by Marv Wolfman
Was this another hallucination?
Words scrolled across the screen where the news had been moments earlier.
IT IS TIME TO OBEY
The bony figure spoke in a deep, raspy, guttural voice that barely sounded human.
“Gotham City, I am taking over all your television channels, so look at what I have done,” he said. “This demonstration used only five ounces of my latest toxin. Tomorrow this will seem like child’s play.” Owens read the crawl again, and stared at the image, recognizing him from one of the daily briefings. That was the criminal known as Scarecrow. “Gotham City, this is your only warning.”
That hideous face seemed to stare directly at him, causing the blood to pulse in his veins. The huge screen crackled again with static, and then died as if the plug had been pulled.
Our only warning?
What the hell was coming next?
2
Scarecrow’s threat worked.
The lines of cars heading to the Mercy Bridge was backed up for more than five miles, some all the way to Memorial Park in City Center. From the bridge one could see City Island and Lady Gotham rising from it, torch held high, standing tall and proud. The great statue had been constructed decades earlier as a beacon, shining a light on Gotham City’s hopes and dreams. Sadly, over the years, that light had dimmed, until it illuminated little more than its endless failures.
Police on motorcycles and horseback corralled the lines in a near-fruitless attempt to keep calm those desperate to escape. Repurposed school and city busses were packed to the bursting point and helped alleviate some of the traffic but ultimately they, too, were caught in the endless wave of frightened, fleeing humanity.
Gordon orchestrated the city’s exodus as best he could from the back seat of his squad car. He was a blur of motion, switching between a half-dozen cell phones that connected him to his captains covering Gotham City’s key districts. The car drove most of its winding path on the sidewalks, its whooping blare of sirens sending already frightened citizens running to avoid being hit.
“Sir.” A frightened voice came over one phone. “My men have cleared about a third of Miagani’s population, but there’s no way we’ll reach everyone in time.” Jerome Finger, a twenty-two-year veteran of the Gotham City Police Department, was captain of the Fifth Precinct, and he was obviously afraid. But he was also struggling to maintain control. “I don’t know what to do, sir. We really need some help here.”
“Wish I had some to give, Jerry,” Gordon replied. Finger was one of the first cops he met when he came to Gotham City. There was no better or more honest officer anywhere, which is why he had been promoted to captain only three years later. “We’re down to a token force. I need you to get out everyone you can.”
“What about those we can’t, sir?”
Gordon hated the answer, but there simply was no other.
“We can only do what we can do.” He clicked off the phone before Finger could respond, dropped it to his side, and exhaled. This job was impossible at its best. Today it was even worse.
He watched as several school busses slowly edged past his car, filled with kids junior-high-school age and younger. They were heading north toward Mercy Bridge and Bleake Island. From there they’d go west and, if luck was on their side, they’d be out of Gotham City an hour or two later. The kids looked frightened, and they had every reason to be. This was, without doubt, the most chaotic event they’d experienced in their short lives. Sadly, Gotham City had a way of leaving its mark on even its youngest.
“It always comes down to the children, doesn’t it?” he said to Bill McKean, his driver. “I can’t even imagine how frightened they are. I see those kids and remember what it was like when James Jr. and Barbara were that age.”
McKean nodded. “Yeah, but you know something, Commissioner? Twenty years ago madmen like Scarecrow never existed. Today, they’re almost a dime a dozen. I can’t even count how many there are.” He shook his head. “I think these kids are growing up knowing way too much about how low humanity can get. Without realizing that life doesn’t have to be a cesspool, that this isn’t what’s supposed to be normal.
“That’s the real crime, you ask me.”
Gordon felt his stomach tighten. “So how do we make it better?”
“Okay, you asked. This is me, remember, but I think we need at least a hundred more Bats. And we tell them to pull out all the stops.” His voice became louder with each word. Then he took a deep breath, and added, “Like I says, just my opinion.”
“Batman’s good,” Gordon agreed. “Maybe even vital. I know that, Bill. But no matter how valuable his contributions have been, you know as well as I do that we can’t survive forever under vigilante justice. Ultimately we need law—rules and order. The people look to us to protect them, and they have to believe that we can do the job, and that we don’t need outside help.”
“Agreed, sir,” McKean said. “But until that day, he gets the job done.”
“Trouble is, he raises the stakes. And the bad guys keep matching him.”
“I know, sir. But if you’re so much against him, why do you let him do what he does?”
“It’s what you said, Bill. He gets the job done. And it’s not Batman I worry about. He’s a good man, maybe the best I’ve ever known. But it’s those who follow him. The copycats. They might not have his unwavering sense of justice. They’re the ones who frighten me. Yes, it’s working for now, but I still keep praying that one day my officers will be all Gotham City needs.”
“Your lips to God’s ears, sir.” McKean pulled the car to a stop. “Oh, we’re here. Ground zero.”
Where it began.
Across from Gordon’s car stood the shattered remains of Pauli’s Diner, its windows broken, its door pulled from its hinges, its tables and chairs overturned, its stovetops and ovens smashed beyond repair. Seventy years of history, gone in less than four hours.
“Bill, you know, just yesterday there were six point three million people living and working here in Gotham City.” Gordon got out of the car and stepped over the debris, avoiding the carpet of glass shards, and entered the empty diner. He looked around staring at what were now only bloodstained memories.
“Today, not so many.”
He picked up a child’s stuffed bear lying under an overturned booth, straightened its overalls and cap, and carefully placed it on a countertop, hoping it would eventually find its way home. He would probably never know what happened to the child who owned it, whether it was a boy or girl, or if he or she had managed to get safely out of Gotham City. Some questions would never be answered, and for a man who lived for answers, that deeply bothered him.
He stared out of the diner, past the cracked pavement badly in need of repair, to the vast emptiness—and thought for a moment he saw a black blur swing past.
“Yeah,” he said aloud but to himself, “he gets the job done. And God do we need him now.”
3
He was perched on a cracked masonry gargoyle two hundred twenty-seven feet above the sidewalk, scanning the horde of running figures. Thousands of men and women, dragging their crying children with them, panic distorting their faces, all hoping without any real hope that they’d be able to get out of the city before the deadline came.
Living in Gotham City always meant living with fear. And soon, unless something was done, there would be nothing else left but fear.
Unless something is done, he thought as he saw a policeman here and there break from crowd control and join the fleeing mob. Unless I do something.
Batman fired a grapple line across the wide street to the Groiler building and leaped off the stone grotesque, his cape spreading as he glided over the panic below and landed on the golden building’s eighth-floor balcony.
Smoke and the glow of flames could be seen a scant dozen blocks away. Fire engines tried to make their way through the crowd, sirens blaring, but they were stuck in the stampede, unable to move.
Batman leaped,
once again letting his cape spread wide, encouraging the air to rush under it and push him up, enabling him to glide over the crowd, past the fire engines, and then around the block. He felt the wind dying and he began to dip, so he fired his grapple again, up to the fourth story of the Kane Building, an old apartment house built in 1940 for Gotham City’s elite. Once used to house the wealthy, like so much of city, it was terribly deteriorated. Today it sheltered the poor.
The grapple lifted Batman’s arc and sent him soaring up again to where he caught a new gust that took him another two blocks, past Stagg Towers, before forcing him to repeat the process. Most of the people below were so intent on finding their way out of Gotham City that they didn’t waste time looking up, so he was able to glide several blocks before a runner noticed him. And even then, before the person could be certain, Batman sailed around another corner, disappearing from sight.
His gauntlet began to vibrate. Cell call. Audio, not video. Tim wouldn’t call—not now. And Dick barely spoke to him anymore. So it had to be James Gordon, Alfred Pennyworth, Oracle or Lucius Fox. With his hands being used to maneuver through the city, he sent the call to his ear comm.
Alfred was on the other end.
“Sir, to let you know, Mr. Fox is working on the new uniform, as per your request.”
“Good to know, Alfred,” Batman responded. “But that’s not the reason you’re calling. Fox would have sent a comm when he was ready.”
“Very perceptive, sir,” the butler responded. “The computer has picked up a fire alert in Old Gotham City. I recognized the address. GPS indicates you’re only two blocks away, and traveling in that direction.”
“So?”
There was a pause, then Alfred continued.
“With all the problems the city is undergoing,” he said, “I have to ask, sir—why would you be making a detour there? The building has long been abandoned. No lives are imperiled.”
“Fires can spread, Alfred.”
“But were that to happen, you know you’re not equipped to stop it. The Fire Department will put it down before it spreads to any other buildings.” Another pause. “You’re going there because of what it was, not what it is… sir.”
No answer.
“Sir? In the greater scheme of things, you know that building is not important.”
“It might be ready for demolition today,” Batman replied, “but fifty-seven years ago that building was a showcase. It was also where my father was born. He bought it before he turned twenty, and often brought me to it as he attempted to buy the entire block, planning its renovation. When he… when my parents were murdered, I… I didn’t follow through, and I should have, Alfred.”
“I understand that, sir. But why now?”
“Although it’s little more than a metaphor, I can’t stand by and watch the city my father tried to save be destroyed by fear.” His jaw tightened, and his voice became harder. “This fire wasn’t an accident.”
“Sir?”
“Are you picking up the five heat signatures directly below me? They’re torching this block—and God knows how many others—with Molotov cocktails. They appear to be doing it for fun.”
“Understood,” the butler said. “I’ll alert the commissioner to have several cells prepared.”
“Thank you, Alfred. We can’t protect our future by viciously razing the past.”
* * *
The leader of the five appeared to be no more than twenty-four, a smallish punk, thin, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt with a design on it representing a popular TV cartoon character. He stuck the alcohol-soaked cloth into a glass bottle filled with gas mixed with motor oil, then lit the makeshift wick. When the bottle was smashed it would release a sudden, deadly fireball.
If Batman let him throw it.
The caped figure fired a grapple cable, snagged the punk, then yanked him halfway up the building, locking the grapple into position and leaving him hanging twenty-seven feet off the ground. As the would-be arsonist jerked to a stop Batman dove, cape wings spread, and caught the falling bottle bomb. Then he hurled it over the street toward Gotham River where it safely sunk out of sight.
He landed in the midst of the other four, taking down the largest one with a crushing kick to his jaw. Blood shooting from his mouth, the creep buckled and fell.
The other three were gangbangers who expected their victims to surrender to their combined and overwhelming strength, with only a frightened mewling indicating any complaint. The store owners they terrorized rarely fought back as the punks aimed their weapons at them, threatening to blow them to hell if they didn’t fork over the contents of a cash register.
But Batman wasn’t planning to mewl or surrender. He was going to teach them a lesson they’d remember, no matter how long they were jailed.
He thrust a hard fist into the gut of the closest punk, then used an elbow to smash him on the back of his neck. The punk gasped and crumpled, but—fool that he was—he tried to reach to his waist to grab his gun. Batman’s boot smashed the gangbanger’s hand and he could hear the bones crack and snap. The thug howled with pain. In six or eight months, when he recuperated, he’d be able to use his hands to feed himself, and perhaps even cut his food, but little else.
His criminal days were over. Batman stared at the downed hoods and chuckled. They wouldn’t be causing further mischief any time soon, he thought. He laughed again, and then suddenly stopped as he saw punk four try to run. A minute ago he might have tried to cripple him, but that blood-spawned anger was now gone. He removed a collapsible Batarang from his belt pouch and threw it. Fifteen seconds later he saw the thug fall, and stay down.
Punk five was smarter, or at least he had learned from his friends. He fell to his knees and snapped his hands behind his head, interlocking his fingers as he’d undoubtedly been ordered to do many times before. Maybe this one would learn his lesson when he got out of jail. Batman hoped so, but sincerely doubted it. He activated his comm and keyed it to Gordon’s frequency.
“Commissioner, I’ve got five punks trussed up on Robbins south of Moldoff. Fire-bombers. Someone should pick them up.”
“I don’t have anyone to spare, Batman,” Gordon said, sounding tired and frustrated but trying to hold it together. “We need to vacate a city of six point three million frantic and frightened people with fewer than a thousand cops. They’re trying their best to keep some semblance to order, but there’re simply not enough busses and trains to help even a quarter of them. So thieves, arsonists and all the other goddam gutter rats that’re out there, they’re not on our priority list today. I’m sorry, Batman. It kills me. I’m really sorry.”
“Where are you now, Jim?”
“Most of those left on the streets are the sort that enjoy the chaos,” Gordon continued. “Scum. Criminals and worse, and there’s not enough of the good people left to stop them. So I’m heading back to the G.C.P.D. I think my time’s better spent planning the evac of the good people who want to get out. Speaking of which, you and I should coordinate—there are some things we need to go over.”
Batman turned back to the five captured punks, all secured with black plastic zip ties.
“I’m not letting them free, so I’ll be there with them in fifteen. Twenty max. The usual place?”
“I can use a friendly face right about now. So sure—see you then.”
Batman stared into the dark skies and shook his head. Before the Joker died, he had injected his blood into Batman. Now it was trying to take him over. It almost made him take a life. He had to stay in control, but that wasn’t going to be an easy task.
Still, he had no choice.
Batman didn’t kill… and he never would.
4
“Penguin? It’s Louie. I’m on Seventeenth and Grant. I met with the Newton boys like you said, only they had a change of mind. They don’t want to sign with us against Scarerow. Newton, he said these days it’s every one for himself.”
“And how do we respond to treachery, Mr. Ross
?”
“But they confiscated my weapons before I met with them, and they didn’t give ’em back when I left. I mean, hell, boss, I was happy to get out of there in one piece. Maybe you can get me some backup?”
“Mr. Ross, I sent you to deal with a situation. I expect it to be dealt with. Solve your own problem, or perhaps Mr. Newton will allow you to become a member of his entourage. You know how much he values… loyalty.”
“Yeah. Uh, right, sir. I understand, sir. I’ll deal with it. Don’t you worry none, boss.”
“I never worry, Louie,” the Penguin said. “I pay others to do that for me.”
Louie Ross heard the phone go dead, and felt his throat go tight. He had no choice. There were seven of them inside the office building, including Newton. The question was, could one man take them all down… one man without a gun?
Sadly, he knew the answer.
Hell no.
When he’d turned nineteen, Louie W. Ross was without many job prospects. He barely graduated junior high and flunked out of high school in the eleventh grade. One of the few jobs he could do back then was be a runner for the Maroni mob.
But he hadn’t been very good at it. Just shy of a year later he moved over to Falcone’s mob, then to the Ventriloquist’s gang, which led him to the specials—the gangs whose primary objective was the extinction of Batman. He tooled between gangs, sticking with each one until they threw him out. Then four months earlier, he’d finally joined up with the Penguin. His problem was, if he failed again he knew he couldn’t just join yet another gang.
The Penguin didn’t respond well to failure.
Louie looked down the block and saw several cop cars parked there. The cops weren’t in them—they were probably clearing the block just like they’d been doing since Scarecrow made his announcement. The street was littered with debris, including a crowbar half lost in the bushes. Louie knew he wasn’t the brightest bulb working for the Penguin, but given the opportunity and the incentive of staying alive, he was fully capable of putting together two plus two.