Chapter Four: Burn Baby Burn
After Joseph had disappeared inside the crematorium with Talia's dead body, Bane's voice broke the silence, his words delivered on a deep rasp. " What are the immovable plans keeping you from sharing time with that young man?"
"I'm washing my hair," Jane remarked dryly.
Bane turned and stared at the back of Jane's head, the heavily conditioned strands woven into a neat braid as she kept her eyes fixed straight forward, looking at nothing in particular.
As Bane continued to stare, inside The Morning Star Crematorium, Joseph Geranie unzipped the body bag that contained Talia. Joseph moved her to a completely combustible rigid cardboard container before typing a series of numerical combinations into the control panel of the automated furnace.
As Joseph whistled lowly to himself, out in the Gotham City Coroner van, Jane licked her dry lips as she glanced down at the steering wheel column, her eyes landing on where to press to sound the sharp horn.
"It would be ill-advised to draw unnecessary attention."
Jane's eyes flew up to the rear-view mirror to meet his storm-filled orbs, the irises swirling with a mixture of returning physical pain and raw mourning.
"There's close to a full tank of gas, just take the van and go," Jane said as she controlled her breathing.
Bane never blinked as he answered her on a grave rasp. "I have further use for you."
"Use?" Jane echoed hollowly.
"You will drive me to where the river meets the ocean."
As Jane's forehead pulled into a frown at Bane's words, inside The Morning Star Crematorium, Joseph loaded the oblong cardboard box containing Talia's corpse onto a moving belt that would carry her exquisite corpse into the furnace.
As Talia's body was slowly moved closer to the opening of the furnace, out in the Gotham City Coroner van, Jane blinked slowly as Bane lapsed into silence, his eyes glossing over as he thought of giving Talia a deserved warrior's death.
He wouldn't share with the woman about the importance of scattering Talia's ashes at sea. Bane wouldn't reveal the ritual of finding a place where the mouth of the river meets the ocean.
He'd let her ashes fall into the erratic, bombastic meeting of currents. The water's agitation lit up the sea floor with the activity of phytoplankton.
Talia's ashes would mix with the sand, some grains would sink to the bottom of the sea, to the depths where only jarring Angler fish would see her in the inky blackness.
Jane blinked as Bane's reflected eyes slowly came back into focus while inside the crematorium, the flames began to lick at Talia's dead, curled, pale toes.
The high-gloss gel manicure began to bubble, the rich burgundy rolled down the arch of Talia's dead foot, bright tear drops on flesh about to be consumed by fire.
As the temperature in the furnace began to grow to its ceiling of just over 1,800 degrees, out in the stolen Gotham City Coroner van, Bane was abruptly brought back to reality at Jane's voice, surprisingly strong despite the mental overload and ache encircling her wrist, throbbing with each beat of her heart. "If I drive you to the coast, will you let me go?"
"After you drive me to the coast, I have further use for you."
Jane narrowed her eyes as he continued.
"You will assess and treat my physical damage."
She shook her head before he was done speaking. "I told you I don't care for the living."
"You can certainly identify physical abnormalities, know proper anatomical structures and functions."
"Sure, of course," Jane managed, trying to find another way of saying she couldn't do anything further.
"You're paramount in allowing the strength to return to my body, you will heal me, provide me adequate time to regroup and prepare," Bane murmured, more to himself than to Jane.
"Prepare for what?" she asked, feeling a dull wave of nausea, a hot knot of pain had been slowly forming in the middle of her lower back and usually heralded the red tide and she only had a few tampons in her purse.
Bane's reflected stare was almost too much for Jane as he spoke. "I will finish what Talia began; I will destroy the city."
"How do you plan on doing that?" Jane asked, unable to keep from scoffing a bit at his diminished capacity and league of dead followers.
"I will heal as I build an army, gather the unwanted and give them purpose," Bane rasped, his voice hoarse without the aerosolized respiratory support. He coughed dryly before he continued, his tone rougher, rocks rubbing together, each syllable a clashing of jagged, granite edges.
"You will enable my rise and return."
Jane turned in the driver's seat to look back at him. "How exactly am I supposed to do that? I don't work with living tissue and only have enough supplies to tape your cracked ribs, throw in a few stitches."
Bane slid down the gurney, a small movement, suddenly looming closer.
Jane was standing too close to the sun in the tiny confines of the van.
Jane couldn't help but flinch, echoing his movement, her injured wrist knocking against the steering wheel.
She gasped as involuntary tears sprang to her eyes.
Bane didn't ask her if she was okay.
He wordlessly stared.
Remained expressionless.
Completely motionless.
As Bane considered the woman who smelled like formaldehyde and latex, certainly a fetish for someone, inside The Morning Star Crematorium, the flames were ravenous as they hungrily devoured the remnants of Talia's cardboard coffin and moved on to her beautiful corpse.
Talia's internal organs first boiled from the heat before bursting, dead balloon animals popped in the shapes of a brain, heart, stomach, and liver.
As Talia's ropy bowels surrendered themselves to the flame, out in the stolen van, Bane spoke without acknowledging Jane's physical pain.
"Upon return from the coast, you will take me to where the city keeps their unwanted."
Jane cradled her injured wrist, a frown forming between her eyes.
"The shelter? Catholic Charities?"
"No, where is the city's leper colony, those society doesn't want to have to see and step over?"
Jane nodded as she pressed her lips together, knowing he meant a large tent city off the interstate. The last news station to feature the encampment had lost count at more than seven hundred occupants.
"Why there?" she asked, sniffing hard as tears formed along her lash line, on the precipice of rolling down her cheeks.
"I will heal and rest in the valley of the unwanted, no one will search for you where the unwashed masses gather."
Jane's lips parted, not thinking the whole time that no one actually knew besides her that Bane had risen from the dead.
No one knew that Lazarus had exited his tomb and was out looking for a good time.
"I could just drop the van in drive and ram this fucking building, take a chance on foot," Jane hissed, her wrist's screaming was becoming difficult to ignore.
"You certainly could, but that would be unwise."
"How could you even begin to stop me?" Jane asked, her voice quavering. The toxic combination of the pain in her wrist and heady good old-fashioned fear made her eyes fill with tears she wouldn't have chosen to shed in front of him.
Bane had to force himself to remain neutral, from his facial expression to his posture, as a baseborn image flashed before his eyes at the sight of the hot tears rolling down her face, the liquid glass droplets glowed a wet path down her smooth skin. He feigned discomfort at his side that needed his immediate attention, so he didn't have to look at her beautiful face.
Bane gritted his teeth, despising the single image that remained wedged in the front of his mind, unable to banish the titillation of seeing her crying.
He stared at the ground; she watched his large hands close in and out of fists.
In that moment, Jane truly looked at Bane.
He was no longer a perceived dead slab of muscle.
An abdominal cavity holding putrefying, wet viscera.
The meat was now being perfused by the beat of a strong heart.
She ran her eyes over the sculpted shape of his body that the scrub sleeves didn't cover. The fabric stretched taut, threatening to burst as it encased his biceps and horseshoe-shaped definition of his triceps.
Jane could see that Bane could crush her in his diminished capacity, but he was also well over an arms-length away and she would be faster on her feet the short distance to the crematorium door.
"Run if you please, I will seek refuge at 1742 Clover Hill Lane," Bane rasped as he brought his large hands together, steepling his fingers. "I will kill everyone who resides under the roof," he added, his gaze remaining firmly fixed on the corrugated steel floor of the Gotham City Coroner van.
"What?" Jane stupidly murmured.
"1742 Clover Hill Lane," Bane repeated as he raised his eyes to meet hers. "First do no harm," he added as his orbs pulsed with glorious pyroclastic waves of chestnut fury.
Jane blinked slowly, pressing her lips together before she dropped her eyes, finding her purse pulled apart. She narrowed her eyes at her molested designer bag, not knowing how he'd been violating her wallet while she was driving the dark van.
Looking back, Jane would always wonder how different her future would've unfolded from that moment if she hadn't procrastinated and changed the address on her driver's license.
Jane Bell didn't live at 1742 Clover Hill Lane anymore, only her mother remained under the stucco roof.
Jane looked back over her shoulder at the clock on the stereo's digital display. "It'll be about an hour and half until your friend is done burning," she said as she brought her angry, tear-filled eyes back to Bane.
"I'll drive you to the ocean, but I'm done listening to you talk," she spit as she turned around in the driver's seat and began turning up the volume knob as she added. "You're not even supposed to be alive, and the dead don't speak."
Bane's ears pounded from the bass that emitted from the garish song she'd landed on.
"As you wish," Bane murmured as the thrashing guitars spilled from the speakers, the vocalist sounded like a fucking Neanderthal behind the mic.
As Talia's body continued to be decimated to bits and pieces in the furnace, a few states south, two federal agents adjusted their seatbelts as their plane left the tarmac.
The dark-haired agent with the most years in service to his country was decorated agent Dallas Derrick Carson, nicknamed Double DC.
Agent Double DC from D.C.
His partner in work and life for the past fifteen years was agent McKay. They never went by their first name, always McKay.
The two had been routinely dispatched due to the elevated federal charges of domestic terrorism to anyone that had survived Bane's army.
As the agents plane took flight, ascending to a cruising altitude, Talia continued to burn, her remaining larger pieces of bone would eventually be ground into finer fragments. Talia became dust that floated and swirled in the air. Bits of her burnt ash cling to Joseph's eyelashes as he poured her into a cheap county urn.
Bane and Jane waited outside in the idling van.
The song was a 1980's hair band ballad, lots of high-pitched mournful vocals and drawn-out guitar solos.
Jane focused on her breathing; her body's shock response made the pain recede enough to be close to tolerable.
Bane stayed quiet in the back of the van, his pain began returning in slow waves as he waited for Talia to be returned in an urn, the ashes still hot to the touch.