Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

broken a rib," the Flash muttered through clenched teeth. "Leave me."

"But–"

"Move, man. By my count, there's only three minutes left!"

CHAPTER 17

One Minute to Midnight

Across the world, lights flickered and died.

Orbiting 350 miles up, the crew of the space shuttle Lincoln saw the cities of Earth plunged into total darkness. Communication with Houston ceased.

All electrical supply lines had been disrupted by the massive energies the Stone King had brought into play. Every generator, every junction box, every circuit burned itself out.

Television broadcasts ceased immediately. The screens that fed civilization its news went dead. The comforting, friendly celebrity faces vanished, to be replaced in a billion homes by blank screens.

Every computer in the world crashed. The Internet went down. All radio transmission ceased.

The disaster movies had suddenly become real.

Tonight, every last one of you will die.

On its own, the Stone King's sinister voice had been frightening enough. Coupled with the total loss of electricity, there was a sudden realization that the prophecy of doom was starting to come true.

Children huddled in frightened silence, seeking reassurances that their parents couldn't give. Men and women in their nightclothes swarmed onto the darkened, alien streets, looking for someone who could tell them what was going on. Was this some mass hallucination? LSD in the water supply? An enemy trick, to be followed by military invasion? An act of terrorism? Some crazed dictator getting back at the world?

Many just pulled blankets over their heads and prayed it would all go away.

In tens of thousands of hospitals, the respirators and dialysis machines and life-support systems crashed. Emergency generators were hastily brought into play, only to die in their turn.

The missile bases and the nuclear submarines, and the aerial reconnaissance planes that never landed, found their weapons could not be fired, their bombs could not be dropped.

In cities, towns, villages, and isolated homesteads, people stood outside and looked at a sky alive with dancing waves of energy, like the aurora borealis on a global scale.

And all across the world, animals howled and people cried.

Batman's foot slithered as he struggled to gain purchase on the Stone King's pelt. He clutched desperately at one of the pelt's massive hairs. It was slick with dried blood, and his hand started to slip. He swung himself around in order to get a better grip, and a wave of dizzying pain swept through his back and right shoulder.

Where the boulder had struck its glancing blow, his skin was swelling in a huge bruise. He wouldn't be surprised if a bone had broken. Every time he flexed the arm, his vision swam red and he felt like passing out.

He closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself, calling up all of his hidden reserves. If ever he needed them, it was now.

Yet it seemed so unreal: in just a few minutes' time, this creature from a bygone age intended to destroy the world. And here was Batman, halfway up a giant's body, in danger of falling off and plunging to his death on the pyramid below. At any moment, the gargantuan Stone King might notice this irritating insect clinging to him and squash him like an unwanted bug.

All who choose the Way of the Warrior know that Death follows at their shoulder, patiently waiting for the right time, the right place, the right circumstance. One slip, one single mistake, and Death always claims its own.

Only a fool doesn't fear death. And such a fool does not live long.

But as well as a messenger, fear can be a springboard.

If it's going to end, Batman thought, I go out the way I came in . . . fighting!

Holding back his nausea, doing his best to ignore the pain that was spreading to make his whole torso one huge, throbbing wound, Batman moved. He leaped upward, reaching as far as he could with his left hand, grabbing onto whatever he could.

This time luck was with him. His grip held, and he was able to defy the pain and swing himself another six feet higher.

Around him, the night air felt alive, expanding and contracting with multicolored lights as the Stone King amassed his power, ready for the climax of his ritual. A hundred yards off to the side, a localized electrical storm was raging; a scene that was playing out in a thousand locations around the world.

Batman's right arm felt like it was being torn off. He shifted his weight, taking as much of the strain as he could on his other arm. He'd been running a mental countdown since the last mention Flash had made of time. It was something he'd trained himself to do as a teenager, and it had come in useful dozens of times in his crimefighting career. All he had to do was start the count, and his unconscious mind would keep it going.

Approximately two minutes left.

Kicking away from the pelt's slimy surface, Batman took all of his weight on his left hand, and swung. His body arced slightly away from the giant, to hang suspended for a moment with that sixty-foot drop below. Then his right hand caught around some matted hair.

Batman's arm felt like it had been torn from its shoulder socket. But he didn't pause. Summoning every last ounce of resolve, he swung again, nearly passing out under the pressure exerted on his injured arm.

Perspiration ran down his face under the mask, trickling behind the nightsights and into his eyes. The pain from his shoulder was like a living thing, gnawing at every nerve ending in his upper body. But he had no time to stop for recovery.

The seconds were ticking away on the countdown to the end of the world.

Bone weary, his right side on fire, Batman valiantly hauled himself another few feet upward.

There's no way I'm going to make it in time, he realized.

His luck had run out–and with it, the luck of the whole world. A black wave of despair swept through him. After everything, that it should all end like this–

I