by Mike Leon
I need you to give me a reason not to hang up this phone right now.
I’m pretty sure my tomorrow will be better if you’re not in it.
No. This is hurtful. I’ve got a couple of your lizard cadavers in storage. I think I’ll drop one of them off at NBC News headquarters. You think they’d be interested in that?
You and I both know you wouldn’t be making this phone call if you were winning anything.
You’re making this call to save your own skin, and it’s not gonna work. I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna launch a hellfire missile so far up your ass-
It’s not a threat. I’m coming for you.
Fuck off, asshole.
BATMAN
“I am the shadow that haunts the dark. I am the creature that strikes fear into the criminal heart. I am the night-beast that brings retribution to the streets of Gotham.”
Morgan rises out of a crouch atop a corner desk in the payroll department. He takes hold of the corners of the orange and green beach towel safety pinned around his neck. As he rises toward the ceiling, he spreads wide the beach towel cape like a pair of bat wings, while humming the opening notes of Danny Elfman’s Batman theme. He wears navy blue sweat pants with a pair of white Hanes briefs worn over them and white knee socks pulled up and over his shins.
“Da – da – da – DAA – DA – DAA!” he sings.
“He’s completely out of his mind,” says Frank Overton. The operator stands beside the desk, staring up at Morgan. He is a tall man with black skin and a short grey beard. He wears a pair of slacks and a polo shirt under a Kevlar vest. “Been doing this for days. We keep having to chase him down and take him back to his room.”
“I am justice!” Morgan insists. He leaps down from the desk and glares into Overton’s face.
“Yeah. We know. You’re Batman.”
“What’s a Batman?” Sid asks.
“Batman. You know Batman.”
Sid shakes his head.
“The superhero.”
Sid stares at Overton blankly. He has no idea what this man is talking about. Sid has been in the Graveyard building for two days now and has seen many things here that confound him. This Batman is just the newest in the series.
After the ambush at the diner, he came here, per standard protocol. If Kill Team One is ever killed or captured then command defers to Walter Stedman, a man Sid does not remember ever meeting, but has seen in pictures.
After the debacle in the lobby of the building, Walter took Sid to his top floor war room, along with the Ghoul and Zap, two members of Kill Team Two. Sid told Walter everything. He told him about Kill Team Three in the desert. He told him about Ashley Marjorie and his brother and that little girl – that poor little girl. He told him about the cave and the village raids. Hundreds dead, killed by his hands. He told Walter how Shelly Baum had come to bring him home from there and how Victor had tried to hurt her. That made Walter chuckle a little. He told Walter about Eagle Necktie and how Victor, the Victor that came back with them, was an imposter. Kill Team One held the monsters off and Sid was able to escape with the girl who doesn’t talk. Walter demanded to see the girl, and some operators retrieved her from the stolen car Sid had left parked outside the fence.
He did not tell Walter about Grenadine. He told no one about Grenadine.
The next several hours were consumed by questions the boy could not answer.
Why is Entropy looking for you? The Graveyard commander wanted to know, but Sid couldn’t say. He never heard of anyone like that before.
How long was Kill Team Three compromised? Sid didn’t know.
Why did they try to kill you? Sid couldn’t be sure.
How many of them are still alive? Sid didn’t know that either.
Who was Ashley taking orders from? Sid certainly didn’t know that.
Walter eventually became frustrated and dismissed Sid from the room without further instruction. Zap took him to an empty dorm on the fourth floor of the building, where he told him to stay, as if that mattered. Sid spent most of the next two days wandering the building. He has drawn awkward stares from many of the soldiers here, and Deadeye told him he should return to his room once, but Sid ignored him.
Now he stands in the payroll office in the blue twilight of the early morning, hours before any of the desk clerks will arrive. He followed Frank in here all the way from the front lobby, where he first saw the operator chasing Morgan down the hall.
“Batman is a superhero. He dresses up like a bat with a cape and fights crime. He beats up bad guys and saves people.”
Sid nods.
“Does he work for Graveyard?”
“You fuckin’ with me, kid?”
Sid shakes his head.
“Batman is a comic book character. He’s fake. Fictional. Make-believe. Doesn’t exist.”
That’s what they said about werewolves, Sid thinks. And lizard people.
“Why does Morgan want to be Batman?”
Frank shrugs.
“Morgan’s head is messed up. He’s acting like he’s a little kid again. Kids worship Batman.”
“Batman is a god?”
“No. He’s a superhero. He’s like…uh… Fuck. I don’t know. I can’t believe you don’t know Batman.”
Overton turns back to Morgan, and he is greeted by empty space. The crazed operator has vanished.
“What the fuck? Did you see where he went?” Frank asks, turning back to Sid. But Sid is gone too. Frank sighs. “Aw, fuck me.”
Sid is already down the hall and to the elevator. He rides the elevator to the basement and gets off. He walks down a long hall, passing some men guarding the armory, before he reaches the stairs leading down to the sub-basement and beyond. He descends two floors to the sub-sub-basement. There, he enters the record storage area.
The records room is vast and dark. File cabinets taller than Sid are lined wall to wall in rows and marked with stickers that display long numbers mixed with letters. Some kind of filing system Sid does not understand. That is fine. He doesn’t need to find what he’s looking for by himself.
The Filekeeper is a strange creature. Sickly and pale skinned, he has a flock of white hair sprouting from the middle of his otherwise bald head. He has no muscle tone. The lines of his ribcage show through the skin of his chest. Simple black pants cover his legs and whatever might be between them. A mass of surgical scars crisscross the crown of his pasty skull. A blackened steel mask covers his mouth and nose. It extends into a tube that runs to a black cylindrical tank on the floor that is as big around the keeper’s calf. It looks like an oxygen tank, but Sid guesses it is filled with some other strange gas. He is like a sight from a nightmare and is shunned by most, but Sid shares a common thread that the rest do not. The Filekeeper was his father’s creature.
Whatever dark allegiance was made between Kill Team One and this shadow of a man that lurks the sub-sub-basement is unknown to him. Still, the Filekeeper has been good to Sid. He first spoke to the decrepit loon soon after arriving at Graveyard. He was looking for a way to finally kill Blood Drinker. If a knife through the head did not do the trick, then surely there must be some secret way – some weakness, some poison, perhaps to destroy its brain or stab it with some particular material. The Filekeeper promised to look, but so far has found nothing. Sid no longer holds out hope for an answer. Now, he tries only to escape thinking about it.
Today’s query is much lighter in nature.
“Batman,” Sid says. “Show me Batman.”
The Filekeeper looks up from the eerie green glow of the LCD monitor on the desk in front of him. His eyes are hidden behind a visor of blackened steel.
“Is that film, television, or periodical?” The mask makes his voice into a muffled echo.
“A book. A comical book.”
“A periodical then,” the Filekeeper says as his withered form rises from his seat. He shuffles over to a simple square table with four chairs and four desktop computers, dragging that canister
along the cement floor behind him. He pulls out a chair for Sid. “I can provide you with digital scans of Batman comic books dating back to the first appearance of the character in 1939. Some volumes are not complete.”
Sid sits down on the chair, as the Filekeeper shuffles back to his desk. The monitor awakens from its dark slumber and Sid looks down at the black keyboard in front of him. It is covered in little buttons. Arrows. Numbers. Letters. A whole alphabet of numbers, all mixed up in the wrong order. This device is maddening.
He has seen computers. It would be impossible not to, considering the pervasiveness of them. He has killed at least fourteen people seated at computers just in recent memory. And yet he has never used one. The old man used to say computers were for weaklings and lazy men. He would have beaten Sid for expressing any interest in them.
He quickly makes up his mind not to ask for help using this machine. It could not possibly be much different from the cell phones or radios he has used during operations. He starts by mashing the keys for his subject. He hunts for the keys one by one with his index fingers. B-A-T-M-A-N. He looks up at the monitor and is greeted by the same image of the Graveyard skull and crossbones that was there a minute before. Nothing. Maybe this computer is voice activated.
Sid picks up the small rounded object to the right of the keyboard and holds it up to his face. A laser shines in his eye from the bottom of the thing.
“Batman,” he says. “Computer, show me Batman books.”
The scene catches the Filekeeper’s attention. He stands from his desk.
“Perhaps I should show you how to operate the computer.”
“That may be necessary.”
The Filekeeper pulls up a window that covers the Graveyard emblem and runs a search for Batman. He shows Sid how the mouse moves the tiny cursor on the screen and the left click selects objects there. He learns how to flip the pages in the digital book and then how to load the next book.
Sid is perplexed when he first sees the material. These are not books like he has seen before, nor are they instructional diagrams like the manuals for the weapons he uses. These are colored pictures with words printed over top of them. The Filekeeper has to explain that they are read panel to panel, left to right, top to bottom. Sid learns this quickly.
He starts with the earliest possible story of Batman and works his way forward. The room is silent for six hours and thirty-seven different Batman comics before Sid utters another word.
“I don’t understand something,” he says.
The Filekeeper turns up from his work.
“What is it?” the withered creature whispers.
“Batman refuses to kill his enemies. Why?”
“He believes it is wrong.”
“It’s stupid. Each time he imprisons these men, they escape and try to kill him again. I would cut their throats and be done with them.”
“You are different than most.”
“How so?” Sid twists his face.
“You show no mercy. Your father made sure of that.”
“Mercy is for the weak. A warrior has no mercy.”
“Did he teach you that?”
“Yes.”
“When you came here, you did not kill the soldiers at the front door. Why?”
“I didn’t need to, and I thought it would make Walter angry.”
“Why would Walter care? They are just soldiers.”
Sid shrugs. He can’t answer the question. The Filekeeper asks him another.
“Would Victor have killed the soldiers?”
“Yes.” Sid answers that question with hardly a millisecond to consider it. Victor would have killed all the guards and continued through the rest of the soldiers in the building until he got what he wanted. He might not have even stopped there.
“I see. And what makes your way better?” The Filekeeper shoots back with the next question just as quickly as Sid answered the last.
“I don’t know. I didn’t have to kill anyone.”
“What if that was a mistake? What if those men come back and try to kill you?”
“I… I don’t know.” He barely finishes stammering before the Filekeeper moves on.
“Maybe you should kill them now, whilst they least expect it.”
“I don’t need to do that.”
“Victor would.”
“He’s different.”
“How? Are you weak? Is that why?” Another rapid fire question. Sid doesn’t like this one…
“No,” Sid barks back.
“Then you should kill all the soldiers,” the Filekeeper insists. “They may try to harm you.”
“What?”
“Then again, maybe they have no intentions to do anything threatening.”
“You’re confusing me.”
“Am I? I’ll make it simple. Better safe than sorry. You must kill the lobby guards.”
“I’m not killing anybody right now.”
“Why not?” bounces back the Filekeeper. He leans closer in his chair.
“I don’t know. I’m just not.”
“Is it because killing is wrong?” The Filekeeper leans even closer and his eyes widen with twisted conviction.
“No.”
“But is it?” The man-thing demands to know. He’s leaning almost completely out of his chair.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” The Filekeeper asks. Sid is more than frustrated now.
“I told you already. No!” Sid shouts. “Why do you keep asking that?”
The Filekeeper leans back in his chair.
“Because sometimes the question is more important than the answer.”
POW II
Blood Drinker punches Ivan across the face. He feels like he’s been through this before.
“Where is the girl?!” he screams. He is dressed in pin-striped pants and a white sleeveless shirt. His Nazi jacket hangs draped over a simple wooden chair. His nubby little pointed teeth are right in Ivan’s face. Has he been through this before? Is it a memory or the present?
Ivan dangles upside down from the ceiling of this dark room. He does not know this place or how he got here. They took his weapons and his clothes. Now he is cold and naked in this cell with high ceilings. Long chains and shackles are attached to his feet. His hands are chained behind his back. Smart thing they did, or he would have strangled this scum days ago and fled.
“Why do you care?” Ivan says. “Cat is already out of the bag, as they say.”
“You never FUCKING MIND WHY I CARE!”
His boys circle each other in the grass like dogs made to fight. They brandish the wooden knives he gave them using the grips he taught them. The little one tests the bigger one with quick jabs to gauge his reactions. Victor disarms him in a flash and kicks him in the guts. Just like that it is over.
Now there is a man tied to a tree. He has a bag over his head, but Ivan removes it. He wants Sid to look in the man’s face. Ivan knows his face. His face is fear. Ivan points.
“This is the target,” he says. “Now kill.”
“With what?” Sid says. “I have no weapons.”
Ivan smacks him upside the head. The boy is eight and stupid as an infant.
“You always have weapons.”
Sid frowns and begins punching the man in the groin. He can’t reach much higher.
Ivan shakes his head. They are going to be here all day.
His boys circle each other in the grass like dogs made to fight. This time they have real knives. The little one jabs at the bigger one to test him. Find his weaknesses. He finds none. Victor slides in and cuts Sid’s hand with the knife. Sid shrieks and drops the knife. He is six. Ivan throws him a roll of bandages and shakes his head.
There is another man tied to a tree. Ivan removes the hood and looks upon another face of fear. This time he only needs to point. Victor climbs up the ropes and begins biting. He is small and this will not be over quickly. Ivan nods.
The boys are ten and twelve. Ivan cuts two men loose be
hind the house and gives them a thirty minute head start into the Pine Barrens. Then the boys follow. They return two hours later. Victor holds both heads and Sid holds none.
“Do you know what I want?” Blood Drinker asks.
“A bullet in the brain?” Ivan answers. He isn’t sure if he’s hanging upside down anymore, or if he’s right side up and the Nazi bastard is walking on the ceiling. He thinks the first thing, but it could be the latter.
“No. Though I would gladly laugh off such a pitiful attempt to destroy me. MURDER!!!” Blood Drinker shouts. It is difficult to determine if that is the answer to his own rhetorical question, or the symptom of his klazomania.
“I wish,” he continues, “for a return to what once was – a world where humans are kept as cattle and at any time we may feast on your succulent flesh. I wear the vestments of a time when we almost accomplished that goal.”
“Hitler was a faggot, you know. Eva Braun pegged his asshole every night.”
“Wonderful imagery, kill team. DESECRATION!!! But I happen to know Eva would tell you different.”
Ivan makes a mental note. If he gets out of here, he needs to have Walter run one of those computer machine searches to find Eva Braun.
“Would you believe there are those among us who would not have it such a way? There are those who say our time has passed – that the great war was our last chance at rebuilding the old empire. They are content to cower in the shadows of your great civilization. Some even say we should reach out to make peace with your kind. Would you believe that if I told you?”
Blood Drinker lifts his hand to point at Ivan’s face and the old man notices something. His ring finger is missing. Every bit of damage they’ve dealt to him has been grown back, the wounds he sustained in the warehouse where he killed Potts, the gratuitous number of gunshots to his face and chest inflicted by Killcrazy, the chainsaw shredding the Ghoul gave him, even the horrendous damage done by Sid by grinding the monster under a tire – but that finger is still missing.
