Batman: No Man's Land

by Alan Grant

• ISBN13: 9780671038298
• ISBN10: 067103829X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Pocket Books

Summary

It's been three months since an earthquake almost destroyed Gotham City. Three months since nearly every decent person left, the city sealed off from the rest of the world by the federal government. Three months since Gotham fell into the hands of street gangs and the world's most dangerous criminals: Penguin. The Joker. Poison Ivy. Two-Face. Evil rules. And Batman is nowhere to be found.

Excerpts

Chapter 1

From Oracle's Log: No Man's Land, Day 91.

The midnight air is crisp, the moon bright. From the window of my hideout, high in the Clock Tower, Gotham City stretches out around me like a ghost town.

Streets that once teemed with people are deserted and still. Not a single vehicle moves along them; there probably isn't a gallon of gasoline left in the entire city, and besides, most roads remain blocked with rubble from the earthquake. It feels strange, seeing a place that once was so alive, now abandoned and empty.

But it's the silence that affects me most profoundly. Once the night was full of noise -- people laughing and talking, car horns blaring, snatches of music streaming from bars and radios. Now, the only sound to break the stillness is the occasional pop of a distant gun being fired, although it doesn't happen often. Like food and water, bullets are in short supply.

I used to hate the noise. Sometimes, when I wanted to think, I'd close the double-glazed windows to try and shut it all out. Now, I'd give anything to hear those sounds again. I never realized silence could be so depressing.

It's been three months since Black Monday, the day the Feds evacuated the population. Over the course of forty-eight hours, millions of refu-gees streamed out over the bridges and through the tunnels, before the Na-tional Guard destroyed them. The newly passed federal law made it illegal for anyone to stay behind; for the first time in my life, I broke the law. How could I go? I grew up here in Gotham. I love this city, warts and all.

And I wasn't the only one to stay in the ruins. My father, Police Commissioner James Gordon, didn't go; he and my stepmother, Sarah Essen, are still at their apartment less than forty blocks away. Along with the many cops who, through loyalty or just plain pigheadedness, remained with them, they're fighting hard to reestablish law in a place where law no longer exists.

But I haven't seen either of them in three months. They know I'm here, but they just can't reach me. Criminal gangs control the streets between us, and heaven help any outsider they find on their turf. Gang warfare erupted the moment the city was cut off. Through fear or force of arms, each gang laid claim to however much territory it was able to hold.

Other people stayed, too, thousands of old people, orphans, illegal immigrants, all the dispossessed who never had much of a life in Gotham anyway, and who wouldn't face anything better outside it. The gangs have become their new owners.

Worst of all was the news from Arkham Asylum -- the home for the criminally insane. Two days before the bridges came down, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham threw open the doors and set his patients free. I can't blame him, really; he had no food for them, no power, no medication to keep the inmates under control. I know he had to make a terrible decision: keep these psychotic criminals locked up and watch them slowly starve to death, or release them, knowing they'd head straight back for the city that spawned them. Jeremiah is a good man at heart; in his place, I'd probably have done the same thing.

It didn't help Gotham any, though, to have maniacs like the Joker, Two-Face, and Poison Ivy descend on it all at once. Most of them had been gang leaders before they were caught and locked up in Arkham; now, like medieval warlords, they stake their claims to what they see as their turf, and fight with tooth and claw to keep it.

Two-Face has taken City Hall for his headquarters. Poison Ivy has camped out in Robinson Park. Penguin has set himself up as a sort of Fixer Supreme; from his base in the Iceberg Casino he trades and barters, swapping food and bullets for matches and batteries. Black Mask and his False Face gang have taken over the Fashion District, and the psychotic team of the Ventriloquist and Scarface has an iron grip on Newtown. There have been no definite sightings of the Joker, though rumor is he's cutting a swath of madness and death through Burnley and Otisburg in the northern sectors.

Joker...I wince at the very thought of him, and have to bite back my hatred.

I glance away from the window, down at my paralyzed legs, and a stab of regret shoots through me. I remember the way it used to be....

No one, not even Dad, suspected that I, Barbara Gordon, was the avenger who called herself Batgirl. I remember the wind in my face as I swung through

the canyons of Gotham's streets, and the song in my heart that told me I was alive and doing what I'd always wanted: fighting crime my own way.

Then came that terrible night when the Joker shot me in the back. The bullet lodged in my spine and my leg muscles just...died. No more would I take to the night air in my costume. My days of trading punches with the likes of Catwoman and Killer Croc were over forever.

It took me a long time to overcome the bitterness and resentment I felt, but finally I managed. If I couldn't be an action hero, I'd make myself into a hero of another kind. I became Oracle, the all-seeing eye. I established networks of informers to feed me news about the criminals. I acted as point person for Batman and his crime-fighting partners, Nightwing and Robin. Slowly but surely I rediscovered my happiness and self-esteem.

So when the Feds announced the city was to be evacuated, I knew I couldn't go. My computers run on solar-powered batteries, the only operational ones in the city. The data they contain is invaluable in fighting against the dark-ness that has settled upon us: maps of the city, the roads above and the sewers below; locations of secret underground food stashes and the old fallout shelters; files on every criminal who's ever broken a Gotham law.

Now I trade my knowledge with my informants, telling them where to find food as long as they promise to give me my share. Ironic, really -- I'm still the all-seeing eye, only these days I don't see very far. Maybe I should change

my name to the Chronicler. After all, someone has to record what's happening here...and no one's better placed to do it than I am.

If only I were still Batgirl! The city needs heroes now more than it ever did, but there are few around. I've heard that the Huntress, a ruthless vigilante, is still operating close by, but she's the only one. Batman ordered Robin to leave the day before Black Monday. Looking after the newly relocated, he's out in the suburbs, across the bay, only five or six miles away. But it might as well be a million.

Nightwing returned to his own territory, the port of Blüdhaven, also swollen with refugees. He's badly needed there.

As for Batman...I haven't heard from him for ninety-one long, bleak days and nights. No one knows where he is. There have been no sightings, no reports. For me, Batman and Gotham

were always inseparable. When the city needed help, he was always there. But not now.

I can't believe he's abandoned us. And if he hasn't...then where is he in our darkest hour?

The few thousand ordinary citizens that are left have almost forgotten Batman even existed. "If ever there was a Batman," they say, "he must have died in the quake."

I tuck my blanket more tightly around my useless legs, and look back out the window of the Clock Tower. The temperature has dropped, and moonlight gleams off the frost that covers the toppled buildings. Thick, dark clouds are rolling in from the north.

Soon, the first flakes of snow will start to fall. It's going to be a long, hard winter.

"Snow!" Zim Benson cursed. Impatiently, he brushed away the flakes that had fallen on the denim patch he wore on the breast of his jacket -- the patch that proclaimed he was a member of the Street Demonz gang. "Snow's all we need!"

"No big deal, man." At Zim's side, his fellow gang member Genghis grinned in evil anticipation. He pointed toward the wooden slats nailed up over the windows of a derelict apartment building. They could just make out a dim light inside, flickering between the cracks in the window boards. "It's occupied. Means heat -- and food!"

Zim hefted the nail-studded club he held in his right hand. "Then let's do it, and quick! I'm freezin'!"

The two Demonz moved swiftly across the road, their footsteps deadened by the thin carpet of snow. "Hit hard and fast" was their gang's motto -- and the burly, shaven-headed Genghis lived up to those words as he shoulder-charged the thin slats that barred the doorway. They gave way with a loud crack; then he and Zim were inside.

"Madre de Dios!" a small, wiry man gasped in Spanish, and reached out for the iron bar leaning against the wall close to him. Zim's club swung in a wild arc and smashed into the man's shoulder. The man shrieked and fell back clutching the wound.

Genghis grinned as flickering candlelight illuminated the scene. The man, two women, and three children squatted in a circle on the floor, the three cans of beans they were about to share in the center. "Told ya, Zim -- food!" Genghis's eyes lit up with anticipation. "And where there's a little, there's a lot. Right, granma?"

The old woman looked up at him through frightened eyes. "Por favor, señor," she began, but Genghis cut her off sharply.

"Immigrants, huh? Illegals, I'll bet." He threw a glance round the dilapidated apartment. "So what else ya got stashed away here? Batteries? Clothes?"

"Hey, we can take the clothes they're wearin'," Zim suggested. He raised his club threateningly toward the terrified children. "Give us everythin' ya got‹or th' kids get it!"

No one moved. Then Zim and Genghis whirled back toward the door as a hard, authoritative voice snapped from the doorway: "Gotham City Police! Drop your weapons!"

Commissioner James Gordon stood there in classic ready-to-fire pose, both hands holding his gun steady. Flanking him on each side were

two other officers. Sergeant Harvey Bullock gripped a tire iron in his hand, while Renee Montoya spun a heavy length of chain in slow, menacing circles.

Zim and Genghis hadn't survived this long without knowing when they were beaten. The club and Genghis's knife clattered to the floor.

"Now," Gordon hissed quietly, "take off your clothes and get out of here."

"B-but it's snowin' outside," Genghis began to protest.

"It's what you were going to do to these poor folks," Gordon grimly broke in. "Tit for tat, that's the law now. So get naked, and get out. And tell your gang that this block is now in G.C.P.D. hands. Blue Boy turf. Anyone who breaks the law here will answer to us. Understand?"

Zim and Genghis nodded miserably as they stripped down to their shorts. Without another word they exited the broken doorway. Jim Gordon watched as they hurried off down the street, arms clasped across their chests in an effort to keep warm. Behind him, Montoya was talking to the family in Spanish, reassuring them they were now safe.

Under Gordon's command, the twenty or so police officers who'd stayed behind on Black Monday were expanding their territory.

Gordon stuck a hand in his overcoat pocket, and pulled out a spray can. Holding it a foot from the outside wall, he pressed his finger down on the release button. A thin jet of blue paint shot out, tracing "G.C.P.D." in large letters. Tagging, the gang boys called it. Marking their territory. Establishing turf. As if they were criminals, not cops.

He blanked the thought from his mind. These weren't normal times. The only law in Gotham was the law that he and his men brought. If this was how they had to do it, then so be it.

"Commissioner!" A thin young cop was coming toward him, wiping snow away from his thick glasses.

"What is it, Wilson?"

"Look what I've made!" Wilson held up a large flashlight. Taped across the glass was a cut-out stencil in the shape of a bat. "Watch, sir!"

Wilson flicked the on switch, and a powerful beam of light leapt into the night. Where it struck the wall, thirty feet above their heads, it showed the distinct figure of a bat. "Just like the old Bat-Signal. If Batman is in the city, this'll get his attention!"

Wilson looked to his boss's face, expecting grateful approval. Instead, what he saw there stunned him into silence.

"No!" Gordon's hand shot out, striking the makeshift signal from Wilson's grip. The glass cracked as it fell to the sidewalk and the light went out. "There is no more Batman," he said between clenched teeth, his voice as icy as the street itself. "Batman gave up on Gotham, like everybody else. He doesn't need us, so we don't need him! We're taking this city back -- and we're doing it on our own!"

Turning on his heel, he stalked away.

"What was that all about?" Wilson asked, incredulous. "I thought the boss and Batman were friends?"

"They were," Harvey Bullock said gruffly. "But the Commish thinks the Bat-guy's deserted him. After all they've been through together, he feels betrayed. And I gotta say," Bullock finished passionately, "I don't blame him!"

Halfway across the desolate city, a three-time loser known only as Skunk crept through deep shadows toward a badly damaged building. Skunk had always been a parasite, stealing what he could, where he could, to make a living. It was harder in No Man's Land, but so what? There were still enough chumps left for him to prey on.

Earlier today he'd heard noises from inside the building. Now he meant to find out who had caused them, and what they were doing -- and the foot-long bayonet he carried in one hand would convince whoever it was to cooperate.

The snow was thinning now as the wind drove the clouds out to the south. Suddenly the moon was visible again‹and Skunk gasped as he saw what its light revealed.

Painted on the wall was a tag. This was someone's turf. But not just anyone's. The tag was sprayed in the stylized shape of a bat.

Gotta be a trick, Skunk thought. There ain't no Batman no more!

Despite the thought, he looked nervously up...and his heart almost stopped. Silhouetted against the moon was a dark figure, the jagged edges of its cape blowing in the wind like the wings of some supernatural beast.

Batman!

Skunk had never run so fast in his life.

Copyright © 2000 by DC Comics