Post by redsycorax on Jan 14, 2019 2:51:14 GMT
Prologue 1:
In 1942, Earth-2's Wonder Woman first encountered Princess Maru, the heavily disguised brilliant but twisted Japanese head of a Nazi spy ring. In 1943, she attempted sabotage of US armed forces operative in China, but was caught by Wonder Woman and imprisoned on Reformation Island, the Amazon penal colony, where she escaped and briefly fought Wonder Woman again as part of a Rogues Gallery supervillainess ensemble, Villainy Incorporated. But on Earth-665, events unfolded differently...
Prologue 2: 1936:
"Maru?" Hirohito's niece looked up to encounter General Tojo, the effective military overlord of the Home Islands. Although the Imperial family theoretically held power over the northern Pacific archipelago, in practice power had long since shifted to major industrialists and the armed forces. She bowed: "Tojo-san. Your presence does me honour."
"Let's not be unnneccessarily modest, Princess. I viewed your dissertation at Tokyo University on toxicology and the uses of bacteriological warfare. It was brilliant. I have come to offer you the role you deserve."
"But Tojo-san... I am but a weak and vulnerable woman."
"Do not patronise me, Your Highness. There is little that is weak or vulnerable about you. I take it that you have heard about the War Ministry plans for Units 100, 731 and 1644?"
"I have, indeed. Is there any reason that the plans are so fragmented, Prime Minister? Perhaps, is it to make any retaliatory action from Chiang Kai-Shek or Mao Tse-Tung or covert US Office of Strategic Intelligence operatives or saboteurs difficult to co-ordinate? But then, such fragmentation would also impede co-ordinated management and use of such facilities."
"Not if they were entrusted to the hands of a suitably gifted individual. Yes, Princess Maru. I am asking you to take over executive co-ordination, control, research and weapons testing within the Imperial bacteriological warfare effort. I can think of no-one more effective in that role.
Prologue 3: Unit 100
On other Earths, Unit 100 was underfunded and unable to deliver on its chief strategic objective, the development of intensified virulence within pandemics that had animal vectors. But in the laboratories and cages of Mokotan in Manchuria, under the malignant clinical supervision and expertise of Princess Maru, the plaguemongers succeeded in developing mutated yersinia pestis bacteria and bacillus anthracis in reserve.
Prologue 4: Unit 731
After Unit 100 did its deadly work, Maru moved onto the next stage, field testing. In this case, her chief facility was Unit 731, located in Harbin, the most populous city in Manchuria, under Japanese occupation. In other Earths, fatalities numbered an estimated 3000 out of a total human experimental pool of five thousand. But on Earth-665, the virulence was magnified tenfold, and 50,000 Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and Allied prisoners of war and civilian 'volunteers' were subjected to the mutated, deadly bacteriological progeny of Unit 100. Ningpo, Changpe and other areas were subjected to enhanced bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, smallpox and botulism. Altogether, two million people died in mainland China as the War in Pacific turned against Japan and it was forced to bloodily retreat along its stepping stone Pacific Islands.
Prologue 5: July 16, 1945.
At 5.29 am on July 16, 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto desert in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a twenty kiloton experimental prototype nuclear device named "Trinity" was tested. On other Earths, the desert sand's silica fused into green, radioactive glass, leaving a crater five feet deep and thirty feet wide. It was felt over one hundred miles away and the resultant, iconic mushroom cloud reached seven and a half miles into the sky. Less than a month later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, two subsequent nuclear devices were detonated above the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated quarter of a million people in total. But on Earth-665, it proved impossible to replicate nuclear fission in the context of an explosive device. The Trinity test failed. As a consequence, plans were drawn up to launch an amphibious invasion of Japan, Operations Olympic and Coronet, later that year.
Prologue 5: November 1, 1945.
With Trinity now a failed project, Allied High Command resolved on a series of invasions of the Japanese Home Islands. A massive amphibious assault would land on Kyushu ("Operation Olympic") on November 1, 1945, followed by Operation Coronet, the assault on the main island of Honshu, in March 1946. It was estimated that a million US marines would be required for the opening stages to establish a bridgehead, followed by another two million as they fought their way into the more heavily populated Honshu territories. But fate had other plans.
Knowing their own homeland, the Imperial Japanese High Command calculated where the invasion force would land. Operation Ketsugo would be waged to the death. At that stage, a familar, cloaked figure with a bulky gasmask appeared at the back of the room. She explained to the High Command that while she did not doubt the valour, courage and noble self-sacrifice of His Imperial Majesty's armed forces, nevertheless there was a simpler way to resolve this. She unrolled charts and explained the details of her Chinese projects to the bewildered, then increasingly relieved Imperial chiefs of staff.
And so it was that when the US marines disembarked from their carriers, they found nothing else awaited them but apparently harmless broken porcelain statuary. Several commented on the unusual number of fleas in the area. Bewildered, they made their way inland to coastal Kyushu, encountering more of the broken statues and dealing with more of the merciless fleas. On the third day, the first detachment of marines ashore reported high temperatures and dizziness. The next day, they collapsed and were ferried to naval hospital ships, originally set up for battlefield casualties. From that point on, the situation snowballed. But despite quarantine, the illness had already made inroads on the United States mainland, thousands of miles away.
------------------
At the Daily Star, Clark Kent knocked at the door of the editor, George Taylor:
"You wanted to see me, chief?"
Taylor wearily smiled: "If you were Olsen, I'd chew your ass off for that. Clark, I want you to check out those reports from San Diego about the influenza outbreak there."
"I'm preparing an article on the cancellation of the Armistice Day celebrations, George. Can't Lois handle it?"
At the sound of her name, the Star's chief reporter stepped into the office:
"Clark, are you feeling okay? That's the bigger story by far, and you know it. George, you look awful. Let me pour you a whiskey."
"Thanks, Lois. And you two, stop playing noble. Lois is right, the San Diego influenza story is the most important one in this context. I take it you've both heard the rumours."
"Yes," Clark said, "and I've been trying to verify them, but the proverbial row of Dutch boy bureaucrats have their fingers wedged firmly in the proverbial dykes."
"Same here. One theory is that the mystery illness is not influenza, that the San Diego 'flu' outbreak dates from September, that mysterious unmarked gliders were found near the city and that the death toll has been heavily censored."
"Yes, but Lois, it would be against the war effort to spread unsubstantiated propaganda if that's untrue."
"I know that, Clark. But what if it isn't? Why was the Armistice with Japan signed so hastily? Why was there a radio and newspaper coverage blackout? Why is President Truman so cagey when it comes to press conferences, apart from the fact that he's only been in the Oval Office for the last few months since FDR passed away?"
"Kent, you once told me you have a medical friend, a Doctor Charles MacNider. Can you get in touch with him and seek out his expert opinion?"
"Sure. His Harvard thesis was in epidemiology, that should be a real help."
At the Justice Society brownstone, Dr Mid Nite looked up from his latest patient, Terry Sloane.
"Clark. It's good to see a new face. I've been treating Wes, Terry here, Shiera and Carter for the last two days."
"Charles, tell me straight. Is this just an exceptionally heavy bout of influenza?"
"No, Clark, it isn't. There's a particular reason that I've rigged up a quarantine room here at JSA headquarters, and the news isn't good. I've identified several co-morbidities in our colleagues. They're showing signs of bubonic plague, cholera, botulism, anthrax and several other medical conditions."
"Great Krypton. Have...have you been able to trace the vectors and epidemiology, Charles?"
"Yes, Clark, and I'm afraid that the traces all lead back to a single dissemination date and location- San Diego, September 22."
"Are you saying this was deliberate?"
"I'm saying that this could be a Japanese bacteriological warfare attack on the US mainland, Clark."
As Superman touched down outside Wayne Manor, he encountered a haggard looking, tired Bruce Wayne:
"Bruce? What is it, you look terrible."
"I've just finished burying Alfred, Clark. Dick is lieing on his bed, dead, inside. I...couldn't do anything to save either of them."
"Oh God. Bruce, I'm so sorry."
"Dick...Robin...was only a boy, he had his whole life in front of him. Alfred... had been with my family for over twenty years. He helped bring me up after Joe Chill murdered my parents. Who did this, Clark? Do you know? Is there any cure?"
"I wish I knew, old friend. I'll make a couple of more stop-offs, then perhaps we can do something about ending this madness."
"I just feel numb, Clark. I'm the world's greatest detective, supposedly, but..."
Superman's first stop was Wonder Woman, his fellow Justice Society member. Unlike the fatigued and overwhelmed Batman, she seemed deeply angry about something. As she put down her invisible plane and disembarked, he landed next to her:
"Diana?"
"All this suffering and mother has refused to help "Man's World." She thinks that the best solution to this is to impose a state of quarantine on Paradise Island, insuring that anyone who finds their way to our pristine, unspoiled and unravaged nation is shot on sight and any aerial or naval vessels are subjected to antiaircraft flames or torpedoes."
"It must be hard for her, Diana. Perhaps she's protecting the Amazons from any exposure to this epidemic? I wouldn'r blame her for that, she may feel it's her duty to her people."
"I know, but she's forbidden any Amazons from undertaking medical research into how this plague arose and how we might conquer it. I am asking my gods to intervene, Clark. Ascelpius and Hygeia love humanity, they will not let this exterminate our entire species."
"How's...Steve, Etta and the others?"
"Etta has established a nursing team. Steve...Steve is in a coma. General Darnell is dead. How about the Daily Star staff?"
"Jimmy hasn't been into work for a week. I'll check on him after I've undertaken this mission.:
"I'm using the invisible plane to ferry medical supplies to remote communities who need them."
"That's a noble endeavour, Diana. I'll ask Charles about what we can do collectively after I get back."
Finally, Superman arrived at Doctor Fate's remote castle turret. The JSA's resident mage looked up from his tripod:
"Kent? Any luck yet?"
"There was no thaumaturgy involved in this, Superman,only science. Nor can thaumaturgy undo what it has not caused in this context. However, I was able to locate the creator of this malignancy. It is a Japanese woman, a scion of their Imperial Family, one Princess Maru."
"Why does that name sound so familiar, Kent?"
"She may be known to an alternate iteration of one of us, Clark. I have never felt so powerless. Diana is praying to her Greek gods of health and bounty that they may intervene on humanity's behalf. I wish her well. But I cannot even slow the tide of the predatory bacilli involved in this pandemic."
"How's Inza?"
"She appears immune to this turmoil, gods be praised. She is nursing the afflicted, but it is psychologically draining for her. For us all, I fear."
Superman finally returned to Metropolis, his heart heavy, as he opened the door to Jimmy Olsen's apartment. The stench and torrent of flies hit him almost at once. He gave the surrounding apartment a flash roast with heat vision and the insects fell to the floor. He hovered over the floor as he entered Jimmy's bedroom. A sunken faced corpse met him, with a dessicated body and the stench of human waste. Tenderly, Superman scooped up the young man's body, washed it, and found a sheet to wrap it in. He saw funeral pyres elsewhere in the city and realised that he'd been gone too long. Ultimately, he found one for Jimmy, wishing that he could take better care of his friend, that he deserved so much better than this, that he was sorry he hadn't been there for him when it counted the most. Then he realised: "Lois..."
She looked up as he landed on the Daily Star roof:
"George is dead, Superman. What did you find out?"
"It's a Japanese bacteriological attack, Lois. I used my telescopic vision to scan San Diego. From what I could see, there were over two hundred thousand people dead. Most of the city. There were armed guards, sentry points, corpses being dumped at sea. It's a charnel house. Lois...I...I visited Jimmy's apartment...he..."
She closed her eyes: "Management appointed me as acting editor."
"Lois, I have something to tell you. I won't have time to maintain the facade of my secret identity any longer. As you've always suspected, I am Clark Kent. I'm abandoning that identity, given the magnitude and volume of this catastrophe."
"Thank you, Superman. If you want me to keep this secret, of course I will."
"I don't know why I didn't trust you with this beforehand, Lois. I was a fool. Can you forgive me?"
"Superman, you've given this world so much. You mean so much to me...to us all. There's nothing to forgive."
"After this is all over...will you marry me?"
"Oh my darling, yes. Of course."
As Superman flew away to deal with the weak, ill and dying in his adopted city, Lois absentmindedly rubbed her armpits and felt tiny lumps forming underneath her fingertips. She had a newspaper to run, though, and she realised the importance of her duty as editor of the largest newspaper in Metropolis. She coughed as she entered the stairway that led down to the Daily Star offices. Inside her, bacterial bacilli and viral growths pulsated and spread throughout her body. Halfway down the stairs, she had a dizzy spell, but told herself to snap out of it.
Two days later, he noticed a presidential motorcade beneath him. President Harry Truman waved at him from below and he flew downward to greet the Chief Executive of the United States:
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"Firstly, Superman, I want to thank you for keeping our national security secrets and your part in averting panic. You were viewed several hundred miles from San Diego yet you have not disclosed the fate of that city. I commend you for that. If it is any consolation for the American people, not that it is, despite their hideous prowess at this inhuman aspect of warfare, Japan has not escaped the ravages of the "Maru Plague" either. We estimate that of its prewar population of seventy one million people, there are now only one and a half million left. Starvation and anarchy are loose in that land. And your colleagues in the Justice Society, Superman? What of them?"
"I've...received word that Robin, Mr Terrific, Black Canary, Starman, Hourman, Doctor Midnite, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are no longer with us, Mr. President."
Harry Truman suddenly looked haggard. He cast a look at a hospital truck at the rear of the motorcade:
"My wife is gravely ill, Superman. Margaret... died before we left Washington. Do you have anyone you love, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then go to her, son. Be with her. I know you have your duties and responsibilities and our nation is grateful to you for being such a symbol of strength, unity and hope." Then Truman had a coughing fit and when he withdrew his handkerchief from his mouth, there was blood visible within his saliva:
"Just a moment's weakness, son, no more than that."
"Take care of yourself, sir."
"God bless you, Superman."
By the time that the motorcade drew into Gotham City, across the bay, Bess Truman had passed away in the night. Harry Truman was gravely ill now himself and talked to Green Lantern from a hospital cot, thanking him for his role in caring for the ill and afflicted in the stricken city. Batman had not been seen for a week. Only Green Lantern knew that he had found him, in a remote area in the Gotham hills, slumped across the bonnet of his Batmobile, face down and eyes closed, nevermore to rise. He realised that he had probably seen the last of the thirty third US president and felt a growing sense of numbness as he gazed at the escalating loss of life around him. Alan Scott returned to his civilian identity at the Gotham Broadcasting Station and continued to provide news about the relief effort and the newest areas of mass burial. This was supposed to be peace time, recovery and prosperity after the long wartime years of deprivation and sacrifice, but it all felt so hollow.
As the motorcade entered New Jersey, Harry S. Truman, thirty-third president of the United States, breathed his last. In distant Washington DC, Sam Rayburn was sworn into office as his successor, given the absence of a Vice President after Roosevelt's death earlier that year and Truman's elevation, and the turmoil and confusion of the abrupt Armistice and the Maru Plague later. The Texan Speaker of the House of Representatives was next in line and announced a week of mourning for the short-lived thirty third president. Under the circumstances and given the stringencies under which the federal government was working, dealing with the plague, there would be no state funeral.
Green Lantern touched down at Doctor Fate's isolated fortress and said, sorrowfully:
"Charles is dead. He held out for as long as he could, helping the others, but he wasn't immune himself. Virtually the entire Justice Society roster has been wiped out, apart from Wonder Woman, Superman, you and I. And who knows about the Spectre? No-one's seen much of him these days."
"That may have something to do with what happened in Japan, Alan. He may have acted as a 'divine wind' expressing the displeasure of higher powers. But he is gone."
Superman joined them: "You both look as if you haven't had much rest."
"I suspect none of us have, Clark. How's Lois?"
"She's getting worse, Kent, but she won't leave her post. I feel so damned powerless. Jimmy. Bruce. Dick. The President."
"Steve," Wonder Woman said, her voice choked with tears,"five years after I rescued him from the seas off Paradise Island and now he's been taken away by something I couldn't fight or controi. I'm sorry, Clark. I know you must be thinking about Lois right now, I didn't mean to-"
"Diana, you're perfectly entitled to express your grief. I know what Steve meant to you."
Alan looked up: "What were we given these powers for? None of us can save the people we love or care about."
Diana cleared her throat: "I made my propitiations to the gods of healing and succour. It seems to be working. The Maru Plague is levelling out. Or it may be the gods acting through their surrogates within the medical profession, perhaps both. I came to tell the three of you- my mother, Queen Hippolyta, was shot on Paradise Island. The purple healing ray didn't work. We think it was a dissident Amazon, angry that mother's refusal to provide medical aid and research during this epidemic also meant it was killing women as well as men."
"You've suffered so much, Princess." Alan said softly
"Mother wanted me to return from "Man's World" before this. Now I can do so... for my duty to my Amazon sisters is plain and clear at this moment. Belatedly, I can reverse mother's orders and insure that women and men receive the benefit of Amazonian medical technology and expertise."
"We'll miss you, Diana."
"I'll miss all of you. But I came here to fight one war and that's over now. I saved a good man, only to lose him to one woman's malice and evil on a magnitude previously undreamt of. Farewell, my friends. May Hera and Athena guide and keep you well."
Superman sat at Lois Lane's bedside as her eyes flickered open: "C-Clark?"
"You collapsed at your desk, Lois. You worked yourself to bare bones."
"I had to, Clark. It was my duty, my responsibility. You understand."
"Lois, I...I wanted us to be together one day. I love you so much."
"Oh, Clark. I always knew that. I wish things had been different for both of us."
"It... looks like the plague's levelling out, Wonder Woman said."
"It's...almost over. Hold me, Clark." He did so and kissed her gently on her forehead, tears streaming down his face, as she drew her last breath.
And with that, the ordeal was over, but the epidemic had ravaged the world's population. It had lost much of its leadership- those who might have helped reconstruct Germany and Japan as liberal democratic societies, but then due to the immediately prior hardships of wartime, the Maru Plague had been especially brutal when it came to both societies. In London. Winston Churchill lay dead, while a severely reduced US Congress met with President Rayburn, amidst the wreck of dreams and ambitions. Only two million inhabitants of the United States were still alive to watch him on their flickering televisions. Superman swallowed as his eyes blurred, at the graveside of the woman he loved. On distant Paradise Island, Princess Diana of Themiscyra stood, clasping the locket which held a photograph of the man she had loved and lost. Alan Scott sat at the microphone of his radio station in Gotham, his heart closed. The women he had loved, Rose Cannon and Molly Mayne, had passed away weeks ago and unlike Superman, he had never had the chance to tell them how he had felt about either. Kent and Inza Nelson stood together as his magicks disclosed something unexpected:
"There are other worlds as afflicted in their own ways as we are, my love. But for now, our priority is this world."
THE END
In 1942, Earth-2's Wonder Woman first encountered Princess Maru, the heavily disguised brilliant but twisted Japanese head of a Nazi spy ring. In 1943, she attempted sabotage of US armed forces operative in China, but was caught by Wonder Woman and imprisoned on Reformation Island, the Amazon penal colony, where she escaped and briefly fought Wonder Woman again as part of a Rogues Gallery supervillainess ensemble, Villainy Incorporated. But on Earth-665, events unfolded differently...
Prologue 2: 1936:
"Maru?" Hirohito's niece looked up to encounter General Tojo, the effective military overlord of the Home Islands. Although the Imperial family theoretically held power over the northern Pacific archipelago, in practice power had long since shifted to major industrialists and the armed forces. She bowed: "Tojo-san. Your presence does me honour."
"Let's not be unnneccessarily modest, Princess. I viewed your dissertation at Tokyo University on toxicology and the uses of bacteriological warfare. It was brilliant. I have come to offer you the role you deserve."
"But Tojo-san... I am but a weak and vulnerable woman."
"Do not patronise me, Your Highness. There is little that is weak or vulnerable about you. I take it that you have heard about the War Ministry plans for Units 100, 731 and 1644?"
"I have, indeed. Is there any reason that the plans are so fragmented, Prime Minister? Perhaps, is it to make any retaliatory action from Chiang Kai-Shek or Mao Tse-Tung or covert US Office of Strategic Intelligence operatives or saboteurs difficult to co-ordinate? But then, such fragmentation would also impede co-ordinated management and use of such facilities."
"Not if they were entrusted to the hands of a suitably gifted individual. Yes, Princess Maru. I am asking you to take over executive co-ordination, control, research and weapons testing within the Imperial bacteriological warfare effort. I can think of no-one more effective in that role.
Prologue 3: Unit 100
On other Earths, Unit 100 was underfunded and unable to deliver on its chief strategic objective, the development of intensified virulence within pandemics that had animal vectors. But in the laboratories and cages of Mokotan in Manchuria, under the malignant clinical supervision and expertise of Princess Maru, the plaguemongers succeeded in developing mutated yersinia pestis bacteria and bacillus anthracis in reserve.
Prologue 4: Unit 731
After Unit 100 did its deadly work, Maru moved onto the next stage, field testing. In this case, her chief facility was Unit 731, located in Harbin, the most populous city in Manchuria, under Japanese occupation. In other Earths, fatalities numbered an estimated 3000 out of a total human experimental pool of five thousand. But on Earth-665, the virulence was magnified tenfold, and 50,000 Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and Allied prisoners of war and civilian 'volunteers' were subjected to the mutated, deadly bacteriological progeny of Unit 100. Ningpo, Changpe and other areas were subjected to enhanced bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, smallpox and botulism. Altogether, two million people died in mainland China as the War in Pacific turned against Japan and it was forced to bloodily retreat along its stepping stone Pacific Islands.
Prologue 5: July 16, 1945.
At 5.29 am on July 16, 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto desert in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a twenty kiloton experimental prototype nuclear device named "Trinity" was tested. On other Earths, the desert sand's silica fused into green, radioactive glass, leaving a crater five feet deep and thirty feet wide. It was felt over one hundred miles away and the resultant, iconic mushroom cloud reached seven and a half miles into the sky. Less than a month later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, two subsequent nuclear devices were detonated above the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated quarter of a million people in total. But on Earth-665, it proved impossible to replicate nuclear fission in the context of an explosive device. The Trinity test failed. As a consequence, plans were drawn up to launch an amphibious invasion of Japan, Operations Olympic and Coronet, later that year.
Prologue 5: November 1, 1945.
With Trinity now a failed project, Allied High Command resolved on a series of invasions of the Japanese Home Islands. A massive amphibious assault would land on Kyushu ("Operation Olympic") on November 1, 1945, followed by Operation Coronet, the assault on the main island of Honshu, in March 1946. It was estimated that a million US marines would be required for the opening stages to establish a bridgehead, followed by another two million as they fought their way into the more heavily populated Honshu territories. But fate had other plans.
Knowing their own homeland, the Imperial Japanese High Command calculated where the invasion force would land. Operation Ketsugo would be waged to the death. At that stage, a familar, cloaked figure with a bulky gasmask appeared at the back of the room. She explained to the High Command that while she did not doubt the valour, courage and noble self-sacrifice of His Imperial Majesty's armed forces, nevertheless there was a simpler way to resolve this. She unrolled charts and explained the details of her Chinese projects to the bewildered, then increasingly relieved Imperial chiefs of staff.
And so it was that when the US marines disembarked from their carriers, they found nothing else awaited them but apparently harmless broken porcelain statuary. Several commented on the unusual number of fleas in the area. Bewildered, they made their way inland to coastal Kyushu, encountering more of the broken statues and dealing with more of the merciless fleas. On the third day, the first detachment of marines ashore reported high temperatures and dizziness. The next day, they collapsed and were ferried to naval hospital ships, originally set up for battlefield casualties. From that point on, the situation snowballed. But despite quarantine, the illness had already made inroads on the United States mainland, thousands of miles away.
------------------
At the Daily Star, Clark Kent knocked at the door of the editor, George Taylor:
"You wanted to see me, chief?"
Taylor wearily smiled: "If you were Olsen, I'd chew your ass off for that. Clark, I want you to check out those reports from San Diego about the influenza outbreak there."
"I'm preparing an article on the cancellation of the Armistice Day celebrations, George. Can't Lois handle it?"
At the sound of her name, the Star's chief reporter stepped into the office:
"Clark, are you feeling okay? That's the bigger story by far, and you know it. George, you look awful. Let me pour you a whiskey."
"Thanks, Lois. And you two, stop playing noble. Lois is right, the San Diego influenza story is the most important one in this context. I take it you've both heard the rumours."
"Yes," Clark said, "and I've been trying to verify them, but the proverbial row of Dutch boy bureaucrats have their fingers wedged firmly in the proverbial dykes."
"Same here. One theory is that the mystery illness is not influenza, that the San Diego 'flu' outbreak dates from September, that mysterious unmarked gliders were found near the city and that the death toll has been heavily censored."
"Yes, but Lois, it would be against the war effort to spread unsubstantiated propaganda if that's untrue."
"I know that, Clark. But what if it isn't? Why was the Armistice with Japan signed so hastily? Why was there a radio and newspaper coverage blackout? Why is President Truman so cagey when it comes to press conferences, apart from the fact that he's only been in the Oval Office for the last few months since FDR passed away?"
"Kent, you once told me you have a medical friend, a Doctor Charles MacNider. Can you get in touch with him and seek out his expert opinion?"
"Sure. His Harvard thesis was in epidemiology, that should be a real help."
At the Justice Society brownstone, Dr Mid Nite looked up from his latest patient, Terry Sloane.
"Clark. It's good to see a new face. I've been treating Wes, Terry here, Shiera and Carter for the last two days."
"Charles, tell me straight. Is this just an exceptionally heavy bout of influenza?"
"No, Clark, it isn't. There's a particular reason that I've rigged up a quarantine room here at JSA headquarters, and the news isn't good. I've identified several co-morbidities in our colleagues. They're showing signs of bubonic plague, cholera, botulism, anthrax and several other medical conditions."
"Great Krypton. Have...have you been able to trace the vectors and epidemiology, Charles?"
"Yes, Clark, and I'm afraid that the traces all lead back to a single dissemination date and location- San Diego, September 22."
"Are you saying this was deliberate?"
"I'm saying that this could be a Japanese bacteriological warfare attack on the US mainland, Clark."
As Superman touched down outside Wayne Manor, he encountered a haggard looking, tired Bruce Wayne:
"Bruce? What is it, you look terrible."
"I've just finished burying Alfred, Clark. Dick is lieing on his bed, dead, inside. I...couldn't do anything to save either of them."
"Oh God. Bruce, I'm so sorry."
"Dick...Robin...was only a boy, he had his whole life in front of him. Alfred... had been with my family for over twenty years. He helped bring me up after Joe Chill murdered my parents. Who did this, Clark? Do you know? Is there any cure?"
"I wish I knew, old friend. I'll make a couple of more stop-offs, then perhaps we can do something about ending this madness."
"I just feel numb, Clark. I'm the world's greatest detective, supposedly, but..."
Superman's first stop was Wonder Woman, his fellow Justice Society member. Unlike the fatigued and overwhelmed Batman, she seemed deeply angry about something. As she put down her invisible plane and disembarked, he landed next to her:
"Diana?"
"All this suffering and mother has refused to help "Man's World." She thinks that the best solution to this is to impose a state of quarantine on Paradise Island, insuring that anyone who finds their way to our pristine, unspoiled and unravaged nation is shot on sight and any aerial or naval vessels are subjected to antiaircraft flames or torpedoes."
"It must be hard for her, Diana. Perhaps she's protecting the Amazons from any exposure to this epidemic? I wouldn'r blame her for that, she may feel it's her duty to her people."
"I know, but she's forbidden any Amazons from undertaking medical research into how this plague arose and how we might conquer it. I am asking my gods to intervene, Clark. Ascelpius and Hygeia love humanity, they will not let this exterminate our entire species."
"How's...Steve, Etta and the others?"
"Etta has established a nursing team. Steve...Steve is in a coma. General Darnell is dead. How about the Daily Star staff?"
"Jimmy hasn't been into work for a week. I'll check on him after I've undertaken this mission.:
"I'm using the invisible plane to ferry medical supplies to remote communities who need them."
"That's a noble endeavour, Diana. I'll ask Charles about what we can do collectively after I get back."
Finally, Superman arrived at Doctor Fate's remote castle turret. The JSA's resident mage looked up from his tripod:
"Kent? Any luck yet?"
"There was no thaumaturgy involved in this, Superman,only science. Nor can thaumaturgy undo what it has not caused in this context. However, I was able to locate the creator of this malignancy. It is a Japanese woman, a scion of their Imperial Family, one Princess Maru."
"Why does that name sound so familiar, Kent?"
"She may be known to an alternate iteration of one of us, Clark. I have never felt so powerless. Diana is praying to her Greek gods of health and bounty that they may intervene on humanity's behalf. I wish her well. But I cannot even slow the tide of the predatory bacilli involved in this pandemic."
"How's Inza?"
"She appears immune to this turmoil, gods be praised. She is nursing the afflicted, but it is psychologically draining for her. For us all, I fear."
Superman finally returned to Metropolis, his heart heavy, as he opened the door to Jimmy Olsen's apartment. The stench and torrent of flies hit him almost at once. He gave the surrounding apartment a flash roast with heat vision and the insects fell to the floor. He hovered over the floor as he entered Jimmy's bedroom. A sunken faced corpse met him, with a dessicated body and the stench of human waste. Tenderly, Superman scooped up the young man's body, washed it, and found a sheet to wrap it in. He saw funeral pyres elsewhere in the city and realised that he'd been gone too long. Ultimately, he found one for Jimmy, wishing that he could take better care of his friend, that he deserved so much better than this, that he was sorry he hadn't been there for him when it counted the most. Then he realised: "Lois..."
She looked up as he landed on the Daily Star roof:
"George is dead, Superman. What did you find out?"
"It's a Japanese bacteriological attack, Lois. I used my telescopic vision to scan San Diego. From what I could see, there were over two hundred thousand people dead. Most of the city. There were armed guards, sentry points, corpses being dumped at sea. It's a charnel house. Lois...I...I visited Jimmy's apartment...he..."
She closed her eyes: "Management appointed me as acting editor."
"Lois, I have something to tell you. I won't have time to maintain the facade of my secret identity any longer. As you've always suspected, I am Clark Kent. I'm abandoning that identity, given the magnitude and volume of this catastrophe."
"Thank you, Superman. If you want me to keep this secret, of course I will."
"I don't know why I didn't trust you with this beforehand, Lois. I was a fool. Can you forgive me?"
"Superman, you've given this world so much. You mean so much to me...to us all. There's nothing to forgive."
"After this is all over...will you marry me?"
"Oh my darling, yes. Of course."
As Superman flew away to deal with the weak, ill and dying in his adopted city, Lois absentmindedly rubbed her armpits and felt tiny lumps forming underneath her fingertips. She had a newspaper to run, though, and she realised the importance of her duty as editor of the largest newspaper in Metropolis. She coughed as she entered the stairway that led down to the Daily Star offices. Inside her, bacterial bacilli and viral growths pulsated and spread throughout her body. Halfway down the stairs, she had a dizzy spell, but told herself to snap out of it.
Two days later, he noticed a presidential motorcade beneath him. President Harry Truman waved at him from below and he flew downward to greet the Chief Executive of the United States:
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"Firstly, Superman, I want to thank you for keeping our national security secrets and your part in averting panic. You were viewed several hundred miles from San Diego yet you have not disclosed the fate of that city. I commend you for that. If it is any consolation for the American people, not that it is, despite their hideous prowess at this inhuman aspect of warfare, Japan has not escaped the ravages of the "Maru Plague" either. We estimate that of its prewar population of seventy one million people, there are now only one and a half million left. Starvation and anarchy are loose in that land. And your colleagues in the Justice Society, Superman? What of them?"
"I've...received word that Robin, Mr Terrific, Black Canary, Starman, Hourman, Doctor Midnite, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are no longer with us, Mr. President."
Harry Truman suddenly looked haggard. He cast a look at a hospital truck at the rear of the motorcade:
"My wife is gravely ill, Superman. Margaret... died before we left Washington. Do you have anyone you love, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then go to her, son. Be with her. I know you have your duties and responsibilities and our nation is grateful to you for being such a symbol of strength, unity and hope." Then Truman had a coughing fit and when he withdrew his handkerchief from his mouth, there was blood visible within his saliva:
"Just a moment's weakness, son, no more than that."
"Take care of yourself, sir."
"God bless you, Superman."
By the time that the motorcade drew into Gotham City, across the bay, Bess Truman had passed away in the night. Harry Truman was gravely ill now himself and talked to Green Lantern from a hospital cot, thanking him for his role in caring for the ill and afflicted in the stricken city. Batman had not been seen for a week. Only Green Lantern knew that he had found him, in a remote area in the Gotham hills, slumped across the bonnet of his Batmobile, face down and eyes closed, nevermore to rise. He realised that he had probably seen the last of the thirty third US president and felt a growing sense of numbness as he gazed at the escalating loss of life around him. Alan Scott returned to his civilian identity at the Gotham Broadcasting Station and continued to provide news about the relief effort and the newest areas of mass burial. This was supposed to be peace time, recovery and prosperity after the long wartime years of deprivation and sacrifice, but it all felt so hollow.
As the motorcade entered New Jersey, Harry S. Truman, thirty-third president of the United States, breathed his last. In distant Washington DC, Sam Rayburn was sworn into office as his successor, given the absence of a Vice President after Roosevelt's death earlier that year and Truman's elevation, and the turmoil and confusion of the abrupt Armistice and the Maru Plague later. The Texan Speaker of the House of Representatives was next in line and announced a week of mourning for the short-lived thirty third president. Under the circumstances and given the stringencies under which the federal government was working, dealing with the plague, there would be no state funeral.
Green Lantern touched down at Doctor Fate's isolated fortress and said, sorrowfully:
"Charles is dead. He held out for as long as he could, helping the others, but he wasn't immune himself. Virtually the entire Justice Society roster has been wiped out, apart from Wonder Woman, Superman, you and I. And who knows about the Spectre? No-one's seen much of him these days."
"That may have something to do with what happened in Japan, Alan. He may have acted as a 'divine wind' expressing the displeasure of higher powers. But he is gone."
Superman joined them: "You both look as if you haven't had much rest."
"I suspect none of us have, Clark. How's Lois?"
"She's getting worse, Kent, but she won't leave her post. I feel so damned powerless. Jimmy. Bruce. Dick. The President."
"Steve," Wonder Woman said, her voice choked with tears,"five years after I rescued him from the seas off Paradise Island and now he's been taken away by something I couldn't fight or controi. I'm sorry, Clark. I know you must be thinking about Lois right now, I didn't mean to-"
"Diana, you're perfectly entitled to express your grief. I know what Steve meant to you."
Alan looked up: "What were we given these powers for? None of us can save the people we love or care about."
Diana cleared her throat: "I made my propitiations to the gods of healing and succour. It seems to be working. The Maru Plague is levelling out. Or it may be the gods acting through their surrogates within the medical profession, perhaps both. I came to tell the three of you- my mother, Queen Hippolyta, was shot on Paradise Island. The purple healing ray didn't work. We think it was a dissident Amazon, angry that mother's refusal to provide medical aid and research during this epidemic also meant it was killing women as well as men."
"You've suffered so much, Princess." Alan said softly
"Mother wanted me to return from "Man's World" before this. Now I can do so... for my duty to my Amazon sisters is plain and clear at this moment. Belatedly, I can reverse mother's orders and insure that women and men receive the benefit of Amazonian medical technology and expertise."
"We'll miss you, Diana."
"I'll miss all of you. But I came here to fight one war and that's over now. I saved a good man, only to lose him to one woman's malice and evil on a magnitude previously undreamt of. Farewell, my friends. May Hera and Athena guide and keep you well."
Superman sat at Lois Lane's bedside as her eyes flickered open: "C-Clark?"
"You collapsed at your desk, Lois. You worked yourself to bare bones."
"I had to, Clark. It was my duty, my responsibility. You understand."
"Lois, I...I wanted us to be together one day. I love you so much."
"Oh, Clark. I always knew that. I wish things had been different for both of us."
"It... looks like the plague's levelling out, Wonder Woman said."
"It's...almost over. Hold me, Clark." He did so and kissed her gently on her forehead, tears streaming down his face, as she drew her last breath.
And with that, the ordeal was over, but the epidemic had ravaged the world's population. It had lost much of its leadership- those who might have helped reconstruct Germany and Japan as liberal democratic societies, but then due to the immediately prior hardships of wartime, the Maru Plague had been especially brutal when it came to both societies. In London. Winston Churchill lay dead, while a severely reduced US Congress met with President Rayburn, amidst the wreck of dreams and ambitions. Only two million inhabitants of the United States were still alive to watch him on their flickering televisions. Superman swallowed as his eyes blurred, at the graveside of the woman he loved. On distant Paradise Island, Princess Diana of Themiscyra stood, clasping the locket which held a photograph of the man she had loved and lost. Alan Scott sat at the microphone of his radio station in Gotham, his heart closed. The women he had loved, Rose Cannon and Molly Mayne, had passed away weeks ago and unlike Superman, he had never had the chance to tell them how he had felt about either. Kent and Inza Nelson stood together as his magicks disclosed something unexpected:
"There are other worlds as afflicted in their own ways as we are, my love. But for now, our priority is this world."
THE END