Spiderman 3 (39 page)

The crowd went wild as Spider-Man swung along with Mary Jane in his arms. Harry watched it all from a distance—he had just witnessed why exactly Peter Parker was a true hero who, dammit, deserved to get the girl. He resolved right then that his ridiculous crush on Mary Jane was at an end. Peter deserved to have her, and if that was what she wanted—

Harry had made a tactical blunder. Allowing his mind to wander, even for an instant, was a costly mistake.

Venom leaped forward from hiding and latched onto Harry's Sky Stick. Harry, realizing he'd picked up an unwanted passenger, angled skyward, trying to shake him loose. No luck. Venom bared his vicious teeth and sank them into Harry's ankle. Harry shrieked, yanking his leg away before Venom could get a solid hold.

Venom started to pull himself up, and a stiletto blade clicked out from the back of Harry's bootheel. Harry had only had time to throw together a few pieces of the armor, but what he had chosen had been canny. He jammed the blade down into Venom's shoulder. The creature howled in protest but still didn't let go.

The Sky Stick banked with a whine of its engines. Venom was slammed against a concrete girder high atop the skyscraper. Venom was knocked loose, but the Sky Stick had sustained damage from Venom's assault. The engine was sounding labored, and it was all Harry could do to keep it on course.

Nor was Venom done. Even as he fell, he fired a black webline and reconnected with the craft, swinging below it like a great dark pendulum.

As Harry angled around, he saw Spider-Man landing on an upper portion of the skyscraper, where a small platform had been set up for construction workers. He watched as Spider-Man set Mary Jane down there and breathed a sigh of relief that at least she was safe.

The ground stirred, twisted, grew, and a gigantic Sandman once again rose up before them. The missing portion of his head had reformed.

"Uh-oh," said Harry, which by startling coincidence was exactly what Mary Jane said as Sandman loomed in front of them. Peter Parker said something a bit more colorful, but his mask muffled the words.

On the street below, J. Jonah Jameson fought his way to the front of the crowd, searching the faces of the news photographers. Alerted to the goings-on, he hadn't been able to verify that the
Bugle
had anyone on the scene and decided he couldn't trust anyone but himself to make sure his paper got pictures.

Unfortunately, as the battery of photographers snapped away, capturing incredible action photos, Jameson didn't see a single one of his people. "Parker! Brock!" he called out, momentarily forgetting that he'd fired the latter. "Where's my photographers?!"

He turned and spotted an eight-year-old girl holding a cheap Instamatic camera. "Hey, kid," he barked. "Want a job?"

The girl stared at him incredulously. "No. I'm a kid. Why would I want a job?"

Exasperated, Jonah growled, "How much for that camera?"

Looking at the camera and smelling Jonah's desperation the way that a lion smells weakness, the kid announced, "Forty dollars."

"Forty?!"

The crowd gasped and pointed at some fantastic photo opportunity that Jameson was missing. Muttering, he yanked two twenties from his wallet and forked them over to the kid. "Little crook," he snarled as the girl handed him the camera.

Jameson raised it for a shot, pushed on the shutter release, and couldn't get it to do anything. Then he stared at the back of the camera and popped it open to verify what he'd already figured out: it was empty.

The kid held up a small box. "Film's extra," she said serenely.

Spider-Man grabbed Mary Jane in a tackle hold and leaped with her out of harm's way as a gigantic sand fist pounded into the building. It trembled violently under the impact but remained standing.

Harry saw it all, but was distracted by his own problem. Venom was still climbing quickly up toward him. Tripping a switch, Harry ignited the thrusters on the bottom of the Sky Stick. They roared to life, and the rocket exhausts torched the shrieking Venom. Burning like a Roman candle, the flaming beast tumbled well away from the Sky Stick.

Freed of Venom, Harry shot straight toward Sandman. The towering creature had just taken a swipe at Spider-Man, who swung himself and MJ to safety…
safety
being a relative term. Trying desperately to buy Peter some time, Harry buzzed past Sandman's face as a distraction.
I'm worth at least thirty million dollars, and I'm a flying sand mite. What a comedown
.

In trying to get Sandman's attention, Harry was all too successful. Turning away from Spider-Man and Mary Jane, Sandman opened wide his hand and sent it blowing toward Harry at gale force. Harry tried to angle away from the blast but was enveloped in a small tornado of sand. He shielded his eyes with one arm, as the sand flurry worked its way into the innermost recesses of the Sky Stick. Harry cut hard on the engine, dropping down out of the assault, but then the engine started to choke and sputter. He tried to get it under control but to no avail as the vehicle hurtled across the sky, its gyros and servos disabled and its steering mechanism completely shot. Fighting to stay aloft, Harry veered behind a distant building, cut off from the war that now waged without him.

With Mary Jane safely out of the line of fire, Spider-Man was running across a girder when a sandstone arm smacked him hard across the face. It sent him flying downward, and he crashed hard into a half-constructed floor.

Sandman had reduced himself to his normal size, but that didn't make him any less formidable. Having transformed his hand into a sandstone sledgehammer, he raised it above the head of a defenseless Spider-Man and growled, "Got no choice. You're in my way."

"Daddy, stop!"

To Peter's astonishment, Marko froze in place, and he turned his head in the direction from which the plea had come: a slowly rising construction elevator. A little girl was emerging from it, along with her mother.

"Penny?" whispered Marko. He hadn't lowered the sledgehammer, and Spider-Man could have taken that moment to lash out. Instead he made no move at all, waiting to see how this unexpected interruption would play out. "I… I have to do this," Marko insisted. "You don't understand."

"I do understand."

"Flint," Emma said, "the doctor came. He told us everything."

Penny sounded as if she was more concerned about her father's and the doctor's feelings than her own welfare as she said, "He tried but he can't help me."

A crestfallen Flint Marko lowered his sledgehammer arm, all the fight gone out of him. The little girl, seeming much older than her years, continued to speak to her father in slow, measured tones as she approached. "But it's okay, Daddy. It means you don't have to keep doing this. You don't have to hurt people anymore. You can come home."

Marko shook his head. "I can't come home. I…" He shifted his gaze to his wife. "I killed a man, Emma. I didn't mean to, but I did."

He turned to Spider-Man. Penny held on to her mother, unsure of how to react to what her father was saying. Peter could relate to that; he wasn't sure how to react either.

"I needed money for the medicine," Marko said to him. "I told your uncle… all I wanted was the car. I was scared. He said, 'Why don't you put the gun away and go home?' I turned to see my buddy running over with the cash. I was scared, and your uncle stood up, and I don't know, my gun went off…"

Spider-Man listened carefully, dumbfounded, scarcely believing it.

"There was a flash, a puff of smoke," Marko continued, "and I was standing there with this stupid expression on my face and the old guy on the ground. My buddy, good ol' Caradine, he jumped in the car and peeled outta there. Left me behind to take the fall. I got on the ground next to… to Ben." Marko said the name uncomfortably, as if claiming a familiarity that he wasn't entitled to. "He looked puzzled, like he couldn't understand what had gone wrong. I tried to pull him to his feet, shouted at him to get up. Then I heard the siren. I let his body slide outta my hands and to the pavement, and then I lit outta there just as the crowd was gathering. I…" He shook his head, reliving the pain, the suffering made real. "I spent a lotta nights wishin' I could take it back."

Peter was silent. All of this was so different from what he had imagined. It had never occurred to him that a hardened criminal such as Flint Marko could possibly show remorse… could possibly care about others. Peter thought of the regret he had endured over his belief that his inaction had resulted in Ben's death, and how he had wished in vain that he too could take back his actions.

And, yes, he had recently done some things because of the symbiote. But they hadn't come out of nowhere.

They'd been fueled by his inner demons. The symbiote had simply unleashed the potential for evil that lurked within him… that probably lurked in everyone.

And he thought of what Aunt May had said… about what Uncle Ben would have really wanted for them. Marko knelt down next to his daughter. "I still want to be with you more than anything. But I did wrong. Gotta pay for what I did."

With a choked sob, Penny pulled against her mother's hand, and this time—a bit to Spider-Man's surprise—Emma released her. "I don't want you to leave," she wailed, and threw her arms around her father. She looked up at Spider-Man and said, "Won't you forgive him? I know he did a terrible thing to you, but he's a good man."

Peter knew perfectly well that what he said, that his beliefs, weren't going to make a bit of difference in terms of what happened to Flint Marko. But there was more involved than this. There was a little girl who desperately needed to believe that her father stood for something valuable and good. And he wasn't entirely sure that she was wrong to believe that.

"We've all done terrible things," Spider-Man told her. "I…" He paused a long moment, then finally managed to get the words out. "I forgive him."

A sudden sound came from above them. They all looked up to see Venom, who had reappeared atop the partially completed building. An earsplitting roar resounded, and Spider-Man shouted to Marko, "Get your family out of here!"

Marko hesitated, looking from Spider-Man to the frightened faces of Penny and Emma. He hugged them fervently as Spider-Man again cried out, "
Go! Save them
!"

Aware of the danger, Marko quickly clambered onto the construction elevator with his family, shielding them with his body should Venom try to attack them.

Venom wasn't the least bit interested in assaulting Flint Marko's family. Instead his full focus was on Spider-Man, and he lunged with a howl of rage.

Spider-Man leaped toward him, prepared to end this one way or the other.

Harry Osborn had impressed the hell out of himself.

He had always given little credibility to his own technological or scientific abilities, but when push came to shove, he was able to get the job done. In this instance, he had landed the Sky Stick, completed the makeshift repairs, and gotten it off the ground again, all in a few minutes. Hurtling toward the construction site, he now saw Venom and Spider-Man slugging it out and gunned the engine so he could get there to help.

Grabbing a steel pike, Venom swung it around and bashed Spider-Man across the chest with it. His ribs already damaged from earlier, Spider-Man felt a new jolt of pain rip across his torso as he was thrown back against a girder. Venom flipped the pike around, revealing its sharp, jagged edge.

Clinging to the girder as much for support as anything else, Spider-Man grated, "Don't give in to the anger, Eddie. It just feeds the suit. It wants you to hate. Give it up!"

Venom hesitated, and just for a moment Spider-Man thought he was getting through. But then Venom's voice grew firm, even challenging. "How can I give this up? Finally, I'm somebody. Look at them down there"—he pointed at the crowds below—"waiting for my next move." He advanced on Spider-Man and said cheerfully, "I like being bad. It makes me happy."

His slow advance turned into a rapid charge as he thrust the pike forward for the death blow. Spider-Man braced himself, prepared to dodge but not sure if he would make it.

From out of nowhere, Harry flew in, placing himself directly between the pike and Spider-Man.

"
Harry
!" shouted Peter, and his heart shattered as the pike impaled Harry Osborn. Harry pitched backward as the pike slid out of him… losing control of the Sky Stick and crash-landing atop a construction platform.

Giving Harry no further attention, as if he had just stepped on an ant, Venom lunged again with the steel pike. Spider-Man twisted aside, and the pike struck the girder with a loud, almost deafening clang.

The black goo of the Venom suit vibrated, migrating away from the shrillness, moving in ripples across Brock's body. Venom stumbled back, pained.

Peter saw it all and remembered when he himself had been struggling to divest himself of the black suit. The church bell had been thundering overhead, but Peter had simply chalked up his ridding himself of the symbiote as some sort of battle of wills that he'd won. Now, though, he realized the truth.

"Sound," he murmured.

Venom had meantime recovered. He raised the jagged pike and charged yet again. There was only a split second—Spider-Man kicked up into his hands a length of re-bar at his feet and, in one fluid motion, struck it against the girder. This time, with Peter's full muscle behind it, it generated a clang so sonorous that Peter could feel the fillings in his teeth vibrating in response. Because the rebar itself was generating the sound, the symbiote would be vulnerable to it… at least in theory.

He lowered the rebar to meet the oncoming Venom, and Venom—staggering from the ringing—was unable to control his forward motion. He impaled himself upon the makeshift tuning fork that Spider-Man had fashioned and gasped in surprise. The deadly pike dropped from Venom's hands.

Peter had taken care not to make the wound mortal.

Eddie Brock would be in a world of hurt for a long time, but it wasn't intended to be fatal by any means. With any luck, though, it would be fatal for the symbiote because of the tonality.