Batman 5 - Batman Begins (31 page)

“Yeah, they’re done. I got the report this afternoon.”

“And?”

“Well, everything’s inconclusive. They still aren’t sure what made it burn so hot. Something in the machine that guy . . .
Rā’s al Ghūl,
is it?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, there was something in the machine that caused the extreme heat. Most everything was melted to slag.”

“Human remains?”

“No body, not even any bones. But like I say, nothing’s conclusive . . .”

Gordon stopped talking when he realized that he was talking to himself.

Batman perched on a Wayne Tower ledge and surveyed the city below him; its geometric regularity and the steep walls and narrow streets for which Gotham was famous, the butt of a thousand jokes on television talk shows and a perverse source of pride to locals. There were only a few lights, this late, but in Gotham somebody was always going somewhere, doing something.

He liked to come up here and lurk, unseen, and think. Someday, he might figure out why.

Tonight, he was thinking about the conversation he’d had with James Gordon an hour earlier. No surprises. He’d seen that blue-white fire—he knew it must have destroyed anything inside the monorail car.

But he was not satisfied.

Almost certainly, Rā’s had perished in the fire.

Almost.

But if he hadn’t?

The body of Carl Finch, the district attorney, had been found at the docks, and to everyone’s surprise, Rachel Dawes was appointed to replace him. She was, at thirty, the youngest D.A. in the city’s history.

For almost a month, Batman had been an empty costume hanging in a cave below the blackened ruins of a once-grand house. Bruce Wayne stayed away from both the cave and the suit, and also from Gotham City. He kept to the guesthouse he shared with Alfred and passed the weeks reading books recommended by Sandra Flanders.

Finally, one night just before midnight, Bruce left the guesthouse and, by the light of a gibbous moon and an electric lantern he carried, picked his way through the remains of Wayne Manor until he came to the secret entrance to the cavern.

From an upstairs window, Alfred watched Bruce cross the lawn and, after some hesitation, followed him.

When Alfred came to the bottom of the winding staircase, he found Bruce staring at the Batman costume, which was illuminated by the lantern.

“Have you decided?” Alfred asked.

“About what?” Bruce gestured to the costume. “Him? Bring him back to life or let him join the urban legends? No, I haven’t. He could be useful, and maybe he’s the only way
I
can be useful.”

“Hardly, Master Bruce. Your philanthropies, your efforts on behalf of education . . .”

“All good things. But not enough. Not enough for me. I need something more and Batman just may be it. Any thoughts?”

“The course you contemplate is dangerous, but you know that. Indeed, danger is part of the attraction. What’s interesting about it is, it provides an outlet for your creativity.”

“Afraid not, Alfred. We Waynes aren’t artsy types—”

“On the contrary. In her youth, your mother played classical piano.”

“Come to think of it, she mentioned that once—”

“And your father’s ardent support of the arts indicated a love of them. Your creative impulse has been submerged, but it has always existed, waiting for the proper opportunity.”

“And Batman was it, huh?”

“I believe so. What you have created is akin to architecture. It has a practical aspect, but also an aesthetic one. And I imagine it gives you great satisfaction—”

“Oh, come on!”

“You described the excitement you felt running over the rooftops after your burglary and I
saw
you when you returned here with Ms. Dawes. You were a man exhilarated.”

“Okay, I guess I was. So I should put on the costume again?”

“I’m certain you will, regardless of what I may advise. I ask only this, that you be aware of the dangers.”

“Any dangers in particular, other than the obvious ones?”

Alfred stared down at the floor while answering. “The greatest danger, I think, is that you may not be able to relinquish your creation when you should. You’re young now, but you won’t always be. You will reach an age when you’ll be a bit slower, not quite as agile, nor as strong. Then, you will either have to give up Batman and pursue your goals by more quiet means or . . .”

“Or what, Alfred?
Die?”

“Or be grievously injured, or humiliated . . . there are a number of melancholy possibilities.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said, and took the costume from its hanger.

Winter came early to Gotham City that year. By Thanksgiving, the days were dark and the nights unremittingly cold. There had been no heavy snowfall, not yet, but flurries were common and the frequent rain was usually mixed with sleet.

Everyone anticipated a white Christmas.

At eleven-thirty, on the night of December first, James Gordon stood on the roof of Central Police Headquarters, sipping coffee from a cardboard cup next to a giant spotlight with a metal stencil of a bat bolted across its lens. Its beam was directed toward the roiling gray clouds and the fuzzy bat shape was intermittently visible on them.

Gordon heard a fluttering and then Batman was on the other side of the light. He reached out with a gloved forefinger and tapped the stencil.

“Nice,” he growled.

“Couldn’t find any mob bosses to strap to the light.”

Gordon switched off the light.

“Well, Sergeant?” Batman asked.

“It’s
lieutenant
now. Loeb had to promote me. And he finally officially disbanded the task force hunting you. Amazing what saving a city can do for your image.” Gordon crushed his empty cup and tossed it into a trash barrel. “You’ve started something. Bent cops running scared, hope on the streets . . .”

Gordon stopped speaking.

“There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there?” Batman asked.

“But . . .
there’s a lot of weirdness out there right now . . . The Narrows is lost. We still haven’t picked up Crane and some of the Arkham inmates he freed.”

“You will. Gotham will return to normal.”

“Will it? What about the escalation?”

“Escalation?”

“We start carrying semi-automatics,
they
buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar,
they
buy armor-piercing rounds.”

“And?”

“
And
. . . you’re wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops.” Gordon fished in his breast pocket and pulled out a clear plastic evidence bag. “Take this guy . . . armed robbery, double homicide . . .”

Batman took the bag. In it, he could see a playing card, a Joker.

“Leaves a calling card,” Gordon said. “Got a taste for theatrics, just like you.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“I never said thank you, by the way.”

“And you’ll never have to.”

It had been a hectic fall. Bruce and Alfred had to do the work of sealing off the cave themselves; no hired workman could be trusted not to be too curious about the vast cavern underneath the green lawns of the Wayne property. Alfred had made a study of the art of masonry and what he was not able to do in terms of physical labor he more than compensated for with meticulous planning and execution. When, after a month, the work was done, Bruce called in architects and contractors and began the task of building an exact replica of the mansion that had been destroyed by fire.

The builders had gotten the foundation laid and part of the framing up when work was halted by the worst snowfall in ten years. Everyone agreed that winter was not the time for building and the job should be resumed in early March.

Bruce Wayne drove his Lamborghini into the city several times a month, often managing to put a dent in one of the fenders, and was seen filling the car’s shotgun seat with an assortment of models and actresses. None rode in the Lamborghini for more than a single evening, but all received lavish gifts soon after leaving it.

Alfred flew to England to spend Christmas with his niece and returned New Year’s Eve, just ahead of what Kassie Cane told her viewers was “Mama Nature dumping record amounts of the white stuff on poor old Gotham.”

By noon on New Year’s Day the snowfall had finally stopped. Bruce trudged to the skeleton of his home-to-be, plowing through waist-deep snow, carrying a sledgehammer. He smashed through one of the masonry seals he and Alfred had placed over the smallest access to the cave and, shining a penlight ahead of him, descended the winding staircase. He found what he was looking for and carried it up the steps and out, beyond the kitchen yard and the greenhouse.

From his room in the guesthouse, Alfred watched Bruce get a pickax and shovel left in the greenhouse by the builders and begin clearing snow from an area next to his father’s grave. Then he used the pick to break through the frozen dirt and began digging a hole.

Alfred put on his outdoor clothing and walked in Bruce’s footsteps to the gravesite. He arrived just as Bruce was putting a ragged garment in the hole.

“You’re burying the outfit you wore back from Kathmandu, Master Bruce?”

“I’m actually burying the bloodstain. It’s all that’s left of Rā’s al Ghūl.”

“And you’re putting these remains next to your father?”

“They both gave me my life. It seems fitting that they be buried together.”

“And do you mourn them together?”

“Yes. I do.”

It began to snow again as Bruce finished his task. He and Alfred stood over the three graves with bowed heads until the sky darkened.

For more than twenty years, editor and writer
D
ENNIS
O’N
EIL
put the “dark” in the Dark Knight and was the guiding force behind the Batman mythos at DC Comics. O’Neil began his career as Stan Lee’s editorial assistant at Marvel Comics and went on to become one of the industry’s most successful and respected creators. As a freelance writer and journalist, he has produced several novels and works of nonfiction, including the national bestseller
Batman: Knightfall
and
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics,
as well as hundreds of comic books, reviews, teleplays, and short stories. O’Neil has written for almost all of DC’s and Marvel’s major titles, including
Green Lantern, Shazam!, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Daredevil, Justice League of America,
and
Azrael.
An expert on comics, pop culture, and folklore/mythology, O’Neil is a popular guest at conventions and on radio and television. He lives and works in New York with his wife, Marifran.