Spiderman 3 (38 page)

Venom came down with a flying knee drop to Spider-Man's ribs, cracking them. Spider-Man yelled in pain, and Venom reached down, yanking Spider-Man's mask clear. Peter gasped for air and hoped that he was still out of range of the TV cameras. The prospect of Aunt May being home, watching this, and seeing Peter's face flashing across the TV screen was unsettling.

Then again, that might turn out to be the least of his problems.

Seventy-three stories above the ground, the industrial steel Dumpster that was hanging in the top portion of the web began to shift position. Strands that held it in place were beginning to break.

Three stories below the Dumpster, Mary Jane watched helplessly as it tilted toward her.

I don't know who Eddie Brock is, or what he wants, but he's really pissing me off
, she thought bleakly.

Seeing the imminent threat to Mary Jane, Peter turned toward Venom and said desperately, "What do you want, Eddie?"

"I wanted to see you again, Pete," Venom said with great cheer, as if they were two old buddies hooking up again at a school reunion. "And talk with you and, well, to be honest, I want to kill you."

"We can find a way to settle this."

"You're so right. I was thinking humiliation. Just as you humiliated me. But televised. Live-action coverage." He held his hands up as if envisioning it in a headline or on a marquee. "Spider-Man screws up, and sweet little Mary Jane dies." He lowered his hands and came in close to Peter. Foul breath, like burnt metal, washed over Peter, who wondered if he'd reeked like that when he'd been wearing the thing. "You made me lose my girl. Now I'm going to make you lose yours, with the help of my friend Sandy. I think you've met."

As a terrible groan of metal came from high above, Peter looked up and his heart thudded with alarm.

The Dumpster's steel lid swung open. Cinder blocks, concrete slabs, and heavy metal brackets began to slide out. They rained down onto Mary Jane's taxi, ricocheting off with loud clanging and clanking sounds. Peter could see Mary Jane getting low in the backseat, trying to avoid the deadly impacts. He also saw that they were tearing away the webs that supported the car.

As they rebounded off the cab, they hailed down upon Spider-Man and Venom, tearing through the webs around them. Venom dodged a falling slab of concrete, while a cinder block tore through the web, freeing one of Peter's hands. Peter reached out, grabbed Venom's ankle, and pulled him off-balance. Venom hit the webbing right next to Peter, and the both of them swayed as Peter grappled one-handed with his tormentor while heavy objects fell all around them.

Suddenly a key support of the web was severed by a jagged piece of metal, and the two of them were in free fall. Liberated from the web restraints, Peter struggled at close quarters with Venom as they tumbled end over end.

The ground was coming up incredibly fast, and Peter fired webs at the last instant to break his fall. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Venom doing the same thing, and although the webbing slowed them down, it didn't completely save them from violent landings as they hit the ground hard.

Peter lay there for a moment, unmoving, trying to determine whether he'd broken anything on impact. He moved his limbs and decided that he hadn't, although his chest was still aching from where Venom had been tap-dancing on his ribs. He hauled himself to his feet and discovered that, fortunately, they were blocked from the view of the crowd by a power shovel, a bulldozer, and some other construction equipment.

His Spider-Man mask was lying a couple of feet away. He staggered toward it, picked
it
up, and pulled
it
on. As he reeled, the world spinning around him, his spider-sense warned him at the last second as Flint Marko's rock-hard fist came swinging right into his field of vision. But he wasn't fast enough to dodge it. It connected, hard, and Spider-Man stumbled backward, only to meet the fist of Venom, driving him back in the other direction. He fired a web upward to try to get away, but Sandman once again slammed into him. This time the impact sent Spider-Man against one of the steel uprights, knocking the wind out of him.

Penny Marko had initially been unhappy as the news broadcasts had knocked
Jeopardy
! off the air. It was her favorite show, even if her impulse was to pronounce it "GEE-o-party."

But as she'd watched, she found herself fascinated by the images of the person everyone was calling Sandman. They kept showing the same sequences with him over and over, and now she got to her knees and drew close to the screen. She reached up and touched it tentatively as Sandman tossed aside all efforts of the SWAT teams to rescue people. "Mama," she said slowly, "I think that's Daddy."

Emma called back from the kitchen, "What's Daddy?" She emerged to see what Penny was referring to, and Penny pointed wordlessly to the TV At first Emma laughed and was about to tell Penny that she didn't know what she was talking about. Then she took a closer look, and Penny could see by the change in her mother's expression that Mama likewise thought it was Daddy. She was shaking her head, though, trying to deny it to herself.

"The sand castle," said Penny. Her mother, still appearing shell-shocked, looked wordlessly at the little girl. "I was with him. That's him." She tapped the screen. "He's doing this for me. I can feel it, Mama."

There was a knock at the door so unexpected and intrusive that both Penny and Emma jumped in alarm. Penny headed to the door, ignoring her mother's warnings not to open it for strangers.

A police officer was standing there, and next to him another man.

"Penny?" he said, and when she nodded, he extended a hand and smiled gently. "I'm Dr. Wallace. We need to talk… quickly."

Pounded back and forth between Sandman and Venom, Spider-Man's bloodied body slammed to the ground. He lay there, trying to will himself to get to his feet, to grow four extra arms or become ten times as strong. Something, anything that would give him a fighting chance.

High above him he heard the sound of groaning metal and looked skyward through blurred vision. The noise was coming from the Dumpster, shifting in the web and leaning more and more toward Mary Jane's taxi.

Desperately he tried to haul himself to his feet to get there in time, and suddenly the Dumpster tore away and plummeted straight down. Spider-Man, horrified, could only watch as the Dumpster winged the cab, causing it to roll onto its side.

Mary Jane smacked up against the driver's-side door, popping it open. She shrieked as she fell from the car. Grabbing, she snagged the closed door on the driver's side, reached through, and clung to the steering wheel. She dangled there, clutching on for dear life.

"MJ!" screamed Spider-Man.

With effort he willed himself to stand. He swayed in place, tried not to puke inside his mask—

Five hundred tons of sand pulled together, sweeping up tractors and power shovels as it rose to form a gigantic Sandman.

He loomed over Spider-Man, hundreds of feet high, with a roaring sound like that of a tornado brought to life. It—for
he
would simply not have seemed appropriate—came after Spider-Man, smashing the ground with its massive fists and feet as it tried to crush the dodging blue-and-red-clad figure.

Spider-Man had a brief glimmer of hope, because as powerful as Sandman was, Spider-Man had him beat on speed. He was too quick and agile for the lumbering giant to catch. But Sandman apparently came to the same conclusion, for he changed his form again, extending his hands into giant paws that reached down for Spider-Man.

Firing a webline, Spider-Man bounded clear of the terrifying sand hands, but he didn't get far. Venom came leaping forward, intercepting him in midair and landing a powerful kick that knocked Spider-Man into a girder.

Hey, gorgeous, what are you doing here?

Oh, just hanging around.

Mary Jane, clutching the steering wheel like a bat, was busy writing her own jovial dialogue in her head. It was a witty exchange between herself and Peter that would show just how plucky our heroine was and how dashing our hero. It helped take her mind off the fact that her fingers were growing tired.

She tried to haul herself up into the driver's seat. Perhaps she could buckle herself in, last a little longer. But she didn't have the opportunity as her fingers—far more fatigued than she'd thought—gave way, and she plummeted from the car.

Shrieking, tearing through the weaker strands of the gigantic black web, she was finally halted by the bottommost strands of the webbing. She bounced up and down for a few moments, steadying herself, and then looked up to see what new calamity was about to befall her. She was becoming cynical enough to assume that there would certainly be
something
.

Her cynicism paid off. The taxi was ten stories above her and about to tear loose from its precarious perch on the web. When it did, it would crush her, and there was nowhere for her to go.

Dear Lord, please, make it quick
. Then she corrected herself.
To hell with that, make it slow, drag it out, give Peter time to get here
.

Spider-Man was running out of time.

He was scampering up one of the girders when a black webline wrapped tightly around his throat, yanking him backward. He dropped two stories, smacking onto a crossbeam. One story below, Venom was pulling on the webline, strangling him. The world was turning into a red haze around Spider-Man, and in the distance he heard Venom shouting, "
Now! Kill him now
!"

Going on the assumption that Venom wasn't addressing him, Spider-Man figured he was talking to Sandman. Sure enough, a shadow loomed over the struggling Spider-Man—it was Sandman all right, bigger than King Kong and twice as formidable.

Jennifer Dugan looked out from the TV screen in Harry Osborn's apartment. "
It's hard to believe what's happening… I don't know how he could take any more… This… this is the end of Spider-Man
."

Harry Osborn wasn't listening.

I'm sorry, MJ… I tried… no one could have tried more.

Even as he thought that, Spider-Man didn't cease struggling against the webbing that was holding him down, trying to get clear of the massive form of Sandman that was about to annihilate him.

A tiny copper ball sailed out of the clouds and lodged on the back of Sandman's massive head.

Sandman turned, sensing something behind him, and Spider-Man barely had time to see that what had landed on Sandman's head was shaped like a pumpkin before it detonated. Chunks of sandstone exploded from the side of Sandman's head. Stunned by the impact, he crumbled like a massive statue.

Mary Jane didn't know where to look first. She saw the mighty Sandman collapse, she saw Venom on the ground looking up in confusion, and then she twisted around and saw what Venom was already looking at: a man astride what looked like a flying hi-tech snowboard, which was roaring like a jet engine.

She recognized the gadget immediately, the rider a moment later. "Harry!" she cried out in joy.

Though she felt a quick flash of anger over the way Harry had manipulated her to hurt Peter, for whatever reason he was now coming in on the side of the angels. There was still a lot to be explained, a good deal she didn't understand—for one thing, my God, what happened to his face?—but it could wait until they all got out of here alive… an optimistic view to have, but at least she suddenly had one.

Harry chortled with self-satisfied glee as he rammed the Sky Stick into Venom, knocking him aside and sending him crashing against a crossbeam like a beanbag. He landed next to Spider-Man, who looked as if he'd just gone twelve rounds with a giant mutant Cuisinart.

Unable to understand what had just happened,

Spider-Man looked up at him tentatively, confused. Instead of bothering to explain, Harry simply extended a hand to his old friend and helped him to his feet.

"I… can't believe you're here," Spider-Man said.

Harry nodded. "Apparently just in the nick of time."

Spider-Man rubbed the back of his neck and Harry suspected that, under his mask, Peter was wincing. "Well, five minutes ago would have been good too."

The distant sound of snapping weblines caught their attention. They looked up just in time to see the taxi above Mary Jane tearing loose.

Mary Jane rolled aside, barely avoiding the car as it ripped down through the weakening strands of black web. It continued its death plunge, tumbling end over end several times before crashing to the ground sixty stories below. But in passing, it damaged the web that MJ was clinging to. The entire thing was rapidly shredding.

Clearly she only had seconds left.

Harry revved the Sky Stick. "
Hop on
!" he shouted.

Spider-Man needed no further urging. He leaped aboard, and they raced upward toward Mary Jane.

Too late.

The giant black web gave way. Mary Jane tore loose from the last of its strands into thin air.

No way no way no freaking way
, thought Harry desperately as he angled the Sky Stick around, diving after her, and he would have been surprised to learn that Peter was thinking the exact same thing.

"
Give it everything
!" Spider-Man shouted as the Sky Stick raced to catch up with her.

Harry gunned the engine, zipping after the plummeting Mary Jane. They were heading straight for the ground, Harry now coming to a terrible realization. "We're diving too fast! I won't be able to pull up!"

"Just a little longer—"

"Pete—!"

"Almost…"

Harry wanted to be heroic enough that he'd be willing D crash the device into the ground before he'd break off pursuit. With a sinking heart, he knew he wasn't, and he hated himself for that weakness.

"I've got to pull up! Now!"

"
Go
!" Spider-Man shouted.

He dove from the Sky Stick an instant before Harry pulled up. Spider-Man intercepted Mary Jane in midair and, wrapping his arm around her, fired a web. It snagged an overhead girder and they arced upward, barely missing the ground and soaring mere inches over the head of a boy who was watching in the crowd. "Wicked cool!" crowed the kid.