Batman 1 - Batman (13 page)

“Damn!” Batman yelled.

They were in a blind alley. The road ended a hundred yards ahead. He jammed on the brakes as he pressed another button on the panel.

As the wheels beneath slammed to a halt, the body of the Batman’s car lifted up and rotated 180 degrees, so that it was facing the other way.

Batman pressed the accelerator, and they were on their way again, out of the alley, headed toward Gotham Square. There were orange blinking lights ahead of them—some sort of night construction crew, Vicki realized, working overtime to get the reviewing stands ready in time for Mayor Borg’s beloved parade. A gigantic crane was backing down the street into the intersection, blocking both lanes. And they were headed straight for it!

Batman gunned the engine, swerving to the left. There still wasn’t enough room. He pumped the brakes as they careened toward the sidewalk. They stopped, inches away from a lamppost.

Pedestrians and construction workers ran toward them, curious about the commotion. Vicki glanced out the back window. The van and the other two cars were gaining on them! She glanced over at the Batman. There must be some way they could get out of here.

“Couldn’t we—” she began.

He shook his head. “Too many people.” He pressed another button, and the doors whirred open. “Come on!” he yelled as he leapt from his seat.

“Shields!” he ordered as soon as she was out as well.

“Shields,” the computer voice replied.

Dark steel plates quickly clanged into place over the cockpit, the wheels, the exhaust system, like nothing so much as an impenetrable black cocoon.

Vicki didn’t have time to watch any more. The Batman was already leading her at a run into the construction site. She heard police sirens behind her. Good, she thought. Maybe the cops can slow down the Joker’s goons. She didn’t for a second think the police had a chance of catching the Batman.

They crossed the construction in less than a minute and turned down another street at a run, dodging openmouthed pedestrians.

An all-too-familiar car pulled out of a side street. Vicki recognized four of the Joker’s men riding inside. The goon in the driver’s seat picked up a walkie-talkie and said something into it. The car turned toward them.

Batman and Vicki ran the other way. A store window exploded in front of them as the goons opened fire. Vicki dove behind a parked car as the goons’ car squealed around the corner.

A little girl, maybe five or six years old, dressed in a ragged, hand-me-down coat, was busily walking her doll around the corner. She was so lost in her playacting that she didn’t even seem to notice the bullets and running feet.

She looked up as Batman approached. Wide-eyed, she lifted her doll up so that the masked man could get a better look.

“Is it Halloween?” she asked.

Batman smiled, motioning for Vicki to follow him into an alley. She ran toward him. Her heart sank as she heard the squeal of tires behind her. The Joker’s men were back for more.

They drove by the alley, not able to stop in time. But this alley was a dead end too, and this time they had no supercar to save them.

Batman looked up. Vicki followed his gaze. There was a catwalk, but it was five stories up.

Batman looked back at Vicki, the eyeholes in his mask two pools of darkness. “How much do you weigh?” he snapped.

Vicki was a little startled. Even in this day and age, a woman didn’t expect that sort of question.

“Uh”—she stumbled—“a hundred and eight?”

He cocked his head a bit to one side, as if performing some quick mental calculations. The bad guys’ car squealed back to the mouth of the alley, this time in reverse. They stopped the car in the alley mouth, blocking the exit. The goons piled out of the car.

Vicki looked back at Batman. He was holding some kind of bat-shaped spear gun attached to a thin nylon rope. He shot the projectile aloft. It caught on the catwalk.

He grabbed Vicki around the waist.

“Hang on!”

He flicked something at his belt. Vicki and Batman shot upward, almost as if they were fish being reeled in. A bullet whizzed angrily by her ear. They went up one story, two. But their flight was slowing.

On the third floor up, they stopped. Vicki realized whatever mechanism was reeling them in must not be able to take their combined weight. Vicki felt a mixture of guilt and panic. They were sitting ducks up here. Should she have told Batman how much she really weighed?

Batman twisted around. Vicki looked down and screamed. The goons all had their heavy artillery pointed at the two of them, but the bad guys were taking their time now, waiting for the twisting and turning up there to stop so they could easily kill both of them.

“Whatever happens,” Batman whispered hoarsely, “don’t let go!”

He detached something from around his waist and hooked it over Vicki’s belt.

That’s when he let go.

Vicki skyrocketed upward, shrieking as she went. She saw Batman beneath her, cape billowing as he fell the two stories to the pavement. She cried out again as her back slammed against the catwalk. But the rope bounced her up and down a bit, and she realized nothing was broken.

There was a crash beneath her. She looked down to see that Batman had landed in the middle of a pile of garbage cans. The goons rushed over to him. He smashed a pair of them into a wall before he was even on his feet. But a third had found a lead pipe in the rubbish. He smashed it into the back of the Batman’s skull.

Batman fell.

The thugs circled closer. Vicki felt so helpless up here. The rope had stopped its bouncing. She pulled herself onto the catwalk, then over onto the roof. But she didn’t have a gun. What could she do?

Through all this, she had managed to keep her camera bag. Maybe, somehow, there was something inside that could help.

She looked down as she unzipped the case.

The lead goon fired two shots, point blank, at the yellow-and-black insignia on Batman’s chest. The body jerked.

Vicki leaned over the edge. Was she too late?

The goons stopped.

“No blood,” one of them said.

“Jesus,” another one answered. “Who is it? Check his wallet.”

“Wait a minute,” a third interrupted. He crouched down beside the body and poked at Batman’s costume.

“What is it?” the last thug asked.

“Some kind of body armor or something,” the kneeling man replied.

“He’s human after all,” the man who had shot him said, courage back in his voice. “Take the mask off.”

Body armor? Vicki realized that must mean he was still alive. And she had thought of a way to distract the thugs, and maybe get an exclusive for the
Gotham Globe
as well.

They pulled off his mask, but his face was still in shadows.

“Get out of the way!” their leader yelled. “I can’t see him.”

That’s when Vicki set off the flashgun.

The goons were startled, disoriented.

“Goddammit!” one of them yelled. “It’s the girl!”

A bullet
kerrang
ed off the cement ledge three inches from her face. She flashed the strobe again, this time taking a photo as well. She knew she was exposing herself, but she had to get this.

All the thugs raised their guns and fired at once.

The flashes stopped overhead.

“Did you get her?” a voice asked.

“I think so,” a second answered. “Wax him.”

Batman opened his eyes as the four gunmen aimed their weapons at him. His right hand snaked up to grab the coat of the nearest one, spinning him around into the gunfire of the other three.

Then Batman was on his feet, using the brand-new corpse for a shield. He heaved the lifeless excrement through the air. The body landed on top of one of his friends. The one who was still alive fell back over a garbage can to crack his head against a wall. He fell down, out cold.

Batman was already on the third piece of slime. He rabbit-punched the slime’s throat, then gave his gut a good kick with a steel-toed boot as the thug went down.

Now there was only one more little matter to take care of. Batman pulled his mask back into place as he turned to face his final business.

The last piece of living trash had his gun out, but he was shaking too much to aim. Batman smiled. The trash screamed and ran.

Batman noticed the strobe lights had started again overhead. Vicki Vale was up there, taking pictures.

He’d have to do something about that.

The Batman had disposed of all the goons in a matter of seconds. And then he looked up at her.

She retreated from the edge, so that the Batman could no longer see her. He must know that she had been taking pictures, including some before he had put his mask back on. Pictures that were too valuable to lose. She quickly rewound the film and unloaded the camera. But where was the safest place for the film? Her alternatives were limited. She dropped the roll inside her blouse and started to run across the roof to a door on the far side of the building.

Maybe this was the wrong thing to do after the Batman had saved her life. But there was something about the Batman—something so familiar and so strange at the same time. She realized she didn’t want these pictures so much for the
Globe
as for herself. She needed to see his face. Once she developed the film, she would know the true identity of the Batman.

Vicki was gone. He could find her in a minute. For now, there were other things to worry about.

He walked out of the alley and saw the Batmobile two blocks away. It was completely surrounded by police and curiosity seekers. A couple of the cops were actually crawling over the top of the car, trying to find a way in. And there was a gigantic tow truck backing down the far end of the street—the kind of truck they used to haul away tractor trailers—maneuvering to haul away the Batmobile.

The Batman made a snorting sound inside his mask. There were always complications. Oh, well. If he had wanted things to be simple, he would have gone into another line of work.

He pressed a button on his utility belt. The miniature radio transmitter popped into his hand. He pressed the Talk button:

“Shields open,” he ordered.

“Shields open,” the car’s computer voice replied.

The steel plates retracted into the doors and wheel wells.

“Ignition,” Batman said.

“Ignition,” the car replied.

One of the cops crawling across the hood tried to get a look inside the darkened cockpit.

“There’s somebody in there!” he yelled.

The turbine engines revved, and the Batmobile started to roll—slowly at first, to allow the cops to roll off the car and the crowd to disperse, then more quickly as the car pulled free of the throng. The left-turn signal flashed as the Batmobile approached the second corner.

Batman would let the computer drive the car for the next few minutes. He needed the cops out of the way for a while, and the Batmobile made an excellent diversion.

In the meantime, though, he had business that would not wait.

Sirens wailed on the street below. Vicki glanced over the ledge and saw the Batman’s customized car tearing down the street, dodging a bus and two taxis, swooping around a gaggle of startled pedestrians. Well, at least Batman had gotten away. Now she had to find a way to get off the Gotham City skyline.

The first door she had tried was locked. That was only to be expected, she guessed, in the big city. But the first roof had connected to a second, with a jump of only a foot or two, and, using an old dining-room chair somebody had left up here, she had managed to climb the five feet up onto a third. And this one had a fire escape that went all the way down. She gratefully started for the ground.

The sirens vanished in the distance. From the intensity of the noise, it sounded as if there were twenty police cars chasing the Batman. She looked down. There was no one on the street below.

She reached the bottom of the fire escape. It didn’t quite reach the ground after all—there was a five-foot drop to the pavement below. She’d have to jump, Why didn’t people warn you about this sort of thing when you went into news photography? At least, Vicki thought, she was wearing her sensible shoes.

Her camera bag slung over her shoulder, she grabbed the bottom iron rung of the fire escape and swung herself down to the sidewalk. Now, she thought, to get out of here. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. It was too quiet around here. She wouldn’t want to run into the Joker’s men again—or the Batman now, for that matter.

She quickened her pace, turning her head back to look where she was going. But there was something in her way, something large and black.

She couldn’t stop herself. She walked—bodily—right into the Batman.

The breath knocked out of her, she looked up into the masked face.

“Not even a thank-you?” he asked.

Thank-you? she thought. For saving her life? Vicki became instantly defensive, probably because she knew Batman was right.

“Well, I think you might thank me,” she retorted. “You were as good as dead.”

Batman stared down at her. His face looked so impassive behind that mask.

“You weigh a little more than a hundred and eight” was his only reply.