Superman

by Matt De La Peña

  A huge black truck with a row of runner lights mounted across the top of the cabin was parked behind the men. A fourth figure sat inside it, just a silhouette behind the glare of the sun off the windshield.

  When Clark shifted his weight to try to get a better look at the truck, a large branch snapped under his feet. He and Lana cowered, wide-eyed, as the men stopped what they were doing and looked in their direction.

  “Who’s there?” a man wearing a black hat shouted.

  A second man stepped forward, calling out, “Stay where you are!”

  Clark watched the man in the hat reach behind his back and pull out a small, dark object that looked like a handgun. Clark’s eyes widened even more as he looked at Lana. “Is that…?”

  “What?” Lana whispered anxiously. “What are you talking about?”

  The man in the hat was pointing the object toward the ground as he advanced on them. Clark instinctively positioned himself between the man and Lana, saying quietly, “He’s got a gun.”

  “Jesus!” She grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, Clark. Let’s get out of here!”

  The two of them spun around and took off running.

  Lana led the way, tearing back through the line of trees, in the direction of the farmhouse. Clark raced after her at what he thought was a normal person’s pace, keeping himself in a position to block Lana from view as much as possible. When he glanced back, he saw that three of the men were chasing them. The fourth had stayed behind with the vehicle.

  “Stop!” the tallest of them shouted. “We just want to talk to you!”

  Clark then heard a brief argument among the three men.

  He and Lana were now halfway across the wide-open field. If they could just make it past the final line of trees, they could take cover on the other side of the farmhouse. And then he could go get Lana’s car and bring it around so she wouldn’t be out in the open for long.

  Two gunshots cracked across the field, ripping through the trees ahead of them. Lana screamed and tripped. Clark dove on top of her to provide cover, terrified that she’d been hit. He could hear the men shouting at each other behind them.

  “Were you hit?” he asked her, his voice trembling.

  “I’m fine,” she barked.

  Clark lifted Lana up by the back of her shirt and shoved her forward, yelling, “Go!” Just then a third shot rang out, and Clark felt a slight stinging sensation in the small of his back, like someone had slapped him there with a bare hand.

  He ran, making sure he stayed positioned between Lana and the source of the gunfire. But the shooting had ceased.

  When Clark glanced over his shoulder, he saw the tall guy shoving the man in the hat to the ground and shouting him down. The third man was still moving in their direction, but more slowly. And he was unarmed.

  When Clark and Lana finally reached the farmhouse, they raced around the corner, and Clark looked back again. The third man was walking now, shouting, “Go on! Get out of here! This is private property!” The other men were just two shapes in the distance, standing at the edge of the line of trees. And it appeared that they were still arguing.

  As Lana knelt down, catching her breath, Clark tried to make sense of what had just happened. This was the first time in his life he’d ever been shot at. At least he thought they were shooting at him and Lana. Or had the shooter been aiming at the treetops, trying to scare them?

  “Shit!” Lana barked between desperate breaths. “Do you see them anywhere? Are they still following us?”

  Clark looked again. The third man was retreating now, heading back to the other two. And Clark heard one of them say, “It was just a couple stupid kids. Our orders were to use force as a last resort.” Clark tried to determine if any of them had a good view of Lana’s car, if they could have seen her license plate. He didn’t think so.

  “They’re going back,” he told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They hurried to her car. Lana beeped open the doors and they climbed in. She started the engine and peeled out in reverse, and as they sped down the bumpy driveway, she shouted, “Who the hell were they?”

  “No clue!” Clark answered. But even though these men looked completely different from the three who’d tried to break into the barn on his farm, he had to believe there was a connection. Both properties had a crater. There was no way the two incidents were completely unrelated.

  Lana was gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “Look at me, Clark. I’m, like, shaking. We have to go talk to the cops.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust them.”

  “That guy just shot at us, Clark! Isn’t that why the police exist? To protect ordinary citizens like us?”

  Clark looked back one last time as Lana merged onto the empty road. He reached into the back for his jacket, thinking about how scared he’d been when he heard the shots. When Lana had fallen. He could have sworn she’d been hit. The thought completely wrecked him. He didn’t know what he’d do if he ever saw Lana get hurt.

  “What do you mean, there’s nothing else you can do?” Lana demanded.

  Deputy Rogers set down his cell phone and leaned back in his worn leather chair. “I listened to your story, Miss Lang. And I sent two men out there to have a look around. But they just called in to say they didn’t find a thing. No bullet casings. No spray-painted grass. No men in fatigues. I’m sorry.”

  “How far in did they go? That place is huge.” Clark turned to Lana. “Maybe pull up the property sales records you found online.”

  Rogers shook his head. “Won’t be necessary. My men are already on their way somewhere else.”

  Lana had warned Clark on the way to the County Sheriff’s Office that the deputy didn’t care much for her. He thought she asked too many questions. He thought she was always sniffing around in places she didn’t belong. But this was different. A man had just shot at them. In Smallville. Clark and Lana had been sitting around the station for two hours now, and they weren’t getting anywhere.

  Deputy Rogers placed his hands on top of his desk, which was strewn with stacks of papers and file folders. It looked less like the desk of a high-ranking law enforcement agent and more like a place where important files went to die. “Now, if you two will excuse me…,” he said, pushing back his chair.

  Clark wished there were something more he could say or do, but Deputy Rogers had always been a simple man. If there was proof, he’d pursue a lead to the end. If there wasn’t, he’d move on. It was the way he’d always operated in Smallville.

  “What about Wesco?” Lana asked. “Are you at least going to talk to Dr. Wesley?”

  “I told you, Miss Lang, we’ll look into it.” Rogers wiped a hand down his face, softening a little. “Look, we’re stretched real thin right now. Between these protests downtown and the upcoming Mankins festival, we’ve already had to bring in a few deputies from the next county. Just to keep us above water. And that’s not to mention a slew of other problems the public’s not even aware of yet.” He gestured behind him at a pile of overstuffed folders stacked on top of a filing cabinet.

  Clark read the names on the five files. He then thanked the deputy for his time—because he knew Lana wouldn’t—and ushered her out of the man’s office.

  “What Mankins festival?” Lana mumbled as they started back toward the front lobby of the county wing of city hall.

  “Bryan told me about that,” Clark said. “The company is celebrating the grand opening of its new building. And I think they want to make it a big deal.”

  Lana was shaking her head. “What a colossal waste of time this was.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Clark said. “Did you read the labels on those files Rogers pointed at when he made that cryptic reference to stuff the public doesn’t know yet?”

  “No. What’d they say?”

  “There w
ere five Hispanic names. And I recognized one of them from talking to Gloria at the party. Danny Lopez.”

  Lana stopped. “The missing workers.”

  “Maybe the police are trying to find out where they are, too. Which would mean the police have nothing to do with their disappearances, right?”

  Lana stared at the white stucco wall beside them for several seconds. “I guess so,” she finally said, turning to Clark. “Unless it means they do know what happened to them. Like, they’re keeping records of the people who get deported. It’s too soon to rule anything out.”

  Clark nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

  He noticed a restroom sign and said, “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

  Lana nodded and sat on a nearby wooden bench and pulled out her phone.

  As Clark stood in front of the mirror, he replayed what had happened on the Jones farm, for maybe the twentieth time since they’d arrived at city hall. What was the spray paint all about? he wondered. And what were they digging for inside those craters? He’d thought there could be a perfectly legitimate answer to these questions—until the man in the black hat had shot at him and Lana. The one thing Clark was sure of was that these men weren’t random locals. They were outfitted like some kind of Special Forces team. But why would military men be on the property that Dr. Wesley, a scientist, had just purchased?

  Clark splashed water on his face and washed his hands. Smallville had always been the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, and no one locked their doors at night. Now people had gone missing, and men dressed in black fatigues were firing warning shots at unarmed high school kids.

  Before Clark left, he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. As he turned toward the door, something in the mirror caught his eye. He stepped back in front of the mirror and pulled off his shirt and held it in front of him.

  His stomach dropped.

  There was a single hole in the white fabric near the lower back.

  He knew right away what he was looking at.

  A bullet hole!

  Clark spun around and looked at his bare skin in the mirror. He discovered a subtle red mark just above the small of his back. It matched the hole in his shirt exactly.

  Clark’s knees wobbled, and he grabbed the sink to keep his balance.

  The armed man in the black fatigues hadn’t been firing warning shots.

  He’d been shooting to kill.

  And what if he’d hit Lana instead?

  Clark’s first thought was to march right back into the deputy’s office and offer up his bullet-hole shirt as evidence. That was what Rogers based everything on, wasn’t it? Then maybe he’d actually do something.

  But this wasn’t the kind of evidence Clark could submit. The bullet hole might motivate the sheriff’s department to get serious about his and Lana’s accusations, yes. But eventually it would lead to both the deputy and Lana wanting to look at Clark’s unharmed back. There was no way he could reveal to anyone that he was somehow…bulletproof.

  Instead, Clark slipped his shirt back on, then his jacket, and went out to the lobby, choosing to keep his mouth shut. But whatever was happening in Smallville…he now knew it was life or death.

  “Check this out, Clark,” Lana said as soon as she saw him. She took him by the wrist and led him to the front door, which she pushed open slightly so that he could see.

  The protest in front of city hall had increased dramatically since they’d entered the building a couple of hours earlier. No longer a handful of people marching with signs, there were now dozens. He recognized the leader from another time he’d watched them. He had a goatee and spiky black hair, and he lifted an electric megaphone and shouted in perfect English, “We belong, same as you. Smallville’s our home, too!”

  The crowd behind him echoed each sentence, one at a time.

  The effect was powerful.

  “The deputy was right about one thing,” Lana said. “This is only going to get bigger before the vote. And I’m all for it.”

  “Hope you don’t mind that I invited Lex,” Bryan said as they sat down across from Clark in a large corner booth at the All-American Diner. The place was packed again, even though it was only Wednesday. Gloria wasn’t working tonight, but on his way in, Clark saw that she was here eating dinner with her brother, Marco. Unable to tear his eyes away from her, Clark had nearly knocked over a busboy carrying a tray full of dirty dishes.

  “That’s fine,” Clark said with a shrug. But he had to admit, he was a little annoyed. It had been four days since the men in black fatigues shot at him and Lana, and they’d gotten nowhere on their own. Clark had asked Bryan to meet up with him to find out what he knew about Dr. Wesley’s relationship with Corey and in what capacity they were working together. Lex’s presence would only complicate matters—Bryan might not be as forthcoming.

  “So you wanted to talk about my brother,” Bryan said, picking up his menu.

  Lex stared across the booth at Clark with a slight grin. He seemed to always have that grin on his face, Clark realized. Even when he and Bryan were getting into it at the party. It was as if everything Lex encountered in Smallville was kind of a joke to him.

  Clark glanced at both of them anxiously. He didn’t know who he could trust anymore.

  “Clark, relax,” Bryan said. “Anything you say to me, you can say to Lex, too. He’d just find out anyway. He always does.”

  “You have my complete confidence,” Lex added. “I’d never cross a guy who can take on a bonfire and actually win.”

  “So, you guys made up, then?” Clark asked, wanting to steer clear of any talk about his fall into the fire at the party.

  Lex laughed. “When you’re tight like us, sometimes you get into little…debates. But there’s never any hard feelings, right, Bry?”

  Bryan shook his head. “He and I both have rich, powerful fathers,” he said. “We just approach things a little differently.”

  “I think Bryan should take more of an active role in the family business,” Lex said. “Like I do. But ultimately it’s his choice. And I respect that.”

  “Anyway, you can trust Lex,” Bryan said. “He’s on the level.”

  Clark looked at them both. Despite Bryan’s confidence in Lex, Clark would be careful about how much he revealed in front of the guy. He pulled his phone out to see if Lana had texted. She was supposed to be here already, and he didn’t want to get into the meat of this conversation without her.

  He looked across the restaurant.

  As if on cue, Lana suddenly burst through the front door. When she spotted them, she waved and hurried over. Clark stood, and Lana slid to the inside seat of the booth. “What’d I miss?”

  Lex shot Clark a curious look.

  “Relax, guys,” Clark said with a smirk. “Anything you say to me, you can say to Lana, too. She’d just find out anyway. She always does.”

  Bryan and Lex grinned, and Bryan said, “Hey, no arguments here.”

  The server showed up just then. She was an older Mexican woman Clark recognized from previous visits. He glanced at her name tag: Margie. She wore her graying hair tied back in a ponytail, and a bulky cross hung from a silver chain around her neck. She described the pot roast special, then took their orders and left.

  “Before we get into anything too heavy,” Bryan said, looking at Lana, “you should probably know something. My brother seems to think you and him have a…thing.”

  Lana frowned. “Wait, what?”

  Bryan nodded. “He only went to the fake funeral party because you were going to be there.”

  Lana shot Clark a look as she sipped her water. “Well, that’s, uh…flattering?”

  “Unless you actually know Corey,” Lex said.

  Clark didn’t exactly love the direction of the conversation, but he also saw it as his openin
g. “Look, Lana’s my best friend,” he said, “so I need to know a few things.”

  Bryan nodded. “What’s up?”

  “So, he’s not a good guy?”

  Bryan set down his water glass. “My brother’s a dick.”

  “I’ll go ahead and confirm that,” Lex added.

  “Really,” Lana said, playing along. “He’s been nice the couple of times I’ve talked to him. Could it be that he’s just misunderstood?”

  Lex scoffed. “By you, maybe.”

  “He’s actually been nicer to me, too, lately,” Bryan went on. “His problem is that he’s just so consumed with proving himself to my dad. Ever since Corey came home from Switzerland, he’s been on this, like, mission to move up in the company.”

  “And that’s why he’s working with this Dr. Wesley guy,” Clark said. “Who, you told me, has a super-shady past.”

  Bryan motioned toward Lex. “I’ll let him tell you about Wesley. He knew him back in Metropolis.”

  “He’s a really, really smart guy,” Lex said. “But he’s not in it for the science. He’s in it for the money. More power to him. But I know all the people who funded his work back home are now in jail. Which is how he ended up in a town like Smallville.”

  Clark was just about to ask another question when a balding, middle-aged patron several tables away began railing at their server, Margie. Everyone in the restaurant craned their necks to watch the dramatic scene unfold. Clark recognized the man right away, though he couldn’t recall how he knew him.

  “You call this rare?” the man shouted, pointing at the hunk of steak on his plate.

  “Sir, we’re happy to fix it,” Margie said in a calm voice.

  “Damn right you’ll fix it! And when you finish, you can go back to your own goddamn country!”

  Clark sprang out of his seat and started toward the commotion. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he couldn’t stomach seeing anyone treated so poorly.

  Margie pursed her lips and tried to steady herself. “Please, sir, you will have to keep your voice down.”