Wayne of Gotham (31 page)

“
I ran down Peterson's Ravine. I could hear him close at my heels. I was panicked and uncertain as to just what …”

Batman reached forward, pressing the stop button on the far right-hand side.

The tape reels stopped moving. The sound died in the hall.

Batman looked down at the tape reel. The clear plastic was yellowing, as was the label, but it was still legible.

T. Wayne—Apocalypse Observations / #3 of 12.

There were seven boxes next to the tape machine … including the empty one.

Batman pushed the rewind lever to the left. The tape spooled backward onto the reel. Batman pushed the selector back into the middle just as the tape cleared the recording/playback heads, slapping freely only a few revolutions before stopping. He removed the reel from the spindle and set it back in the empty box, closing the lid. Then he stepped over to one of the unconscious Confederate soldiers lying bound on the floor of the ruined ballroom and took his map bag from him. He returned to the record, Amanda still over his shoulder, and stuffed the tapes into the bag.

His hands were shaking the entire time.

He walked toward the soaped pane of the French doors, opened them, and walked into the chill night. With Amanda and the tapes, he walked across the weed-choked grounds into the bordering woods and down into Peterson's Ravine, and its cave.

Cave / Wayne Manor / Bristol / 11:59 p.m. / October 26, 1958

Thomas was soaked to the skin.

The old underground lake that had created the caverns in the first place had long since shifted. The cavern entrance itself became the drainage point for the lake, a river flowing out into the ravine beyond. The entrance was easy enough to find simply by following the river, though, and being in the untamed area of the Wayne Estate, only a few had discovered it. Thomas hated the place with his soul but was desperate. He plunged blindly into its maw, splashing noisily up the waterway and into the darkness.

“You cannot escape yourself, Thomas!” Disciple's voice echoed slightly as it came into the cavern from behind Dr. Wayne. “I've grown beyond you now … become something greater than you had hoped or knew possible.”

Thomas knew that was, unfortunately, partially true. He had seen the carnage in the laboratory and read the reports. The virus he and Richter had unleashed had unpredictable results in its genetic reprogramming, but in general, the results were consistent: they enhanced and magnified a number of set characteristics. Those infected seemed to be more flamboyant, taking on extreme dress, uniforms, or costumes as an outward expression of their inner vision of themselves. Certain genetic predispositions also were exaggerated disproportionately—strength or dexterity or mental acuity in certain areas or reasoning. Ethics, morality, and social connections—the primary focus of their behavioral modification—proved to be the most volatile.

A volatility that was, in Thomas's medical opinion, quite likely to get him killed.

I can fix this. If I can just reason with Denholm … or at least force him back into the laboratory. Jarvis secured it, but it's still there. Then I could fix this—fix Denholm and the others and make it right.

The virus had not yet jumped from the hosts—he was sure of that. There were only four members of the Apocalypse, and no additional reports of other vigilantes or aberrant criminals, for that matter. The disease seemed to be restricted to the bloodstream thus far. All he had to do was contain them, hold them, and find a cure. All he had to do—

“Thomas, what's wrong?” Denholm's voice echoed into the cavern. It was closer now, near the entrance. “You wanted me to be
good.
You wanted me to exact
justice
on the guilty, didn't you?”

Thomas felt his way further into the cavern. He knew instinctively that there was a small alcove just to the right of the entrance. His father had forced him enough times to find it in the pitched blackness of the cave. He swallowed hard and then plunged down the tunnel, his right fingertips running along the cold, slick, and irregular surface of the wall until it dropped away into an abyss to his right. Thomas stepped into the void and stopped.

He could hear the bats waking.

“That's what I've done, Thomas,” Denholm's voice rebounded throughout the cavern. “I've discovered the guilty of Gotham, and it was a revelation … a pure, brilliant revelation. Thugs, mobsters, thieves, robbers … they're just the branches, Thomas. They're leaves that vanish in the fall and are born again in spring.”

Thomas felt awkwardly behind himself, hoping the cavern wall was still where he remembered it … where his father had forced him to find it.

“You know,” Disciple said in a smooth, low voice just above the sound of the river water rushing around him, “I grieve for the innocent, too. Those orphans that died in the fire—it was a terrible tragedy, a crime of unprecedented horror and callous cruelty. I wept for them. I wept for them all.”

Patrick Wayne had a single refuge from his life. It had been coming down to this cave, where he could hide his drunken rages in the darkness and take them out on the bats overhead. He had returned often right up until the day he died, always leaving the tools of his private fury well oiled and ready.

“And I died with them, Thomas; you made sure of that,” Denholm chuckled. “You burned away the impurities in my dark soul, killed everything that I once had been. Now I'll do the same for others, Thomas, just as you wanted me to do.”

Thomas felt the cold, smooth steel behind him just where his father had left it.

“I've arisen like a phoenix from the ashes you made of me, dear Thomas,” Denholm's voice resounded through the cavern.

Thomas ran his fingers down the barrel. He felt the mounts old Patrick had installed just above the action bar. The corrugated tube fixed parallel to the barrel, flaring wide at the end. The glass lens felt intact. He could only hope the batteries were still good.

“And who will pay for the screams of those children? Celia, who embezzled the money in the first place?”

Thomas gritted his teeth, his hands shaking as they closed around the mounted flashlight, feeling for the switch.

“Or perhaps Martha,” Denholm murmured. “Dear Martha Kane, whose blind desire to assuage her own guilty conscience provided the money that fueled the fires of greed and desperation? Yes … she played a part in those children's deaths. She must pay, too.”

In a motion, Thomas picked up the shotgun, using its upward momentum to cycle the pump-action. He held the heavy weapon against his hip with his right hand as he used his left to shove the switch forward along the length of the flashlight mounted to the gun barrel. The light brightened at once, its beam cutting a narrow circle of illumination through the void.

Denholm turned toward the light.

He was smiling at his prey from the other side of the cavern, the underground river flowing between them.

“
Stand up. Damn it, boy
!”

His father's voice emerged through the ringing in Thomas's ears.

“
That's no way to hold a gun
!”

“It's going to be all right, Denholm,” Thomas said, his voice lacking the strength of his words even as he said them from behind the barrel of the shotgun. The light from the flashlight continued to dance shifting shadows across Denholm's still-masked face. “I'm going to take you somewhere … somewhere safe … and we'll figure this out. I'll make it right—”

“Make it RIGHT?” Denholm said through a vicious smile. “You made ME to make it RIGHT!”

“
Hell or high water, boy, I'm going to make a man out of you
!”

“Denholm, please,” Thomas said, the light flickering atop the shotgun. His hands were sweating. “Just come with me. We'll go up to the house. I can help you.”

“No, Thomas,” Denholm's smile was malevolent. “It's me who's going to help you. It's in my blood—you put it in my blood.”

“What?”

“The virus,” Denholm said. “The gift. It lives in my veins. I'm going to give you that gift, Thomas. I'm going to give it to the world.”

“
There are only two kinds of people in this world: the hunters and the hunted—and you had better make up your mind right now that you're going to hunt
!”

Denholm took a step into the river, the water splashing up around the costume tights. The ridiculous, scalloped cape flared behind him as he moved. The scarf mask had bunched up at the side of his head, forming small, pointed folds. In Thomas's nervous state, he looked like a Sunday comics version of a bat.

“
It's kill or be killed out there—not like that comic book world you live in
!”

“Denholm, you're not well,” Thomas said, his voice quavering. The gun felt slippery in his hands. The old batteries in the flashlight mounted next to the barrel were failing, causing the pool of light around Denholm to yellow and dim. “Please, just come with me and I can cure this.”

“Come with you? But I've come
for
you, Thomas—my dear, doubting Thomas. Never truly committed to the faith of the convictions you espoused … always questioning yourself. But I've come to end your doubt, Thomas,” Denholm the Disciple spoke from the dimming pool of light around him. “I've come to purge you of all that, Thomas, just as I've purged the souls of so many others. I'll purify you, too, dear Thomas. You can be free of guilt, free of fear. I've ushered many tortured souls into that peace … a peace that you brought to me, dear Thomas … and which I now return to you.”

“
And you're gonna learn how to kill today, son. You're gonna kill
something!”

Thomas remembered to stand across the weapon, bracing against the back foot, pressing his shoulder hard into the stock. “Please, Denholm … I just want to help.”

“You're sick, Thomas,” Denholm snarled. “I'm going to
cure
you!”

“
Be a man
! Show me
you're a man
!”

Thomas had released the safety without thinking.

The cartoon bat leaped at him from the water's edge.

“
DO IT
!”

Thomas did not hear the gun discharge. He felt the sudden blow to his shoulder, his body bending and absorbing the recoil of the blast. His eyes opened to see the gaping hole in the costume's chest, the crimson stain blossoming outward like a tide across the cloth. Denholm reeled with the impact, staggering back to the river's edge.

“
Kill or be killed …”

Tears were streaming down Thomas's face. Part of his mind was examining the wound in Denholm's chest, spinning through the steps necessary to have any chance of saving the patient. Broken ribs … punctured lungs … internal hemorrhaging …

“
Atta boy! Show me
!”

Thomas pumped a second shell into the breach, barely in time. Denholm, enraged, charged at him again, blood flowing down his chest, streaming from between his bared teeth.

The shotgun's roar echoed throughout the cavern. Thomas was not nearly as ready for it this time as before, the kick of the weapon nearly wrenching it out of his hands. The impact caught Denholm in the shoulder, spinning him around. He caught himself before falling, turned again, and screamed.

Thomas had regained his footing, the shell casings flying out of the ejector from the pump shotgun. Thomas yelled with every shot, his voice drowned out by the stream of explosions from the barrel of the gun. After the sixth shell ejected, Thomas pulled the trigger on an empty barrel.

Denholm was gratefully face down in the river, no longer recognizable from the carnage dealt by Thomas's hand. His body floated with the river a short way before hanging on the rocks at the cave's entrance.

Thomas walked out where the river flowed around the body of Denholm Sinclair, the shotgun now held loosely in his right hand. Thomas had promised to take care of him for Martha. It had all gone so wrong. He looked down at the body; the water was dark in the moonlight.

Denholm's virus-infected blood was washing down the stream, toward the Gotham River and the lit towers of the city beyond.

Batcave / Wayne Manor / Bristol / 8:59 p.m. / Present Day

“
… ended any hope of containing the Richter virus to those who had been infected. As I watched his blood flow down the stream I realized the effects of the virus could be spread by contact with the infected blood or through other similar agents. I also knew that there were three more carriers still loose in the city …”

The mansion phone was ringing.

Bruce sat at his terminal in the Batcave listening to the continuation of the tape. It had taken him a while to locate an old reel-to-reel deck, but now it was playing the tape back into the cave. He had shed the heavily damaged Batsuit; its power was completely drained and the exomuscular system completely compromised. He was hearing the voice of a father he now realized he had never really known.

The mansion phone continued to ring.

“
… Jarvis once again insisted on taking care of the problem, and I have wondered since if there was some ulterior motive behind his efforts. He certainly is the one man who had more leverage on me than I care to acknowledge. I suppose part of my reasons for making this record is so that my sons may not be threatened after my passing—so that the blame and the responsibility for all that has happened should rest on my shoulders rather than theirs …”

Bruce was slowly aware of the sound, wondering vaguely why Alfred did not pick up the phone. Then he remembered. He toggled the tape machine to stop and picked up the receiver.

“Wayne Estate,” he said flatly.

“Yes, I … uh … I apologize for calling, but I was wondering if you might help me. I'm trying to get in touch with someone.”

“Nurse Doppel?” Bruce said the words more as a statement than a question.