JSA: The Face Of Evil
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a sequel and the third part to the False-Face trilogy. The previous two parts can be found in the DC Elseworld's section of FFN. The stories are titled: "JSA: Atrocity" and "JSA: If Looks Could Kill."
CHAPTER 1
Selina Kyle felt awkward and embarrassed, but men's clothing was all she could find in the house. More than an hour had passed since she had knocked out and bound her two captors.
False-Face had made a big mistake, she mused to herself. Did he really expect two amateurs to hold the likes of Catwoman?
It was dangerous to stay in the farmhouse, but a shower and washing her hair had been necessary to her sanity. She tied the tails of the plaid cowboy shirt at her waist. She had recently seen Marilyn Monroe do such a thing in a movie with Clark Gable called "The Misfits."
The blue jeans were so big that she had to hold them up with her hand. She stopped beside the curtained windows of the dining room. Heavy drapes of deep maroon were tied back with a knotted cord of the same color. Spreading her knees to keep the large pants from falling down around her ankles, she undid the cord. She threaded it through the belt loops of the Levi's and cinched up the pants tight. On her feet were three pairs of borrowed sweat socks -- the men's shoes had been hopelessly large for her.
Selina Kyle stared through the dining room window. Two vehicles were making their way up the driveway. She had waited too long. "Shit," she cursed through her teeth, and she started to run.
She stopped by the open door of the bathroom to pick up the backpack she had found in the house. Inside it she had packed the two biggest butcher knives from the kitchen, and two candy bars. The car keys and clean handkerchief she'd discovered among the men's things were in the pockets of her borrowed pants.
Selina stopped behind the kitchen door, brushing aside the window curtains slowly, peering through the glass to the backyard of the farmhouse. There were just chickens and nothing else.
She opened the door, stepping out.
Hearing the sounds of vehicles, she ran across the yard. Stones gouged through the scant protection of the three layers of athletic socks, cutting the tender flesh on the soles of her feet.
She dropped into a crouch just beside the far corner of the barn, glancing into the yard again. Selina dug into the backpack for the one other item she had liberated from the house where she had been held prisoner: a lined nylon jacket that had belonged to one of her jailers. She pulled it on against the cold.
Men were coming into the farmyard with what she recognized as submachine guns slung from their right shoulders. A tall, blond-haired man, handsome she thought, held a pistol with a silencer screwed to the muzzle.
They were Nazis, not police.
She pushed herself up from her crouched position and ran as silently as she could along the side of the barn. A quarter of a mile across an open pasture there were woods and cover, perhaps escape. If she hadn't waited to take a shower, to find the clothes, had just stolen a coat and made a run for it she would have been far away by now.
But recriminations were a luxury she had no time for at the moment, she decided. She threw herself into a run, looking quickly over her shoulder.
The men had spotted her. "Halt! Miss Kyle! Halt -- halt or we'll open fire!"
"Up yours!" She screamed the words. She was on the open field now, aiming herself toward the tree line. Unless they were good with their submachine guns, it would be dicey shooting at the yardage. Behind her, she heard them opening up.
The tree line was close now, while behind her the sounds of vehicles grew louder.
Selina looked back. A station wagon was lurching and bumping across the field. Men hung on to the sides from the luggage rack, balanced in the doorways, shooting at her.
She darted behind the trunk of an oak tree. Chunks of bark exploded from it as submachine-gun fire hammered toward her. Her lungs ached with the exertion and the coldness of the air. Gathering herself up, she started to run again, deeper into the woods where the men would have to follow her on foot.
For an instant she thought of the thunderbolt-shaped scar on the left side of the neck of the man known as False-Face, and tears welled in her eyes.
Selina Kyle, her white socks stained red with her blood, kept running.
***
"That's him, calls himself Wildcat, he does."
"Wildcat?"
"Roger, boyo."
Tom Reilly considered his friend's remarks and started to look more intently at the man wearing a very dark, skintight costume that only exposed the lower portion of his face. The figure was walking on the top of a rooftop. He noticed that Wildcat was tall. "Well, there's two of us and one of him. I suppose we should go, then."
"Right you are, Thomas," the first man agreed.
Tom Reilly stepped from the doorway across the alley, shrugging deeper into his jacket against the cold. Billy Sheehan was beside him, walking quickly. They had waited across the alley from the jewelry store for two hours. A well placed challenge in the personals section of the New York Daily News had lured the hero back to London. The motive, as the captain of Reilly's unit had explained it, was simple revenge. They had tried to strike directly at Wildcat, the New York vigilante who had killed O'Malley during the takeover of Marchand's department store in London, sending three contract killers to New York. But Wildcat had defeated the would-be assassins.
So Wildcat was to die, Reilly had decided, and Billy agreed. Only the IRA and a growing number of regular street criminals carried guns in a city where not even the regular police were armed.
Reilly shoved his hand under his coat, for warmth and reassurance. The butt of his pistol jutted from his trouser band. Reilly stopped walking to stare into the rear of the store. They decided to go around to the front of the building. Once on the street, they crossed it. They stopped to to stare into a store widow that was jammed with Bibles in a variety of bindings, sizings and colors.
Billy Sheehan rasped, "Thomas -- he's off the roof and crossin' this way."
"I know that. Why the bloody hell do you think I'm staring at a bunch of Good Books in a shop window, Billy?" came the response.
"Oh," Sheehan murmured.
"I can see him reflected, heading up the street now."
"He is that -- I can see him, too, Thomas," Billy Sheehan Whispered. "We gun him now?"
Reilly gave Wildcat a sideways glance, then shrugged against the cold again. "Sure, why not? Follow my lead, Billy-boy."
Reilly turned right, away from the window and started down the street. He judged the distance between him and the American who was wearing a cat costume at less than a quarter of city block. Being some kind of American hero, Wildcat wouldn't be armed, Reilly knew that. A Yank armed in London -- there was no way it could be so.
Reilly started walking more quickly, seeing a slight tensing in Wildcat's shoulders. Reilly drew his gun, shouting to Billy Sheehan, "He's on to us, boy!"
Reilly started to fire, pumping the trigger twice, but Wildcat was no longer on target as he rolled across the sidewalk into a doorway. Reilly could hear the high-pitched popping of Billy Sheehan's .22-caliber automatic. The target gun was firing fast. Reilly wheeled toward the doorway and tried to acquire his target. The sound of screaming came from across the street and cars and buses and trucks screeched to a halt in the roadway. Reilly triggered his pistol twice more, then twice again.
Then, he heard Billy Sheehan shout, "I'm hit, Thomas!"
Reilly looked at his friend and saw some type of silver star stuck deep in Sheehan's gun hand. Blood was oozing from the wound. Billy had dropped his gun.
Then Reilly felt something tear its way into his chest just above his stomach, where his open coat had failed to protect him. Something was burning and searing. He was falling backward and couldn't stop himself. The gun in his right fist was still firing as his finger twitched involuntarily against the trigger.
Reilly was on his back, looking along the sidewalk. Wildcat was coming out of the doorway.
Wildcat grabbed the would-be killer by the lapels of his coat. Reilly started to say, "Hey, mister, a mistake, it was. It was that --"
"Twitch funny and you get a face full of my fist," the American said to him in a calm voice. "Somebody call the police!" he yelled to the bystanders.
Reilly closed his eyes, ashamed of his failure.
***
Selina Kyle focused her concentration on the run. The bleeding of her feet was something she forced herself to reject. She heard gunfire behind her and felt the slap of tree branches against her face as she ran. The shouted threats of the Nazis goaded her on. She kept running.
The ground began to rise sharply ahead of her, making the strain she already felt in her legs and the burning in her lungs all the more intense. Her mouth was open wide as she gulped the chill air.
She tripped and rolled several feet back down the rise. Two men came through the trees toward her, one of them blond with the silenced pistol. Selina clenched her fists and executed a perfect drop kick into the chest of the second man, holding a machine gun. He was the greater threat. His body seemed to shudder with the blow and he was pushed back through the trees and foilage and crashed against the man with the pistol.
Selina was up and running, regaining her balance as she reached the top of the rise. She stole a backward glance. The two men were still trying to untangle themselves. Selina kept moving. The men opened fire on her again. She reacted quickly and dived through a course natural hedgegrow. There was no sound, only the ground at her feet churning up betrayed how close she'd come to death.
The men were coming toward her. As they passed her hiding place, Selina decided to make her move. Ambushing the men from the back, she slammed her body into both of theirs at the same time. All three bodies fell to the ground with Selina on top.
Quickly, she chopped the blond man across the back of his neck with the blade of her hand. The man was driven unconscious by the blow.
The second man was able to get to his feet but he was staggering. Selina planted her left foot firmly into the ground and her right leg drove out into a vicious kick to the man's face. The man staggered some more. Selina pivoted on her right foot and drove another kick into the man's groin. He dropped fast, moaning. It was just a matter of kicking the man in the face, once again, to put the thug finally out of action.
Selina scooped up the blond man's silenced pistol. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed additional protection.
Selina Kyle ran.
***
She crouched in a ditch that ran beside a two-lane blacktop. Across the road was a town. Selina Kyle started to her feet but she ducked back into the ditch as a car came slowly along the road. Behind it, a stake truck nosed toward her. The car was one she recognized from the farm -- more of the Nazis. She didn't like being so popular. The cold mud in the ditch covered her legs below her hips and her feet were numb.
As the truck passed, a bit of tarpaulin blew in the slipstream, and through the crack that was created she thought she saw the muzzle of a rifle. She shivered. She recognized a church nearby at the end of the town's main street. Sanctuary was her only thought as she ran across the road, jumped the ditch on the opposite side and dodged into the trees.
Selina Kyle threaded her way through the dense growth. She was cold and exhausted, and the church stood ahead of her like a welcoming hand. The main entrance of the church was ahead and at a sharp angle to her right, facing the street. On her left, another car-and-truck combination traveled slowly along the highway. She crouched beside the stone steps of the church entrance, waiting until it passed. Then she climbed over the side of the steps, not bothering to cross to the front, afraid to expose herself that much to the main street.
The church doors were composed of high double panels of heavy wood with brass handles. Putting the gun into her hip pocket, she reached out and pulled at the doors.
Locked.
She wrenched against the door handles. Nothing happened.
She threw her body against the doors. Still they did not move.
Hearing the sound of approaching vehicles, she looked behind her toward the main street. Another of the car-and-truck combinations slowed at the far end of the highway before entering the outskirts of the town and stopped.
Men poured out, armed with submachine guns and rifles.
Selina threw herself over the far side of the steps and started to run toward a two-story brick-and-stone building that stood near the church. A yellow light glowed from a side window.
She prayed that it was a rectory. A priest would hide her, help her reach a phone to get help from somewhere. She pulled desperately at the door handle, but it, too, was locked.
She hammered frantically on the door with the bare knuckles of her left hand. The handgun was in her right fist, aimed behind her toward the street.
"Come on," she urged.
She heard a flurry and a voice on the other side of the door, and then the door opened. In front of her stood a Catholic nun, elderly, chubby, moon faced and red cheeked.
"I need help, please, Sister -- please," Selina pleaded.
The nun was looking at the gun. "Yes, come in, child."
Selina Kyle stepped through the doorway. The nun closed the door behind her, then extended her right hand. "But I'll take your revolver."
Selina swallowed hard, but she handed her the gun. "It's loaded -- be careful."
"My father was a policeman, so are my brothers. I know how to handle a rod," the old nun laughed, her eyes twinkling like something from a painting of Santa Claus.
The nun nodded as if answering a question. "We'd better see to those feet, and you look like you could use some food, too," and the nun still holding the pistol, folded her arms around Selina's shoulders. Selina bowed her head.
***
The telephone was not dead, but the peculiar loud busy signal of blocked circuits was all that could be heard whenever dialing out was attempted. Selina sat in an overstuffed chair in what the nun referred to as a parlor. The cuts on her feet had been washed and bandaged, and now that her feet were warm, they throbbed with a burning pain.
The nun -- Sister Mary Albert -- entered the parlor with a second pot of tea. "I've been trying the telephone, but still get that eternal busy signal. And radio station is only playing records -- no news, no commercials, nothing."
"Damn," Selina muttered.
The nun set down the pot of tea, then turned to face Selina. Her hands were on her hips, making her seem all that much shorter in her veil and habit and all that much fatter. "You can come into the convent with a gun. You can get me to try to help you reach the state police or the National Guard. But you can't swear, here, young lady. Is that understood?"
Selina Kyle doubled forward, laughing, murmuring, "Yes, Sister, yes." She heard the hall door opening and started quickly to her feet.
"You're safe here, young lady," said the nun, and as Selina watched, the old sister pulled the pistol from the side pocket of her habit.
A second nun, young and pretty beneath the veil that covered her hair, entered the parlor. She stopped abruptly, inhaling loudly, stifling a scream. "Sister Albert!"
"What is it, Sister Catherine?" said the elder nun.
"A bunch of men have taken over the school. They say they're Nazis, and they're holding all the children. I got out through a side door. I thought I could telephone for the state police -- Chief McKeever is their prisoner, and so is Officer Rand. The Nazis took their guns. Where did --" and the younger nun looked at the revolver Sister Albert held and then at Selina Kyle.
"The telephone doesn't work, and they have the radio station, too," Sister Albert said, making the little revolver disappear inside her habit.
"Would you have used that gun, Sister Albert?" Sister Catherine asked, gasping.
"My father taught me how to shoot the same way he taught my brothers. Both my brothers won marksmanship competitions all their lives. I was always a better shot."
Selina persisted. "But would you have used it?"
"I'd probably have shot a hole in the floor by somebody's feet," Sister Albert replied.
"Who are you?" Sister Catherine asked Selina. "And who are these Nazis?"
"The Nazis are part of a conspiracy led by a man who calls himself False- Face. He controls nearly one hundred canisters of a very dangerous VX nerve gas, and he's insane. What his men are doing here, I don't know."
"But who are you?" Sister Catherine asked again.
"My name is Selina Kyle. I was kidnapped on an island near Crete and brought to a farmhouse near here. I escaped , and they tried to kill me."
Sister Albert spoke. "We need to give you an appropriate name."
Selina looked at her, puzzled. "Why?"
"I've never heard of a Sister Selina," Sister Albert said with a smile, "but a Sister Angelica -- there's one of those under every rock," and the old nun began to laugh.
"They said," Sister Catherine stammered, "that they have a nerve gas weapon in a crate they brought into the school. They'll use it if we do anything to try to stop them."
"You and Sister Cathernine look about the same dress size," Sister Albert said. "There are only five of us here -- you can be the sixth. A visiting sister."
"Only five of you in this whole convent?" Selina didn't even consider the remark about sharing the same dress size with Sister Catherine.
"Well, the nun business isn't as appealing as it used to be -- Sister Angelica. But who knows, we whip those Nazis out there, the publicity might a draw a crowd," and Sister Albert plopped into the overstuffed chair opposite Selina laughing. "I can see it now -- recruitment posters for the sisterhood. Lead a life of excitement and adventure, fight the forces of evil -- become a nun!" And she laughed again. "Got a good ring to it, huh?"
Selina Kyle just shook her head and sat down.
To be continued ...
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a sequel and the third part to the False-Face trilogy. The previous two parts can be found in the DC Elseworld's section of FFN. The stories are titled: "JSA: Atrocity" and "JSA: If Looks Could Kill."
CHAPTER 1
Selina Kyle felt awkward and embarrassed, but men's clothing was all she could find in the house. More than an hour had passed since she had knocked out and bound her two captors.
False-Face had made a big mistake, she mused to herself. Did he really expect two amateurs to hold the likes of Catwoman?
It was dangerous to stay in the farmhouse, but a shower and washing her hair had been necessary to her sanity. She tied the tails of the plaid cowboy shirt at her waist. She had recently seen Marilyn Monroe do such a thing in a movie with Clark Gable called "The Misfits."
The blue jeans were so big that she had to hold them up with her hand. She stopped beside the curtained windows of the dining room. Heavy drapes of deep maroon were tied back with a knotted cord of the same color. Spreading her knees to keep the large pants from falling down around her ankles, she undid the cord. She threaded it through the belt loops of the Levi's and cinched up the pants tight. On her feet were three pairs of borrowed sweat socks -- the men's shoes had been hopelessly large for her.
Selina Kyle stared through the dining room window. Two vehicles were making their way up the driveway. She had waited too long. "Shit," she cursed through her teeth, and she started to run.
She stopped by the open door of the bathroom to pick up the backpack she had found in the house. Inside it she had packed the two biggest butcher knives from the kitchen, and two candy bars. The car keys and clean handkerchief she'd discovered among the men's things were in the pockets of her borrowed pants.
Selina stopped behind the kitchen door, brushing aside the window curtains slowly, peering through the glass to the backyard of the farmhouse. There were just chickens and nothing else.
She opened the door, stepping out.
Hearing the sounds of vehicles, she ran across the yard. Stones gouged through the scant protection of the three layers of athletic socks, cutting the tender flesh on the soles of her feet.
She dropped into a crouch just beside the far corner of the barn, glancing into the yard again. Selina dug into the backpack for the one other item she had liberated from the house where she had been held prisoner: a lined nylon jacket that had belonged to one of her jailers. She pulled it on against the cold.
Men were coming into the farmyard with what she recognized as submachine guns slung from their right shoulders. A tall, blond-haired man, handsome she thought, held a pistol with a silencer screwed to the muzzle.
They were Nazis, not police.
She pushed herself up from her crouched position and ran as silently as she could along the side of the barn. A quarter of a mile across an open pasture there were woods and cover, perhaps escape. If she hadn't waited to take a shower, to find the clothes, had just stolen a coat and made a run for it she would have been far away by now.
But recriminations were a luxury she had no time for at the moment, she decided. She threw herself into a run, looking quickly over her shoulder.
The men had spotted her. "Halt! Miss Kyle! Halt -- halt or we'll open fire!"
"Up yours!" She screamed the words. She was on the open field now, aiming herself toward the tree line. Unless they were good with their submachine guns, it would be dicey shooting at the yardage. Behind her, she heard them opening up.
The tree line was close now, while behind her the sounds of vehicles grew louder.
Selina looked back. A station wagon was lurching and bumping across the field. Men hung on to the sides from the luggage rack, balanced in the doorways, shooting at her.
She darted behind the trunk of an oak tree. Chunks of bark exploded from it as submachine-gun fire hammered toward her. Her lungs ached with the exertion and the coldness of the air. Gathering herself up, she started to run again, deeper into the woods where the men would have to follow her on foot.
For an instant she thought of the thunderbolt-shaped scar on the left side of the neck of the man known as False-Face, and tears welled in her eyes.
Selina Kyle, her white socks stained red with her blood, kept running.
***
"That's him, calls himself Wildcat, he does."
"Wildcat?"
"Roger, boyo."
Tom Reilly considered his friend's remarks and started to look more intently at the man wearing a very dark, skintight costume that only exposed the lower portion of his face. The figure was walking on the top of a rooftop. He noticed that Wildcat was tall. "Well, there's two of us and one of him. I suppose we should go, then."
"Right you are, Thomas," the first man agreed.
Tom Reilly stepped from the doorway across the alley, shrugging deeper into his jacket against the cold. Billy Sheehan was beside him, walking quickly. They had waited across the alley from the jewelry store for two hours. A well placed challenge in the personals section of the New York Daily News had lured the hero back to London. The motive, as the captain of Reilly's unit had explained it, was simple revenge. They had tried to strike directly at Wildcat, the New York vigilante who had killed O'Malley during the takeover of Marchand's department store in London, sending three contract killers to New York. But Wildcat had defeated the would-be assassins.
So Wildcat was to die, Reilly had decided, and Billy agreed. Only the IRA and a growing number of regular street criminals carried guns in a city where not even the regular police were armed.
Reilly shoved his hand under his coat, for warmth and reassurance. The butt of his pistol jutted from his trouser band. Reilly stopped walking to stare into the rear of the store. They decided to go around to the front of the building. Once on the street, they crossed it. They stopped to to stare into a store widow that was jammed with Bibles in a variety of bindings, sizings and colors.
Billy Sheehan rasped, "Thomas -- he's off the roof and crossin' this way."
"I know that. Why the bloody hell do you think I'm staring at a bunch of Good Books in a shop window, Billy?" came the response.
"Oh," Sheehan murmured.
"I can see him reflected, heading up the street now."
"He is that -- I can see him, too, Thomas," Billy Sheehan Whispered. "We gun him now?"
Reilly gave Wildcat a sideways glance, then shrugged against the cold again. "Sure, why not? Follow my lead, Billy-boy."
Reilly turned right, away from the window and started down the street. He judged the distance between him and the American who was wearing a cat costume at less than a quarter of city block. Being some kind of American hero, Wildcat wouldn't be armed, Reilly knew that. A Yank armed in London -- there was no way it could be so.
Reilly started walking more quickly, seeing a slight tensing in Wildcat's shoulders. Reilly drew his gun, shouting to Billy Sheehan, "He's on to us, boy!"
Reilly started to fire, pumping the trigger twice, but Wildcat was no longer on target as he rolled across the sidewalk into a doorway. Reilly could hear the high-pitched popping of Billy Sheehan's .22-caliber automatic. The target gun was firing fast. Reilly wheeled toward the doorway and tried to acquire his target. The sound of screaming came from across the street and cars and buses and trucks screeched to a halt in the roadway. Reilly triggered his pistol twice more, then twice again.
Then, he heard Billy Sheehan shout, "I'm hit, Thomas!"
Reilly looked at his friend and saw some type of silver star stuck deep in Sheehan's gun hand. Blood was oozing from the wound. Billy had dropped his gun.
Then Reilly felt something tear its way into his chest just above his stomach, where his open coat had failed to protect him. Something was burning and searing. He was falling backward and couldn't stop himself. The gun in his right fist was still firing as his finger twitched involuntarily against the trigger.
Reilly was on his back, looking along the sidewalk. Wildcat was coming out of the doorway.
Wildcat grabbed the would-be killer by the lapels of his coat. Reilly started to say, "Hey, mister, a mistake, it was. It was that --"
"Twitch funny and you get a face full of my fist," the American said to him in a calm voice. "Somebody call the police!" he yelled to the bystanders.
Reilly closed his eyes, ashamed of his failure.
***
Selina Kyle focused her concentration on the run. The bleeding of her feet was something she forced herself to reject. She heard gunfire behind her and felt the slap of tree branches against her face as she ran. The shouted threats of the Nazis goaded her on. She kept running.
The ground began to rise sharply ahead of her, making the strain she already felt in her legs and the burning in her lungs all the more intense. Her mouth was open wide as she gulped the chill air.
She tripped and rolled several feet back down the rise. Two men came through the trees toward her, one of them blond with the silenced pistol. Selina clenched her fists and executed a perfect drop kick into the chest of the second man, holding a machine gun. He was the greater threat. His body seemed to shudder with the blow and he was pushed back through the trees and foilage and crashed against the man with the pistol.
Selina was up and running, regaining her balance as she reached the top of the rise. She stole a backward glance. The two men were still trying to untangle themselves. Selina kept moving. The men opened fire on her again. She reacted quickly and dived through a course natural hedgegrow. There was no sound, only the ground at her feet churning up betrayed how close she'd come to death.
The men were coming toward her. As they passed her hiding place, Selina decided to make her move. Ambushing the men from the back, she slammed her body into both of theirs at the same time. All three bodies fell to the ground with Selina on top.
Quickly, she chopped the blond man across the back of his neck with the blade of her hand. The man was driven unconscious by the blow.
The second man was able to get to his feet but he was staggering. Selina planted her left foot firmly into the ground and her right leg drove out into a vicious kick to the man's face. The man staggered some more. Selina pivoted on her right foot and drove another kick into the man's groin. He dropped fast, moaning. It was just a matter of kicking the man in the face, once again, to put the thug finally out of action.
Selina scooped up the blond man's silenced pistol. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed additional protection.
Selina Kyle ran.
***
She crouched in a ditch that ran beside a two-lane blacktop. Across the road was a town. Selina Kyle started to her feet but she ducked back into the ditch as a car came slowly along the road. Behind it, a stake truck nosed toward her. The car was one she recognized from the farm -- more of the Nazis. She didn't like being so popular. The cold mud in the ditch covered her legs below her hips and her feet were numb.
As the truck passed, a bit of tarpaulin blew in the slipstream, and through the crack that was created she thought she saw the muzzle of a rifle. She shivered. She recognized a church nearby at the end of the town's main street. Sanctuary was her only thought as she ran across the road, jumped the ditch on the opposite side and dodged into the trees.
Selina Kyle threaded her way through the dense growth. She was cold and exhausted, and the church stood ahead of her like a welcoming hand. The main entrance of the church was ahead and at a sharp angle to her right, facing the street. On her left, another car-and-truck combination traveled slowly along the highway. She crouched beside the stone steps of the church entrance, waiting until it passed. Then she climbed over the side of the steps, not bothering to cross to the front, afraid to expose herself that much to the main street.
The church doors were composed of high double panels of heavy wood with brass handles. Putting the gun into her hip pocket, she reached out and pulled at the doors.
Locked.
She wrenched against the door handles. Nothing happened.
She threw her body against the doors. Still they did not move.
Hearing the sound of approaching vehicles, she looked behind her toward the main street. Another of the car-and-truck combinations slowed at the far end of the highway before entering the outskirts of the town and stopped.
Men poured out, armed with submachine guns and rifles.
Selina threw herself over the far side of the steps and started to run toward a two-story brick-and-stone building that stood near the church. A yellow light glowed from a side window.
She prayed that it was a rectory. A priest would hide her, help her reach a phone to get help from somewhere. She pulled desperately at the door handle, but it, too, was locked.
She hammered frantically on the door with the bare knuckles of her left hand. The handgun was in her right fist, aimed behind her toward the street.
"Come on," she urged.
She heard a flurry and a voice on the other side of the door, and then the door opened. In front of her stood a Catholic nun, elderly, chubby, moon faced and red cheeked.
"I need help, please, Sister -- please," Selina pleaded.
The nun was looking at the gun. "Yes, come in, child."
Selina Kyle stepped through the doorway. The nun closed the door behind her, then extended her right hand. "But I'll take your revolver."
Selina swallowed hard, but she handed her the gun. "It's loaded -- be careful."
"My father was a policeman, so are my brothers. I know how to handle a rod," the old nun laughed, her eyes twinkling like something from a painting of Santa Claus.
The nun nodded as if answering a question. "We'd better see to those feet, and you look like you could use some food, too," and the nun still holding the pistol, folded her arms around Selina's shoulders. Selina bowed her head.
***
The telephone was not dead, but the peculiar loud busy signal of blocked circuits was all that could be heard whenever dialing out was attempted. Selina sat in an overstuffed chair in what the nun referred to as a parlor. The cuts on her feet had been washed and bandaged, and now that her feet were warm, they throbbed with a burning pain.
The nun -- Sister Mary Albert -- entered the parlor with a second pot of tea. "I've been trying the telephone, but still get that eternal busy signal. And radio station is only playing records -- no news, no commercials, nothing."
"Damn," Selina muttered.
The nun set down the pot of tea, then turned to face Selina. Her hands were on her hips, making her seem all that much shorter in her veil and habit and all that much fatter. "You can come into the convent with a gun. You can get me to try to help you reach the state police or the National Guard. But you can't swear, here, young lady. Is that understood?"
Selina Kyle doubled forward, laughing, murmuring, "Yes, Sister, yes." She heard the hall door opening and started quickly to her feet.
"You're safe here, young lady," said the nun, and as Selina watched, the old sister pulled the pistol from the side pocket of her habit.
A second nun, young and pretty beneath the veil that covered her hair, entered the parlor. She stopped abruptly, inhaling loudly, stifling a scream. "Sister Albert!"
"What is it, Sister Catherine?" said the elder nun.
"A bunch of men have taken over the school. They say they're Nazis, and they're holding all the children. I got out through a side door. I thought I could telephone for the state police -- Chief McKeever is their prisoner, and so is Officer Rand. The Nazis took their guns. Where did --" and the younger nun looked at the revolver Sister Albert held and then at Selina Kyle.
"The telephone doesn't work, and they have the radio station, too," Sister Albert said, making the little revolver disappear inside her habit.
"Would you have used that gun, Sister Albert?" Sister Catherine asked, gasping.
"My father taught me how to shoot the same way he taught my brothers. Both my brothers won marksmanship competitions all their lives. I was always a better shot."
Selina persisted. "But would you have used it?"
"I'd probably have shot a hole in the floor by somebody's feet," Sister Albert replied.
"Who are you?" Sister Catherine asked Selina. "And who are these Nazis?"
"The Nazis are part of a conspiracy led by a man who calls himself False- Face. He controls nearly one hundred canisters of a very dangerous VX nerve gas, and he's insane. What his men are doing here, I don't know."
"But who are you?" Sister Catherine asked again.
"My name is Selina Kyle. I was kidnapped on an island near Crete and brought to a farmhouse near here. I escaped , and they tried to kill me."
Sister Albert spoke. "We need to give you an appropriate name."
Selina looked at her, puzzled. "Why?"
"I've never heard of a Sister Selina," Sister Albert said with a smile, "but a Sister Angelica -- there's one of those under every rock," and the old nun began to laugh.
"They said," Sister Catherine stammered, "that they have a nerve gas weapon in a crate they brought into the school. They'll use it if we do anything to try to stop them."
"You and Sister Cathernine look about the same dress size," Sister Albert said. "There are only five of us here -- you can be the sixth. A visiting sister."
"Only five of you in this whole convent?" Selina didn't even consider the remark about sharing the same dress size with Sister Catherine.
"Well, the nun business isn't as appealing as it used to be -- Sister Angelica. But who knows, we whip those Nazis out there, the publicity might a draw a crowd," and Sister Albert plopped into the overstuffed chair opposite Selina laughing. "I can see it now -- recruitment posters for the sisterhood. Lead a life of excitement and adventure, fight the forces of evil -- become a nun!" And she laughed again. "Got a good ring to it, huh?"
Selina Kyle just shook her head and sat down.
To be continued ...