arms around him and posed for the battery of cameras that flashed away.

Under his mask, Peter was grinning like a lunatic. Suddenly, to the sound of wolf whistles and cries
of "Kiss him
!" Gwen gave him a kiss on his masked cheek.

With his ego swelled almost to bursting by the unparalleled adulation of the crowd, Peter proceeded to seize the moment full-on.

"Go ahead, lay one on me," Peter told her.

Gwen looked startled, but not in a bad way. "Really?"

"They'll love it."

She leaned in toward him and pulled down his mask so that it cleared his mouth. Then she kissed him with a startling ferocity that Peter wouldn't have expected from the normally sedate Gwen Stacy.

For an instant it took him out of the moment, and he remembered that improbable, deliriously romantic kiss he'd shared with Mary Jane while rain poured down upon them in buckets. That kiss seemed long ago and far away, and this was very much happening in the here and now. All he was thinking about were the shouts and cheers, and that his head was probably going to explode any moment.

The thoughts of that rain-soaked kiss also caused him to dwell on Mary Jane, but he wasn't concerned. She was a working actress—he'd watched her kiss other guys onstage, and it hadn't bothered him because he knew that she was performing a character. That's all he was doing as well.

Certainly Mary Jane would understand all that, right?

Mary Jane watched with her eyes wide, filled with disbelief, hurt, anger. What the hell was Peter playing at? Was this some sort of… of sick game to try to make her jealous? As if she hadn't been feeling low enough, inadequate enough… now this?
Now this
?!

Harry, like everyone else around him, was focused on what was happening onstage. "Wow! Hope Pete's getting a shot of this," he said.

Not like the shot I'm going to want to give him.

The band had switched to a punchy "college fight song" version of that infernal Spider-Man tune, as if their hero had just scored a touchdown. Mary Jane, unable to take it anymore, felt tears stinging her eyes. She turned away and wiped the moisture from her face, praying that it wouldn't cause her makeup to run.

She couldn't imagine this day getting worse.

She was about to discover just how limited her imagination was.

Gwen was only partly playing to the crowd as she affected a swoon. She stepped away from Spider-Man, swaying a bit, and grasped the standing microphone as if it were the only thing preventing her from falling over. "Wow!" she sighed.

A shadow fell over her.

At first Gwen thought that some errant clouds had moved in and blocked out the sun, but, no—the sky was clear. Meanwhile the shadow continued to spread, darkness covering the crowd, Spider-Man, the entire district.

People began to scream and point, and then Gwen saw what was causing it. Even when she did, it made no sense. She could imagine something like this in the middle of the Sahara, but not in downtown Manhattan.

But there it was, unmistakable: a cloud of sand, hundreds of feet high, barreling toward them, blotting out the sun and hurtling at high speed down the narrow canyons of the city.

Spectators started to run, prepared to stampede over whoever was in their way to get clear of it, and then suddenly—impossibly—the sandstorm made a sharp right three blocks shy of overwhelming the celebration. Rounding a corner as if it were a combination of sandstorm and tornado, the sand cloud disappeared, although a distant roaring could still be heard.

"What
was
that thing?" Gwen asked, forgetting that she was still at the microphone and her question was going out to the entire crowd.

Spider-Man's determined declaration of, "I don't know, but I'm going to find out!" resulted in another roar of support from the crowd. He bounded upward, fired a webline, and swung off after what would more than likely turn out to be some sort of weird atmospheric condition.

Yet the science student in Gwen told her that it couldn't possibly be that simple.

Her inner science student, as it turned out, was absolutely right.

SON OF A BEACH

Flint Marko was brimming with confidence. It was a pleasant feeling, one that he was unaccustomed to, given the usual assortment of people criticizing him, beating him down, or at least trying to.

Now, as he strode down the streets of New York City, he looked back on all the people who had made his life miserable, people who had loomed so large in his day-today existence. Cops, wardens, his wife, teachers, his parents… especially his father. Indeed, the crappy way his father had treated him had compelled him to be the best parent he humanly could for Penny's sake.

It was odd. All those loomed-so-large people now seemed small, pathetic… even irrelevant. How could he ever have been so concerned about them? They were nothing. He was now a giant, bestriding humanity like a colossus, and if they didn't like him or despised him or thought he was beneath them… what did it matter? All they could do was shout at him or try to tear him down, and that just wasn't going to be happening anymore. Not to Flint Marko.

Because Flint Marko was no longer there. He had left the building, gone on to a better place. The man that he was now—the being that he was now—had as much in common with Flint Marko as Flint Marko had in common with an amoeba. Thinking of himself as merely Flint Marko would be limiting.

He scratched his ear thoughtfully, wondering… if he wasn't Flint Marko, who was he? A few grains of sand fell out of his ear. Feeling as if something was still in there, he pounded firmly on the side of his head as he tilted it, and a stream of sand poured out. That wasn't surprising—as he had trimmed away excess sand so that his features would appear more and more normal, the grains had simple retreated into his body. Because of that, he now had too much sand between his ears. Once he'd extracted it, though, he felt a lot better.

Some blocks away he heard music and cheering. He snorted and wondered if it was to celebrate his return to New York City and somehow doubted that was the case.

He walked past two policemen who were sitting in a cop car. Marko barely afforded them a glance as he kept on going. He heard one of them say, "Isn't that the guy from the prison break?" and the other replied, "Fits the description.
Hey, you! Halt
!"

Marko didn't feel like bothering with them. They were too little and simply not worth his time. Walking quickly across the street, he ducked behind a construction truck. The police officers, pursuing him on foot, split up and came around the truck from two different directions, knowing there was nowhere for him to go.

To their confusion, they came from either side and met on the other end of the truck. There was no sign of him. However, a large tarp covered the back of the truck, and the two cops looked at each other and nodded together. Clearly they thought they had him.

Seconds later, one of them had whipped the tarp aside and both of them had their guns leveled, fully expecting to see Flint Marko charging them in a hopeless attempt to escape.

There was nothing there except a truckload of sand.

One of the cops grabbed a shovel and stepped forward, about to push it into the sand. That was when Marko suddenly thought,
Why am I hiding? Why am I waiting for them to go away? Why am I afraid of them? That's the old way of thinking. That's Flint Marko's way of thinking. I'm not Flint Marko anymore. I'm not a man of flesh and blood. I'm a man of sand
.

Yes. I'm… the Sandman. And the Sandman lies down for no one.

Before the cop could start probing, a giant sandstone hand thrust upward, launching him into the air. He soared a short distance and came down hard on a car windshield.

A patrol car rolled up and several more cops sprang out.
It's like a clown car
, the Sandman grimly thought, and he decided to make clear to them just how hopeless the situation was. He rose, having merged his form with the load of sand that was already in the truck, and towered over them, twenty feet high and growing with every passing second.

The cops stepped back, goggle-eyed, and went for their weapons. Instantly Sandman was filled with concern…