Batman: No Man's Land Page 2

  How did we come to this?

  They were asking the same question on Nightline and The News Hour. They recounted the contagion that devastated the city three years ago, then the second outbreak that picked up where the first one had left off. They talked about how tens of thousands of Gothamites died, about the repeated impositions of martial law. They talked about the eroding economic, social, and cultural bases as people fled this city for greener pastures, relocating to Blüdhaven or Boston or Metropolis or—God forbid—Hub City.

  Gotham, they all sadly admitted, was pretty much a write-off even before the Cataclysm.

  Oh, and how they love to talk about the Cataclysm. Dad! A whopping 7.6 earthquake with an epicenter not ten miles from downtown, the fires burning for days, the massive loss of life. As far as tragedies go, let’s be honest the media couldn’t have asked for better. Gotham City was front-page news around the world that morning, you can bet Aunt Mae’s girdle on that.

  Put all the tragedies together, one after the other, and we’ve got a death toll in the hundreds of thousands, easy.

  I’m looking out the window and I want to laugh, because, let’s be frank… the Cataclysm, that was just insult to injury.

  What happened next, when you think about it in that light wasn’t so hard to believe. I mean, after Mother Nature, there was really only one thing worse that could happen to Our Fair City.

  Politics.

  No money for Gotham, said Congress. No money for Gotham, said the Senate. Federal funds in excess of one hundred billion dollars would be needed to rebuild the civic infrastructure, that was the sound bite. And then the number climbed higher—not one hundred, one-twenty—not one—twenty, one-fifty.

  We became the nation’s latest scapegoat and, in a way, wasn’t it about time?

  We’re the murder capital of the country, or at least, we used to be, when we were part of the country. According to the FBI—and I know this, trust me—we outscored every other city in the nation with our stats.

  Highest incidence of crimes against property per capita? Gotham City.

  Highest incidence of robbery-homicide per capita? Gotham City. Assaults? Gotham City. Rapes? Gotham City. Kidnapping, arson, hell, even auto theft? Gotham City.

  If that wasn’t enough—and for the politicos, it wasn’t—next came the parade of lunatics. Two—Face and Mr. Freeze. Ivy and Clayface. Mr. Zsasz, the Riddler, the Penguin… and, of course, their favorite madman, the son of a bitch who put a bullet through my spine, who put me in this wheelchair for the rest of my life:

  The Joker.

  Where the politicians went, then, the nation followed. Gotham City, the new Sodom. Let it burn. Let it rot. Let it crumble.

  Even our favorite son, Bruce Wayne, couldn’t save us from the might of Washington. The billionaire playboy, the inheritor of the Wayne fortune, the wayward president of Wayne Enterprises, Wayne Technologies, and Wayne Development. Even with the billions of dollars from the companies bearing his name that Wayne poured into both cities at once. Gotham and D.C., he couldn’t keep the President from signing into law the Federal Declaration of No Man’s land.

  Bruce Wayne

  Here comes another mask removed. The big one. Brace yourself.

  Dad, Bruce Wayne is the Batman.

  Seriously.

  He told me once how it happened, or, more specifically, why it happened. Perhaps you’ve already figured it out.

  I can’t imagine what it was like, to be him. To be eight years old and on the way home from a night at the movies. To have your mother holding one hand, your father holding the other. To let go, laughing, to jump out in front of them, wheeling, swinging the imagined sword of Zorro.

  To see the fear crossing the face of your parents as a shadow fell from behind you.

  To turn and see the man with the gun.

  To see him shoot. To smell the cordite.

  To watch your mother and father die on the sidewalk in front of you.

  To wonder why they had to die, to wonder why they’d left you alone.

  To wonder at a world that could allow such a thing to happen.

  But Bruce Wayne is gone now, and the Batman with him. I suppose that shouldn’t mean anything—so many don’t even believe he exists—but this time it feels… different

  It feels like maybe he really is gone.

  That maybe Batman and Bruce Wayne both have done the sensible thing, the sane thing.

  Maybe they got out while they could.

  I don’t want to believe it Gotham City needs him now as much as he has ever needed Gotham City.

  I don’t want to believe he’s abandoned us.

  But he hasn’t been seen in days. I would have heard something by now.

  I should have heard something by now.

  For the first time since as long as I can remember, there is no Batman.

  And I’m scared, Dad.

  I’m really scared.

  PROLOGUE

  SIX OF THEM STOOD ON THE SUNKEN ROOF of the GCPD Central Precinct, almost in a perfect line, just shy of the edge. All faced west,

  toward the Gotham River, and with the height of the Precinct building and the rest of the shattered skyline before them, their view was almost entirely unobstructed. In the distance, shrouded in the thin mist that rose from the water, helicopters flew low along the far shore, halogen beams drawing white lines through the air. Behind them, on its mount, sat the broken floodlight that could paint the clouds with the silhouette of a giant bat.

  It was brittle-cold, the middle of winter, but there had been no snow yet, not even at Christmas. The air was dry and the wind was strong and from the north and it made the condensation from their breathing look more like smoke than steam, whipped away as quickly as it was exhaled. All breathed through their mouths, trying to minimize the assault of scent from the traumatized city—the rotten food, the sewage, the smoke.

  They stood quietly, waiting, each with their own thoughts, hands thrust deep into pockets or folded under armpits, shifting from foot to foot in an attempt to stay warm. Two of them, in the center, held hands.

  At 11:50 exactly, the man on the end, the one dressed in tactical gear and wearing a black ball-cap with the GCPD badge stitched to its face, said, “Ten minutes, Jim.”

  James Gordon, at the center of the line, his wife’s hand in his own, said, “Thank you, Bill.”

  Somewhere across the river, in the mass of floodlights camped on the far shore, a Klaxon began blaring. They watched as ant-sized soldiers in toy-sized trucks burst into a sudden frenzy of movement. A voice, distorted by amplification, drifted across the water. None of them could make out the words; all knew what was being said.

  Gordon tightened his grip on his wife’s hand, not so much to reassure her as to keep himself in check. In his mid-fifties, with hair now more gray than brown and a face that had lines etched from a thousand different crime scenes, he had been a police all of his adult life since leaving the Marine Corps. His career had started in Chicago, a young rookie on a rough force, but just over ten years ago he had moved to Gotham City, a new lieutenant in a department wallowing gleefully in its own corruption.

  It was—and he knew this—the single most important decision of his life. Looking out at the city now, he found himself remembering the city then.

  He had arrived and almost immediately hated the new job, hated the people he was forced to work with even more. He had hated the crime and apathy and desperation that seemed stamped on every street of his new home. He had hated the arrogance of the public servants who had turned their backs on the people.

  But Gordon had fallen immediately in love with Gotham herself, with the vibrancy of the city, with its character and its history. Gotham was an American city, with streets full of people of every color, stores that catered to every culture. Gotham had a pulse, a heartbeat, a soul. Its buildings stood tall and bold, as if reaching for the heavens in the light of day, art deco architecture a block from Bauhaus, a street from neoclassical
, abutting the baroque. Gotham had glamour and sass, yet the brassiness of a longshoreman beneath it all. Gordon loved it. Within days of his arrival, he’d known he would never leave, indeed, that he could not. He’d known that Gotham was to be his city. He’d known he would serve her, come what may.

  Within a year Gordon had made captain and overseen the purging of one of the most corrupt police forces in the nation’s history. He had made new enemies and new allies, and all but destroyed his first marriage. He had met Sarah Essen—the woman whose hand was even now his anchor—and Harvey Dent, the friend who too soon became a foe.

  But if those were all important, vital facts to who he was now, there was one other.

  His first year in Gotham had been the first year of the Batman, as well.

  Sarah gave his hand a squeeze, almost reflexive reassurance, jerking Gordon back from the past. He looked away from the National Guard encampment on the far shore, at the miles of razor wire and tank barricades that had been assembled across the already-mined river, to look at her. Twelve years his junior, twice as pretty as when they’d first met; looking at her he could feel his heart beat just a little faster. For a moment, the temptation to bury his face in her hair, to hide in the familiar feel of her skin, was overpowering.

  But it wouldn’t do, and he knew that. Not in front of his people, certainly. They were looking to him for leadership and strength, and, after all, he was still the Commissioner of Police.

  At least for another seven minutes or so.

  His people. It almost made him smile as he looked at the line on either side of him, at those cops who, like himself, had decided to stay behind for one reason or another.

  At the far end of the line, Renee Montoya, Detective Third Class and the only other woman in the rooftop group aside from Sarah. Born and raised in Gotham, the child of Dominican immigrants, Montoya was one of the best on his force, and he had a paternal pride in her. He had promoted her himself, overseen her assignments and training. At times, he felt as fond of Renee Montoya as he did of his own daughter, Barbara.

  Standing beside Montoya, her partner Detective Sergeant Harvey Bullock. Sarah liked to call him the Bulldog—never when Harvey could hear, of course—and Gordon thought that it was more than just an apt physical description of the overweight cop. Nobody more stubborn, nobody more tenacious, nobody more potentially offensive in the whole of the GCPD than Bullock. A hell of a police.

  Then Sarah Essen, Lieutenant. Their marriage had seen more rocks dug up than a quarry, and there were times when Gordon wondered if they kept returning to each other simply because no one else would have them. She was more than his wife and more than his friend and more than his lover; Sarah, he thought, was his equal.

  How could he not love her most of all for that?

  That was on his left. On his right, the remaining two of the GCPD hierarchy. Hugh Foley, the latest addition to the GCPD officer corps. A lieutenant in Vice/Bunko, Gordon knew Foley as a competent administrator, good with the public and the media. Quiet in the ranks one of the many men under Gordon’s command, hardly distinguishable from so many of the others. Looking at him now, Gordon had to admit he had no idea why Foley had decided to stay behind with the rest of them.

  And then the end of the line, where Captain William Pettit, head of the GCPD Quick Response Team, stood, binoculars in one hand, watch in the other. Another former soldier, Pettit had served in Gotham’s own war for several years now, responsible for training and commanding a unit where hostage takings and shoot-outs were only twenty-four hours apart on a good day. As far as tactical support, Gordon couldn’t think of anyone better.

  We six, Gordon thought. We six, and down below another four dozen wearing the Blue, and what the hell are we thinking anyway? Do we really think we can make a difference?

  “Five minutes,” Pettit said.

  “Suppose it’s too late to change our minds about this, huh?” Foley asked.

  “Not if you run for it. You sprint—”

  “—you might make it as far as Brady Avenue before the charges start going off,” Bullock said, the sneer in his voice. “Go for it, Foley.”

  “Quiet,” Gordon said.

  Sarah gave his hand another squeeze.

  * * * * *

  The problem, as far as Helena Bertinelli was concerned, was with her watch.

  It was a good watch, and she knew that. A Rolex, shock-resistant and waterproof and accurate like you wouldn’t believe. That wasn’t the problem.

  It was that she had to wear the damn thing on her wrist, even when she was in costume. Even when she was the Huntress. There was just no other accessible place to put it where she could reach it in a hurry. In a pouch on her belt, for instance, would require both having a free hand and the time to reach it. So it stayed on her wrist, below the launcher on her forearm that fired razor-sharp spikes with a blast of compressed air, and she had long ago resigned herself to all the problems that created; Helena couldn’t even count how many times she’d had to have the watch crystal repaired. Not to mention the pain that came from blocking a punch with a lump of metal wrapped around your wrist.

  The Batman, she was certain, did not wear a watch to work.

  No, he had some fancy heads-up display in that Kevlar-lined cowl of his, something that kept perfect time, tied to the atomic clock in Colorado, and that was visible day or night but never obscured his vision. All Helena had behind the domino mask she wore as the Huntress were third-generation starlight lenses, and they only worked half the time.

  The Batman didn’t have any of these problems. The Batman had all of the cool equipment, and all the training to use it.

  And what the Batman had he shared only with a chosen few, and long ago he had made it clear that Helena Bertinelli was not one of those. Sure, they were both vigilantes in a city where crime was as common as cars, but as far as he was concerned, the similarities ended there. She wasn’t Robin and she wasn’t Nightwing and she wasn’t welcome in the club, and that, it seemed, was that.

  He had laid it all out for her once, almost two years before, when she had been crouching on the roof of a warehouse overlooking Miller Harbor. Surveillance on a group of mafia soldiers, getting ready to move some heroin off the docks. She hadn’t even known he was there until he’d spoken, making her jump half out of her costume.

  “Huntress,” he’d said, just the one word to start, and the tone of it made the hair on the back of her neck stand. Then he’d looked pointedly at the crossbow she was holding.

  “I’ve got this,” Helena had answered. “I don’t need your help.”

  “No one dies tonight,” he’d said. Just like that. Just like he was laying down the law.

  It had made her angry, suddenly, the judgment in his voice, the command. “Unlike you, I shoot back.”

  “That’s the problem,” the Batman had said, already turning away.

  “Don’t do that! Don’t walk away from me!” She’d gotten to her feet without thinking, blowing the hiding place, blowing the hours of surveillance. “I’ve been out here every night for a year! We do the same thing! How dare you presume to judge me?”

  The movement had been so quick she hadn’t even seen it, the blur of cape so fast it might have been shadow. And then the crossbow was out of her hand and he’d tossed it across the rooftop, not bothering to look, face-to-face with her. It was the first time she’d been that close to him, been able to see that there truly was a man beneath the cowl. His jaw was strong, and his lips thin, drawn tight as he spoke.

  “You kill,” the Batman had hissed.

  She’d surprised herself by finding her voice. “Yes.”

  “Not in my city.”

  “Is that why you don’t like me? That when some four-time loser with murder on his mind pulls a gun on me, I’m not afraid to drop him? Is that it?”

  His jaw had clenched further. It was like ice when he spoke. “Yes.”

  “That’s not what this is about!”

  “That’s all th
at this is about,” he’d said, and the tone had stunned her, the way his voice had dropped, and once again she could imagine the man beneath the cowl. But before she’d been able to respond he’d already turned, and then was gone, dropping off the roof with a snapping of his cape and a flutter that… well, that honestly had sounded like bat wings.

  Helena had known better than to try to follow him, and that had been that for a while, until only a year ago when the Malfatti thing had come up and she’d found herself sharing the case with the Batman’s protégé, Nightwing. They had ended up teaming together by accident more than anything else, Nightwing coming up from his usual beat of Blüdhaven—sixty miles south of Gotham—to cover for the Batman who was mysteriously out of town on business. Before she’d known what had happened, they were sharing clues and facts.

  Then they’d shared her bed.

  After the case was done, she’d told herself it was a onetime thing. They had both been alone in Gotham, and it was a thrill and a comfort and nothing more. Certainly, Nightwing had tried to be a gentleman about the brief affair, which in its own way was pretty funny. He’d refused to even let slip his real name, which she had teased him about mercilessly. There they’d been, for God’s sake, masks as off as they could get, and still he’d tried to protect his identity.

  She knew why. She knew it wasn’t for him. It was for the Batman. Whoever he really was, Nightwing would rather die than betray that confidence. She hadn’t pressed. She respected that.

  Still, she found herself thinking about Nightwing more often than she’d ever thought she would. Even now, she wondered where he was.

  She realized she’d been staring at her watch for over a minute now, not registering what the hands were telling her.

  Five to midnight.

  Five minutes until all hell breaks loose, she thought. Five minutes until Gotham City becomes persona non grata to the rest of the U.S. of A.

  She let the cuff fall back into place, smiling despite herself.

  Like me.

  It wasn’t strictly analogous, she knew that. But she felt a perverse camaraderie with Gotham, suddenly. They were both alone, they were both unwanted, and both would fight on against the odds. She wrapped her cape around herself a little tighter, trying to stay warm, then leaned back into the shadows.