Subject: Chapter 27
Short summary: Finally free, Clark heads home but his captors keep up the pursuit...
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Chapter 27
From the direction he had to fly to head home, Clark figured the lab had been somewhere in the deserts of west Texas or eastern New Mexico. As he flew toward central Kansas, the terrain below looked more and more familiar.
Clark didn't know for sure how long it'd been since he was taken. When he thought about it there was probably no way for him to be sure until he learned the date. There had been so much time lost to illness, injury and drug induced hazes... However, from what he could see it had probably been about six months. The arid Southwest ground below him gradually changed into the dry, brown grass of late fall on the plains.
He'd missed the start of fall classes, the beginning of football season and probably the World Series. Had he missed Thanksgiving too? Thinking of that made him ache to see his mother... Without even thinking about it, he willed himself to go even faster. He didn't really think about how fast he was going, even if he'd thought to be curious.
If the thought had occurred to him, he'd be in awe of what he was doing and where he was. Flying through the sky, this far up, was beautiful and the ground below was a spectacular patch work quilt of fields, housing developments and towns....
However, Clark didn't have the time to enjoy the scenery. He was focused on getting home, but as he neared Smallville he slowed. He wanted to be cautious and try to gauge the dangers that might be waiting for him... As much as he wanted to go home immediately, now that he was so close, he knew the military might have beaten him to Smallville, despite how fast as he'd gotten there. It was maddening, he had to be careful but he also had to get home to take his parents to safety.
He wasn't safe yet. He had to check for immediate danger.
When Clark slowed to a stop, hanging in the air tens of thousands of feet above Smallville, he never felt more vulnerable in his life. Even though his skin was impenetrable, he still felt exposed up there in the sky with nothing around him.
He looked around. He was outside any air corridor, no airplanes nearby or even heading his way in the nearest hundreds of miles. He was just below a small bank of clouds.... He drifted up and hung just inside the cold damp of the cloud. Clark was grateful for the wispy, fog-like cover. As minimal as it was, the mist swirling around him gave him some feeling of safety. He used his telescopic vision to view the little yellow farm house in the distance that was home, and his eyes stung with unshed tears and his chest tightened when he saw it.
Clark widened his field of view and was glad to see that the house and farmland immediately surrounding it were clear of strangers. His vision went wider and about 25 miles outside the west side of town, he saw three black SUVs with heavily tinted windows racing toward the house.
He focused and took a closer look. The men that filled the three vehicles all wore military uniforms, wore large kryptonite amulets and several held rifles. Clark growled in his frustration.
He was already out of time... Furious, he decided to give himself a little breathing room.
Clark turned and zoomed toward the racing cars, his jaw set and his eyes already feeling the heat.
He stopped far in front of them about 100 feet above the pavement. The men spotted him and shouted orders angrily to each other just as the drivers slammed on the brakes. The wheels squealed and he focused his heat vision and melted the pavement in front of their slowing vehicles. The cars stopped almost immediately and went only a few yards more before coming to complete stops. As the air inside them expanded, the car tires all exploded and caught fire as the wheel rims sunk deep into the mire of gooey hot asphalt. They wouldn't be able to continue even after the pavement cooled.
Grim, knowing that more would be coming soon to replace these men, Clark turned and raced home. He had to see his parents and get them to safety...
The sonic boom that he created, now only flying a hundred feet up, shook houses all along his path. As he approached home, he slowed, suddenly unsure.... It didn't feel real, he'd been gone so long, so much had happened... He wasn't the same person who the Man had taken all those months ago on a lazy Saturday morning.
His heart racing and tears streaking his dirty cheeks, Clark softly touched down in the driveway, far more lightly than he'd thought he ever could. He looked around, amazed at the signs of neglect everywhere on the normally tidy property. The fence needed paint, the screen door had a rip, dead weeds clogged the flower beds, and the loose floor boards on the porch would trip anyone who wasn't careful...
The state of disrepair made Clark's heart ache. He wasn't the only person who'd changed while he was gone. The untended property spoke volumes about the pain of the broken family inside the house.
He quietly went up the steps he hadn't seen in months except in his dreams. The house seemed smaller, somehow. He opened the door and stepped in to find his mother staring at him in surprise.
She held a coffee cup and looked like she had just stood up from the table, startled and unsure who would be entering the house. His father sat at her side, his face pale and he also looked surprised that someone would open the door.
No one said anything for a moment, the shock was too extreme. For Clark it seemed too unreal.
He looked between his two parents. Unbelieving, he said quietly in a trembling voice, "Mom? Dad?"
The sound of Clark's voice broke the spell and Martha cried and dropped the cup as she welcomed Clark with opened arms. He fell into her warm embrace and started to sob.
Martha cried as she held her son tightly, "Clark! Oh, God! Clark..."
His father held his family as the normally stoic man cried.
"Mom... Dad... I missed you so much."
His father's voice caught. "It worked, what Lana had done worked... Thank God." Jonathan, seemingly overcome by his emotions, sat down heavily as Martha continued to hug Clark.
Martha leaned back and pulled Clark's face up so she could look him in the eyes. When Clark saw her face, he could tell that her heart was clearly breaking. "Oh my God, Clark... You're so thin." She gently cupped his cheek in her soft hand as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. "You're so thin and so pale... What did they do to you? Lana wouldn't tell us what she knew..."
Clark swallowed hard and deflected her questions. "I'm okay, Mom... I'm home now, that's all that matters."
Her face reflected the pain he felt as she tenderly wiped the tears from Clark's cheek. "Yes, you're home. It's what we've prayed for..."
Jonathan spoke, looking up from where he sat. A nearly destroyed man, his voice wavered as he tried to console his family. "We'll have to work hard to pick up the pieces, son, now that you're finally home."
Clark was about to speak but something he heard caught his attention. He focused his hearing and Listened. It was Colonel Preskin's voice coming over a radio, "Damn that was fast... The tracking signal indicates he's already home... The copters should be there in about twenty minutes... Have your teams rendezvous at the Kent Farm."
Shocked, Clark looked angrily at the bracelet he'd all but forgotten about in his flight home. He'd been stupid to forget it...
His mother noticed his distraction. "Have you heard something?" Clark hesitated, but she persisted. "What's wrong, Clark?"
Clark shook his head as fresh tears welled up in his eyes. "They know I'm already home." He held up his wrist. "They tracked me with this and they're going to be here soon." He swallowed, more resolved. "We don't have much time."
He sped upstairs and quickly changed out of the tattered shorts he still wore. He pulled on an old pair of work boots, he'd been wearing his best pair when he'd been taken. He frowned at how baggy his clothes were, they used to fit him so well. He sighed and then packed his old gym bag full of his clothes and a spare pair of running shoes.
On the bedside table, his parents had replaced the photo that the Man had taken. Clark was glad to see the photo of them and stuffed it into his bag. Back in full speed, he packed bags for both of his parents and zipped back downstairs. He dropped all the bags by his mother's feet and looked at the bracelet on his wrist.
"Wait a second. I need to get rid of this..." He pulled on the chain as hard as he could, he couldn't break it.
His mother shook her head as she looked at the bags at her feet, "Clark... What are you doing?"
"We gotta go, Mom... But I want to get this off first. Hang on..."
Clark went out into the front yard and focused his heat vision on the bracelet's chain. He got it as hot as he could but it still didn't melt. However, the hard metal softened enough that, with a hard tug, Clark was finally able to break the chain. He dropped the bracelet to the ground, and the links he'd softened were hot enough that the heat turned the gravel it touched to glass.
He sped back inside almost before his parents had a chance to even process the fact that he'd left, leaving the door open to quicken their exit. He picked up the bags and looked to his parents. "We have to go now..."
He was confused when Jonathan looked away with a pained expression and Martha sadly shook her head as she sat down. "What're you doing? We need to get out, they're coming."
His mother couldn't speak at first, so she looked sadly at Jonathan and then at a bottle of pills at his dad's elbow. Clark hadn't noticed it before, but there were several bottles of pills on the table. Comprehension dawned as he looked over at the counter next to the sink. There were more bottles of medicine sitting there. They all had his dad's name on them.
Shocked, Clark didn't want to believe it. "You can't leave, can you?" His father grimaced as his mother shook her head.
"No, we can't go, Clark. Since you were taken, your father's health..." She couldn't finish the sentence and grasped her husband's hand.
Clark was distraught. "You don't know what they're like... What they're capable of... What they did to me..." Clark's voice broke as his emotions overwhelmed him. He didn't want to think about what the army would do to his parents to get to him... Desperate to change their minds, he shook his head. "No, you can't stay. You won't be safe here."
His mother's voice caught, "We can't go." Martha looked sadly at her husband, who insisted on only looking at his foot. His face was grim and troubled. "Your dad couldn't withstand it, Clark."
"Mom, you don't understand. Those men are the worst kind. You could both die..."
Martha solemnly returned her son's gaze. "We can't leave, Clark."
Jonathan looked at Martha, his eyes brimming with unshed tears and turned his gaze to his son. Clark realized his father looked like he'd aged years, not months. He seemed smaller too.
Shaken to his core, Clark turned away as he tried to get a handle on his emotions. He had to be brave and accept the risk... He was resolved that he had to protect his family. He couldn't let them die.
He swallowed hard and angrily wiped the tears off his cheeks. He turned back to his parents, to find them hugging each other tightly. He cleared his throat, "Okay, well... we have to get some place where I can better protect you." His parents looked up at him confused. "I was thinking the storm cellar. It should be easier for me to defend than the house..."
His mother shook her head and pulled out of the embrace with Jonathan. "No, Clark... You have to go."
"Mom, you want me to leave you here?" Clark looked at his parents in shock. "I can't let you guys stay alone..."
She looked up into his eyes as she gently took his hands in hers. "Clark, they know your weakness. There's nothing you can do to protect yourself and I have no doubt that they'll kill us if they have to in order to take you again. Your best option is to run and hide... Make sure they don't get the chance to use kryptonite against you."
Clark shook his head. "Mom, all I could think about the whole time they had me was coming home. The thought of seeing you again is what kept me alive, it gave me hope when there was none left in me... I can't believe you want me to leave you here to die."
"We don't want you to leave and we don't want to die, Clark, but we couldn't bear it if you were taken again. Escape may not be possible next time..."
He shook his head, "But Mom..."
She was emphatic. "No, Clark. You have to save yourself. It won't matter what else happens, I couldn't bear the thought of you being kidnapped again. Neither of us would." His father got up, not quite as smoothly as he would have before Clark had been taken, and walked over to his family.
"Son, save yourself... We've had the storm cellar fortified. We'll be okay..." He wrapped an arm protectively around Martha's shoulders.
"Foritifed? How did you afford to do that?"
Martha looked up at Clark with an arched eyebrow. "Inexplicably a few months ago a mysterious series of payments erased our debts..."
"That was because of me, Mom. They wanted to try and buy my cooperation..."
"We thought it was something like that. We tried to find out who'd paid, but we couldn't discover the source of the payments. It was worrying, so we decided to use some of the money we had in savings to fortify the storm cellar, in case we needed to protect ourselves."
Jonathan nodded, "It came in handy, son. Just a week after the work was done we had a stranger call to warn us that someone was coming. We weren't sure it was true, but we didn't want to take any chances. Good thing, while we were in the cellar they ransacked the house and tried breaking down the door to the cellar, but it held until the sheriff's sirens scared them off."
Martha nodded, "And they've come back several times since, but each time we've had a cryptic phone call warning us first, we had time to hide..."
Clark was mystified. "Who called? Did you ever find out?"
Jonathan shook his head, "We never did but it sounded like the same man who'd contacted us later about finding a girl to help you..."
"Was that how Lana...?" Clark never got a chance to finish what he was going to say since a sound caught his attention. He paused to listen. The helicopters were getting closer.
"Dad, Mom... We don't have much time. They're almost here..."
Martha frantically hugged Clark. "You have to go, Clark... Please, leave and be safe. Don't worry about us." She pulled away and went to the small desk in the hallway. "We knew that Lana was going to do something, we just didn't know when. But we worried it might not be safe for you to stay..." She pulled open the drawer and took out a fat envelope. "So we took the precaution of getting you this."
She handed him the envelope and Clark opened it to see it was full of money, all in fifty dollar bills. There were thousands of dollars in there.
"Mom, I can't take this... You need this money."
Jonathan shook his head. "No, son. We need you to be safe and warm with food to eat and a place to stay. That takes money. Run as far and as fast as you can away from here and call us as often as you can."
Martha was close to tears again, and nodded in agreement. She hugged Clark tightly and, unwilling to let the moment go, she took a deep breath and pulled away. She looked to her husband and moved over to table. She went to pick up the medicine bottles. Clark stopped her.
"Let me do that for you, I should get you to the shelter now."
"No, you should go, dear... "
He stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his jeans and joined them and held out a hand as they both took a step to the open door. "No, let me take you." The sound of the approaching helicopters could be heard faintly in the far distance. "If you put your arms around my neck, I can carry you both."
Martha shook her head, worried. "I'm not sure your Dad could take the jarring of you running with him..."
He stood in front of them. "I wasn't going to run..." He held out his arms. "Just grab on." His parents held onto Clark's neck and he easily picked them up, wrapping his arms around their waists and he allowed himself a small smile. "I should show you what I can do now anyway..." His parents cast worried glances at him and then at each other, unsure of what Clark was referring to.
Clark floated up as they gasped and looked at him in awe. He drifted up and, careful in the tight confines of the house and porch, delicately maneuvered until he got outside. Once clear of the building he flew them as fast as he thought they could take it.
He placed them gently down in front of the now reinforced storm shelter. They hugged him again and Martha opened the door. Clark flew back in high speed to the house and stuffed Jonathan's medicines into his parents' bags. He grabbed them and flew to join his parents down into the storm cellar.
His parents looked at him with pride and in awe as he lightly touched down at the foot of the steps. His mother's eyes welled up. "I know now that you're going to be okay, Clark. You can go anywhere... If you're careful enough, they won't be able to find you."
He didn't have to try to listen to be able to tell that the helicopters were a lot closer. Clark's chest tightened and the tears that had been filling his eyes finally spilled, and trailed steadily down his cheeks. "I love you, Mom, Dad... but I have to go."
Martha and Jonathan hugged him again and Clark pulled away. He stepped outside and, as tears spilled down their cheeks, his mother closed and locked the door behind Clark. He didn't need superhearing to hear her break down into sobs as soon as the lock engaged.
He lightly touched the door and whispered, "I love you. I'll be okay, but I'm going to make sure you're okay too. I promise."
Grim, he focused and looked at the helicopters now only a few miles away. There were dozens of men in them, all wearing kryptonite amulets along with the combat gear and armed with dart guns. They weren't going to kill Clark; they were intent on capturing him again.
He wasn't going to let that happen. He flew back to the bracelet and stuck that into his pocket, he wanted to make sure the army knew to follow him, hopefully keeping them away from his parents. He had to lead them away...
He went back into the house and grabbed his bag and stepped out onto the porch. He looked toward the approaching helicopters. He slung the bag over his head, the strap now cutting across his upper body. He pushed the bag behind him to keep it clear of his arms and took a deep breath. Despite a nearly undeniable urge to fly away as fast as he could, he grimly stood on the porch and waited.
Clark listened but he didn't recognize the voice that spoke. "Colonel, he's still at the farm..." They weren't close enough yet to see him once he started to fly. Clark had to wait because he wanted to be sure they saw him with their own eyes before he left. He wanted to be sure both of the approaching helicopters followed and he hoped they wouldn't figure out that was why he had waited so long before taking flight.
Scanning the horizon, he saw the helicopters passing just past this side of the edge of town. They were moving fast and would soon be over his family's property. Clark adjusted the strap of the bag slung across his body and waited for the helicopters to pass over the boundaries of the farm. As they closed in on the house, Clark ran out into the yard and looked grimly over at them.
Scowling as he waited for them to see exactly where he was, Clark lifted up and hung in the air. His heart was racing a million miles a minute. The men coming to catch him were the worst kind of people on the planet. They meant to take him and lock him away again so they could force him to make them an army that would take over the world.
It was probably one of the hardest things he had to do, his breath coming in gasps as his body rose and fell without him realizing it, but he waited until the pilots changed their flight paths to intercept him. He waited to move until he knew they had seen him. Clark glared at his enemy for a moment before turning and flying away. He was very careful to not fly too fast for them; after all he wanted them to keep up. He flew away from his home, hopefully leading the enemy away from his vulnerable family...
Part of him didn't believe it, but they followed. When he looked back at them, he could see that the faces of the men were angry. They appeared as resolved to capture him as he was resolved that they wouldn't succeed.
He waited until they were about 50 miles away from Smallville and they began to be suspicious why he was moving so slowly, before he took off as fast as he could. Behind him, they dropped back quickly as he tore away and passed the sound barrier and rocketed east toward the ocean. He heard, without even trying, the colonel's angry voice far behind him call jets into service, but knowing they were coming Clark found them easy to avoid.
As he passed the Virginia coast, and more jets scrambled from the Naval Air Station near Norfolk, Clark took the bracelet out of his pocket. He looked at the bar code angrily before he threw it away from him faster than he was flying. It arced down as it fell and Clark turned from its eastward trajectory and flew south.
The jets followed the bracelet, not him. Clark knew that he was too small to track with radar, especially since he wasn't made of metal. A few hundred miles south of where the bracelet fell into the ocean, he hung in the air and watched them searching for him. Jets, helicopters, boats, and submarines all converged on where the bracelet had fallen, looking for him hundreds of miles away from where he was.
He smiled, his mother was right.
He could go anywhere and they wouldn't be able to find him. As powerful as he was, he wasn't much bigger than most men and he had a whole planet to hide in. Even with all of the equipment and untold numbers of angry military men at their disposal, it'd be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. He might not be able to go home again, but there is no way he was going to let them find him. He'd hidden himself his whole life. He could keep on doing it.
Determined to find someplace where he could blend in and lose himself, Clark turned back toward the US coast and flew higher and higher as the sun edged toward the horizon.
Continued here....
See all chapters here...
Chapter 27
From the direction he had to fly to head home, Clark figured the lab had been somewhere in the deserts of west Texas or eastern New Mexico. As he flew toward central Kansas, the terrain below looked more and more familiar.
Clark didn't know for sure how long it'd been since he was taken. When he thought about it there was probably no way for him to be sure until he learned the date. There had been so much time lost to illness, injury and drug induced hazes... However, from what he could see it had probably been about six months. The arid Southwest ground below him gradually changed into the dry, brown grass of late fall on the plains.
He'd missed the start of fall classes, the beginning of football season and probably the World Series. Had he missed Thanksgiving too? Thinking of that made him ache to see his mother... Without even thinking about it, he willed himself to go even faster. He didn't really think about how fast he was going, even if he'd thought to be curious.
If the thought had occurred to him, he'd be in awe of what he was doing and where he was. Flying through the sky, this far up, was beautiful and the ground below was a spectacular patch work quilt of fields, housing developments and towns....
However, Clark didn't have the time to enjoy the scenery. He was focused on getting home, but as he neared Smallville he slowed. He wanted to be cautious and try to gauge the dangers that might be waiting for him... As much as he wanted to go home immediately, now that he was so close, he knew the military might have beaten him to Smallville, despite how fast as he'd gotten there. It was maddening, he had to be careful but he also had to get home to take his parents to safety.
He wasn't safe yet. He had to check for immediate danger.
When Clark slowed to a stop, hanging in the air tens of thousands of feet above Smallville, he never felt more vulnerable in his life. Even though his skin was impenetrable, he still felt exposed up there in the sky with nothing around him.
He looked around. He was outside any air corridor, no airplanes nearby or even heading his way in the nearest hundreds of miles. He was just below a small bank of clouds.... He drifted up and hung just inside the cold damp of the cloud. Clark was grateful for the wispy, fog-like cover. As minimal as it was, the mist swirling around him gave him some feeling of safety. He used his telescopic vision to view the little yellow farm house in the distance that was home, and his eyes stung with unshed tears and his chest tightened when he saw it.
Clark widened his field of view and was glad to see that the house and farmland immediately surrounding it were clear of strangers. His vision went wider and about 25 miles outside the west side of town, he saw three black SUVs with heavily tinted windows racing toward the house.
He focused and took a closer look. The men that filled the three vehicles all wore military uniforms, wore large kryptonite amulets and several held rifles. Clark growled in his frustration.
He was already out of time... Furious, he decided to give himself a little breathing room.
Clark turned and zoomed toward the racing cars, his jaw set and his eyes already feeling the heat.
He stopped far in front of them about 100 feet above the pavement. The men spotted him and shouted orders angrily to each other just as the drivers slammed on the brakes. The wheels squealed and he focused his heat vision and melted the pavement in front of their slowing vehicles. The cars stopped almost immediately and went only a few yards more before coming to complete stops. As the air inside them expanded, the car tires all exploded and caught fire as the wheel rims sunk deep into the mire of gooey hot asphalt. They wouldn't be able to continue even after the pavement cooled.
Grim, knowing that more would be coming soon to replace these men, Clark turned and raced home. He had to see his parents and get them to safety...
The sonic boom that he created, now only flying a hundred feet up, shook houses all along his path. As he approached home, he slowed, suddenly unsure.... It didn't feel real, he'd been gone so long, so much had happened... He wasn't the same person who the Man had taken all those months ago on a lazy Saturday morning.
His heart racing and tears streaking his dirty cheeks, Clark softly touched down in the driveway, far more lightly than he'd thought he ever could. He looked around, amazed at the signs of neglect everywhere on the normally tidy property. The fence needed paint, the screen door had a rip, dead weeds clogged the flower beds, and the loose floor boards on the porch would trip anyone who wasn't careful...
The state of disrepair made Clark's heart ache. He wasn't the only person who'd changed while he was gone. The untended property spoke volumes about the pain of the broken family inside the house.
He quietly went up the steps he hadn't seen in months except in his dreams. The house seemed smaller, somehow. He opened the door and stepped in to find his mother staring at him in surprise.
She held a coffee cup and looked like she had just stood up from the table, startled and unsure who would be entering the house. His father sat at her side, his face pale and he also looked surprised that someone would open the door.
No one said anything for a moment, the shock was too extreme. For Clark it seemed too unreal.
He looked between his two parents. Unbelieving, he said quietly in a trembling voice, "Mom? Dad?"
The sound of Clark's voice broke the spell and Martha cried and dropped the cup as she welcomed Clark with opened arms. He fell into her warm embrace and started to sob.
Martha cried as she held her son tightly, "Clark! Oh, God! Clark..."
His father held his family as the normally stoic man cried.
"Mom... Dad... I missed you so much."
His father's voice caught. "It worked, what Lana had done worked... Thank God." Jonathan, seemingly overcome by his emotions, sat down heavily as Martha continued to hug Clark.
Martha leaned back and pulled Clark's face up so she could look him in the eyes. When Clark saw her face, he could tell that her heart was clearly breaking. "Oh my God, Clark... You're so thin." She gently cupped his cheek in her soft hand as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. "You're so thin and so pale... What did they do to you? Lana wouldn't tell us what she knew..."
Clark swallowed hard and deflected her questions. "I'm okay, Mom... I'm home now, that's all that matters."
Her face reflected the pain he felt as she tenderly wiped the tears from Clark's cheek. "Yes, you're home. It's what we've prayed for..."
Jonathan spoke, looking up from where he sat. A nearly destroyed man, his voice wavered as he tried to console his family. "We'll have to work hard to pick up the pieces, son, now that you're finally home."
Clark was about to speak but something he heard caught his attention. He focused his hearing and Listened. It was Colonel Preskin's voice coming over a radio, "Damn that was fast... The tracking signal indicates he's already home... The copters should be there in about twenty minutes... Have your teams rendezvous at the Kent Farm."
Shocked, Clark looked angrily at the bracelet he'd all but forgotten about in his flight home. He'd been stupid to forget it...
His mother noticed his distraction. "Have you heard something?" Clark hesitated, but she persisted. "What's wrong, Clark?"
Clark shook his head as fresh tears welled up in his eyes. "They know I'm already home." He held up his wrist. "They tracked me with this and they're going to be here soon." He swallowed, more resolved. "We don't have much time."
He sped upstairs and quickly changed out of the tattered shorts he still wore. He pulled on an old pair of work boots, he'd been wearing his best pair when he'd been taken. He frowned at how baggy his clothes were, they used to fit him so well. He sighed and then packed his old gym bag full of his clothes and a spare pair of running shoes.
On the bedside table, his parents had replaced the photo that the Man had taken. Clark was glad to see the photo of them and stuffed it into his bag. Back in full speed, he packed bags for both of his parents and zipped back downstairs. He dropped all the bags by his mother's feet and looked at the bracelet on his wrist.
"Wait a second. I need to get rid of this..." He pulled on the chain as hard as he could, he couldn't break it.
His mother shook her head as she looked at the bags at her feet, "Clark... What are you doing?"
"We gotta go, Mom... But I want to get this off first. Hang on..."
Clark went out into the front yard and focused his heat vision on the bracelet's chain. He got it as hot as he could but it still didn't melt. However, the hard metal softened enough that, with a hard tug, Clark was finally able to break the chain. He dropped the bracelet to the ground, and the links he'd softened were hot enough that the heat turned the gravel it touched to glass.
He sped back inside almost before his parents had a chance to even process the fact that he'd left, leaving the door open to quicken their exit. He picked up the bags and looked to his parents. "We have to go now..."
He was confused when Jonathan looked away with a pained expression and Martha sadly shook her head as she sat down. "What're you doing? We need to get out, they're coming."
His mother couldn't speak at first, so she looked sadly at Jonathan and then at a bottle of pills at his dad's elbow. Clark hadn't noticed it before, but there were several bottles of pills on the table. Comprehension dawned as he looked over at the counter next to the sink. There were more bottles of medicine sitting there. They all had his dad's name on them.
Shocked, Clark didn't want to believe it. "You can't leave, can you?" His father grimaced as his mother shook her head.
"No, we can't go, Clark. Since you were taken, your father's health..." She couldn't finish the sentence and grasped her husband's hand.
Clark was distraught. "You don't know what they're like... What they're capable of... What they did to me..." Clark's voice broke as his emotions overwhelmed him. He didn't want to think about what the army would do to his parents to get to him... Desperate to change their minds, he shook his head. "No, you can't stay. You won't be safe here."
His mother's voice caught, "We can't go." Martha looked sadly at her husband, who insisted on only looking at his foot. His face was grim and troubled. "Your dad couldn't withstand it, Clark."
"Mom, you don't understand. Those men are the worst kind. You could both die..."
Martha solemnly returned her son's gaze. "We can't leave, Clark."
Jonathan looked at Martha, his eyes brimming with unshed tears and turned his gaze to his son. Clark realized his father looked like he'd aged years, not months. He seemed smaller too.
Shaken to his core, Clark turned away as he tried to get a handle on his emotions. He had to be brave and accept the risk... He was resolved that he had to protect his family. He couldn't let them die.
He swallowed hard and angrily wiped the tears off his cheeks. He turned back to his parents, to find them hugging each other tightly. He cleared his throat, "Okay, well... we have to get some place where I can better protect you." His parents looked up at him confused. "I was thinking the storm cellar. It should be easier for me to defend than the house..."
His mother shook her head and pulled out of the embrace with Jonathan. "No, Clark... You have to go."
"Mom, you want me to leave you here?" Clark looked at his parents in shock. "I can't let you guys stay alone..."
She looked up into his eyes as she gently took his hands in hers. "Clark, they know your weakness. There's nothing you can do to protect yourself and I have no doubt that they'll kill us if they have to in order to take you again. Your best option is to run and hide... Make sure they don't get the chance to use kryptonite against you."
Clark shook his head. "Mom, all I could think about the whole time they had me was coming home. The thought of seeing you again is what kept me alive, it gave me hope when there was none left in me... I can't believe you want me to leave you here to die."
"We don't want you to leave and we don't want to die, Clark, but we couldn't bear it if you were taken again. Escape may not be possible next time..."
He shook his head, "But Mom..."
She was emphatic. "No, Clark. You have to save yourself. It won't matter what else happens, I couldn't bear the thought of you being kidnapped again. Neither of us would." His father got up, not quite as smoothly as he would have before Clark had been taken, and walked over to his family.
"Son, save yourself... We've had the storm cellar fortified. We'll be okay..." He wrapped an arm protectively around Martha's shoulders.
"Foritifed? How did you afford to do that?"
Martha looked up at Clark with an arched eyebrow. "Inexplicably a few months ago a mysterious series of payments erased our debts..."
"That was because of me, Mom. They wanted to try and buy my cooperation..."
"We thought it was something like that. We tried to find out who'd paid, but we couldn't discover the source of the payments. It was worrying, so we decided to use some of the money we had in savings to fortify the storm cellar, in case we needed to protect ourselves."
Jonathan nodded, "It came in handy, son. Just a week after the work was done we had a stranger call to warn us that someone was coming. We weren't sure it was true, but we didn't want to take any chances. Good thing, while we were in the cellar they ransacked the house and tried breaking down the door to the cellar, but it held until the sheriff's sirens scared them off."
Martha nodded, "And they've come back several times since, but each time we've had a cryptic phone call warning us first, we had time to hide..."
Clark was mystified. "Who called? Did you ever find out?"
Jonathan shook his head, "We never did but it sounded like the same man who'd contacted us later about finding a girl to help you..."
"Was that how Lana...?" Clark never got a chance to finish what he was going to say since a sound caught his attention. He paused to listen. The helicopters were getting closer.
"Dad, Mom... We don't have much time. They're almost here..."
Martha frantically hugged Clark. "You have to go, Clark... Please, leave and be safe. Don't worry about us." She pulled away and went to the small desk in the hallway. "We knew that Lana was going to do something, we just didn't know when. But we worried it might not be safe for you to stay..." She pulled open the drawer and took out a fat envelope. "So we took the precaution of getting you this."
She handed him the envelope and Clark opened it to see it was full of money, all in fifty dollar bills. There were thousands of dollars in there.
"Mom, I can't take this... You need this money."
Jonathan shook his head. "No, son. We need you to be safe and warm with food to eat and a place to stay. That takes money. Run as far and as fast as you can away from here and call us as often as you can."
Martha was close to tears again, and nodded in agreement. She hugged Clark tightly and, unwilling to let the moment go, she took a deep breath and pulled away. She looked to her husband and moved over to table. She went to pick up the medicine bottles. Clark stopped her.
"Let me do that for you, I should get you to the shelter now."
"No, you should go, dear... "
He stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his jeans and joined them and held out a hand as they both took a step to the open door. "No, let me take you." The sound of the approaching helicopters could be heard faintly in the far distance. "If you put your arms around my neck, I can carry you both."
Martha shook her head, worried. "I'm not sure your Dad could take the jarring of you running with him..."
He stood in front of them. "I wasn't going to run..." He held out his arms. "Just grab on." His parents held onto Clark's neck and he easily picked them up, wrapping his arms around their waists and he allowed himself a small smile. "I should show you what I can do now anyway..." His parents cast worried glances at him and then at each other, unsure of what Clark was referring to.
Clark floated up as they gasped and looked at him in awe. He drifted up and, careful in the tight confines of the house and porch, delicately maneuvered until he got outside. Once clear of the building he flew them as fast as he thought they could take it.
He placed them gently down in front of the now reinforced storm shelter. They hugged him again and Martha opened the door. Clark flew back in high speed to the house and stuffed Jonathan's medicines into his parents' bags. He grabbed them and flew to join his parents down into the storm cellar.
His parents looked at him with pride and in awe as he lightly touched down at the foot of the steps. His mother's eyes welled up. "I know now that you're going to be okay, Clark. You can go anywhere... If you're careful enough, they won't be able to find you."
He didn't have to try to listen to be able to tell that the helicopters were a lot closer. Clark's chest tightened and the tears that had been filling his eyes finally spilled, and trailed steadily down his cheeks. "I love you, Mom, Dad... but I have to go."
Martha and Jonathan hugged him again and Clark pulled away. He stepped outside and, as tears spilled down their cheeks, his mother closed and locked the door behind Clark. He didn't need superhearing to hear her break down into sobs as soon as the lock engaged.
He lightly touched the door and whispered, "I love you. I'll be okay, but I'm going to make sure you're okay too. I promise."
Grim, he focused and looked at the helicopters now only a few miles away. There were dozens of men in them, all wearing kryptonite amulets along with the combat gear and armed with dart guns. They weren't going to kill Clark; they were intent on capturing him again.
He wasn't going to let that happen. He flew back to the bracelet and stuck that into his pocket, he wanted to make sure the army knew to follow him, hopefully keeping them away from his parents. He had to lead them away...
He went back into the house and grabbed his bag and stepped out onto the porch. He looked toward the approaching helicopters. He slung the bag over his head, the strap now cutting across his upper body. He pushed the bag behind him to keep it clear of his arms and took a deep breath. Despite a nearly undeniable urge to fly away as fast as he could, he grimly stood on the porch and waited.
Clark listened but he didn't recognize the voice that spoke. "Colonel, he's still at the farm..." They weren't close enough yet to see him once he started to fly. Clark had to wait because he wanted to be sure they saw him with their own eyes before he left. He wanted to be sure both of the approaching helicopters followed and he hoped they wouldn't figure out that was why he had waited so long before taking flight.
Scanning the horizon, he saw the helicopters passing just past this side of the edge of town. They were moving fast and would soon be over his family's property. Clark adjusted the strap of the bag slung across his body and waited for the helicopters to pass over the boundaries of the farm. As they closed in on the house, Clark ran out into the yard and looked grimly over at them.
Scowling as he waited for them to see exactly where he was, Clark lifted up and hung in the air. His heart was racing a million miles a minute. The men coming to catch him were the worst kind of people on the planet. They meant to take him and lock him away again so they could force him to make them an army that would take over the world.
It was probably one of the hardest things he had to do, his breath coming in gasps as his body rose and fell without him realizing it, but he waited until the pilots changed their flight paths to intercept him. He waited to move until he knew they had seen him. Clark glared at his enemy for a moment before turning and flying away. He was very careful to not fly too fast for them; after all he wanted them to keep up. He flew away from his home, hopefully leading the enemy away from his vulnerable family...
Part of him didn't believe it, but they followed. When he looked back at them, he could see that the faces of the men were angry. They appeared as resolved to capture him as he was resolved that they wouldn't succeed.
He waited until they were about 50 miles away from Smallville and they began to be suspicious why he was moving so slowly, before he took off as fast as he could. Behind him, they dropped back quickly as he tore away and passed the sound barrier and rocketed east toward the ocean. He heard, without even trying, the colonel's angry voice far behind him call jets into service, but knowing they were coming Clark found them easy to avoid.
As he passed the Virginia coast, and more jets scrambled from the Naval Air Station near Norfolk, Clark took the bracelet out of his pocket. He looked at the bar code angrily before he threw it away from him faster than he was flying. It arced down as it fell and Clark turned from its eastward trajectory and flew south.
The jets followed the bracelet, not him. Clark knew that he was too small to track with radar, especially since he wasn't made of metal. A few hundred miles south of where the bracelet fell into the ocean, he hung in the air and watched them searching for him. Jets, helicopters, boats, and submarines all converged on where the bracelet had fallen, looking for him hundreds of miles away from where he was.
He smiled, his mother was right.
He could go anywhere and they wouldn't be able to find him. As powerful as he was, he wasn't much bigger than most men and he had a whole planet to hide in. Even with all of the equipment and untold numbers of angry military men at their disposal, it'd be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. He might not be able to go home again, but there is no way he was going to let them find him. He'd hidden himself his whole life. He could keep on doing it.
Determined to find someplace where he could blend in and lose himself, Clark turned back toward the US coast and flew higher and higher as the sun edged toward the horizon.
Continued here....