Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King

by Alan Grant

  This was the kind of language Marcus needed to hear. It was nearly three years since botched surgery had triggered his facial neuralgia. Three years of daily pain, pain that seemed to worsen with every passing hour, pain that defied the doctors' best efforts to banish or even alleviate it.

  One specialist had told him neuralgia was the most painful disease known to the medical community, as if Marcus should wear the fact as some kind of badge of honor. He knew exactly how painful it was. All he wanted was a cure.

  Surely, after all he'd been through, one tiny miracle wasn't too much to ask for?

  Marcus caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, and turned his gaze from the pulpit to the nearby altar. Covered in a pristine white doth with golden stitching, the altar was backed by an oversized heavy plaster sculpture depicting Christ in his agony on the cross.

  Tiny sparks of bluish-white light seemed to be playing around the altar. Some of them rolled off the top, more like globules of mercury than flashes of light. Everyone else was fixated on Consody in the pulpit, and Raymond Marcus felt a sudden elation welling up inside him.

  Lurching to his feet, he pushed past a couple of people and into the aisle. The bluish light grew stronger as Marcus walked purposefully toward the altar, his gaze never leaving it.

  A miracle! The words soared in his mind like a hymn of praise. There's going to be a miracle!

  A couple of feet from the altar, the pain in his face forgotten, he stopped and leached out a hand toward the sparkling light that danced in front of him.

  The altar erupted with a roar like thunder.

  A dense column of blue energy shot straight up from it, engulfing Marcus's outstretched hand. He screamed in sudden, surprised pain as the skin on his hand and wrist began to blister. Dazedly, he smelled the reek of his own burning flesh and desperately wrenched his hand away.

  He stared at his wrist in shock, unable for a moment to comprehend what had happened. His hand had disappeared almost entirely, leaving only a few strips of charred skin flapping off burned bone.

  Dimly, he was aware of voices shouting and people leaping to their feet. Then the column of energy struck the cathedral ceiling, twenty-five feet above. Beams and rafters cracked and broke, then tumbled down into the church interior.

  Raymond Marcus looked up, just in time to see the falling wooden crossbeam that crushed him to death.

  As the energy beam burst through the sewer roof, Batman realized that the cathedral was directly above him. He knew that whatever the source of this lethal pillar of light, wherever it came from, the people inside were going to need help.

  Ignoring Ratcatcher's curses and protests, Batman tied him to a set of iron rungs a safe distance away that led up to a sewer hatch.

  "I'll be back for you," he growled.

  Part of the arched ceiling had collapsed under the power of the beam. Taking care that no part of him touched the energy column, Batman scaled the worn brick tunnel side and hauled himself up through the hole in the roof.

  He emerged into a nightmare.

  The column of blue light seemed to dance on the altar, still bringing sections of the cathedral roof crashing down on the people below. Dozens lay where they'd fallen, their bodies crushed and broken, while hundreds of others milled around in panic and confusion. The pulpit had shattered like matchwood under the weight of falling timber, and John Consody's lifeless body lay sprawled next to it.

  Tonight, faith had not been enough.

  Batman barked into the radio microphone that was stitched into the lining of his cowl. He knew that wherever Jim Gordon was, the message would be relayed to him. Emergency services would be there as fast as Gordon could rouse them.

  A loud shriek cut across the babble of noise as the metal bands that once supported a plaster sculpture of Christ gave way. It toppled sideways slowly, directly toward a half-dozen caretakers who were trying to maneuver their patients' wheelchairs among the debris.

  Batman ran toward the sculpture, throwing himself feetfirst in a double-footed dropkick that squarely connected with its heavy supporting strut. The falling statue twisted in the air as Batman's momentum altered its trajectory. It missed the small group by less than a yard as it crashed to the floor.

  A fire extinguisher hung from a bracket on the cathedral wall. Batman wrenched it free and broke its seal, directing a jet of thick foam at the base of the column still playing over the altar.

  The foam vaporized instantly. If anything, the energy column swelled rather than shrank.

  Realizing it was futile, Batman hurled the metal extinguisher casing into the beam; it too was vaporized.

  Now the pillar of energy was swirling above his head like a living thing. Shielding his eyes with his hand, Batman glanced directly into the beam–and felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. A figure was forming in the light, a human shape with a bloodstained torso and golden horns growing from its head.

  What was this? And how was he going to stop it?

  He slid two small metallic spheres from his Utility Belt and weighed them in his hand. He gazed back up at the shifting bull-headed figure in the pillar and felt his blood run cold as its red-glazed eyes swiveled to skewer him.

  Batman's heart began to pound. Needles of fear lanced through his mind. Every nerve ending in his body jangled as a black hole of terror opened up at the very core of his being, threatening to suck him in.

  Somehow, the bull-headed figure was laying bare the fears that Batman knew and accepted–and it was amplifying them, till they threatened to overwhelm him.

  Batman shook his head violently, trying to deflect the malevolence that engulfed him. There was a moment of respite, and Batman seized it. He lobbed the two small spheres with unerring accuracy into the center of the light column.

  The phosphor grenades exploded with a flash that lit up the entire cathedral. Just as suddenly, the bull-headed figure seemed to dissolve as the energy column twisted, then buckled.

  As suddenly as it had appeared, it withdrew into the altar and vanished completely.

  An eerie silence filled the church, broken only by sobbing and the cries of the injured. In the distance, Batman could hear the sound of approaching sirens. Jim Gordon had received his message.

  The Dark Knight bent to help a woman trapped by broken pews. As he pulled her to her feet, mercifully uninjured, the vision of the bull-headed figure seemed to linger. What was it? Why had it done this?

  When he returned for the Ratcatcher, half an hour later, he still had no answers to his questions.

  "This is Rayne Taylor, reporting from Gotham Cathedral, where at least a dozen people have died in a freak tragedy . . ."

  Cassandra stared hard at her radio, mentally challenging the reporter's statement. She had never owned a television, because she suspected its subtle electrical fields might disrupt her empathic abilities. But she always listened to the late news on the radio before retiring for the night.

  She didn't need to hear the names of the dead to know that Raymond Marcus was among them. Her vision had come true.

  Her heart heavy, she switched off the radio and sat down on a window seat, staring out at the lights of the city. Sometimes she wished she'd never inherited her grandmother's talents. Empathy could be more of a curse than a comfort.

  She sat there for a long time, dazed and numb, before the tears came and she found herself crying for a man who would never find his miracle.

  CHAPTER 4

  Brief encounters

  Boston, October 27

  An evening shower of rain had cleansed the city, washing off the day's dirt and freshening the air. The manicured lawns of the mansions on Thurber Avenue had turned a deeper shade of green, mottled by dead leaves the rain had stripped from the trees.

  Princess Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, stood in the bay window of Ambassador Wester's house, watching a large black-and-white cat as it patrolled the moonlit, tree-studded garden. Behind Diana, a small d
iplomatic party was in full swing, a murmuring babble of voices backed by quiet jazz music from a state-of-the-art sound system.

  The men wore tuxedos and the women were expensively and fashionably dressed, but Diana didn't feel out of place in her red, blue, and gold costume. Silver bracelets given to her by the gods themselves glinted on her wrists, and a golden lasso was slung from her belt.

  Her peripheral vision caught a flash of color moving through the trees near the foot of the sweeping gravel drive that led up to the million-dollar house. Diana frowned. A moving spark of blue light? What could that be?

  "You are bored with our company, Princess? Or do I call you Wonder Woman?"

  Diana half turned, her long, thick, black hair swinging against her bare shoulders. Sergei Vasily, the billionaire Russian businessman in whose honor the party was being held, stood close behind her. His steely eyes and slim mustache gave his face a distinguished look, but Diana wasn't fooled; she'd heard the stories about this man and his ultraviolent clashes with the gangs of the Moscow Mafia. Somehow, Vasily had always come out on top.

  "Your choice, Mr. Vasily." Diana's voice was deep and rich. "And how could I possibly be bored by some of the most interesting people on the East Coast?"

  Diana nodded slightly toward the main body of the party. The ambassador himself was on the small dance floor, his movements jerky and uncoordinated compared with the lithe grace of the pretty model he danced with. Vasily's girlfriend, Diana noted.

  A group of wealthy Silicon Valley investors was animatedly swapping information with Vasily's senior staff, and a gaggle of the younger guests were laughing loudly as they grouped around the punch bowl.

  "Ah, if you were only a beautiful princess, that would be enough," Vasily told her with easy charm. His gaze flicked down to acknowledge her costume. "But you are also a super hero, ambassador from the ancient gods and goddesses to the atheists of our modern world. If I were you, I would most certainly be bored."

  Diana glanced outside. The blue light was gone. A car pulled up, and a couple of latecomers crunched across the gravel to the front door. There was obviously no threat.

  Diana turned away from the window as Vasily reached out to take her hand.

  "Come, we will dance," he said with imperial authority, a man clearly not used to being refused. "I am sure our host will have some Russian music for us."

  Diana smiled and followed him through the throng.

  Outside, the prowling cat's attention had been caught by something near the end of the driveway. A small globule of blue light hovered in the air, darting between the trees, heading toward the lot next door. Motionless, the cat waited behind a neatly trimmed Japanese cherry tree, its eyes glinting with anticipation.

  The blue light moved closer, and the cat leaped from its hiding place, one paw reaching up to slash it with unsheathed daws. As the cat connected with its prey, the globule pulsated suddenly and pain shot up the animal's leg. The cat gave an indignant screech, men turned tail and bounded back up the drive.

  As if satisfied, the light bobbed and continued on its way.

  St. James's Church had stood on this spot for a century and a half, long before the street had a name and the mansions were built. It was a small, compact building with barely enough space to hold the Sunday congregation, but its graveyard was immense.

  The blue light zigzagged between some maple saplings, then arced over the wooden panel fence that separated the garden from the cemetery. As it hovered six feet above the neatly dipped grass between the sea of tombstones, lines of force began to emanate from its interior, like tiny streaks of lightning, the energy lines darted through the burial ground, homing in on the graves.

  As the light touched each grave marker it expanded and brightened, causing a tracery of fine blue veins to sparkle and spread across the tombstones. An eerie silence fell, broken only by the hooting of a nearby owl and the occasional muffled peal of laughter from the party next door.

  Suddenly, the lawn in front of one tombstone began to ripple slightly, as if something was trying to force its way up from below. A skeletal hand burst through the surface with sudden force, knocking a long-dried bunch of flowers off the grave. The ground heaved and buckled as, a hundred years after it had been laid to rest, a corpse began to hoist itself out of the ground.

  Throughout the graveyard, the scene was repeated a score of times and more. Long-dead bodies, festooned with scraps of moldering grave-clothes, hauled themselves out of what should have been their final resting place. Their bony limbs jerked and shuddered spastically as they rose to their feet, eye sockets empty and sightless.

  Responding to some unseen signal from the still-hovering globule of light, the zombie corpses turned as one and began to shuffle toward the mansion next door.

  Joe Krane, the Westers' security guard, had heard the cat's scream. Karnak, it was called, a reference to Horace Wester's time as U.S. ambassador to Egypt. Joe always carried a couple of cat treats in his pocket when he was on night patrol, and over the months he and Karnak had become good friends. He called the cat's name now, unwrapping a fish-flavored treat–Karnak's favorite. But tonight the cat didn't come running to greet him.

  There was a loud crash from a thick patch of rhododendrons that skirted the fence between Wester's property and the church. Puzzled, Joe moved toward the noise, playing his flashlight at ground level. Maybe Karnak had caught that squirrel he'd been stalking for weeks.

  A dreadful stench assailed his nostrils, and Joe fought down the impulse to gag. Surely the cat hadn't dug up something in the graveyard? Pinching his nose against the pungent smell of decay, Joe cautiously pushed his way into the bushes.

  "Karnak?" he whispered.

  A vision of unspeakable horror appeared in his flashlight–a skeleton with a grinning skull, scraps of rotting flesh still clinging to its frame. Joe opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.

  Before he could move, skeletal hands reached out from the darkness, grabbing at his arms and torso. Bony fingers closed around his throat, tightening with incredible strength until the world started to spin. Within seconds, blackness claimed him.

  Inside, Vasily and Wonder Woman had just finished their dance. Diana couldn't honestly say that she was enjoying the party, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that she was doing her duty. Her mother, Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira, had appointed Diana ambassador to Man's World. It was her task to mingle with people, to share the millennia-long philosophy of the Amazon race, and to foster peace wherever she could.

  Horace Wester came over to join them, red-faced from his efforts on the dance floor. He accepted a glass of punch, eager to discuss with Vasily the new joint-enterprise businesses they intended setting up in Moscow and New York. While the two men launched into a mutual tirade against over-enthusiastic government regulation, Diana smiled and made her excuses to leave.

  The smash of breaking glass momentarily drowned out the Duke Ellington track playing on the stereo. Conversation died as party guests looked around quizzically, wondering if this was some new entertainment with which Horace and his wife were going to dazzle them.

  Slowly the terrible stench of rotting flesh drifted into the high-ceilinged room.

  Something's wrong! The words screamed in Diana's mind as she strode quickly past the Westers' expressionless butler and headed down the hall toward the front entrance, wrinkling her nose against the growing smell.

  She turned a corner and approached the mansion's opulent reception area. The opaque glass entrance door had been smashed beyond repair. Several zombie corpses had hauled the Westers' master of ceremonies to the polished parquet floor. Blood spouted from a dozen places on the dying man's body.

  Diana ran forward, grabbing one of the skeletons from behind. She yanked it off the dignitary's still-twitching body, surprised at the strength of the creature's resistance, and hurled it against the wall. There was a hollow snapping of bone. A leg broke off entirely, and the corpse pitched to the floor. Diana stam
ped hard on its scrabbling fingers, then turned her attention to the others.

  Normally, Wonder Woman preferred discussion to violence. Part of her mother's instructions had been that she should attempt to spread the message of peace on Earth. That was hard enough, among a species that seemed to delight in waging war against its fellow members. But how did you preach peace to murdering zombies?

  Fortunately, the ancient gods had smiled upon Princess Diana. They endowed her with the power of superhuman strength, gave her the Golden Lasso of Truth, and provided the silver bracelets that had the ability to ward off any missile.

  She thanked the gods silently, as three of the skeletons turned toward her. She saw jagged slivers of glass from the destroyed door, held like daggers in their fleshless hands. She dodged aside as the first zombie swung its weapon, deflecting the blow on the silver bracelet around her wrist Then her fist shot out in a savage punch that took the zombie full in what was once its face. The monster's skull shattered in an explosion of bone.

  But the headless body didn't fall. It merely redoubled its efforts to skewer her as its companions joined in the attack.

  Wonder Woman rained a series of heavy blows on her attackers, smashing the rib cage of one and completely snapping the arm off another. Their glass knives went flying. But even with limbs and skulls shattered, the corpses fought on. Hands that were almost as strong as hers clawed at her body, and bony fists knuckled into her with blows that hurt.

  From the other end of the hallway, she heard the sound of more breaking glass, followed closely by the screams of the Westers' guests. Gritting her teeth, Wonder Woman stepped up her assault.

  Her fists sought out target after skeletal target. Her foot kicked out and up, the sole of her red-and-white knee boots landing squarely on a corpse's thigh. The bone snapped and, unable to retain its balance, the corpse toppled sideways to the floor. Even as it landed, Wonder Woman's foot stamped down hard on its skull, smashing it to smithereens.