“Look at ’em go!” Clyde roared next to him as Mardon alighted. “Pity you couldn’t take out a few permanently.”
“There will be another time.” Mark was not at all disturbed by his brother’s abrupt appearance. To his mind, as a ghost, Clyde could be anywhere at any time.
“You think you’ll find anything?”
“That’s why I’m here.” The rogue strode calmly through the ruins of the wing, once more the fearsome elements of the storm avoiding him.
Clyde stood in front of him. “You know he may very well show up.”
“He’s going to have enough trouble on his hands.” Mark paused to look up at the turbulent skies. “I’m getting stronger by the day, Clyde! I can handle more and more of it! My power extends throughout the storm. I can create havoc on the other side of the city while I handle matters here.”
Clyde only grinned, not seeming to see the obvious circles under his brother’s eyes or the straining vein in the Weather Wizard’s neck. “Yeah… not enough, though. Remember that. Not enough.”
“It will be. Soon.”
He located his cell, now mostly a pile of concrete, brick, and steel. The authorities had not yet had the opportunity to clear it away, in great part thanks to the incessant storm.
“Lot of heavy trash here,” Clyde remarked.
“Pebbles and sticks.” The Weather Wizard inhaled, then concentrated.
In the center of the rubble, a small whirlwind formed. As Mark stared at it, the whirlwind began to swell. Small bits of refuse became swept up into it.
Glaring, the Weather Wizard increased his efforts.
The whirlwind became a small tornado. Larger pieces of brick and concrete stirred from the ruins, then slowly rose up before his eyes.
“Come on, bro! Come on!”
Egged on by Clyde—a comfortably familiar sensation from the past—Mark Mardon threw his full strength into the tornado.
The tornado exploded into a giant and yet its horrendous winds did not extend beyond the area the Weather Wizard desired.
“That’s it, Mark! A good five on the scale, eh?”
“I’ve just upped the scale. This’ll be a six.” Mark eyed a particular spot in the rubble. The tornado shifted minutely. As it did, it began ripping up huge chunks of concrete as if they were styrofoam.
“Ha! Now we’re talking big!”
It’s the storm, Clyde,” the Weather Wizard rasped. “The original one. It’s feeding me just like I’m feeding it. I’m getting better at holding all that power. Do you see it?”
“Yeah, you look just like a god!”
Sweat succeeded where rain had not in drenching the Weather Wizard. He noticed none of it, caught up in the astonishing sight of massive pieces of wall and ceiling rising into the tornado at his command. Within seconds, nearly all the area of the cell had been cleared.
As tons of material swirled over his head, the Weather Wizard stepped into the clearing and began searching.
* * *
“This storm is getting crazier… if that’s even possible,” Cisco rumbled. “I’m getting readings on both sides of the city that could be Mardon.”
“How’s that possible?” asked Barry, cowl shoved off.
“It’s like the energies involved in Mardon’s abilities are becoming totally intertwined with the natural ones of the storm. Remember, this storm existed before he gave any indication of being able to escape.”
“We still haven’t come up with an explanation for that, have we? They had him pretty secure, didn’t they?”
Cisco nodded. As Barry watched, he called up another program. “Get a load of this. All perfectly well until then—”
A warning signal erupted from the computer.
“What is it?” Barry asked, cowl already on. “Mardon?”
Cisco’s fingers danced on the keyboard. “Must be! Alarms going off all over that area! You see the address—” When Barry didn’t answer, Cisco looked up… and found himself talking to no one. “Yep! Guess you did.”
Turning back to the console, Cisco grabbed his headset.
* * *
Barry sped through the storm, every nerve taut as he waited for it to start striking at him. He had the advantage of swiftness, but the storm had the better advantage of being everywhere. If Mardon thought the Flash was heading toward him, the Weather Wizard would unleash everything. Not for the first time he reminded himself that running fast didn’t help when there was nowhere to run.
The main part of the interstate lay ahead. The Flash didn’t have to have Cisco’s readings to sense the incredible forces suddenly building up over the gargantuan cloverleaf. Nothing had as yet happened and that worried him most of all. The immediate implication in the Flash’s mind was that Mardon was waiting for him.
“All right,” murmured Barry. “I’m here. What’ve you got?”
Cars moved along the interstate at a fair clip. The Flash noted the rain had slowed to a drizzle.
“Cisco, you copy?”
“Go ahead!”
“How’s the storm acting over the rest of the city right now?”
“Pretty much miserable! Trying to get police and fire reports, but the electrical part of the storm is wreaking havoc. If I hadn’t upgraded our system in response to the problems we’d had earlier, we wouldn’t be speaking right now!”
“I stopped a mile from the address you had online. Are the readings still crazy?”
“Yes… and no. How’s it look there?”
“Hardly a drop coming down. In fact, it’s so calm, traffic is picking up speed. The rest of Central City would want to be so lucky… I think.”
“What’re you thinking?”
Barry didn’t answer, the dread truth having suddenly occurred to him. He knew he was right about Mardon waiting for him and didn’t even need the first lightning bolt to tell him that it might already be too late to stop what the Weather Wizard planned.
The respite the cloverleaf had experienced ceased instantly. Walls of rain came crashing down on the interstate. Lightning strikes hit strategic spots throughout the vast concrete structure. Several cars lost control as conditions dropped to catastrophic in the blink of an eye. They, in turn, veered toward other vehicles or the safety walls designed to prevent them from driving off the cloverleaf and into the air.
The Flash raced along the structure, quickly noting which cars were in the most immediate danger. He plucked out the two passengers of the first vehicle, carried them from the interstate to a place of safety, then returned to turn the wheel so that the empty car ended up on the side of the highway. Even before that one could move, the Flash rushed to the second car and did the same.
Lightning struck the cloverleaf, more lightning than Barry had witnessed thus far in the monstrous storm. It had actually struck at the very moment the speedster had reached the interstate, but only now did he comprehend what it presaged.
“Oh boy…” He picked up his pace, moving to the next auto and the next, clearing out the occupants and directing the emptied vehicles as quickly as he could.
The necessity of rescuing people meant that minuscule moments of time still passed. That, in turn, gave the lightning the chance to affect the cloverleaf.
Battered by the barrage, several portions of the cloverleaf cracked, then collapsed. Huge gaps opened up, cutting off some parts of the interstate from others and trapping vehicles that the Flash had thought momentarily safer.
He raced to the cars now teetering at the edge of the shattered cloverleaf. Momentum enabled him to span the gap between the two portions of the interstate. Once on the other side, he pulled out the back passenger of the nearest vehicle, then quickly searched for the best path to safety.
Unfortunately, that meant having to cross another crumbling section. Inhaling, the Flash jumped onto one of the safety barriers on the shoulder and used that to give him the few necessary extra feet to reach the other side. Then, midway to the next, Barry stumbled. It was only a slight misstep, bu
t it was followed by another. The same exhaustion he had felt during the previous rescue missions began to plague the Flash more and more as he pressed on.
“Cisco! I’m starting to flag!”
“We just saw! It gets worse!”
Barry made a face. “How?”
“Police reports are all over it! Mardon’s back at Iron Heights wreaking havoc!”
The speedster eyed the interstate. “I can’t get there yet! I can still move fast, but I need every ounce of strength right now for the rest of his victims here!”
“Yeah,” Cisco replied. “Probably just like he planned.”
“What’s he up to, Cisco? We need to find out! It’s like he’s trying to draw tremendous amounts of power together—hold on!”
Picking up his pace again, the Flash raced up the side of one of the great columns in the cloverleaf and onto another part of the interstate. As he neared, he kept an eye on the overpass above. There, the stress created by the rest of the destruction had caused those columns to fracture. Several chunks of concrete rained down on the three trapped cars toward which Barry raced.
Despite his increasing weariness, he pushed harder, reaching the first vehicle while the falling concrete was still high above. The Flash seized the two small gaping children in back, carried them down to safety, then went back up for the mother and father before the concrete had dropped more than a foot. He emptied the next auto in nearly the same brief moment of time, but it was enough to allow the heavy chunks to drop more than halfway to where the Flash worked.
He stumbled again, lost his footing and fell to his knees. As he landed, he looked up desperately.
The massive piece of concrete was plummeting toward the last car.
* * *
“I can feel him through the storm,” the Weather Wizard remarked as he continued his search. “I can sense every movement. He’s faltering.”
“Just so long as we get what we need from him before something happens to him, okay?”
“I know what I’m doing now,” Mark snapped back, jutting an index finger to the swirling fragments he had cleared from the vicinity. “Just be quiet while I—there we go!”
The Weather Wizard shoved aside some smaller bits of concrete to uncover an electrical connection. Near it lay some fragments of the arrangement linked to the helmet Mark had recently been forced to wear. Even from where he stood, he could sense the residual energies.
Going down on one knee, the Weather Wizard picked up a part. To his disappointment, there was no charge.
He concentrated. Holding out one hand, he produced a tiny cloud.
A miniature bolt struck the link from the broken arrangement. The Weather Wizard eyed the rest of the damaged system. A brief hint of power coursed through the setup, then faded.
“Quit your games,” Clyde urged him from behind.
“No games. Just checking to see if there’s enough of the system intact—”
“I wouldn’t worry about anything except how you’re gonna decorate your cell walls over the next few decades!”
“Flash?” Clyde blurted.
“Flash?” The Weather Wizard repeated.
“Gained a stutter, Mardon?” said a figure at the edge of what had once been the rogue’s cell. “No, I’m not him, but I do pretty good myself!”
Mardon straightened to see a young, athletic African-American figure in a gold-and-red outfit akin to the Flash’s. The figure gave him a confident smile.
“The Kid Flash,” The Weather Wizard mocked.
“Just ‘Kid Flash’ will do! Care to make it easy on yourself and just surrender?”
“To an understudy? If the Flash can’t stop me now, how will you?”
No sooner had he finished the question than Kid Flash stood just inches from him. The speedster continued to smile. “I’m pretty fast! Sometimes even faster than him!” He eyed the Weather Wizard. “Maybe prison might be good for you. You take a peek in the mirror lately? You don’t look very well—”
“Stop playing with children, Mark.”
Kid Flash’s smile faded. “What was that you said, Mardon? Who’re you talking to?”
Mark Mardon gave Kid Flash a nasty smile. “I said, did you hear that thunder?”
An earth-shaking boom erupted from the Weather Wizard, Mardon having been forming the conditions even as Kid Flash had been speaking.
The gold-and-red speedster flew back from the force and crashed hard into a large pile of rubble. Kid Flash let out a yelp as he bounced over a piece of concrete before landing atop the pile.
“Should’ve stayed on the bench until you were seasoned a little better,” the Weather Wizard remarked.
Wally rose… and ran at him.
He collided with several large pieces of concrete and brick Mardon had already let fall before Kid Flash had even stood up. Stunned, the speedster stumbled back.
“Think ahead, that’s the key to dealing with you swift guys. Got the Flash feeding me through the storm running around saving innocents! Don’t know why I never figured out that part before. All that surge in energy, just like in a storm. Of course, didn’t start until they hooked me up to that last device! Idiots! They not only gave me the way out of here, but they made me stronger!”
He spoke to emptiness, Kid Flash having already moved.
Hail surrounded the Weather Wizard like a wall of bullets. Mardon laughed as he heard his adversary cry out.
Head bleeding, Kid Flash pulled away from Mardon.
“Fast on the feet, slow in the head, eh, Clyde?”
“Put him out of his misery, Mark,” his brother said.
“Yeah, he’s not got enough to help us.”
Kid Flash raced at him again, only to slip on an icy patch where once there had been puddles.
“You still haven’t learned. Too bad for you.”
Before the speedster could regain his balance, the vast tornado the Weather Wizard had first summoned dragged him into the sky. As Kid Flash went soaring away, Mardon turned from the ruined cell.
“That’s it. We’re done here.”
“Yeah? What about their toy?”
The Weather Wizard gestured at the departing tornado. “Learned all I need. They made one big mistake. They had it locked into my head for weeks. They made me better. I don’t need it or the wand now.” He took one last look at the huge whirlwind. “They made me into a real god, Clyde. A real one.”
9
Despite the pain wracking him, the Flash shoved himself up and headed to the last car. Inside, he made out five startled-looking elderly women.
Racing to the back door, he unhooked the first and carried her away. Despite having to fight the increasing exhaustion as well as the pain, Barry pushed as hard as he could. He set the first woman down and hurried back.
The concrete had dropped conspicuously closer by the time he returned. The Flash gingerly took out the second woman and rushed to safety.
The third went as easily as the first two, but in that time the huge chunk of concrete had nearly plummeted to the car’s roof. Barry forced himself to increase his pace even though his body screamed for him to rest.
He got the front passenger out and brought her to the others, but as he hurried to grab the driver, his body rebelled against him.
“No you don’t…” the Flash gasped. Ahead, he looked in horror as the concrete moved slowly but effortlessly into the metal roof.
Fighting every step of the way, the speedster made it to the driver’s side just as the woman appeared to realize what was happening above her. One of her hands had instinctively reached for the seatbelt, complicating Barry’s efforts. As he peeled her fingers away and undid the safety belt, the concrete pressed the roof down to the woman’s head.
Grabbing her by the shoulders, the Flash pulled her out. The roof caved in to the steering wheel. The slight relative movement of the car compared to the speedster nearly tripped the Flash, but he managed to get both himself and her away just as the cement finished crushing
the auto.
Leaving the smashed vehicle behind, Barry carried the last occupant to the rest. As he set her with her companions—and near an emergency vehicle already handling victims—his legs buckled.
“No… not yet…” Straightening, the Flash sped back to the crumbling cloverleaf. He leaped across the jagged, widening gaps and continued ferrying innocents to safety.
He dropped off the last one, then immediately dropped to his knees before several of the startled folk. A few moved to help him, but through gasps for air, the Flash waved them off and said, “I’ll be fine. Keep moving.”
Cisco’s voice broke through in his ear. “Sorry to ask this of you, buddy, but can you still run?”
“I’d rather lie down and sleep for a thousand years, but what is it?”
“Wally went after Mardon at Iron Heights… and got sucked up into a tornado! Right now he’s doing a Dorothy Gale high above the area!”
Barry started running.
He came up on the penitentiary in time to see the tornado moving off from the facility.
“Cisco! Can you locate him in all that? Is he even still alive?”
“His readings are all over the place, but he’s alive! In the upper part!”
“Of course.” The Flash eyed the tornado’s immediate surroundings, then ran toward the monstrous whirlwind. Seeing the tons of material being tossed around so effortlessly, he knew that the potential danger in the cloverleaf paled in comparison.
“Looks like I need to pick up more speed,” he murmured, already feeling the wear and tear on his body as he accelerated. “A lot more.”
As his velocity increased, the tornado seemed to slow its spinning. Try as he might, though, the Flash couldn’t accelerate enough to see the whirlwind as if it had completely frozen in place.
“Not good.” He eyed the ruined areas near the tornado’s base, picked the highest spot, and ran to it. Even as slowly as it moved in comparison to him, the tornado still radiated immense power. Barry knew that if he hesitated even for a moment, he would be swept up just like Wally.
He scanned the tornado, studying the refuse swirling around in it. Then, reaching a roofless building just below, the Flash raced to the top and threw himself into the maelstrom.
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