The Further Adventures of The Joker (47 page)

He didn’t bother removing the Joker from the Batmobile. There wasn’t much point. He padded silently across the smooth floor, passing his many toys along the way, glancing briefly at the trophies near the far wall: the dinosaur, the giant penny, the huge grinning wild card hanging from the ceiling . . .

You see, Joker, here’s my problem. I can’t let you live anymore.

Grim-faced, he marched up the metal steps to the platform atop which his main console rested, and began tapping its keyboard before he could allow himself a chance to reconsider.

But neither can I live with the guilt of being your executioner.

He removed his glove and pressed his palm against the sensor. Immediately the lights in the cave shifted from yellow-white to a hellish red.

So the solution’s very simple, really.

His screens lit up, each displaying the same message: “IDENTITY VERIFIED. AUTODESTRUCT READY ENTER CODE.”

I’m ending it here and now.

Batman tapped more keys, ignoring the sweat on his lip. The sound of metal slabs sliding and closing resounded through the cavern. The screens answered: “CODE VERIFIED. CAVE SEALED. AUTODESTRUCT ARMED.”

For both of us.

He stared at the main monitor, heart feeling as if it would pound its way through his chest.

“INITIATE COUNTDOWN.”

. . . and he saw Barbara, condemned to a wheelchair for the rest of her life because of a bullet the monster had sent blasting through her spine. And Jason, brutally murdered half a world away. Sammy Levant, grinning lifelessly from the gutter. Children all over Gotham dying horribly. A legion of grinning corpses paraded across his vision, and now Leslie—

His hand hovered over the last button, shaking.

Do it.

He felt her arms holding him for the first time, her voice echoing softly in his ear as he wept on her shoulder. “Come with me . . . I’ll do what I can.”

“INITIATE COUNTDOWN.”

Do it.

“No!” he screamed, and smashed his fist into the screen. Glass shattered and sparks flew. Blood flowed from his broken hand. His eyes and teeth clenched in agony, though the pain had little to do with fractured bone.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “God forgive me, I can’t . . .” He turned away from the console and wept into his other hand, steadying himself against the platform railing. “I can’t give him the final victory.”

There was a tiny click behind him. Batman turned and saw the Joker standing next to the keyboard, his index finger still pressed against the destruct-engage.

“Then I’ll just have to take it, old sport,” he whispered softly.

“AUTODESTRUCT INITIATED. X-MINUS 59 SECONDS.”

Grinning, the Joker swung a metal pipe he’d procured, impacting solidly with Batman’s jaw, sending him backward over the railing and down ten feet onto a steel worktable. The impact bruised his hip, but he managed to avoid landing on his broken hand.

Above him, the Joker leaped off the railing, his laughter echoing through the cave.

Batman got a leg up in time, caught the Joker in the abdomen as he fell, and swung hard, sending the maniac through the air and crashing onto the hood of one of the other cars.

Batman got into a crouch atop the table, his eyes flashing quickly up to the screens.

“X-MINUS 43 SECONDS.”

He cursed. Brilliant idea, Batman, bypassing the abort command. The Joker looked hurt. The impact had jarred his back, judging from the way he squirmed atop the car. But it might mean Batman had a chance to save them both, if he could get them into the all-terrain vehicle, smash their way out . . .

His leg nearly gave when he leaped onto the floor. Hip was in worse shape than he realized. Forget it. Move.

The Joker was moaning. Nice sound. Batman grabbed him by the front of the shirt with his one good hand and dragged him off the car. The maniac struggled, trying to get some solid footing.
Not as injured as he wanted me to believe.
Batman pulled him closer. “Get this straight,” he spat into the Joker’s face, “We aren’t dying in here.”

“Oh, so fickle,” the Joker admonished. Then he grinned. “I think I’m in love.” Without warning he brought both arms up and smashed his fists into Batman’s ears.

Batman recoiled, lost his hold. The Joker scrambled across the cave, searching frantically for a weapon among the trophies.

Batman watched him as his head cleared. Madman. The screens blazed: “X-MINUS 14 SECONDS.” Damn him to hell. No time. But as he watched, a possibility came into his mind, and desperately his hand groped his belt, found his Batarang, and sent it whizzing across the cave. It caught the Joker near his left shoulder, its razored end sinking deep into the flesh beneath the collarbone. He screamed and fell to his knees beside the giant penny.

Batman rushed toward him as the seconds ran down, slamming his shoulder hard against the penny, grabbing the Joker even as it fell against the rocky wall and wedged itself there, holding steady at sixty degrees to the floor. Then the world began to shake and the sky began to fall, as carefully placed explosives throughout the cave split thousands of tons of stone loose from the bedrock beneath Wayne Manor, and the darkness descended.

The moment the chandeliers began to ring, Alfred knew. He started running through the old manor even as the tremor cut through it, feeling the rumble subside just as he reached his private office.

He found his personal elevator to the cave inoperable. Even the bookcase that camouflaged it refused to open. Rushing to his desk, he frantically powered up his personal computer and tried to link up with the cave mainframe.

“ACCESS DENIED,” it told him.

Alfred muttered something very old and profane as he tried the override, using his password. He tapped in, “FRIDAY.”

After several torturous seconds, the screen responded. “HELLO, ALFRED. HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”

Alfred leaned forward. “LOCATE WAYNE,” he instructed.

“UNABLE TO COMPLY. ALL PRIMARY SYSTEMS DOWN. 91% OF HIGHER FUNCTIONS DISABLED.”

He hesitated. “SPECIFY CAUSE OF SYSTEMS FAILURE.”

“IMPLEMENTATION OF AUTODESTRUCT PROGRAM.”

He stared at the screen, his fears confirmed. “My God,” he murmured. He leaned back in his chair and silently considered what to do next.

With his one good hand he fumbled for his utility belt in the darkness, drawing out a small cylindrical device. He pressed two switches on it, and there was light.

Batman’s gamble had paid off. They were both alive, albeit trapped in a pocket of air. The penny, once wedged against the wall, had shielded them from the cave-in after he’d dragged them under it, although Batman couldn’t be certain the giant coin’s steel core would hold for any length of time under tons of rock. Still, for now at least, it looked secure, looming over them like a great copper lean-to.

How long had he been unconscious? An hour? Two, perhaps? Off to one side, the Joker lay on his back, his legs pinned by a large slab of stone. Batman found a soft spot in the opposite wall and inserted the dark end of the lighting device into it. Then he turned his attention on his foe.

“Before you say anything,” the Joker said, wincing in pain, “I want you to know I don’t think I’ll ever understand what you see in all this cave nonsense.”

Batman ignored him and checked out the slab. At least five hundred pounds, easily. At his best, he might manage it. But in his current shape, with a broken hand . . .

He put his shoulder against a convenient spot and heaved anyway. No luck.

“How touching,” the Joker gasped. “But a moot gesture, old sport, unless you were planning to tunnel us out barehanded.”

“How’re your legs?”

The Joker grinned. “That’s a joke, right? You loathsome monstrosity, I knew you had it in you.” He winced again. The Batarang still protruded from his shoulder. The left side of his tailcoat was drenched with blood. Batman considered removing it, but it would probably only worsen the wound.

He stood up and looked around, listening. He could still hear dust falling. “We’ve got an air supply, at least for a while. Must be another cavity nearby.”

“Comforting. I take it you’ll be moving out soon? If not, call room service and tell them I demand another room.” He laughed.

Batman turned to him. “Shut up.”

The Joker only laughed harder.

“Stop laughing,” Batman snapped.

“And what if I don’t?” the Joker giggled. “What’re you gonna do? Break my legs?” After that, he became hysterical.

Batman bent to one knee and hissed in his face. “I have a thousand other ways to add to your pain, Joker. Don’t tempt me.”

The Joker looked into his eyes and smiled affectionately, but he did stop laughing. Batman sat down against the wall and watched him silently.

“I don’t suppose you have a deck of cards?” the Joker said.

Batman merely glared at him.

“Forget I asked.”

“You’re in such a talkative mood.” Batman said slowly, “why not answer a few questions?”

The Joker made a sour face. “Oh, like what? What makes me tick? What is it that I really want? Won’t I let you help me? Spare me, Bats. We’ve had this conversation before. Don’t bore me again. It would really only drive me crazy.” His face contorted. “Besides, why are you suddenly so relaxed? You’re acting like you’ve got all the time in the world.”

Batman shrugged. “I’m not bleeding to death.”

“You’re a very sick person, you know that, Bats? And I’m supposed to talk to you—?”

“All right, fine,” he said, and suddenly leaned forward. “Then just answer me this: why the children, Joker? Why Leslie?”

“Bats, you know, you’re a real turn-on when you’re intense, anybody ever tell you that?”

“Answer me.”

“All we need to do now is to get you to develop a slightly less perverse sense of humor.”

“Why the children?”

“You know, I heard this story once—stop me if you’ve heard this one. Seems there was this traveling salesman selling semiautomatic whitefish door to door—”

“Why Leslie?”

“She was my mother!”
the Joker shouted.

Batman stared at him, frozen. “What . . . ?”

The Joker wasn’t smiling. “My mother,” he repeated, more softly this time.

Batman’s hand lashed out and gripped him by the throat. “You filthy, lying—”

The Joker chuckled breathlessly. “Oh, no, Bats,” he said calmly. “I don’t need to lie. I’m bleeding to death, remember? Besides, the truth’ll hurt you far worse than my lies ever could.”

Batman’s teeth clenched. His hand tightened.

The Joker appeared unruffled. “Of course, if you strangle me now, you’ll never hear the rest of it, and I know you, you cowled horror: that’ll haunt you to your dying day—” His eyes rolled around at their surroundings, and he grinned. “—which is starting to look as if that may not be long after mine.”

“I was ready to kill us both,” he snarled.

“Oh, who’re you kidding? Contrary to common belief, Bats, ready and willing are two entirely different things. When push came to shove, you just didn’t have the stomach for it. Poor dear. You had such potential, too.”

Batman loosened his grip and leaned back. He waited.

The Joker chuckled. “Ah, what a guy you are, Bats. My father was quite a guy, too, you know. But he didn’t have to terrorize criminals to make it through the day. No, his wife and child were all the victims he needed. His outlook was simple: life was cruel. But it wasn’t until years after I murdered him that I realized what an incredible genius he was.”

Batman struggled to keep his voice level. “You mean, you . . . you killed your own father?”

“Well, I admit I may have been a little hasty, but I was only eight at the time and, well, you know how kids are . . .”

“How?” Batman demanded softly. “How could you kill your own father?”

“Hmm . . . I think his causing my mother to miscarry while he was in a drunken rage might’ve had something to do with it. But who can say, really? Memories are such deceitful little buggers. They play little cat-and-mouse games with you if you aren’t careful. But anyway, as I was saying, I was frightfully young when it all happened, and I suppose I did the dirty deed out of love for my mother.

“Oh, yes, Bats, don’t you ever doubt it for a moment. I loved my mother with a vengeance (as I ended up proving quite literally when I brained the old man). She was my whole life, and I’d have done anything for her. Anything. And when the beast she married made her lose the baby, I killed for her.”

He was silent a moment, his eyes becoming vacant as he shook his head and chuckled. “Women. Go figure them. Doesn’t matter who they are. You give them what you know deep down they want, nine times out of ten they lose interest. I mean, do you understand them?”

Batman said nothing.

The Joker stared at him, breathing hard.
“She left me!”
he screamed. “I killed for her and she left me! She couldn’t even bear to look at me, the deceitful cow! The cops and the doctors even helped her! They put me in a nuthouse for eight years, and she never once cared enough to find out about me. Never!

“Of course, by the time they let me out. I’d been filled up with so many of their drugs and rehab treatments. Most of my memories became suppressed. Gone but not forgotten, as it were. They could only bury them, not purge them. And shortly after I got out, I came across an old Gotham City newspaper, and there she was, like a sign from God, on the front page. Different name now, but the same face, even after eight years.
My mother,
comforting this cute little rich boy whose parents had just been gunned down in the street.” He locked eyes with Batman. “Can you, can you imagine for a moment what that did to me, to see her with another child? A stranger? After running away from me in
horror?
Do you have any idea of the pain in seeing her arms around him while that snot-nosed little brat cried on her shoulder?”

Batman went on staring, holding very still. The Joker’s breathing was getting very ragged, his blood-loss becoming critical.

“After that it all came back to me. I followed her to Gotham City . . . But you know, Bats, I actually tried to forget for a while, to get on with my life . . . I watched from a distance, I waited, and I stayed away . . . But then, of course, you and I met, and I think then I finally realized how right my father was . . . about everything . . . and I hated her for what she did to me . . . for having so much love and understanding to offer so many strangers over so many years . . . hundreds of children, maybe thousands . . . but nothing for her own son. Nothing for me! . . . And then the unkindest cut of all . . . She befriended you . . .
You,
the horror responsible for turning me into this . . . this
thing! How could she do that
?