Batman: No Man's Land Read online

  It burned her, though, that he had left her to this without explanation. After all, if protecting the Clock Tower was important, why wasn’t he there, too? She didn’t even understand the reason behind it—as far as Batgirl knew, the Clock Tower was just another building that had somehow managed to keep from falling in the quake.

  She’d ask Batman about it later, after it was over. If she still could.

  She watched the cops at the foot of the tower reacting as they realized Black Mask had flanked both ends of the block, and that their retreat was cut off. The taller of the two, the male, had turned as if to run, then balked. She heard the woman below shouting something to him, but the other cop didn’t seem to hear, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care, because he threw down his shotgun and ran.

  “Charming,” Batgirl muttered.

  The remaining cop had put her back to the front of the building.

  From the north end of the street, the sound of Black Mask’s shout rose to her ears.

  “We have come to reveal Gotham’s true face,” Black Mask proclaimed. Even from on high, she heard him clearly. All else below was silence. He pointed at the Tower, almost at where Batgirl herself was crouched, just above the clock face. “This affront to the No Man’s Land, we will destroy it! And all within shall see, shall remove their masks, or else they shall suffer for it.”

  Just below her, inside the tower, Batgirl heard the sound of a window creaking open, watched as the barrel of a rifle slipped out, glinting in the night. Her surprise was only momentary; clearly people were living in the tower. That someone at the top was about to play sniper was totally unexpected.

  Batman would never forgive her if she let Black Mask die.

  Without another thought, she pushed off the roof, curling her knees against her chest, and dropped through the air like a cinder block into a pond.

  * * * * *

  “Turner! You bastard!” Weir shouted.

  But there was no point. He was already gone.

  At both ends of the street, the mobs began to advance.

  Weir dropped the shotgun and went for the flare, and as she did she heard the report, the distinctive explosion of a magnum round, and she felt her leg snap back and the total numbness run from her hip to her foot. She knew she was on her side, felt the cold stairs in front of the Clock Tower digging into her body. Weir knew she had taken a round. And she knew she had the flare gun in her hand.

  She fired, watching the white streak race into the sky.

  On the street, the converging groups froze, tracking the ascending light.

  The flare reached its apex and went out, and for a half second there was only more darkness, and Weir heard someone laughing in the mob.

  Then the flare detonated, and everything was suddenly bathed in shattering white light, the shadows falling suddenly, sharp and long around the block. And Weir opened her mouth as the shape, lit by the flare from above, resolved, and she saw the giant wings of a descending bat. Its shadow slid silently over her, across to the mob, and the laughter stopped.

  Again, there was only silence.

  Then someone screamed.

  Weir fumbled for her shotgun, took her eyes off the sky long enough to find the weapon, and tried to reach it. The pain in her leg ran like electricity along the bone, and she bit down on her lip and told herself that the noises she was hearing weren’t hers, the screams weren’t her own. She lurched, grabbing the gun, rolling and looking for the shot, and again she froze at what she saw.

  Smoke had enveloped the space where the mobs were converging, and people were falling back, coughing and crying and running, men and women alike, all with the same horribly mutilated faces. Standing in the middle, clouds spiraling past him, stood Black Mask, gun up, firing at the giant bat descending on him. The wings alone stretched sixteen feet, at least, and as she watched, Weir saw them collapse and a figure drop from between them, cape billowing back and up, landing perhaps twenty feet from the mob, already straightening.

  “You can back down or you can fall down,” the Batgirl shouted, and the voice if not the shape confirmed it for Weir, that it was in fact a woman facing down Black Mask. “But if you fall down, you won’t be getting up again.”

  “No more masks!” Black Mask screamed, and he swung the gun and fired again, and the Batgirl had leapt, it seemed to Weir, impossibly high and impossibly far, and she had come down again now with a kick, and Black Mask was on the ground. The Batgirl whirled, the edges of the cape climbing up, catching another of the mob along the head with its edge, and Weir thought the cape had to have been weighted, the way the man went down, unconscious, without a sound.

  Then the Batgirl was on Black Mask, yanking him up for the crowd to see, but as Weir looked she realized that the crowd was already retreating. He tried to strike her, and the blow was blocked, almost casually, and then the Batgirl was hitting him, once, again, again, again, and Black Mask was going down once more. Before he hit the ground, however, she caught him, throwing him over her shoulder and then diving forward, into the smoke.

  Weir held her breath, tracking the shotgun along the length of the street, blinking back the tears that were now filling her eyes.

  It seemed to her to have ended as quickly as it had begun.

  The smoke was already dissipating, revealing bodies on the ground, their coughs and moans pathetic. The last of the mobile members of Black Mask’s mob disappeared into the darkness.

  The pain in her leg suddenly intensified and she gasped audibly, dropping the shotgun and clutching her wounded leg. Blood had soaked through her pants. Wincing, she felt along the wound.

  She heard the sounds of running feet and scrabbled for the shotgun once more, looking up to see not more of Black Mask’s mob, but instead Gordon and Montoya and Bullock racing down the street toward her. More cops were following, and she saw DeFilippis, and he caught her eyes, but she kept herself from calling his name.

  “Weir!” Gordon shouted.

  “Sir…”

  He didn’t stop, just nodded at her and then continued through the open doorway, and she understood the look on his face. She understood it, because it seemed to her DeFilippis had the same one, but was pointing it at her. She heard the Commissioner say that Montoya should follow him, that Bullock should secure the area, and the others ran inside.

  DeFilippis made it to her first, on his knees and at her side, pushing past Bullock who mumbled something about priorities.

  “The hell did this to you?” DeFilippis asked.

  “Black Mask,” she said. “He’s gone. He’s… he’s gone.”

  She looked at him, at the way he was staring at her, then glanced past his shoulder at the other cops, now moving along the street. She looked back to him, wanting to say something more, but not wanting to betray what they had.

  He said, “Hell with it,” and then he kissed her.

  She thought she heard Bullock say, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  ORACLE

  PERSONAL

  Entry #342—NML Day 124

  1442 Zulu

  Dear Dad—

  You didn’t have to break the door down, you know?

  I understand that you were worried, but you really didn’t have to break the door down.

  It’s easier, incidentally, to be angrier at you about that than at him about her.

  And I’m livid, let me tell you. I could just spit.

  A new Batgirl?

  I sit in this chair and there’s a new Batgirl?

  Damn right I’m angry.

  The noise had gotten my attention, that’s what did it, that sound of them marching and banging their metal and maybe they were chanting, too; I don’t know what the hell it was. But I looked out the window and there were over fifty of them. Dad, at both ends of the street, and I knew it was Black Mask leading them, knew it even before I used my binoculars to confirm it. Two cops and one of them turned rabbit, leaving the other. Sergeant Weir, to block the door. I mean, what was she supposed to do?
Threaten to arrest them?

  I’ve kept the rifle for years, Dad. Always the weapon of last resort, I’ve never even fired the damn thing. Bought it in case it ever became the one situation, the one justification, where a life had to be taken to preserve another an innocents. It felt like poison in my hands. It didn’t sit right on my shoulder, and I could barely see through the scope at first.

  But I had to kill him, that’s what I told myself. They were following Black Mask, and if I took him from them, that was the only way I thought I could protect Weir and the others still living in my building. And myself.

  Because, let’s face it, while your little girl is no slouch in the hand-to-hand department, even in this here chair, there ain’t no way I’m going to win in a fight against fifty.

  Have you ever looked through the scope on a rifle and seen a man, oblivious to you, and known you could kill him with just one pound of pull from your right index finger? You never talk about the war. Maybe you know it too well… .

  I didn’t like that feeling, Dad. It made me want to vomit.

  But I’d taken the safety off, and I’d let my breath out, and I’d lined up the shot best as I could …

  … and then she flew by.

  You can’t know what it felt like. I don’t think anyone can know what that moment felt like.

  Watching her swooping down, wearing those wings, the glider wings—the glider wings I helped design, for God’s sake!—that made her look so big and terrifying and powerful. Watching her drop the canister of tear gas, the handful of smoke pellets. The way she cut loose from the wings and dropped onto the scene, like shad been doing it forever, like she was made for it, like…

  Like she was me.

  I hated her absolutely in that moment I was so angry. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe, I just moved the scope onto her head and I thought about it

  Forgive me, but I honestly thought about it for an instant I honestly thought about punishing her for making me feel the way I did then.

  But I didn’t.

  I set the rifle down and I took off my glasses and I started crying.

  When you showed up you saw I’d been crying and because you are the World’s Greatest Dad, you thought it was because I was terrified. You were partly right, I had been, but that wasn’t it. It’s unfortunate, because you were worried enough you wanted to stay, to make certain I was feeling all right, and I felt like I had to practically shove you out the door before I could do what I needed to.

  But I saw the look on your face, Dad. When you asked me what had happened.

  “Black Mask,” I said, “He ran away before you got here.”

  You didn’t believe me for an instant. Maybe you thought it had been the Batman, that he had appeared and saved me in the nick of time. Maybe that’s why you looked so angry. There was no time or way to explain it, though.

  After you left, I went back into the control room and got on the radio. I tried for two hours to raise him on his frequency, demanding that he talk to me and getting no answer whatsoever. Finally I broke out one of my solar NiCads and plugged it into the infrared projector I’ve been using for sensor tests. I cut out a stencil, the shape of a bat, and I went to the window and I turned it all on, shining my invisible Bat-Signal at the sky. Faint, nearly useless, invisible to the whole city. But if the Batman looked up for a moment with those IR lenses of his switched on, maybe, just maybe, he’d see me.

  I sat there all night, I sat there until dawn waiting for him to show up.

  I’d finished cursing him with every name in the book when I heard him behind me, in my control room.

  “Barbara.”

  I swung that chair around so fast your head would’ve spun, Dad.

  He didn’t even move, standing half in the shadows at the other end of the room, like some cross between a gargoyle and a nightmare. I glared at him, trying to find the words, and I could feel my cheeks getting hot and my chest getting tight.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I asked, and it came out fast and much more petulant than I’d care to admit, and then it was all racing out and I was getting louder and louder and by the end I was almost screaming at him. “Did you think I honestly wouldn’t care that someone else is out there being me? Did you even think about it at all? How dare you? How dare you do this to me?”

  He still didn’t move. It was like he had turned to marble, absolutely untouchable, emotionless. Then he said. “You know it wasn’t as simple as that.”

  “No! No, I do not know that. What I know is that there’s now someone else out there, someone who isn’t me! And she’s got what I made, she’s got what I was.” I took the projector and shoved it to the floor, and the crashing noise was almost satisfying, and for a moment I wanted to kick it and get that noise again, and then I remembered that I couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t ever be able to do that again. Never.

  He moved out of the shadow, coming forward. His jaw had softened. “My options have been limited, Barbara. It was like this when I … when I returned.”

  I glared at him. “Returned. So you did leave after all. You did turn your back on us.”

  “I never turned my back. I needed to prepare. I needed to think.”

  “Three months, Batman. Three months. While you were thinking we were here, fighting.”

  “I know.”

  “You didn’t give her the job?” I asked. “You’re saying she took it on all by herself?”

  He nodded.

  “So it was her doing the tagging?”

  “At first, yes.”

  “Who is she? Just tell me that.”

  “I can’t”

  I rolled in close, glared up at him. “I can find out. You know I can. You’re not the only detective in the No Man’s Land.”

  “Yes, you can find out.” He put a hand out, on my shoulder, and then he crouched so we were at eye level, and when he did that I felt the anger just slip away, and then all I felt was sad. He was still looking at me. “But what will it prove?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and my voice was getting thin with the emotion, and my eyes hurt, and it wasn’t from staring at my terminals all day. I turned my head away, looking at the window, the window where I’d held the rifle, the window where the other Batgirl had dropped past me like she knew all of my tricks already, and maybe knew them better than I ever had.

  I felt his hand move from my shoulder to my chin, and he turned my face back to look at him, and then I really did want to cry. He’d only ever touched my face one time before, when I was in the hospital after Joker shot me. I remembered waking up then, in the darkness, and being so scared and hurting so much, hearing the machines hissing and the EKG buzzing. He had touched my cheek then, the feel of his hand inside that glove, so gentle. It made me think of you, Dad.

  “No pain I’ve ever caused you was my choice,” he said, and he sounded different, maybe even tired. “I’ve never wanted you hurt. I know that makes no difference.”

  He moved his hand away.

  “I need you to trust me,” he said.

  “I’ve always trusted you,” I said. “And you know I always will.”

  PERSONAL

  Entry #38—NML Day 140

  0610 Zulu

  Dear Dad—

  Looks like we’ve all been busy the last few weeks, huh? And now spring has sprung, and there’s been almost a calm in the No Man’s Land for a while.

  Which is normally what one gets before a storm, I suppose.

  Updates abound. I’ve got reports from all my Eyes throughout the city, and some of it gives me hope. But, being a cynic, I don’t expect it to last.

  I don’t understand exactly what’s going on between you and the Batman, I’ve got to tell you that. Now that he’s back. I’d have thought the two of you would have put your heads together and taken on the task of bringing law and order back to Gotham.

  Instead, I hear stories that you’ve had your Blue Boys removing any bat-tags they find. That your people paint over
them, or scrape them off, or otherwise obliterate them. I’m not certain if I think you’re being petty, or if it’s that you really think a bat-tag does more harm than good.

  Ironic, though. In one quarter of the time it took you and yours to take TriCorner and Old Gotham, he’s managed to secure almost all of the Upper East Side, and a fair portion of Burnley as well. On my map, that makes him the second-largest landowner in Gotham currently, after Two-Face. That puts you Blue Boys in a comfortable third place.

  Of course, he’s been so successful for four very specific reasons, none of which apply to you. First, he’s got this Batgirl helping him, and while I don’t much care for the fact that she’s out there. I have to admit she’s been doing a damn fine job thus far. It’s the thus far, of course, that I’m worried about I took some notes based on what I saw of her in action back on Day 124, and I checked it against my files, and I have a pretty solid idea of who is behind that full-face mask right now. And if I’m right, she had damn well better keep that mask an if she knows what’s good for her.

  That’s one.

  Second, since Black Mask had been working his way south along the East Side, and since he had started in Burnley, he’d pretty much crushed all of the minor gangs that had stood in his way. Once he was taken down, it was relatively easy for the Batman to take that territory as his own. How he and Batgirl are managing to cover it all I don’t know, but so far they’ve been pretty successful.

  Third, and this one even caught me by surprise, apparently Batman has worked out same sort of arrangement with Penguin, a nonaggression pact. I’m not entirely clear on the details or even how it came about, though Alex, one of my Eyes, reported that Batman had crashed one of Penguins “fêtes” and pretty much took on the whole house.

  And he won.

  Then he pulled Penguin off into the shadows, and when he was done speaking with him the nonaggression pact was in place, and that was pretty much that. It’s worked out well so far. Penguin’s territory abuts the Batman’s along the Upper East Side. I’m sure Penguin was getting nervous about his northern border and I’m just as sure the Batman didn’t want to deal with Penguin launching an offensive from his south. Detente at its finest, I suppose.