“Spill and the Spider”
Today, Peter Parker is a photographer visiting the Gulf Coast, aboard a skimmer,
the Lady Sabrina. The boat was recruited to help retrieve the oil from the water’s surface, as dark clouds gather overhead.
He feels sick and sad. Fumes and brown globs cover its waters.
“My spider sense,” he thinks, “keeps buzzing, as though there’s some form of
danger all around! And these gases give me a terrible headache! Compared to this, web slinging in New York City is a breath of fresh air!”
“Storms are bringing wind speed up several knots,” remarks the captain next to Peter. He is scrubbing a brown pelican with detergent. “Glad we are heading back to shore.”
“Wish these pictures had better news,” says Peter.
“I hope, when people see this, they will not forget,” says Captain Steven, shaking his head.
“Trouble with the radio, Captain Steven!” says a crewman. “No signal going out.”
“Looks like we have company,” says Captain Steven. “That’s Captain Eldon Kelli’s boat, the Darby Mist.”
Peter’s warning buzz grows stronger. “They’re siding up to board us. Captain, do you see those strange guns?”
From the prow of the Darby Mist, costumed Pirates appear. “Stand down! We’re armed and coming aboard!”
“Let’s take these hostages before storm blows in,” one says. “See what these lasers can do? They can cut through metal---and you, too, if you don’t cooperate!”
Nothing I can do for now, Peter thinks, except watch out for my fellow shipmates.
I’ll help if necessary...but at my first chance...
Soon, as the Lady Sabrina and Darby Mist approach an island in the distance, one of the thugs says, “We’ll be docking in a few minutes!” At this point, Peter swiftly gets up off the floor and runs for the edge. “What’s that nut doing?” says a thug. “He’s falling overboard into the water!”
“He doesn’t stand a chance out here, with his hands tied,” says their leader. “Let’s prepare to dock!”
As he falls overboard, Peter snaps the ropes and flicks the hidden nozzle of his web shooter open. “Keep a tether onto the boat with my web! Otherwise, in this wind I may never fire a straight shot, and I don’t want to lose them!”
Then he quickly spins a web around himself.
“Hope this cocoon will do the trick while I change.” What no one aboard the ships know is that Peter Parker is secretly the Amazing Spider-Man!
“Use my webbing to make a paraglider, catch wind...” he thinks, as the storm catches up his huge webbing kite. “Lifting me up...perfect!”
“Not the ideal day for para-sailing, but so long as they can’t see me at this distance, I can follow them the rest of the way! My spider-tracer I left aboard Sabrina is all I need to find the boat inside.”
From far above the waters, Spider Man is treated to a
heartbreaking sight. “Man, Roxxon Oil’s exploded rig was a big enough disaster---but no one realized how bad the deep water leak would be! These poor animals!”
“I’m glad Captain America called for, pleaded for, the donated time and efforts of boats who can skim oil. This stuff could decimate the marshlands---and those are all that protect the coast when hurricanes come along!”
He sees rows and rows of absorbent tubing called booms stretched out. Some of them are catching oil; some are overturned. “If only someone were out here overseeing the boom!” he says aloud, while trying to snag a line of the boom as it floats above the ocean.
“The boom can’t stop the oil if it’s tangled up along the coast! I wish my web could substitute, but it dissolves in an hour.” With great difficulty, he manages to pull the boom straight again from his paraglider.
Below, he sees the pirates reaching their destination. From his webbing glider, Spider Man swings down and crawls inside on the cavern ceiling, where he sees many other small yachts captured.
He watches the hostages carefully; first he makes huge, sticky web. Then he dives into the gun men.
“What? Spider Man!”
“You were maybe expecting Abbie Sunderland?” he jokes, referring to the teen sailing her boat solo around the world.
With spider-speed, Spider Man begins throwing the Plunderers into the web to hang stuck.
The last one tries to shoot Spider Man, whose webs fly over either side of his shoulder. “The Plunderer’s gun will fry you where you stand! And you missed!”
“Oh, I won’t miss you one bit!” Spidey says, throwing another gun man into him so hard that he slams into the webbing, which stretches , then catapults them both over Spider Man’s head into the huge web. He then turns to Captain Steven:
“I’ve got to trust you on your own...try to radio Coast Guard and I’m going to explore this base!”
“Get me in touch with Admiral Thad Allen!” says Captain Steven, as Spider Man swings away.
“Someone’s got to have a plan for stealing all these skimmers,” says Spider Man. “If the buzz my spider-sense is giving me is right, I might find the answer down this mine shaft.”
(End of part one of two)
NEXT: Danger from below!
