Spiderman 3 (20 page)

but not for himself. Unlike the cops, he knew their bullets would be useless against him. They were in a populated area, and flying bullets didn't discriminate between criminals and law-abiding citizens. He had an image of a little girl, not unlike Penny, standing up at her window somewhere to see what all the noise was about and getting an errant slug square between the eyes.

He opened his mouth to tell the police they should put the guns down, but no voice came out. He was still working on being able to speak without normal vocal cords or a tongue when the cops opened fire. Bullets tore through his chest and out his back. He looked down and saw daylight streaming through the holes.

"Don't!" he finally managed to say. "
I said don't
!"

You'd think they'd have learned. Instead they kept shooting. He couldn't believe that he was more worried about citizens being hurt than the cops were.

His physical form imitated his thoughts, and he transformed into an angry sandstorm that blasted down the street. Overwhelmed by the force and fury of it, the cops were knocked flat onto their backs, clawing at the air, unable to breathe. Nor were the police cars spared Sandman's wrath as they were flipped over from the sheer power of his onslaught, their wheels spinning.

Seeing no point in continuing to screw around with the fools who thought they had a chance in hell against him, Sandman blasted down the narrow canyons of the city. He never knew how much free-floating dirt and dust there was in New York. He gathered it all to himself, like a nurturing father, and grew larger and larger until he was a living sandstorm sixty stories high. People ran screaming from his advance, which was fine by him. He wasn't out to kill anyone—he simply wanted to help his daughter, and having cops wasting ammunition on him wasn't going to accomplish that.

Satisfied that he had left his pursuers behind, Sandman reconstituted himself, drawing in the grit tighter and faster until he looked like a stationary whirlwind. Seconds later the sand and wind faded, leaving him standing there looking at his hands. They appeared fairly normal and he smiled with satisfaction. It was taking him less time to sculpt himself to human specifications. Clearly he was ahead of the learning curve.

He smiled as he stood outside his target: an armored car outside the First National Bank. The words Manhattan safe armored car CO. were emblazoned on the side, along with the assurance that the company had been PROTECTING NEW YORK SINCE 1925. That was laughable. They didn't give a damn about New York. They cared about protecting New York's money. Not exactly the same thing.

As he stood there, the armored car—oblivious of his presence—roared to life and pulled away from the curb. Either they had just discharged their contents, so the car was empty and useless… or else they'd just made a pickup, in which case it was ready to be picked like an overripe grape.

With a single thought, he caused the grains of his body to separate slightly, making him light as air. He vaulted to the top of the truck and instantly brought them all back together tighter than they originally were. Far denser than a normal human, Sandman landed with a heavy thud atop the roof, the paneling creaking and groaning beneath his feet.

He heard a voice from within—a guard, no doubt—saying, "There's something on the roof," followed by an electronic crackle of static. The guard was probably communicating to the driver via walkie-talkie. Fine. Let him call for help, for all the good it would do him.

Sandman stared at his right arm, willed
it
into the shape he wanted it, and was pleased to see it reform into a giant sandstone mace. He raised it high and then slammed it down, tearing into the rear of the armored car and shredding it like tissue paper.

The one guard inside looked up at him with a face that had gone the color of curdled milk. Then Sandman spotted what he'd been after: the huge sacks of bank cash piled in a corner like so much laundry. Jackpot.

Sandman glanced back to the guard just in time to see the shotgun being pointed at him before it went off.

He tried to avoid the blast out of reflex and was only partly successful as the left side of his face was blown away. Howling in fury at the pain he didn't feel, Sandman let his cohesion go. The guard was instantly besieged by a tidal wave of sand, smashing him against the Plexiglas partition that separated the cargo section of the truck from the cab.

The driver turned, his eyes wide in alarm, as he saw the back section fill impossibly fast with cascading sand. The partition was designed to withstand direct shots from bullets, but not the sheer unyielding amount of weight that was piling up against it now. A ribbon of cracks appeared in the Plexiglas, and before the driver could think of what he should do, the partition shattered and sand gushed into the cab. The driver let out an alarmed shriek, but the sound was overwhelmed by the roar of Sandman's onslaught. Pouring into the cab without letup, sand buried the driver up to his neck.

It also buried his foot on the accelerator, pressing it to the floor.

Even enveloped as he was by sand, the driver desperately fought to keep the armored car on course. He was only partly successful.

The armored car careened wildly down the street, sending pedestrians scattering. A taxi veered to get out of its way, but the speeding truck dealt it a glancing blow and sent it skidding to the side.

Sandman, meantime, had reformed part of his body into its human proportions, even as the rest of the sand kept the driver immobilized and the armored car moving.

Only a short time earlier he had been so concerned about the safety of others in regard to flying bullets. But the more he used his power, the more he found such concerns to be quaint, even irrelevant. He had the power of a god… and what use did gods have for worrying about the safety of mere mortals?

He could do anything now… anything…

A jaunty voice broke through his musings on omnipotence. "What sandbox did you crawl out of?"

Sandman looked up and saw the masked face of Spider-Man staring down at him. The wallcrawler was leaning against the rear doors of the armored car, apparently having dropped through the hole that Sandman had created. He had a cocky demeanor, like a blue-and-red-clad Bugs Bunny, that immediately irritated the hell out of Sandman.

"Don't you know there's a penalty for early withdrawal?" Spider-Man demanded.

"Back off," snarled Sandman, and just to underscore how serious he was, he extended his arm and swung a sandy fist at Spider-Man. Moving faster than Sandman would have thought possible, Spider-Man ducked under it, punching Sandman in the gut.

It had about as much effect as the cops' bullets—his fist went right through Sandman's body. Sandman instantly reacted, transforming his fist into the shape of a hammer and slamming Spider-Man not only into the truck's rear doors but through them, tearing the doors right off their hinges.

One of the doors clattered to the street and tumbled away; Spider-Man landed atop the other. The door, still moving at the same speed as the armored car, skidded and sent up a shower of sparks. The annoying insect fired a webline and, affixing his feet to the door with his astounding adhesive powers, "surfed" down the street behind the car, dragged along at top speed.

Other cars were scrambling to get out of the armored car's path. The armored car swerved, mowing through a line of parked cars, sending each of them flipping up and over, and Spider-Man had to surf left, right, left again, dodging the tumbling vehicles as they crashed down on either side of him.

Sandman witnessed a van fly toward Spider-Man, who somersaulted over it and landed back on his still moving "wakeboard." A Gremlin, of all things, now hurtled toward him end over end, and Spider-Man practically bent backward, like a limbo dancer, allowing the car to pass harmlessly over him.

Sandman admired Spider-Man's agility, if not his brains. Deciding that watching the wildly gyrating web slinger had provided enough amusement for one day, Sandman climbed out the top of the armored car, hauling as many of the cash bags as he could carry. Out the corner of his eye, he saw his pursuer suddenly vault from his makeshift wakeboard onto the top of the armored car, squaring off yet again in this ongoing and ridiculous attempt to impede him.

Just ahead of the out-of-control armored vehicle, oblivious of the world around her, a woman crossed the street to her car while chatting away on a cell phone. She opened the driver's door of her parked car. The armored car was barreling straight at her—in about five seconds there would be nothing between the hurtling truck and the open door of her car.

She was standing directly under a lamppost. Without thought, Spider-Man fired a webline in a long arc that soared over the top of the lamppost, descended, and snagged her from behind. In the instant before the armored car struck, the webline drew shorter, and the startled woman was yanked upward. The armored truck smashed through the open car door, sending it flying with such impact that it landed a block away. The woman dropped to the ground seconds later, looking around dizzily, clearly uncertain as to what had just happened.

Spider-Man was torn with conflict. Clearly this… this human sandpile had to be stopped. But so did the armored car before it killed someone, and at least he had some clue how to go about that.

Taking a huge risk, he dropped into the speeding armored car, ignoring the scowling face of the sand guy as he went. He spotted the one guard, pressed up against the shattered Plexiglas, and the driver, who was buried up to his neck.

Spider-Man also saw that the problem of stopping the armored car was about to be solved. It was heading toward the solid side of a building.

With only seconds to act, he grabbed the one guard under one arm, hauled the driver out from the sandpile with the other, and threw them both out the back of the ruined car. Even as he did so, he spun webnets faster than ever before. They formed slings around the guards, snagging them both.

Spider-Man was about to leap clear when the leftover sand beneath his feet grabbed at him. He looked down in confusion, buried in sand up to his ankles. He tried to pull free, yanking with increasing desperation.

Just as he managed to extricate his feet, the armored car hit the curb, flipped completely over, and slammed into the side of the building.

Ironically, the pile of sand in the cab saved him. Spider-Man was propelled forward on impact, but all the sand in the front that had nearly smothered the driver cushioned the blow. The rest of the armored car crunched in behind him, and he tightened himself into a ball, tucking his head down for maximum protection.

Even after the car had been halted in its suicidal course, Spider-Man stayed there for long seconds, scarcely able to believe he was still alive. His whole body ached, the world around him spinning.

Hauling his battered body forward, hand over hand, Spider-Man pulled himself out the open back of the car and tumbled with a distinct lack of gracefulness into the street. The armored car was a smoking wreck, and a bit of flame burned on the underside. He snuffed it out with a few quick web shots; the last thing anyone needed was for the whole thing to erupt in a massive fireball.

He looked over toward the guards just long enough to ascertain that they were all right. There was not, however, any sign of the money, nor of the sandy freak that had made off with it.

Spider-Man immediately fired a webline that hauled him to a high perch, giving him an unobstructed view of the surrounding area for blocks in all directions. He tried to catch a glimpse of his opponent, but there was none to be had. He was long gone.

He briefly pondered the insane opponents that had surfaced since the first day he had put on the Spider-Man costume—the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, the Goblin redux… and now this human sandpile.

"Where do all these guys come from?" he wondered aloud, then grimly thought that the
Daily Bugle
was going to have a field day with
this
.

Peter Parker couldn't have been more correct. The next day's
Bugle
headline blared: SANDMAN! SON OF A beach! even SPIDEY cant stop HIM! Even more irritating was the smaller headline, which had a picture of Spider-Man receiving the key to the city from Gwen Stacy, with the words: give back the key! plastered beneath it.

Reading the front page in his apartment, Peter threw
it
down in irritation. Then he looked in the mirror, straightened his tie, and pulled on his sport jacket as he muttered, "It was a draw."

He was still aching from the pounding he'd taken at the hands of the guy everyone was calling Sandman. An obvious enough name, and certainly appropriate, since he'd come close to hammering Spider-Man into unconsciousness. But Peter healed quickly and was determined to soldier through the pain for Mary Jane's sake. This was going to be an important evening, and he didn't want to risk anything ruining it.

Pulling his wallet out of his jacket pocket, he checked the contents and wasn't thrilled. He went to a drawer where he kept what he laughingly referred to as the Parker family fortune and extracted a few more bills. He stared at it, looked at the money in his hand, then took the whole pile and shoved it in his pocket. From his other pocket he extracted Aunt May's engagement ring. It was tiny, granted, but if he held it up just right in the light, it dazzled.

As he headed for the door, he had a vague sense of unease. At first he thought it was simply butterflies in his stomach over his plans for the evening, but then something drew him to the closet.

He glanced in and saw nothing except his sparse wardrobe and deep shadows. Peter supposed it was understandable that he was getting increasingly cautious in his old age. If sand could have it out for him, then it was entirely possible that, the next thing he knew, shadows would be out to get him.

Laughing inwardly at the notion, Peter headed out the front door, shutting it tightly behind him… and never noticing that one of the shadows in his closet was moving ever so slightly.