Batman 2 - Batman Returns (4 page)

Gordon stopped talking into the police radio.

Gotham Plaza had gone crazy.

The giant package burst open. Three men on motorcycles roared out, right into the crowd. People tried to run, screaming, frantic to get away from the growling engines.

A fourth cycle ripped out of the side of the box, jumped the railing above the plaza and landed in the middle of the crowd gathered for the tree lighting.

Some of the people didn’t make it, and were flattened or tossed aside by the marauding cycles. A fifth cyclist emerged from hiding to follow the first three. The crowd was too tightly packed. They had nowhere to escape.

And the box still had more surprises.

The top opened. Five acrobats sprang out, cartwheeling into the panicked crowd to knock down anyone still left standing. One of them kayoed a mounted patrolman. Another flipped beyond the nearby onlookers, straight toward a mobile soup-kitchen Shreck had set up for the homeless. The kitchen volunteers barely escaped as the acrobats’ fists and feet smashed everything in sight.

The other acrobats had another goal. They were headed straight for the platform with the Christmas tree!

Confusion was everywhere. Calls came in to Gordon from the other cars, asking for directions. The panicked crowd surged away from the plaza to surround the commisoner’s car. People were climbing over each other in their rush to escape. Someone was going to get crushed out there. A sled crashed into the windshield of Gordon’s cruiser.

Something had to be done now. And there was only one person who could do it.

The police commissioner found his voice again. “What are you waiting for?” he barked into his radio. “The signal!”

B
ruce Wayne sat in the darkness. Alfred hadn’t returned home from his Christmas errands yet, and Bruce was all alone in Wayne Manor. Alone in the dark and quiet; alone with his thoughts.

Bruce didn’t like going out in crowds much at night. It reminded him too much of another winter night, when he was only a boy. His parents had taken him into downtown Gotham City earlier on that day, and they had all stayed until long after dark. They had had a wonderful time that day, going shopping, having dinner, going to a show. Bruce could never remember having such a good time with his parents. It was a day filled with nothing but laughter.

And then—

Bruce closed his eyes, but he could still see the gunman who stepped out of the shadows to rob his parents. He could still see his father put up a fight, see his mother’s mouth open as she cried for help. And he saw the double flash of the gun as two bullets killed both father and mother.

They had taken his parents away from him.

Now he would make them pay.

He opened his eyes and saw the light shining in the window; the symbol, a silhouette of a bat in a pool of yellow light.

Bruce smiled.

He was needed.

This was going so well. First the cyclists, then the acrobats, and now the rest of his merry band. It was getting to be a real circus.

The Fire Breather smashed the window of the toy store. He stuck that rod of his in his mouth, and breathed fire over the whole display window. The entire place went up in flames. That precious Ice Princess ran away, pushing an elderly woman to the ground. Oh, dear, look at the old bag. She’d fallen and she couldn’t get up. In a minute or two, she was sure to be trampled.

The squat creature laughed from his vantage point beneath the sewer grate. If all went according to plan, this was the last night he would ever have to watch the world from down here. Soon, he would be up there again with all the fat cats, and all those “haves” would look up to him, because he’d have more than all of them combined.

He saw a beacon split the sky. He’d know that black and yellow signal anywhere, and it only made him laugh that much harder.

“Ooh, Batman,” he said in his odd, raspy voice. “I’m tremblin’.”

T
he elevator had taken forever to get to the top floor. Selina had jumped in it as soon as it had opened, pounding the down button and hoping that she was still in time to salvage some portion of her boss’s speech. Thankfully, nobody else was going down just then, and she made the descent in under a minute. She ran through the lobby and out the main door of the department store.

Boy, it sure was noisy out here. For a second, she was almost happy her boss never let her attend these things. Now where was he in all these people?

Three motorcycles burst out of the crowd, headed straight for her. She jumped back out of the way as the cycles roared on by, still almost brushing her clothes.

If she hadn’t jumped she would have been crushed. Boy, she thought, all those workouts at the gym had actually done her some good.

But why weren’t those cyclists looking where they were going? They could really hurt somebody! And the way everybody was screaming; was something wrong down here?

This was crazy.

An organ grinder, with a big red organ box and handlebar mustaches, was the first one on the stage. And he had the usual monkey—except that this monkey had a gun.

Max hoped it was a cap gun.

The Organ Grinder grinned and turned his box toward the Christmas tree. He twisted the handle. Bullets spewed out of the box. It was a Gatling gun! Ornaments and lights exploded under the hail of bullets.

“Take, that, tannenbaum!” the grinder yelled.

But there were other newcomers on the stage now—a grossly fat clown, another guy, dressed in rags, who kept sticking a sword down his throat, and this very colorfully dressed woman. For once in Max’s life, he wasn’t all that interested in the curves beneath that woman’s costume, probably because a large portion of her costume consisted of rows and rows of knives.

Both the Mayor and Chip moved toward the back of the platform. Max wanted to join them. But where could they run?

“Relax,” the lady with the knives remarked. “We just came for the guy who runs the show.”

The Mayor stepped forward. Max was impressed. He never thought the weasel had that kind of guts.

“What do you want from me?” the mayor asked.

The Sword Swallower laughed and pushed His Honor off the stage.

“Not you,” the fellow somehow said around his sword. “Shreck.”

Him? Max thought. Where could he run? Where could he hide? But good old Chip stepped in the way. That gave Max a moment more to plan his escape.

“All this courage,” the clown remarked drolly. “Goose-bump city.”

And with that, the Knife Lady whipped one of her blades straight at Chip, nicking his ear. Oh, God, Max thought, they were both in danger.

“Son!” Max called out

“Dad!” Chip called back. “Save yourself!”

But Max had already leapt from the platform and was heading for the crowd at a dead run.

Chip looked across the plaza and realized this mad scene was going to get wilder still.

There, on the far side of the crowd, he saw the Batmobile.

A
lfred was trapped by the surging crowd, still mere feet from the safety of the Rolls. At the very minute that he had been about to reenter his car, that large box had burst open, sending the crowd into a panic and pushing him a dozen feet away from his goal.

There the car sat, bulletproof, shatterproof, with a phone inside with which he might be able to call Master Bruce and summon help, and there was no way he could reach it. Everyone was screaming and pushing futilely one against the other, but the crowd seemed trapped by its very density, without direction.

And the criminals only wanted to make it worse. A thug on a motorcycle plowed through the masses only a few feet in front of him while three stilt-walkers started kicking the crowd from behind. With all these miscreants in costume, Alfred thought, it was like some nightmare version of the circus.

He heard the roar of engines, not motorcycles this time, but a deeper sound, and one that he believed he recognized.

Alfred looked back to the plaza and smiled at last.

The Batmobile had arrived.

Blades shot from either side of the Batmobile, smashing through two different stilts in an instant. A pair of stilt-walkers fell to the ground face first.

But they were not out of danger yet. Alfred saw a circus strongman, all rippling muscles beneath his tight-fitting costume, bearing down upon them. It looked as if the butler would have to rescue the little girl.

The Strongman was gaining on them. Alfred glanced over to see that the Batmobile was shooting some of its arsenal, small black Batdiscs that whirled straight for the gangsters terrorizing the crowd. The Batmobile turned in Alfred’s direction.

Now.

Alfred ducked as another Batdisc sailed over his head to connect with the Strongman’s cranium. The Tattooed Strongman fell, quite unconscious. Alfred stood again and smiled as the Batmobile wheeled past.

That was very nicely done.

Max couldn’t believe it. He had gotten away. It just proved, he guessed, what a pair of still-speedy legs and a bellyful of fear can do for you. But that fear could only take him so far. He had to stop for a moment, to catch his breath and decide on his next move. He darted down a side street, free at last of all but a few members of the screaming mob.

Max’s steps slowed even more as he felt hot air coming up from a sewer grate below his feet. It felt oddly warm and reassuring compared to the winter chill around him, especially now that the sweat on his face and hands was exposed to the Gotham wind.

Maybe he should stop here for a moment or two and reconnoiter, perhaps figure out exactly what was going on here. After all, he had just survived threats from criminals, a speedy chase, and a near capture.

For the first time, Max wondered if there was some way he could turn all this to his advantage.

Action always helped.

He’d taken care of the worst of this band of thugs in the middle of Gotham Plaza. Now he had to mop up the trash on the outskirts. He turned the Batmobile toward three more of the criminals who seemed intent on destroying the surrounding stores.

These three were dressed as clowns. Batman found that particularly appropriate. He angled the Batmobile slightly so that all three were directly in his path, then pressed the accelerator. The clowns turned and fired on him. The bullets bounced harmlessly off the car’s exoskeleton as the Batmobile sped toward its prey.

One clown managed to jump free, but the other two bounced smartly off the hood. He’d come back for the third in a moment. Batman turned the wheel to follow another fellow who was breathing fire on the window displays of a toy store.

Wait a moment. Both of those clowns had still managed to cling to the hood, and one was firing at his windshield. And that clown he missed was firing at him from behind. Sometimes, these felons simply didn’t know when they were beaten.

Batman hit the brakes.

The Batmobile stopped abruptly, launching both clowns forward into the Fire Breather. All three of them fell into the smashed window display.

Batman had one clown to go.

He twisted the knob to activate the hydraulic lift. In a matter of seconds, the lift’s steel framework unfolded from the car’s undercarriage and jacked the entire Batmobile off the ground, spinning the vehicle completely around so that the toy store was now to the Batmobile’s rear.