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Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold
Chapter 10: Horrors at the Bottom of a Pit
Colonel Abner Tanner's room was slightly smaller than Amanda Waller's, but unlike her, he was aware that the space was excessive. He stayed because there were certain things a camp's commanding officer just had to do, and one of those things was to stay in bigger quarters than his subordinates. He didn't have to enjoy it. If he compensated for this, it was by keeping the furnishings as Spartan one could without knocking out a load-bearing wall. He had a cot, a blanket, a footlocker, a gas lamp, a small sink, a small mirror, and an old phone which now didn't work.
Most nights the Colonel was asleep by ten, but tonight he was still awake, sifting through the backlog of orders and rosters stemming from the radical patrol changes. He sat on the edge of his cot, reviewing forms by lamplight with a stubby pencil. Telling one hundred and seventy-four human beings what to do every hour of the day was no easy task. Meeting the new priorities while allotting the men a chance to eat and sleep was an ugly balancing act. Double-checking that no building or shovel was assigned to two tasks at once added a set of pins to juggle. And providing enough slack in it all so that a cracked window or stomach ache didn't stop the whole operation could drive a lesser man mad.
Tanner had assistants for this sort of thing, and he was smart enough to delegate to his officers when he could, but there were still certain forms a colonel had to review personally. When he had such a large pile he preferred to make a dent in it before bed. It was very boring, but he soldiered on. Every so often he would tap his chin with his pencil and stare at his letter wall. Tanner did have one set of decorations in his room: a hanging grid of twenty-four framed letters from his time in the Army. Most letters that a soldier kept were from mothers or sweethearts. Tanner's letters were from bureaucrats and hearing boards. The Colonel was sentimental in a way: he thought of each letter as punctuation in the story of his career - some were periods, many were question or exclamation marks, and a disturbing few were ellipses. Of course, the punctuation meant little without the prose.
The authors knew this. The letters were bland and vague in the fussy style of all embarrassing federal documents. They piled on terms like "our miscarriage of justice", "appraisals of your recent actions", "fit to reinstate at rank and grade", and "a plea of no contest regarding the aforementioned scenario". Most offered so little context and so few proper nouns that a stranger wouldn't have the first clue what specific events were being described. But Tanner knew what the coy authors weren't saying. He remembered every lurid story. He knew the context, and – to the eternal fear of certain figures – he knew every last proper noun.
In fact, when Abner Tanner looked at his letters, he didn't see "appraisals of your recent actions". No, what he saw was:
"As the only sober witness at the scene of the detonation, you're free to go."
"Sorry for the false incrimination again, here's a plaque. Have fun in Havana."
"We've negotiated with the Belgians; you can come home if we all agree that neither party at the wreckage technically declared war."
"Upon further investigation, the committee recognizes that all seventeen mules died of natural causes."
"President Coolidge assures us that you didn't mean to challenge him to a duel."
…and so on across the long wall. Some mementos made him smile, some made him cringe, but only one could bring a tear to his eye. His most cherished possession was a little wooden case displaying a burnished medal shaped in a bronze cross: the Croix de Guerre, awarded for gallantry in 1918 as a volunteer of the French Foreign Legion. Behind that medal was a beer-stained old telegram from 1920 informing him that because he was later discovered to be underage when he joined the Legion, he would not be allowed to display such a medal on his Army uniform.
Like most men mellowed by age and capable of recognizing irony, these days he thought it was sort of funny. He had given his life to the Army, but in that long career of mostly sitting behind a desk, the one medal he actually earned on the field of battle was the one they wouldn't let him wear.
And it was French, for gosh sakes.
He tried not to be bitter. C'est la vie, and whatnot. Actually, he was very fond of the French. The little bronze medal didn't remind him of the muddy trenches or the dysentery. It didn't even remind him of the medal ceremony. It reminded him of those golden weeks in Paris when Jean Claude, Neil, and the rest really showed him the town. The whole city was a party then. He had the best wine, the loudest dancing, and the latest mornings in his life. When Jean Claude recognized a certain implication of his youth and strait-laced upbringing, the wily romantic tried to trick him into one of Paris' busy cathouses. The young Tanner only realized why there were so many pretty ladies in dishabille at the last minute and escaped out a window.
His affection for the French ran deep. When their surrender was signed back in June, he nearly cut his hand crushing a glass of water. Those proud souls were being kicked and gutted by the bloodthirsty Ratzis, and this gnawed his conscience raw. He knew the news on the ground as well as anyone; the Brits were brilliant at that sort of thing and happy to share. He also knew that Fort Morrison was among the very few places where an American might ready the war effort in the meantime. Anything less would be disgusting. For that reason alone he hadn't left yet.
He heard crunching footsteps and a knock at the door. "You awake, Colonel?
The voice was Staff Sergeant Hank Jackson, one of the few men in camp near Tanner's age and a friend.
Colonel Tanner spoke back, "Yeah, Jackson."
"Then open up. Got news."
It was ancient military law that old sergeants could say whatever they wanted to their commanders in private if it saved time or saved lives. The Colonel stood and unlocked the door (he didn't feel he needed a guard). Staff Sergeant Jackson briskly pushed his way inside. He was a flinty-eyed curmudgeon with a paunch and Popeye's forearms. His polished shoes were no disguise; Jackson was the sort you never wanted to cheat at cards or meet in an alley. One of the main reasons nations had armies was to give mean bruisers like him someone else to pick on.
"Queer finding jus' came in, Abner."
"What's that?"
"Baker squad found an empty car parked in the woods south o' the Fort."
"A car? Whose car?"
"Don't know. Some two-door Ford. The message has already sped along to our lady guest," Jackson scowled just mentioning her, "but the radio boys didn't seem to think you were worth informin' at this time a' night. Lucky for you, I heard the commotion and thought I'd rectify that." The staff sergeant growled this in a way that made it clear part of his rectifying would involve having a long talk with the "radio boys" about their priorities vis-à-vis the chain of command. "For now, we got a pair o' gearheads trottin' down to this car as we speak. Should know more soon."
The Corporal crossed his arms thoughtfully. "Alright. I imagine Waller will react to this with her usual reserve and sense of proportion."
"Heh. Then we ought to be hearing a general alarm any-"
Suddenly, a tremendous horn erupted through the camp like an air raid siren. The two old soldiers stared at each other, bored and annoyed. Staff Sergeant Jackson waited for the noise to die down before continuing.
"-second now."
Amateur detectives trusted their instincts.
Skilled detectives trusted only reason and observation.
And master detectives reluctantly trusted ... their instincts.
As the theologians said, pride was truly the greatest sin. Pride put unjustified faith in one's capacities, and the smarter you were, the easier a trap this was to fall into. It took a great dose of intellectual humility to recognize that the brain did half its work beneath the surface. This was bitter medicine for the thinking man because it meant losing control. The subconscious was a fickle beast from a distant land; it ran on its own accord. You couldn't graph an intuition. You couldn't peer review a feeling. Acting on "the willies" didn't hold up in a court of law.
Still, a wise man understood that his subconscious had many uses. It was always on, always finding connections and seeking meaning. And it ran on different gears than the familiar end of the brain, sidestepping the myopia and biases of old-fashioned awareness. In fairness to its detractors, translating instinct was terribly difficult. You only had that sense of unease, that tingle in your spine. What did it mean? What if it was wrong? The answer was simply, like all good things, that knowing when to trust your instincts took practice.
Batman had a substantial amount of practice and knew very well how to judge his instincts. But he still had just enough pride for it to annoy him.
The stuck door Catwoman so impetuously entered led to a cluttered mass in pitch darkness: a janitorial supply room. The sliver of moonlight from the doorway offered a scene of wooden shelves and buckets, but even before that it was obvious from the layers of scents: bleach, borax, varnish, and soap.
Something here made him uneasy. The skin on his hands and neck prickled. His gut flipped. There was something out of place, something dark. Batman scowled. He was tired of walls and secrets. It was well past time to rip this case open and drag it into the light.
The stuck door Catwoman so smoothly entered led to a cluttered mass in pitch darkness: a big mop closet. The sliver of moonlight from the doorway offered a scene of wooden shelves and buckets, but even before that it seemed likely from the scents: bleach and a few other cleaning supplies.
As Batman wrenched the door shut behind them, she pulled out her flashlight and looked around. Yep, mop closet.
This was a huge relief. Catwoman knew the layouts of the sites she thieved down to the last power outlet. When blueprints or a preliminary stroll through were impossible, she could normally make a few safe assumptions based on the kind of building and other hints. But she had absolutely zero familiarity with secret military corpse stealing compounds. Entering a guarded site blind was one of the stupidest things a lady in her line of work might try. Who knew what lay beyond the door? It could be a busy hallway. It could be an occupied kitchen. It could be a shark pit. Really, mop closet was a best case scenario.
But of course, Grumble-face suddenly grimaced like he had eaten a pail of hot peppers.
"What's wrong?"
He glared around suspiciously. "I'm not sure yet."
"Great. Let's get going." Catwoman went to open the exit on the other side.
"Stop."
"You know we can't stay here."
"Just a minute." Batman retrieved his own flashlight from a belt pouch and studied the shelves. "I smelled something on the way in."
"There's a lot of smells. Let's move."
"This room's important."
"If you spill soup on the carpet."
"Stop talking."
"You-"
"Stop talking now."
Catwoman was about to respond with appropriate force when he stated to mutter at the bottles. "-Lanolin, formaldehyde, pH-neutral detergent, iodine-"
Catwoman looked over his shoulder. "What's this?"
He answered as he looked. "I smelled the formaldehyde. No janitor would need a bottle; it's mostly an embalming fluid. And there are other items that don't belong."
"Do they mean anything to you?"
Batman continued to search for a moment then turned, his face drawn tight. In his hand was a long scalpel.
"Unfortunately they do."
Minutes later.
Fort Morrison was never intended for combat and didn't have a formal war room. Colonel Tanner's office proved the next best thing. The hastily assembled pow-wow consisted of the Colonel, a scattering of officers, Miss Waller, and her constant shadow Lieutenant Wilson. The room was dark save for the illumination of a slide projector. One of the officers, Captain Roach, stood before the rest and was busy drawling lines and circles on a projected map of the Fort. The other officers occasionally interrupted with comments or questions.
Amanda Waller leaned over and whispered to Colonel Tanner, "Still think I overreacted?"
The Colonel quietly responded, "Frankly, yes. You had a footprint. Now you have an empty car. A car that, let's not forgot, isn't even on Fort property. Not exactly a smoking gun, Waller."
She raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You think the driver was lost and ran off the road? No one would park so deep in these woods without aggressive intentions. Might as well be spitting distance."
"I agree it's worth a reaction, but you're turning us into the Alamo. Unless they brought a helicopter, any intruders will have to come through the front door, especially on a night like this."
"I'm disappointed, Colonel Tanner. Reading your record one would never guess you possessed so little imagination."
"Looking at your record, Miss Waller, one would never guess you existed. Forgive me if I take your judgments on tactical matters with a grain of salt."
She gently smiled. "My record is as extensive as it is spotless, Colonel; it's not my fault you aren't cleared to see it. Although I suspect seeing a sequence of unblemished field operations would confuse you. I can't imagine you know what one looks like."
Behind them, Lt. Wilson chuckled. Though a clenched effort of will, the Colonel kept his response to himself. He was a man of honor, and there were certain things a man of honor didn't say to a lady.
The presentation up front quickly finished and the lights were turned back on. Colonel Tanner stood up and the rest of the room quickly followed.
"Thank you, Captain Roach. You know your orders gentlemen. Come morning, I'm sure we'll figure out what this is all about, but let's keep circling the wagons in the meantime. Dismissed."
The officers nodded and collected their coats and folders. Amanda spoke up. "Just one final note, if you please."
The Colonel gave a tired look but raised a hand for her to proceed.
"Officers, if we have infiltrators on site, and I strongly believe we do, this is a cause for maximum vigilance. Few of you have experience in the intelligence community, so you'll have to believe me when I say a hostile agent can be supremely clever. It was pure luck we uncovered that Ford in the woods tonight. I don't depend on getting lucky twice. In that spirit, we have to be ready for any trick. Maybe the infiltrators have cut a hole in the fence during a prior visit. Maybe they are in disguise as one of our own. Or maybe someone in our ranks has been coerced into aiding them-"
The officers responded with a chorus of angry denials. Amanda held up her hands for silence.
"I'm only saying to be ready for anything. I once attended a three-party meeting in the Polish embassy with a delegation from the Red Army. When the Polish diplomats wanted to speak privately, I noticed some of the Soviet officers excusing themselves to use the bathroom. Eventually, I got suspicious and forced the door open. The Russians were busy planting a microphone in the wall. They were spying on the meeting."
The only enlisted man present, young Private Fletcher, looked up from the projector he was taking apart.
"I guess that bathroom had a leak!"
There was utter silence in the office. Private Fletcher grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. "Get it?"
Amanda Waller closed her eyes as if in pain. "Private?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How many pushups can you do?"
"Uh ... I'd say sixty-five, ma'am."
"Do eighty right now or you clean every latrine in camp for the rest of the winter."
The private gaped in fright and hopped to the floor.
The other officers walked out. The Colonel huffed and Amanda turned to him.
"I'm sorry, did I infringe on your authority?"
"Pun like that? I would've given him a hundred."
Minutes earlier.
There was no light entering the mop closet, so Batman and Catwoman felt safe to leave. One the other side was a dark locker room with several shower stills and far too many sinks. It was a relief to be out of the cold, but the air was rank and humid. Every surface was chipped and stained. There was light shining under the far entrance. Presumably, anyone inside this strange building would have left with the alarms, but presumptions had a bad track record tonight. They huddled beside the door. There was no sound on the other side. Catwoman lowered onto her stomach and pulled out a very small mirror with a thin handle. She stuck her face up to the bottom gap and slid her mirror slowly under the door, adjusting the angle.
Batman tapped her shoulder blade.
Anything?
Catwoman shook her head and made a few gestures with her free hand.
Just a hallway. Twenty feet long. Nobody home.
He nodded.
They stood and quietly opened the door. They were in the middle of the hallway, equidistant from swinging double doors at each end. The hallway was crude like a passage in a cargo ship: bare walls and naked light bulbs. There were black skid marks on the tile floor: heavy carts obviously rolled through regularly.
Catwoman said, "Left or right?"
"The garage has to be ahead facing left and the heavier tire marks lead right. Whatever's being carried is dropped off and-"
She snapped her fingers under his face. "Short version?"
"Go right."
They crept to the swinging doors at the right end of the hallway. The other side was dark. Batman slowly pushed one open. Catwoman steadily aimed her flashlight around the room. The dim light was a montage of haunting images. A stack of emesis basins on a shelf. A freight elevator. A large device Batman recognized as an autoclave. Shiny green floor tiles, scrubbed immaculate. The metal frame of a gurney. A handsaw.
Batman hit the light switch. It was an operating room.
He swiftly got to work searching through the drawers and cabinets. Catwoman leaned against the wall with a troubled frown.
"This is it, right? Some sort of human testing?"
He didn't answer. She looked back through the door to make sure the coast was clear.
"Anything else incriminating?"
Batman didn't look her way, but she could see the edge of his frustrated expression. "Just surgical tools. But they've been used, and formaldehyde isn't for the living."
She glanced across at him, her lips tight, eyebrows pulled together. "You ... you expected to find a place like this from the start, didn't you?"
It was hardly a question. He said nothing.
Looking at the floor, she quietly pushed her point. "You knew since November. Not only something bad, but ugly and terrible and specific. An-" she gestured for words, "-an abomination." Catwoman looked up at him. "All these weeks as you put the pieces together, the whole time, you were imagining this happening. You were sure."
Batman stood in meditative stillness. When he finally spoke, it harsh and slow, like he was stifling a cough. "No. I wasn't sure. But it was always first in a short list of possibilities."
Catwoman never knew a person could sound so young and so old. She opened her mouth but there were no words inside. He stared evenly at her, expecting a response. She bit her lip instead. He ignored her and returned to work.
A clock ticked on the wall.
Reluctance and curiosity fought inside her, but for a cat there was no contest.
"Does it-"
He whipped around. "What?"
Catwoman hesitated.
He lowered his chin tepidly. "What?"
She tilted her head. "Does it ever hurt to be the World's Greatest Detective?"
He stared back and didn't answer.
Two minutes later.
The Gotham Containment Influenza Laboratory was a long, single-story brick building with no windows. The name was an anachronism, but the building's current program was far too cautious for something as bold as a title, so the old one was kept officially. Everyone just called it the Brick. It was shaped like a brick and colored like a brick and made of bricks. Also, anyone who tried to run into it received serious head trauma. The whole Fort knew about the Brick, but less than thirty were allowed inside, mostly to assist the gaggle of civilians that cycled though every season, and none of those soldiers were talking.
Amanda Waller and Lt. Slade Wilson walked briskly toward its front entrance. She had work to do in her office in light of these intrusions, but it was also for safety's sake: the Brick was obviously the last building anyone could break into. She nodded to the checkpoint sentry and flashed her ID card. Lieutenant Wilson just strode past. Reaching her office near the front, she turned to him.
"Have them send someone to man my door; I need you on the offensive. Pick the search team you like best and lead it. Find these interlopers."
"And when my little gang doesn't keep up?"
"Whatever. Go alone for all I care, but if you get into hot water because you didn't bring backup, you and I are going to have a problem."
"Right."
She stared him in the eye with a serious frown. "And you better not forget the rules."
He dryly recited. "Better a prisoner than a corpse; better a corpse than a witness. I know the drill, mother."
"Real funny, Wilson. Go."
Letting him have his silence, Catwoman walked in a circle around the room. "So what now? The elevator looks promising, looks like it was made to hold this gurney."
"Right, but it's loud and the search teams will see it moved. We should-."
"Don't worry, I know exactly what you're thinking."
Catwoman shut the lights off.
...
There were many differences between a city dweller and a city infiltrator. Work hours. Social circle. Life expectancy. But the biggest difference was in attitude towards elevators. A city dweller saw an elevator as a boxy means of conveyance. A city infiltrator saw an elevator as an inconvenient stepping stone to a rope.
Like many freight elevators, this one was nearly skeletal, not bothering with wallpaper or mirrors or other comforts. It was a cage of metal latticework; they could look through and see the weights and pulleys in the shaft outside. Keen eyes and a flashlight showed that there was one stop far below them, three stories underground.
In no time, they found the maintenance hatch above and pulled up through. The two of them crawled over to the side and nimbly climbed down the elevator's exterior to the cables. Then they rappelled.
As Batman and Catwoman quietly descended, the air grew chilly and they began to hear a loud hum. When they reached the bottom, they turned on their flashlights and cautiously crept forward. It was a long room with four darkened passages. There were scores of what seemed to be lockers on the wall, all three feet square. Catwoman found and hit the light switch. The lamps were greenish and dull, casting shadows in the corners. The whole space was cramped like a mine; the ceiling was a foot too low. He had to hunch to fit the ears of his cowl.
Batman looked around. "The noise is coming from these lockers." He slowly rotated, piecing together the room. "Wait," he paused a minute, staring into space and muttering, " ... four- ... five- ... six- ... seventeen ... seventeen ..." Batman's face started to tick back and forth like a man speed-reading without a book. His mouth moved soundlessly. Catwoman grabbed his arm. "Hey! What is it?"
Suddenly, his trance broke and his complexion burst into passionate rage. Batman could cover ground in an instant when he really wanted to. In three steps, he was at the nearest humming locker and grasped its handle.
Catwoman stepped firmly in his way and yelled in his face. "Seventeen of what?"
Batman paused. In a split second, his body remembered that The Batman kept emotions so deeply in check that they died of malnutrition. The rage in his form disappeared, leaving the old glacial cool. He looked down at her, calm and lucid.
"These are freezers. There's sixty in the room, but only seventeen are active now."
She let go of his arm. "So?"
He nodded slowly. "It's all of them. They're all here."
"What? You skipped a step."
"Watch."
Batman pulled the handle of the freezer. There was a blur of icy air. Then a long tray swiftly slid out with a putrefying body on it. The grayed corpse was missing both legs at the hip and half of one forearm. Its dessicated face was shriveled and sunken. The stench was muted but profoundly unwholesome.
Catwoman didn't even try to hide her fit of dry heaving. "Oh, God." She bent double and gagged. This lasted quite some time before she caught her breath. She stared at the body numbly.
Batman looked strangely ambivalent, like an old hunch was finally proven. He closed the locker for her sake.
"I knew the the number was significant, but I didn't recognize why at first. It's the number of bodies stolen from Gotham. Seventeen. Now we have it. This is evidence."
Catwoman looked at him, looked at the locker, looked around the room, and dry heaved again.
