Batman walked on through the corridor stepping over the bodies – evidence of his failure. He wasn't going to sleep well for months – if he slept at all. There was another body curled up in a ball under the garbage shoot. Next to it was the shoot's open padlock.
So close yet so far.
This body was different to the other ones. It was female, small and it wasn't one of Joker's goons. He moved closer and noticed the balaclava. She was one of the robbers.
Pink? He thought looking at the balaclava. Who robs a place in pink? What self-respecting criminal robs a tobacconist's in a fluoro pink balaclava? Then he heard a whimper. He looked closer. This one was still breathing, for now anyway. The Joker gas was just taking while. Again he was thankful for his gas mask. He radioed Gordon.
Bring ambulances, coroners, and a Hazmat squad for this corridor, he said.
He looked at the dying robber again. She was whimpering again, it was strange. She was whimpering the words of a song.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy, when skies are grey.
Her voice was young. He wondered how old she was. She was almost certainly the girl who screamed in the tobacconists. He reached out and grasped the balaclava. The girl let out a gasp and stopped whimpering. She held her balaclava on and opened her eyes. The moment she saw him she tried to pull away.
JADE'S POV
I heard someone mumbling something. The only word I caught was Hazmat, if that's even a word.
I felt weird. My head hurt. There was so much pressure above my eyes.
My chest hurt. I couldn't breathe. Maybe I had been shot and not noticed. Maybe I had been shot like all of the others and I was going to die.
I thought about dying. I thought about it often. Now it was here and I was scared. I wanted to feel safe. I remembered when my dad used to sing to me to make me feel safe. Later I sung the song to mum when she was sick and after that I sang it to myself because I couldn't sleep or stop the pain that wracked me. I knew the words by heart –
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy, when skies are grey.
Something tugged at my balaclava.
No. Wouldn't let them take it off.
I opened my eyes.
There was a shadow sitting in front of me. My eyes cleared a little. It was a bat. No. It didn't look like a bat. Bats look almost alien.
This was a man. Batman.
Crap. Run.
I shuffled along the wall, crawling my way on the cold floor. My vision grew fuzzy. I couldn't breathe. I gasped.
My chest hurt. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I had a knife between my ribs.
I fell face first onto the floor, squirming.
Must breath, must make it go away.
I moved my clothes so my chest was in direct contact with the floor. The cold would help. Help the pain. Make it go away. I rested my aching forehead on the marble tiles.
Just wanted it all to go away. I closed my eyes and pretended the world wasn't there. No pain. No dead people. No batman. No hunger.
No fever. No cough. No alleys to sleep in.
No feeling anything. No remembering.
Nothing. All gone.
She collapsed. He went up to her. She was still breathing, but only just. He took out a rebreather from his pocket. There still wasn't much clean air in there and the amount of Joker virus was still lethal. He gently lifted the girl's head and removed the balaclava. He stopped. She was young, very young. Her voice sounded older than she was. He'd guessed she was in her early twenties by her voice, but this girl couldn't have been older than fifteen, at the higher end of the scale. He put the rebreather in her mouth and turned her on her side. Her shirt was pulled up so he moved it back down, but not before seeing how shrunken her flesh was. She was skin and bone. She whimpered and reached up, clutching her chest. Batman reached out and held her hand. She was taking so long to die and she was probably the most innocent person here – just stealing to get money for food.
It wasn't fair.
He sat there. He didn't know for how long. The Hazmat squad arrived. The told him to get out before they sealed off the area. He looked at the little girl. She was still breathing. He told them she was still alive and he wasn't leaving her. They looked doubtful but they let him carry her out of the corridor. The virus didn't transfer person to person so far. She wasn't a risk.
He set her down on the bench and removed the rebreather.
Then he turned. Expecting to see Joker being led away in handcuffs, laughing. Instead there were only his handcuffs – melted through with acid, and lying on the ground. The Joker had escaped.
Anger pulsed through him. He'd screwed up again.
But there wasn't time for that now.
Batman went and sat next to the girl again.
Still breathing.
Commissioner Gordon looked miserable. The coroner's van wasn't big enough to fit all the cadavers.
He walked up.
"Bad situation." He said quietly "not like you needed telling though."
He nodded.
"How many casualties?" Batman asked
Gordon knew he couldn't soften the blow.
"Fifteen dead, plus the security guards. Seven injured. The rest with mild exposure to joker gas. The virus shouldn't multiply enough to kill them" Jim looked at his feet. He knew Batman would be feeling guilty. The moment he'd said fifteen dead he acted as though he had been physically hit. "You still did a better job than anyone else could've. Most of them were dead before you got here." He tried to comfort
"There still dead."
Batman looked at the girl. Jim did too.
"Shouldn't she be getting treated?" he asked.
"No. She's terminal."
They both knew there was nothing to be done. She was unconscious and not in pain. The coroners were standing by waiting for her to stop breathing so they could put her in a body bag.
"She sang earlier," whispered Batman.
"Swansong."
They sat and said nothing. The coroner looked like he wanted to cry.
There was a small cough from beside them. Then a whole fit of coughs and a whimper. Batman and Gordon looked at each other. The final symptoms of joker gas was coughing, euphoria, retching, convulsions, paralysis, unconsciousness and then death. Usually this happened within a minute or two but sometimes it took longer, like the security guard that had tipped them off. Sometimes they slipped out of their coma and came back before dying.
Batman reached out and grabbed the girl's hand.
"Does it hurt?" he asked
The girl didn't answer but tried to sit up. He gently pushed her back down. The paramedics were hurrying towards them. The girl tried to sit up again.
"No. Lie still." He ordered.
The girl glared at him. He looked right back.
The paramedics came and setup. One of them got out a needle to put an IV in.
The girl sat up, struggling. Batman tried to push her down again. This girl was dying and she was worried about a needle.
She ripped his arm off of her and tried to leap over the bench. Her foot caught in the bench railing and she stumbled, landing on her knees with a nasty thud, one knee went pop. She got up and kept going. Trying to run. She was trying to run but was easy to catch up with. She limped heavily and couldn't draw breath.
Batman caught her in the next corridor outside the cinema. It occurred to him that she shouldn't have been able to run if she was sick. She tried to hit him to escape but he caught her wrist. She tried to hit him again, but he caught that one too.
Gotcha.
