Slow motion

It wasn't until he was almost to the rift that he saw
the shadow inside the second rift. It took him a
moment to realize that it was coming toward him, like
the shadow of a shark coming from deep inside the
water.

Before he could react it was coming through.
It was a 747 and it was on fire. If it had been
empty, he'd have let it crash. He had more important
things to do than grab an empty piece of machinery,
and the plane would have missed the news van in any
case.

But there were people inside the plane, and they
were screaming.

He felt time begin to freeze around him as his
body went into overdrive. At this speed the plane
seemed frozen above him, trapped in a hideous sort of
limbo where people were trapped between hell and a
better place.

Even through the brightness above him, he could
see the light of the first explosions from the chemical
plant. Some of the fire had managed to drift downward
far enough to light something important. He wasn't
sure what sort of chemicals this plant produced, but
there was no way to be sure that the fumes weren't
going to be as toxic as the ones from the first rift.
With the news van and the highway filled with
motorists behind him and to his left, the church
downwind and to his right and with the airplane
coming in from above him, he had a choice to make.
He wasn't going to be able to save all three. Even
Superman had his limits. At this speed he could
conceivably grab the van and move it out of the way,
but the people inside would be turned into a paste.
There were limits to how much protection he could
give to things.

Clark could pull the airplane up and away from the
fire, but that would incinerate the news van, and the
fires would hit the church.

Clark felt a moment of hopelessness. It was what
he'd always secretly feared, even more than being
rejected as an alien freak. He'd hidden and told
himself that it was because he didn't want to be
hounded by the world. The truth was far simpler.
He'd failed his parents the night he was ten. He'd
been too slow, too weak, and he'd been forced to
watch them die and burn. The reason he hadn't done
any of this until he'd been prompted by Lois was
because he'd known he was going to face choices like
this.

Because of him, people were going to die.
If he grabbed the plane from below, he wasn't
going to be able to maintain the wind that was the only
thing keeping the fire from engulfing them all. If he
grabbed it from above, there was a good chance that
the skin would rip despite all his power and the people
inside would plummet to the ground.

If he let the people in the plane die, there wasn't
any guarantee that he'd be able to keep this wind up
long enough for the rift to close. His lungs were
already screaming for air, and it was only going to get
worse.

The plane moved slightly and he realized that
whatever happened, he had to make a choice.
The world seemed frozen for a moment as Clark
floated, indecisive.

At last he straightened. He'd made his choice. One
of the three groups had to die.

Like hell they did.

The world burst into motion around him and he
grabbed the plane from the side. He let the other side
dip, ignoring the screams of the passengers as he
continued to maintain the wind.
It took him a moment to register how cool the
surface of the plane was, given that it had just come
through a sea of fire.

His breath screamed within his lungs as he slowly
dropped toward the ground, letting the fire above him
expand. His fingers dug into the side of the plane,
holding the ribbing.

Pg. 152