Supposedly all I would have to do was pass on a straight shot down the center row of the crematorium to get to the boiler room. Checking my gun to make sure it was fully loaded and ready to go, I adjusted my belt and took a moment to re-lace my boots. Tying up my hair in a snug little bun at the back of my head, I strode across the room and opened the crematorium door. But nothing could have prepared me for what laid inside.
There were three rows of cremation chambers, eight furnaces in each row. The floor was not metal grating like the rest of the rooms down here. Here it was carefully raked gravel. The heat coming from the furnaces was oppressive. They were great iron furnaces, blazing hot from their internal fires. And that was when I heard it, a dull scraping in the gravel.
I was not alone.
I could see the edge of the boiler room door at the other end of the room. It's heavy turn-wheel staring tantalizing at me. If the person in the boiler room wanted to help me, maybe they wouldn't mind my opening that heavy door, but if they wanted to hurt me. . .
I pursed my lips, refusing to think about that. I could hear the scraping at the right end of the row so I edged to the left, peering down the empty row of furnaces. I crept along, listening to the scraping of a shovel on the gravel. When I reached the edge of the row I could see the door, it was only a few feet away. I still couldn't see the other person in the room, so I crept up to the door, grasped the wheel and threw all my strength into it. And wouldn't you know it? The wheel squeeeeaaaallled in protest as I turned the wheel, I got about half a turn before I heard advancing footsteps.
I barely had time to duck as a shovel flew at my head. Diving out of the way as it slammed into the ground I rolled and pushed off the ground and landed on my feet, dancing back as I sized up my new opponent. He was huge, hulking even, with broad shoulders and abnormally long arms that gave him extra reach with that shovel of his. He wore a dirty loin cloth that fluttered up with his movements and left very little to the imagination. On his head he wore a cage with screws that went into his head, bolting the cage to his skull. He had a sloped brow and dark beady eyes, like the coal his filled the furnaces with.
He advanced on me as I dove out of the way, doing my damnedest to stay out of reach of his shovel. He caught me once on my left bicep and I winced at the pain and the dull cracking sound as pain blossomed and caused me to see stars. I forced myself to get it together and cocked the gun as he stopped, staring longingly at the gun in my hands.
He moaned loudly at me, thumping his chest as I raised the gun wearily, and that's when I saw the sadness in his eyes.
"Poor baby, you want to be free of the boilers don't you?" I murmured, slowly walking forward until we were only a few feet apart.
Inside the cage his thick lanky black hair spilled over his shoulders and down his back. He towered over me, he was easily 7 feet.
"My name is Brita, can you tell me your name?" I asked him gently.
"Mmmhhhrrrrr. . . Sshhhaammm," he slurred, slobber dribbling down into his beard.
"Hello Sam, it's nice to meet you," I said gently, reaching how to take his enormous hair hand in my own. "I can get you out of here; take you someplace safe, but I need to get through that door to get you to safety."
Sam looked from me to the door and back again. He reached out gingerly and stroked my cheek. "Purdy."
I smiled sadly up at him until he snatched his hand away and stalked over to the boiler room door, opening the water-proof door with ease and then holding it open for me as I walked past him into the dank hall. Another stretch of metal casing and grim relics of the psychiatric communities and we finally found ourselves standing in front of the boiler room door. I checked my watch.
"Alright Sam, we've got two minutes to blow the generator and then get the hell out of here," I said, opening the final door and leading him into the boiler room. The generator sat in the corner, a gleaming white symbol of modernity in this antiquated corner of hell. Waltzing up to it, I stared at the incomprehensible controls trying to figure out where to start when Sam beat me to the punch and grabbed the entire thing in his arms and proceeded to drag it up off the floor, several cords and cables and connections, turning the generator into nothing more than an expensive paperweight before he launched it against the wall.
"That should do it," I said, walking over to the grate in the floor that would lead to the sewers. The problem was, while it would fit me, I would have to leave Sam behind, and I had promised him he could be free now.
"Sam, how fast could you get us to the upper levels of Arkham from here?" I asked thoughtfully.
"Mmmrrr, maybe ten tick tocks," he groaned, staring at me affectionately.
"Ten minutes you mean?" I asked as he nodded.
"Miinnnutes. . . Come, we go now," he said, grabbing me like a rag doll he carried me delicately as we ran through the bowels of Arkham, through the morgue and ECT rooms, past the surgical suites, down the iron halls and through the hydrotherapy chamber, we ran ran ran until we were finally at the door to the women's ward. Instead of waiting for me to pull out the combination, he ripped the lock off the door and pressed out into insanity. There were women milling around everywhere, screaming and fighting, but two stood out above the rest. Harley with her blonde pigtails and another red headed woman.
"Harley! Let's go!" I screamed at her from my perch as Sam flew by like a champion line backer and broke up the knot of women as Harley and her friend made sure to follow in our wake. Then we were out in the rotting halls of Arkham, but I could feel the air moving now and I breathed in relief. When we finally burst into reception, the Joker joined us from the other side, staring wide eyed at me in Sam's arms and Harley and the red head flanking us.
Making Sam put me down on my feet I ran across the room and jumped into his arms, kissing him deeply.
"Joker, this is Sam, I promised him I'd set him free," I said as Harley squealed. "Oooh! Mistah J!"
"Pipe down Harley, you've been replaced," he said, pushing her away and I couldn't help but feel a little bad for her. "Come on, we gotta move!"
The five of us turned as one and ran for the front doors, we cleared the entrance just as the cops were pulling up the drive and I jumped onto Sam's shoulders, pulling everyone up as Sam did what he did best and barreled through the cop cars.
As we approached the gate a gun shot rang out in the night and Sam slowed and fell to his knees. I turned quickly to see Batman heading towards us and the Joker stepping up to meet him. And then I turned my attention to Sam. About twenty feet away was an ambulance, if we could just make it that far. . .
"Come on baby, you just gotta go a little further and then you can rest," I said, heaving Sam to his feet. The three of us managed to get him into the ambulance. Harley shot everyone who dared to get in our way and the brave ambulance driver lost his life to my gun in a stupid attempt at stopping us.
"Joker, let's go!" I screamed out the back of the ambulance before slamming the doors shut. Harley started the ambulance and made a mad turn, dragging our purple suited companion into the van and then sweeping off into Gotham.
Sam was bleeding profusely and I couldn't find an exit wound. Looking around desperately I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and found a scalpel in sealed plastic in a drawer. Pulling my shirt off over my head I handed it to Ivy to thread through the bars of Sam's cage.
"Bite on that, this is gonna hurt a lot," I told him in what I hoped was a confident tone of voice. I sliced into his belly, blood burbling up around my hands as I dug into his body cavity, looking for the bullet that had lost it's way. It had, thankfully, not damaged any of his internal organs, and I found it nestled in the coils of his large intestine. Using tongs to pull the bullet out, I took the large medical staples from Ivy, cursing loudly as Harley made a sharp turn and I fell off my perch. Climbing to my feet, I caught the Joker eyeing me darkly in the mirror. I stared back for a moment, giving him an equally hateful look before returning to tending Sam's wounds. Pursing my lips, I held the jagged incision together as best I could and stapled the entire cut, leaving nothing to chance before I washed and dried the cut and dressed it with clean gauze and medical tape. Ripping off the bloodied gloves and taking the staple remover, I threw them out and leaned back against the cool wall in my stained brassiere. Taking my first deep breath of the night.
We drove for another ten minutes until we were sure we weren't being followed before stopping by the car to grab our things and then headed for the sewers. This time we found a grill that Sam could slide through if he bunched himself up, and pretty soon we were walking along the dank sewers towards one of the Joker's many hideouts.
"So what's your name?" Harley asked me brightly, attempting to look at me from where she was helping hold up Sam's listing person.
"It's Brita, and this is Sam, the boiler man. Who's your friend?" I asked, motioning to the red head.
"Name's Ivy, Poison Ivy," she said coolly.
"Nice to meetcha," I replied cheekily.
I have no idea how long we were down there, I do know that my nose was numb from the stench of the sewer by the time we reached the safe house and climbed in. It was more than just a safe house, it was a luxury apartment. Complete with a living room, fully stocked kitchen and three bedrooms with their own bathrooms. I took the box with Gran and her belongings into the master bedroom and dropped them on a chair. Going into the bathroom and turning on the shower full bore, I dropped my clothes on the floor and sat down on the toilet. Moaning with toe curling pleasure at the luxury of going to the bathroom. When I finished I hopped under the shower and began to scrub myself down. I scrubbed away the grime of my recent adventures until the water ran clean and my skin was pink before I sat down hard on the floor of the tub and thought about everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours. In fact I was so overwhelmed by what had happened that I didn't even notice the Joker come into the room and pull aside the curtain to gaze over my bruised and battered body.
"Can I rest now baby? I just want to sleep," I murmured.
"Not until you tell me what happened down in that basement, and tell me who Sam is," he said menacingly.
"In the morning," I yawned.
"Sure sure, the morning. . Well it fucking well is the morning!" He screamed, wrenching off the running water and dragging me by my wet hair from the tub and into the bedroom, kicking me savagely in the ass and causing me to fall to the floor.
"Listen to me you fucking nutcase!" I screamed, pushing myself to my feet with strength I didn't even know I had in me. "I killed a madwoman because she wanted to take my face off my skull. Then I had to walk, run and wade through the bowels of hell for you. I waded through a swimming pool full of dead bodies! I snapped a skull open and found grey matter floating on the water around me. Did you know brains float Joker? Because I didn't! And then I find myself in surgical suites, one with a lobotomized skeleton on the slab that they forgot to move four doors down to the crematorium. And the other with an IV of lambs blood hanging from a thingie and buckets upon buckets of ancient clotted blood. Bleeding patients and blood transfusions with animal blood were actually thought to drive out the demons! But all it did was kill more people than save them! And then I find myself in an ECT suite. Do you know what ECT is? It's when they electrocute the personality out of you you moron, turn you into a zombie, no better than being lobotomized. And I swear to you I smelled ozone. And the morgue? The morgue was the best part because my heart wasn't trying to jump out of my chest or crawl into the pit of my stomach because the one room in that damned asylum that should have been rife with the unthinkable was actually the most orderly place in the joint. And just when I think I'm going to go insane myself, I find the crematorium. So I sidle on up to the door and I open it and I hear a scraping sound. So I inched away from it thinking oh, I'll go around the other way only the door to the boiler room is ancient, so when I try to open it it screams at me. And well, that just woke Sam up who comes lumbering around the boilers and tries to take my head off with a shovel and I barely get away from him with my head still on my shoulders and I hold up the gun. And do you know what he does? He begs me to kill him. And I lost my nerve because he just wanted someone to love him and show him a little kindness, so I said I'd get him out of there if he just helped me kill the generator. And he did. He ripped it clear out of the wall and chucked it across the room before picking me up and carrying me back through Arkham. Now after I get some sleep and get something, I'm going to see about taking that cage off of his head and maybe getting him to a home where he'll be treated like the human being he is!"
Turning around I stalked over to the closet, ripped open the doors and pulled out a blue and white shirt. Buttoning the white buttons, I went and climbed into bed and fell instantly and desperately into oblivion.
"Oh sweet lord," Enna whispers. Because there's nothing really else to say