Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King (7 page)

Diana glanced outside. The blue light was gone. A car pulled up, and a couple of latecomers crunched across the gravel to the front door. There was obviously no threat.

Diana turned away from the window as Vasily reached out to take her hand.

"Come, we will dance," he said with imperial authority, a man clearly not used to being refused. "I am sure our host will have some Russian music for us."

Diana smiled and followed him through the throng.

Outside, the prowling cat's attention had been caught by something near the end of the driveway. A small globule of blue light hovered in the air, darting between the trees, heading toward the lot next door. Motionless, the cat waited behind a neatly trimmed Japanese cherry tree, its eyes glinting with anticipation.

The blue light moved closer, and the cat leaped from its hiding place, one paw reaching up to slash it with unsheathed daws. As the cat connected with its prey, the globule pulsated suddenly and pain shot up the animal's leg. The cat gave an indignant screech, men turned tail and bounded back up the drive.

As if satisfied, the light bobbed and continued on its way.

St. James's Church had stood on this spot for a century and a half, long before the street had a name and the mansions were built. It was a small, compact building with barely enough space to hold the Sunday congregation, but its graveyard was immense.

The blue light zigzagged between some maple saplings, then arced over the wooden panel fence that separated the garden from the cemetery. As it hovered six feet above the neatly dipped grass between the sea of tombstones, lines of force began to emanate from its interior, like tiny streaks of lightning, the energy lines darted through the burial ground, homing in on the graves.

As the light touched each grave marker it expanded and brightened, causing a tracery of fine blue veins to sparkle and spread across the tombstones. An eerie silence fell, broken only by the hooting of a nearby owl and the occasional muffled peal of laughter from the party next door.

Suddenly, the lawn in front of one tombstone began to ripple slightly, as if something was trying to force its way up from below. A skeletal hand burst through the surface with sudden force, knocking a long-dried bunch of flowers off the grave. The ground heaved and buckled as, a hundred years after it had been laid to rest, a corpse began to hoist itself out of the ground.

Throughout the graveyard, the scene was repeated a score of times and more. Long-dead bodies, festooned with scraps of moldering grave-clothes, hauled themselves out of what should have been their final resting place. Their bony limbs jerked and shuddered spastically as they rose to their feet, eye sockets empty and sightless.

Responding to some unseen signal
from
the still-hovering globule of light, the zombie corpses turned as one and began to shuffle toward the mansion next door.

Joe Krane, the Westers' security guard, had heard the cat's scream. Karnak, it was called, a reference to Horace Wester's time as U.S. ambassador to Egypt. Joe always carried a couple of cat treats in his pocket when he was on night patrol, and over the months he and Karnak had become good friends. He called the cat's name now, unwrapping a fish-flavored treat–Karnak's favorite. But tonight the cat didn't come running to greet him.

There was a loud crash from a thick patch of rhododendrons that skirted the fence between Wester's property and the church. Puzzled, Joe moved toward the noise, playing his flashlight at ground level. Maybe Karnak had caught that squirrel he'd been stalking for weeks.

A dreadful stench assailed his nostrils, and Joe fought down the impulse to gag. Surely the cat hadn't dug up something in the graveyard? Pinching his nose against the pungent smell of decay, Joe cautiously pushed his way into the bushes.

"Karnak?" he whispered.

A vision of unspeakable horror appeared in his flashlight–a skeleton with a grinning skull, scraps of rotting flesh still clinging to its frame. Joe opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.

Before he could move, skeletal hands reached out from the darkness, grabbing at his arms and torso. Bony fingers closed around his throat, tightening with incredible strength until the world started to spin. Within seconds, blackness claimed him.

Inside, Vasily and Wonder Woman had just finished their dance. Diana couldn't honestly say that she was enjoying the party, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that she was doing her duty. Her mother, Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira, had appointed Diana ambassador to Man's World. It was her task to mingle with people, to share the millennia-long philosophy of the Amazon race, and to foster peace wherever she could.

Horace Wester came over to join them, red-faced from his efforts on the dance floor. He accepted a glass of punch, eager to discuss with Vasily the new joint-enterprise businesses they intended setting up in Moscow and New York. While the two men launched into a mutual tirade against over-enthusiastic government regulation, Diana smiled and made her excuses to leave.

The smash of breaking glass momentarily drowned out the Duke Ellington track playing on the stereo. Conversation died as party guests looked around quizzically, wondering if this was some new entertainment with which Horace and his wife were going to dazzle them.

Slowly the terrible stench of rotting flesh drifted into the high-ceilinged room.

Something's wrong!
The words screamed in Diana's mind as she strode quickly past the Westers' expressionless butler and headed down the hall toward the front entrance, wrinkling her nose against the growing smell.

She turned a corner and approached the mansion's opulent reception area. The opaque glass entrance door had been smashed beyond repair. Several zombie corpses had hauled the Westers' master of ceremonies to the polished parquet floor. Blood spouted from a dozen places on the dying man's body.

Diana ran forward, grabbing one of the skeletons from behind. She yanked it off the dignitary's still-twitching body, surprised at the strength of the creature's resistance, and hurled it against the wall. There was a hollow snapping of bone. A leg broke off entirely, and the corpse pitched to the floor. Diana stamped hard on its scrabbling fingers, then turned her attention to the others.

Normally, Wonder Woman preferred discussion to violence. Part of her mother's instructions had been that she should attempt to spread the message of peace on Earth. That was hard enough, among a species that seemed to delight in waging war against its fellow members. But how did you preach peace to murdering zombies?

Fortunately, the ancient gods had smiled upon Princess Diana. They endowed her with the power of superhuman strength, gave her the Golden Lasso of Truth, and provided the silver bracelets that had the ability to ward off any missile.

She thanked the gods silently, as three of the skeletons turned toward her. She saw jagged slivers of glass from the destroyed door, held like daggers in their fleshless hands. She dodged aside as the first zombie swung its weapon, deflecting the blow on the silver bracelet around her wrist Then her fist shot out in a savage punch that took the zombie full in what was once its face. The monster's skull shattered in an explosion of bone.

But the headless body didn't fall. It merely redoubled its efforts to skewer her as its companions joined in the attack.

Wonder Woman rained a series of heavy blows on her attackers, smashing the rib cage of one and completely snapping the arm off another. Their glass knives went flying. But even with limbs and skulls shattered, the corpses fought on. Hands that were almost as strong as hers clawed at her body, and bony fists knuckled into her with blows that hurt.

From the other end of the hallway, she heard the sound of more breaking glass, followed closely by the screams of the Westers' guests. Gritting her teeth, Wonder Woman stepped up her assault.

Her fists sought out target after skeletal target. Her foot kicked out and up, the sole of her red-and-white knee boots landing squarely on a corpse's thigh. The bone snapped and, unable to retain its balance, the corpse toppled sideways to the floor. Even as it landed, Wonder Woman's foot stamped down hard on its skull, smashing it to smithereens.

Thirty seconds later, the hallway was littered with broken, disconnected bones, and Wonder Woman was streaking back to the party and the ongoing screams.

Her heart sickened as she entered the room. A large group of zombies had barged in through the window, and at least half a dozen people lay dead or wounded on the thick Chinese carpet. Horace Wester was trying to wrestle a skeleton away from his wife, and Sergei Vasily was swinging a heavy, cut-glass lamp standard around his head, trying to hold several of the zombies at bay.

Wonder Woman plunged among them like a whirlwind, fists flashing and feet flying. Time and again her blows landed home, cracking bones and pulverizing skulls. The zombies tried to retaliate, but their strength–wherever they derived it from–wasn't up to the task.

On the sound system, the music of Duke Ellington still played, a surreal backdrop to the slaughterhouse that the Westers' home had become.

Soon, there was only one zombie left intact. It lurched toward Wonder Woman, the fractured bones of its companions crunching under its feet. Easily avoiding the creature's clutching hands, Wonder Woman unclipped the golden lasso that dangled from her waist. It spun in her hand, then dropped lightly over the zombie's skull and down to the bulge of its chest. She pulled the noose tight, and the creature halted in its tracks.

Forged from the girdle of the Earth goddess, Gaia, the magic Lasso of Truth forced anything caught by it to be rigorously honest.

"What power has resurrected you?" Wonder Woman demanded of the trapped zombie. "Why are you here?"

The monster's toothless mouth moved, as if it was trying to comply with her demand, but no sound issued from it.

Realizing that she would not get a response, Wonder Woman tugged hard on the lasso, yanking the zombie toward her, and her fist powered into its skull. Seconds later, it too was no more than a pile of disconnected bones littering the expensive carpet.

All around her were the sounds of moaning people. She heard Horace Wester speaking on the telephone, urgently calling for ambulances and police. Sergei Vasily was crouched on the floor, sobbing as he cradled the head of his lifeless girlfriend. The room was redolent with the reek of death.

Wonder Woman was filled with heavy sadness. Queen Hippolyta had also charged her daughter with safeguarding humans against any kind of outside attack.

Tonight, she had failed.

Keystone City

Kurt Glaser glanced at the bank of dials that comprised the dashboard in the cab of the subway train he was driving. Everything A-OK.

This was the last trip on his schedule, the long, winding journey from South Chever Station up under the city center and on to the suburbs. According to the monitors, he was precisely on time, not a second early or late. It was something Kurt prided himself on; in thirty years of conducting trains, he had come to know the Keystone City underground like the back of his hand. He knew the times, stops, and destinations of every train in the timetable.

The doors hissed shut with a low whoosh of pressurized air, and Kurt pushed the button that would electronically secure them until the next station. He heard the whistle from his rear-positioned guard, and engaged the engine. Slowly, the train pulled away from the platform and its garish lights.

Kurt sipped a soda and smiled softly to himself. The train reentered the tunnel, the cab's headlamps illuminating the gleaming rails ahead as they rolled into the darkness. This is where he was happiest, in the air-conditioned car as it sped underground, tunnel walls only a foot away on either side of the rushing engine. Kurt wasn't a big people person.

He didn't need the monitor map, with its pulsing lights, to tell him to slow for the signal ahead. After so much time, Kurt liked to think he could have driven any route blindfolded.

Behind the engine, the cars carried only a fraction of their rush-hour load: late workers heading back to the welcome of their families, a few homeless people coming in to the big shelter on Main Street.

The train slowed. Through the toughened glass window, Kurt saw the signal ahead blink from red to green. He eased up on the brakes, and the train effortlessly regained its speed.

As the train neared the signal, Kurt frowned and lowered the soda bottle from his lips. There was a bluish glow around it, casting a few sparks out into the surrounding darkness.

Looks like the signal's about to short out.
Kurt reached out to the radio mike that kept all drivers in constant touch with the centralized control system.
Better call it in
–

The thought died in midstream as Kurt's eyes opened wide in amazement. The mysterious blue light had detached itself from the signal and was hovering and pulsating six feet above the tracks.

"Kurt?" Section Controller Jack Icke's voice crackled from the cab speaker. "You have something to say, buddy?"

"Yeah, you bet," Kurt began. But scarcely had he got the words out when he broke off again.

The blue globe of light flew toward him at incredible speed and hurled itself at the cab window. Instinctively Kurt threw up one hand to protect himself. But the Plexiglas remained intact as the light passed right through it.

There was a tingle like static electricity as the ball touched his skin. Then Kurt's mind went blank, and his entire body spasmed with bone-deep pain as the globe of light sank into his flesh.

"Kurt? Kurt, you still there?" Jack Icke asked.

But Kurt Glaser
wasn't
there. His consciousness was stilled, his identity usurped. Whoever–or whatever–was controlling him reached out to crush the crackling intercom, splintering it into pieces. Warning lights flashed red on the monitor panel as the train's speed began to increase dramatically.

Wally West stood on the platform of the Blane Street subway station, the taste of Paloma's Pizza still tangy in his mouth. "Best in Town," Paloma's advertising claimed, and Wally couldn't disagree with that. He'd been to the football game, a dreary defensive ordeal mat could have been a classic if only both sides had opened up. At least the pizza was good.