Batman: No Man's Land Read online

  Not in my city.

  She checked her watch again.

  Three minutes to go.

  Not your city any longer, she thought. Not after midnight. After midnight, this concrete jungle becomes a truly savage place, and the creatures that walk it will be different beasts entirely. After midnight there’s no Gotham City, only a No Man’s Land.

  She touched the cross at her throat, the one part of her costume as the Huntress that carried over into the life of Helena Bertinelli. She said a quick Our Father.

  Then she took a deep breath and prepared to go hunting.

  * * * * *

  The voices were getting to him, which was vaguely puzzling since, every day and for as long as he could recall, the voices had always been his. But he was relatively sure that the voices he was hearing now, though of course they concerned him, were not, actually, his own.

  He turned his head on his pillow and listened.

  Yep.

  Voices. In the hall, outside the cells.

  “Keep it down out there!” he shouted. “Some of us have to go to work in the morning!”

  Somewhere outside, down the hall, someone laughed. Whether it was one of the simpleton guards or another of his comrades in arms, he wasn’t certain.

  “You’re too kind,” he said, dryly.

  The cell was dark—the lights went off at 9:00 p.m., rain or shine, didn’t matter what you might be doing at the time—and no illumination leaked through the door, but he guessed it had to be near midnight. Once, way back when, after that damned winged rodent—and honestly the most unappreciative audience ever—had captured him, he’d been put in a cell with a window. The window had been barred, of course, but at least at night he could see the stars, and when he stood on the commode he could look down at the grounds. And whenever he had slipped while on the commode, his foot had gotten stuck in the toilet, and that had been funny. Really funny. Toilet jokes were always funny, after all.

  Then he had pushed Dr. Nybakken’s head through the bars in an attempt to remove his ears, to sort of, you know, peel them off. It had worked, but the doctor’s skull had been crushed as a result, which was actually doubly funny, and worth it. The look on the guard’s face when he came in that time and saw the doctor just dangling there, death rattle and all, limbs jerking around all crazy like that. Then the guard had turned and seen him sitting there on his cot, looking innocent as could be. Just the Joker, minding his own business.

  And wearing Dr. Nybakken’s ears, of course.

  Now that was funny.

  The memory of it made Joker laugh.

  None of the voices told him to shut up.

  He pivoted off the bed, then did a pratfall while getting up, tripping over his own feet and taking a header into the far wall. It was still pitch-black and there was no one to see it, but it was worth a laugh, and Joker thought he pulled it off quite well.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, sincerity flooding his voice. “I’ll be here all week.”

  Springing up, he dusted himself off and went for the door. He put his hands out in front of him, thinking to settle himself against it, to feel for the seam in the center, eye-level, where the little sliding surveillance window was. He didn’t put too much pressure on the door at all.

  But it swung open, and the shift took him utterly by surprise, and he did another pratfall, this one unintentional, out into the corridor.

  “Clumsy,” Harvey Dent told him.

  Joker got up quickly, then exaggeratedly dusted himself off. Harvey’s presence in the hall surprised him. Normally, when Harvey was in the hall, there were orderlies in hot pursuit. With cattle prods, more often than not.

  But the hallway was empty.

  “Harv,” Joker said, extending an arm and slapping the larger man on the back. “What the hell is going on here, old son?”

  Harvey reached and removed Joker’s hand as if it were coated with poison, then turned to look at him full on. Joker got his big grin out, fixing it in place. He needed it, because, honestly, Harvey was crazy, and you could literally see it on his face. Back before the dawn of time, Harvey Dent had been the Gotham City D.A., and then a mobster—Joker couldn’t remember who it was, Marcelli, Marconi, Macaroni, didn’t matter—had thrown a lovely bottle of perfectly good acid at him. Harvey, not being a total fool, had turned away, but the result was that half of his face—the left side—was puckered and red and purple and all greasy crinkles, even around his left eye, which bulged like someone was trying to shove it out of his head from within. The acid had even caught his hair, burning the scalp so that the only thing that grew on that side was wiry and white.

  Joker had no problem with that side of Harvey Dent’s face.

  It was the other side, the one that was still handsome and charming, blue eyed and brown haired, with the noble brow and strong nose, that was the side he couldn’t stand.

  Frankly, it made Joker’s bowels rumble.

  Harvey Dent, or Two-Face as Harvey preferred half the time, glared back at him.

  “Shouldn’t there be an alarm by now?” Joker asked.

  Harvey shook his head and started down the hall. Joker, after a moment, followed. It was awfully quiet, he decided. Even the voices—the other voices—had stopped.

  He couldn’t help noticing that a lot of the cell doors were open and their occupants missing, and he moved on, checking the names. The Ventriloquist was gone—probably searching for a log to carve into Scarface, the dummy gangster that was a man in his own right; so was Roman Sionis, another member of the Horribly Scarred Brigade, who was so damn hideous he normally wore a mask made from—Joker loved this part—his mother’s ebony funeral coffin, and thus went around telling everyone to call him Black Mask.

  Joker stopped at Pamela Isley’s room, peering in, perplexed. Pam was a kick—Poison Ivy, lovely girl, a kiss that could kill—but the thing was, the cell was bare. Not even her appalling fern that she kept in that old pot, or the single rose that the doctors let her keep. All gone.

  “Um, Harvey?” Joker asked. “Where’s Pam?”

  “Come on,” Dent said, ignoring the question. “I need to find a coin.”

  Joker sighed and followed. Find a coin, find a coin, it was always the same. “Check O’Malley’s desk. I heard him saying something about laundry money after I came back from my last shock therapy.”

  Harvey grunted, moving down the hall and stopping at the orderly’s desk.

  “Now, shock therapy,” Joker went on. “That’s a buzz, if you get my gist. I mean, it’ll really make you sit up at attention, really get you charged up for your day. Shock treatment, in fact, has to be—”

  “Shut up,” Harvey said, but the tone had changed, and Joker saw that now, in his hand, was a nice and shiny half-dollar. It made him grin. Harvey had finally left, and now Two-Face was in the house.

  “What was O’Malley doing with your coin?” Joker asked.

  “This isn’t my coin. This is a coin. It’ll do.”

  “Where’s your coin?”

  Two-Face looked wistfully past Joker’s shoulder, a look that Joker found more than a little silly. “Gave it to a cop,” he said.

  Joker laughed. “Oh, Harvey, stop it! You gave it to a cop? Which one?”

  “You know Montoya? Detective Montoya?”

  “He’s the fat slob one who smells like Spamburgers and is always smoking stogies?”

  “No, that’s her partner, Bullock. I’m talking about the other one, the lady one, in Major Crimes.”

  Joker thought, wrinkling his brow. When he wrinkled his brow, he thought perhaps he could get his forehead to touch his nose, but that didn’t work. Then his brow smoothed.

  “Oh, yeah, her,” Joker said. “She’s mighty fine, ain’t she, Harv? Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?”

  Two-Face took a quick step and grabbed Joker by the collar of his shirt, pulling him in and up so that their noses were almost touching. Joker grinned maniacally, not so much because he was
maniacal, but because there wasn’t much else he could do. Of the two of them, Two-Face was the stronger by far, and in a straight battle of strength against strength, Joker knew he’d be a loser every time. But then again, Joker would never stand for a fair fight. Fighting fair wasn’t funny; it was boring.

  Two-Face growled at him. “You talk about her like that, I’ll feed you each of your teeth. Rectally.”

  Joker kissed the tip of Two-Face’s nose. “Tag, you’re it.”

  Two-Face turned the growl to a snarl and pushed him away, then flipped the coin in his hand. Joker waited respectfully for the result. Two-Face caught the coin, slapping it down on the back of his hand.

  “Follow me,” Two-Face said.

  “Oh, of Course!” said Joker, stopping just long enough at the desk to find himself a pair of scissors. He snipped the air with them experimentally a couple of times, working his way down the hall, and wondering what Two-Face would do when they hit the security doors. Those doors, those were always the problem in each and every escape plan, the great massive steel things that slammed shut automatically when the alarm sounded. Four hundred pounds apiece, if not more, and Joker knew that personally. They’d swung shut on him on more than one occasion.

  He was vaguely irritated to see that the doors, were, in fact, open.

  “Someone,” Joker remarked, “forgot to close the door.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Two-Face said without looking back.

  Joker tried to remember how to look wounded, failed, and contemplated burying the scissors in Two-Face’s back.

  “Don’t,” Two-Face warned.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t stab me with the scissors, Clown.”

  “Clown? I’m not the one who looks like Pruneface!” Joker said. After a beat, just long enough to set up the gag, he added, “Ever read Dick Tracy?”

  “Shut,” said Two-Face, “up.”

  Joker snipped the air again, continued to follow Two-Face down the hall, then out into reception, at which point a couple of things struck him in quick succession. First, no one was working reception. No nurses. No orderlies. No security guards. No Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. Second, it wasn’t simply that the asylum seemed to be empty, he was now getting the distinct impression that it was deserted. And third, and perhaps most important, the front doors were wide open.

  “This has to be some sort of joke,” he said.

  “No Man’s Land,” Two-Face said. “The earthquake. Gotham City totaled. Any of these ring a bell?”

  Joker frowned and snipped at the air again, thoughtfully. He didn’t like being condescended to, but the problem was that Two-Face was almost always condescending, and he had the impression that if he stabbed him now, he wouldn’t get the answer to his questions.

  Two-Face continued. “Government’s called it quits on Gotham. Closed off the city. Blowing the bridges at midnight.”

  Something tickled at the back of Joker’s brain for a moment, and he chewed his lip, trying to draw the idea out. It wasn’t coming, though, so Joker turned to the nearest wall and bashed his forehead against the cinder block.

  “Ah!” Joker said. “What Dr. Quinzel said!”

  “Who?” Two-Face demanded.

  Joker rubbed his forehead, trying to massage the rest of the memory free. The earthquake, Dr. Quinzel had talked about it in one of their last sessions. About how the city was a mess, how the asylum was going to be abandoned. Then Dr. Quinzel had cried, because she didn’t want to leave Joker. She told him that Dr. Arkham was calling institutions all over the country, trying to get the patients placed in new facilities. But no one wanted to take them, Joker remembered. No one wanted Poison Ivy or Two-Face or Joker.

  He tried to get his lower lip to quiver with the memory. And now, here they were. Well, at least here Joker and Two-Face were. Who cared about Poison Ivy?

  Or Dr. Quinzel for that matter?

  Joker checked the clock on the wall over the receptionist’s desk. His favorite, Betsy, wasn’t there. That was a pity, because now that he had the scissors he’d have really liked to talk with her about the way she cut her hair.

  The clock read 11:58. Because it was dark out, Joker felt safe in adding, “P.M.” to the calculation.

  “Everyone with an ounce of sense has left town already,” Two-Face was saying. “Dr. Arkham programmed the doors to open at 11:55. Figures this way we’re all stuck in Gotham, can’t get off the island.”

  “Can we?” Joker asked hopefully.

  “Not unless you want an Apache gunship firing missiles down your throat, no.”

  Joker snipped at the air again, crestfallen, then suddenly brightened. “Wait! You mean …?”

  Two-Face nodded slowly, as if trying to teach a very slow child.

  “It’s all ours?” Joker finished, awed.

  “You got it, buddy.”

  “Gotham?”

  “All of it.”

  “Ours?”

  “Yes.”

  Joker craned his neck slowly to look past Two-Face, out at the barren grounds of Arkham Asylum. Beyond the fence, through the trees, down the hill, he could see where the Sprang River was flowing beneath the Schwartz Bridge. He felt his heart starting to race. All thoughts of stabbing Two-Face to death had vanished.

  “And Batman?” Joker was almost afraid to ask.

  “He’s staying. He has to.” Two-Face’s bulging left eye glinted with barely contained glee. “He’s too crazy to leave. He’s locked in here with us.”

  For a moment, Joker honestly thought he might cry with the joy of it. The whole city, his to play with. No government, that meant no cops. No cops, that meant no law. And no law…

  “Victims,” he sighed happily.

  Two-Face scowled. “You’re crazy. I’m going. See you around, Clown.”

  Joker watched as Two-Face went down the steps, crossed the manicured lawn to the front gate, and then disappeared from view, Joker sighed again and stepped out into the cold air, settling down at the top of the steps. He snipped at the air dreamily, gazing at the city.

  “I’ll wait awhile,” he said to no one in particular.

  * * * * *

  Pettit began counting down from five.

  Across the river, half a second later, Gordon heard the amplified voice doing the same.

  “One,” Pettit said, and before he was finished they saw the flash as the Brown Bridge exploded, the demolition charges firing in perfect sequence. Farther upriver, they heard other explosions, saw the light as the TriGate Bridge blew. The Gotham River bubbled as beneath it, each of the subway and rail tunnels suddenly imploded, water rushing to fill the space.

  The last electric lights winked out.

  The sound of the detonations echoed through the broken streets.

  From within the city, there was absolute silence.

  Gordon let go of his wife’s hand and stepped forward, then turned to face the line of people—the line of his people. From inside his jacket he produced his shield, holding it so that they all could see.

  Make it good, he thought.

  “Gotham City is gone,” he said. “There’s no such thing as the GCPD from here on out.

  “But we’re still police, and we’re still here. So it’s up to us, now, to make it work. It’s up to us alone to keep what we have, what we value, safe.

  “No Man’s Land won’t last. You know it, I know it. Eventually, Washington will come to its senses. Eventually, those bridges will be rebuilt.

  “Until then, this shield—all our shields—they’re only worth the person wearing them.”

  He pinned his badge to his shirt, feeling the heavy metal dragon the fabric.

  “As long as we can wear these, we’ll make it,” he said.

  For a moment no one moved, and Gordon thought that he’d tanked it. He’d never been good at public speaking. Even after ten years of media hounds looking for sound bites he’d never gotten it down.

  Then Sarah was pinning her badge to her shirt, then Pettit
, then Montoya, and suddenly all of them were wearing their gold shields, all looking at him, waiting for what would happen next.

  “Time to protect and to serve,” Gordon said, and he headed for the door off the roof, back downstairs.

  On the way his eyes went to the broken Bat-Signal, where the shattered bulb sat in dark shadow.

  Don’t let us down, he thought.

  We need you now more than ever.

  PART ONE

  ORACLE

  PERSONAL

  Entry #289—No Man’s Land, Day 090

  1020 Zulu

  [NOTE: I’m truncating here, so if it seems a little choppy, that’s why. Most of the last 288 entries have been mix-and-match, three months of getting my bearings and pretty much doing what we’ve all been, just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

  In other words, it’s a summary of sorts, and I make no pretense to artistry here.

  Cut your girl a break. :-)]

  Dear Dad—

  After ninety days of No Man’s Land, I have come to the following conclusion:

  Anarchy is mankind’s natural state.

  I don’t think even the most jaded social anthropologist could’ve anticipated how quickly it would happen, how quickly the tribes would form. Within one week of Black Monday—the day the bridges blew and NML began—this block alone, where I now write, changed hands three times, gangs that came and went so quickly I don’t even remember their names. Since then it’s settled down somewhat, as I understand it has all across the city. As of this moment. I think I live in Street Demonz territory, but I can’t be sure. Either them or the LoBoys.

  The difference is academic, because aside from their tags and colors, their rule is pretty much the same. They tromp along the streets, demanding that everyone they see give them either food or goods in exchange for their protection. That’s about as evolved as they’ve gotten—they’ve yet to truly discover the entrepreneurial spirit, unlike many of their compatriots throughout the city.