Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (7 page)

But there was no time to dwell on that. He still had time to save the city—if he hurried.

“We’ve got to make sure this rocket doesn’t turn Gotham into a crater,” he said. He looked around and thought for a moment.

Then he whipped out a bat-shaped charge from his Utility Belt and threw it underhand at the ceiling, where it stuck fast. An armed light on the charge began to flash green.

“Now what?” asked Robin. “We call a taxi?”

Batman turned to one of the doors and gripped a handle marked
CAUTION
:
EXPLOSIVE BOLTS
. Divining his plan and apparently approving of it, Robin smiled and grabbed a similar handle on the opposing metal door.

“Watch the first step,” Batman advised, keeping a straight face.

Robin nodded. “Surf’s up.”

Simultaneously, they pulled the release handles and leaped onto their respective capsule doors as the explosive bolts blew them into space. At the same time, the light on the Batcharge turned red.

As the wind whipped past him, Batman glanced at the capsule and counted to himself. When he reached “five,” the capsule exploded above them in a thunderous, blood red flare.

Sizzling debris rained down on them. But he and his protégé managed to avoid it as they skyboarded downward on their capsule doors.

So much for making a crater out of Gotham,
he thought. With luck, the remnants of the capsule would drift out to sea on the wind, where they wouldn’t hurt a soul. But his work still wasn’t done.

Below them, Freeze was zigzagging to earth, the diamond called the Second Sun of the Sudan in his hand. And to Batman’s chagrin, he had a rather healthy head start.

Freeze wasn’t expecting a sudden explosion in the starry heavens above Gotham. But as soon as he heard it, even before he looked up and saw its fiery aftermath, he knew what it meant.

He had underestimated Batman.
Again.

And Robin as well, it seemed. Somehow, both the crime fighters had survived and were coming after him. On . . . he grunted appreciatively . . . on the doors of the obliterated capsule, of all things.

Still, Freeze wasn’t perturbed. He still had his cryo-gun. And his wits. With both those very formidable weapons in his arsenal, he was confident he would yet carry the day.

It wouldn’t be easy. It never was with those two. But in the end, Freeze would triumph.

Batman negotiated the wind currents with apparent abandon, his cape fluttering behind him, taking chances that might have been ill-advised under other circumstances. But unless he sped up the pace of his descent, he wouldn’t have a prayer of catching up with Freeze—who had already dropped below the tops of the city’s highest skyscrapers.

Robin was right with him, taking the same chances. But then, the boy had been a trapeze artist. His entire family had been comprised of trapeze artists. Working without a net was second nature to him.

The canyons of Gotham yawned. Lights flickered dizzily, impossibly distant but getting closer all the time.

Throwing his weight to the left, Batman avoided a turret as he plummeted after Freeze. Then he threw himself the other way to avoid the point of another building. Back and forth, down and down, closing the gap with each breathtaking twist and turn.

But would it be enough? Would they reach the villain in time to get the museum’s diamond back? Batman gritted his teeth, knowing there was only one acceptable response to those questions.

One might as well have asked him if bats fly.

Slicing past an elevated bridge, Batman caught a quick glimpse of the motorists’ faces as he dropped by, followed closely by Robin. They were astonished, to say the least.

Still far below, the streets of Gotham rushed up at the Dark Knight with increasing clarity and definition. And Freeze’s lead wasn’t diminishing quickly enough. Oh, he was looming closer and closer, but as long as Batman was at the mercy of the wind, he could descend only so quickly.

Coiling like the predator he was—the predator he
had
to be—Batman took the greatest chance of all. He leaped from his capsule door, relinquishing the only element of maneuverability he had, and fell through the night like a stone.

It was a calculated risk. If he wasn’t knocked off course by a sudden gust of wind, if Freeze didn’t see what he was doing and veer at the last moment, he would land directly on his objective.

But if Freeze
did
happen to look up—and elude the falling crime fighter—Batman didn’t have a chance. At this rate of descent, there would be nothing he could do to save himself.

Another moment,
Batman told himself.
Just one more
. . .

Indeed, Freeze turned to look back—but by then, it was too late. The Dark Knight hit him square in the glide pack and grabbed the villain around the neck. What’s more, the impact knocked the diamond out of Freeze’s hand.

As Batman hung on to his nemesis, gloved fingers clawing for purchase, he watched the gem tumble through the air. Even if he had his hands free, it was too far away for him to recover it. And if he didn’t, it would shatter on the pavement below.

Fortunately, the hero’s dilemma didn’t last very long. A red-and-black figure swooped out of the night. Maneuvering in a grand flip, Robin snatched the falling gem.

The villain and the swag, both in hand. Batman was just beginning to look for a place to land when he saw Freeze reach down and release his glide-pack buckle.

Before Batman could respond, he found himself holding an empty glide pack. Freeze himself was dropping unassisted toward the giant, smoking chimney of a towering industrial complex.

Finger Foods,
he thought. One of the bigger businesses in the city
not
owned by Wayne Enterprises.

Freeze aimed his cryo-gun at the smoking tower and fired. The maw of the chimney choked up instantly with snow—just a fraction of a second before the villain plummeted into it.

Once again, Batman felt he was in jeopardy of losing his prey. He flung Freeze’s glide pack away and grabbed the limits of his cape. Then he arched his back and used the Kevlar of the cape like a rudder—to aim himself at the chimney headfirst.

His cape fluttering around his head like an entire swarm of bats, he sliced into the snowy opening. And caught a glimpse of Robin dropping in right after him, his capsule door discarded.

They found themselves dropping through one snowy layer after another in a madly snaking tunnel with walls of ice. Batman could see Freeze up ahead of them, firing as he fell, but nothing more.

Still, the chimney wouldn’t go on forever. They had to break their fall before their fall broke them.

Pulling out his Batgrapple equipment, Batman made sure Robin saw what he was up to, then fired. Almost simultaneously, two grappling hooks hit the icy inner surface of the chimney and caught.

Gripping his tether with both hands, the Dark Knight managed to hang on as the line went taut—and nearly tore his arms out of their sockets. But a layer of ice, no matter how thick, just wasn’t the ideal medium for a grappling hook. The sudden tug of his weight on the line jerked the Batgrapple free of the ice.

Batman fell, albeit not quite as quickly, into icy dark ness. Somehow, he landed on his feet. Robin came to earth a heartbeat later. Then they heard the clatter of their grappling hooks hitting the ground.

They were in a long, submarinelike corridor. Or at least, that’s what it looked like. Actually, Batman guessed, it was the basement of the Finger Foods complex.

Robin grinned at him in the murky light of an overhead bulb. “Cool,” he said. “Can we do that again?”

Batman didn’t bother to answer, and his protégé didn’t bother to wait for one—because at the same moment they spotted Freeze at the far end of the corridor, trying to get away. As they took off after him, Batman saw him pause just long enough to point his gun at the ceiling and fire.

The pipes there—sprinkler pipes, apparently—exploded under the pressure of water expanding into ice. The result? An intense blizzard in the narrow confines of the corridor.

But that wasn’t the worst of it, Batman knew. “Sudden temperature drop,” he shouted. “Watch out for the—”

A blast of frigid air roared down the tunnel, slamming doors into walls ahead of them, beating them back with a powerful jolt of snow and ice.

“—wind!” Batman finished.

He and Robin whipped their capes over their wind-burned faces and pushed forward, fighting their way through the howling force of the storm. They went through the doors ahead of them one by one.

Finally, throwing open the last door in the tunnel, they burst into the boiler room. Of course, by then the place was frozen solid. A rime-covered boiler stood in the center of an icy moat that had, until recently, been the building’s internal reservoir.

Obviously, Freeze had been here. But where was he now?

Suddenly, the heavy metal door slammed hard into Batman’s face. He stumbled, dazed—but he had gotten the answer to his unspoken question. Freeze emerged from behind the door and aimed his gun at Batman.

But before he could fire, Robin interposed himself between Freeze and his target. His intent was no doubt to pounce on the villain, to take him down before he could injure Batman.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.

Freeze fired—and Robin was enveloped in a point-blank blast of cryonic energy. One moment, he was a living, breathing human being—and the next, a frozen version of himself, openmouthed with shock.

The villain plucked the diamond from Robin’s frigid hand.

But Batman was no longer quite so concerned about the gem. He wasn’t concerned about anything except the frosted statue of his protégé.

He fought off horror. No, he told himself. It can’t be. It couldn’t end like this for Robin.

He wouldn’t
let
it.

As he made that silent promise, Batman heard a rumbling in the ground and looked around. What . . . ?

And then he remembered. Freeze’s drilling truck—they’d left it in the museum. And if it was anything like the Batmobile, Freeze could summon it via remote control. Batman imagined the thing burrowing its way underneath the city, freezing the rocks and dirt in its path and clearing away the debris as it zoned in on the boiler room.

Abruptly, with a shriek of bending metal and a crunch of concrete, a wall of the room exploded inward—and Batman didn’t have to imagine the vehicle any longer. As the smoke cleared, the drilling truck loomed point first like some bizarre beast out of legend.

“How cold-blooded can you be?” Freeze asked his enemy. “You have eleven minutes to thaw the Bird before it’s too late for him. What will you do—chase the villain or save the boy?”

A hatch opened in the giant vehicle, and Freeze leaped inside. But he didn’t close the hatch just yet.

“Your emotions make you weak,” he said. “Weak and vulnerable. That’s why this day is mine.”

And with that, Freeze shut the hatch. As he cleared the frosted pane of a window to say good-bye, the drilling truck withdrew into the ground. Before long, it had sealed the last part of its entry tunnel with a mighty blast of cryonic ice.

Batman had a bad taste in his mouth. He wasn’t accustomed to letting criminals get away. But in this case, he’d had no choice.

Moving to Robin’s side, he touched the boy’s frozen skin. Eleven minutes—that’s what Freeze had told him. But what if he was lying?

Batman knew he couldn’t think that way. He had to do something before he lost his friend forever.

Whipping out his Bat-laser, he pointed it at the frozen reservoir and fired. The ice melted. It began to steam, to simmer.

Picking up Robin with the utmost care, the Dark Knight lowered the boy into the steaming liquid until he was completely immersed. But under the water, Robin’s face was terribly still.

Deathly
still.

For a long, heart-wrenching moment, Batman thought the boy was a goner. Then Robin’s eyelids fluttered. A couple of bubbles broke the surface. There was movement, the sudden flapping of arms and legs.

Batman dragged the boy up until his head broke the surface. Robin coughed out water, took a wheezing, wet breath, and did it again. He looked weak, drained of energy.