ZSASZED

By Jason McDonald

Somewhere in the Dark City
In the midst of a home invasion

The obsessive, driven serial killer named Victor Zsasz took the wet knife and cut a long, painful gash directly below the man’s lower eyelid. The gray-blonde killer glanced over toward the wife – a lovely blonde whose fear and terror he could practically taste even from here – and winked. Gripping her poor husband’s head and digging his fingers in to get a good grip, the madman sliced another scar across the man’s bleeding face.

He’d remembered how defiant that particular Zombie had been. How forcefully she’d struggled, and how she said that they weren’t afraid of some psychotic bastard even before he had restrained her with the knife and the gag.

Such resistance needed to be broken, if the Zombies were to understand his message. Just as Nemina’s resistance had been broken, and she was helping him deliver these cretins into the Light. Even now, the girl was setting up the video camera, without him even having to direct her to do so. Zsasz grinned, watching the young woman do his bidding.

He gazed back upon the husband’s face; a bleeding mess of pulpy matter. He was twitching from the pain, but his eyes were rolled back into his head – his mind clearly elsewhere. Possibly due to the brain damage Zsasz had to inflict upon him with the toaster in order to subdue him. Mr. Wilkins had been a powerful man himself, who had tried so hard to protect his family. Victor Zsasz knew that the husband was clearly concussed out of his mind, and could barely feel the kinds of agony that Zsasz was inflicting upon him. Still, the agony wasn’t really for his sake.

Thirty short minutes and Mrs. Wilkins was clearly, finally willing to listen to Zsasz’s holy message. The whole Wilkins family, in fact, was ready to listen to his words.

That was when Zsasz’s phone chirped in his pocket.

The grey-blonde killer yanked Mr. Wilkins’ bleeding body off of the floor and tossed his slack form into Mrs. Wilkins’. Zsasz pulled the phone out of his pocket and swiped the screen, breathing in Mrs. Wilkins’ terror as she squirmed under her husband’s weight. Zsasz listened to the husband’s labored breathing and bathed in the woman’s helplessness as her husband continued his bleeding all over her shaking, bound form. He clicked on the phone message, scanning its contents, and frowned slightly.

“Nemina,” he said.

Nemina froze in a terrible dread, clutching the video camera tightly. “…yes, Mister Zsasz?”

“I’m going to need you to set things up a bit more quickly now. We’re going to have another guest.”

“We are?”

Victor Zsasz looked up from his phone and leveled his eyes at the blue-and-green-haired young girl. She could see a snarl forming from his tight-lipped mouth and shook at the expression of sadistic rage on his twisted face.

“Yes. We are,” Zsasz said flatly. “So if you do exactly as I tell you, he will soon be just as Saved as the Wilkins will be, and as you will be.”

A tear escaped from Nemina’s wide, terrified eyes.

Gotham City
The Rooftops
Leaving the Criterion District

His joints and muscles swelled with each footfall, and the hard winds swept up his cape in a hurricane of fluttering, flapping darkness. The shadow leapt toward the sprawling edifice, bringing his grappler to bear on its roof. A sound like a pistol silencer’s muffled bang and a flash, and the lightweight steel cable found its purchase at the target. The cable reeled him up and for a moment, the man in the free-flowing black cape truly flew above the grimy city streets below him before gravity kicked back in.

He reached the ledge and placed his hand on the accompanying gargoyle statue to steady himself. Another grapple shot and he was running across another rooftop.

This was the Gorgon Building, somewhere near Second Street and the Boulevard. The gargoyle looked much different from the street as did the new age architecture along the sides but, even all the way up here, Batman knew his city inside and out.

Two minutes out. Only a tenth of the way there, the dark knight reckoned. Muscles ached beneath the heavy kevlar weave of his thick, gray batsuit. He was pushing himself too hard, punishing himself for not finding Zsasz sooner.

More than a week ago, Victor Zsasz had deviated from his consistently-murderous M.O. and kidnapped a young teenager named Nemina Verde after slaughtering her entire family, instead of murdering her as well. Batman surmised that the blade-wielding madman had kept her alive only to be a witness to his crimes. Like all criminals, there was in Zsasz a pervasive need to have his sadistic actions understood.

The dark knight had not five minutes ago discovered that Zsasz had uploaded his murders on his new website – Zsaszed.com. The dark knight had discovered that the whole world could now watch him murder indiscriminately. He’d discovered that the whole world – through the website – could understand his methodology and reasons for killing. He’d used the girl to film his killings so they could be uploaded as videos to the site.

With the website serving as his witness, there was no need in Zsasz’s mind to keep her alive. She was just a liability now, another Zombie. Another tally mark to add to his skin.

Not one more, the dark knight vowed, do you hear me Zsasz? NOT ONE MORE!

The costumed hero had to reach Zsasz before he committed his final murder. He had to save Nemina Verde before she became his latest tally mark. He moved faster than a man had any right to move, grappling across rooftops, taking every shortcut he knew, not stopping for a moment’s breath. Because in that moment, Nemina could be breathing her last. There was just no time to waste.

27 Park Row, Leland Building. Apartment 9.

The heart of Crime Alley.

The building just across the way from where a little boy lost his parents over three decades ago to the sounds of clattering pearls and gunshots. The building overlooking the scene at which the Batman was born.

He vowed it would not be the scene where Nemina Verde died.

Crime Alley
27 Park Row, The Leland Building
Just outside Apartment 9

There was a slight scraping sound as the window slowly slid upward all on its own, exposing the dark hallway to the chill winds outside the lonely apartment. The otherwise acrid stench of acid – the only remaining remnant of the window’s simple locking mechanism – was lost to the hungry vortex outside. A dark figure stealthily slipped through the narrow opening, his footfalls on the cool, plush carpet absolutely silenced from years of rigorous ninjutsu training so very long ago.

With the same practiced precision of mind and body, he eased the ancient window pane shut again, killing the soft breeze that was seeping through the opened window into the corridor. Like a wraith floating unseen in the darkness, the dark knight slinked through the narrow hallway, moving from room to room with a speed and skill few could ever hope to match.

Perhaps more disturbing than his own silent movements was the cold stillness of the entire apartment. Victor Zsasz was a lunatic, but a lunatic who loved the sound of his own voice as he preached his demented gospel to his intended victims. The few survivors of his previous escapes and rampages were always very clear on that point.  Sadism was in his nature. The darkness and the silence of this place – the caped figure hoped against hope that his instincts were dead wrong.

Through the jade haze of his night vision goggles, Batman analyzed every detail of his surroundings, searching desperately for some small sign of life. It was then that the caped crusader saw a faint trail of blood emanating from the living room.

Clenching his fists in a helpless rage, he followed the stains across the carpet toward the living room, where the flickering lights from a wide-screen television on mute stood as the only source of light. Batman rounded the corner, drawing the heavy metal batarang tight in his glove.

His red eyes narrowed at the scene before him.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins – that was the surname he saw on the nursing certificate from his inspection of the bedroom – were laying hunched up on the floor in a mess of dried blood. Mr. Wilkins’ face was torn to shreds, clearly the victim of Zsasz’s incidental rage. His body lie still and unmoving, save for the wheezing sound coming out of his shredded nose in tune with the laborious rise and fall of his chest. Mrs. Wilkins, on the other hand, lay propped up next to her husband with tears streaming down her purple face. Her face – just littered with bruises and lumps as her husband’s was with gashes and cuts – told the tale of their valiant struggles against their monstrous captor. The two young girls – the Wilkins’ young daughters – were struggling against their gags and their bonds, soft sobs emanating from their mouths. Compared to the parents, they were practically untouched. No doubt due to the distractions that the parents had given the madman and how he’d kept his attention focused on them instead of the children.

Thank God, Batman thought.

The Wilkins’ family were propped up against one another on the ground in the style that Zsasz typically committed the actual murders, leading Batman to believe that he’d just arrived in the nick of time.

Except for the fact that Zsasz was sitting on the easy chair in the living room, his dark countenance outlined sharply by the dim blue lights from the television. The contours of his face were wrapped in shadow, created by Nemina’s lithe form atop his lap. Batman saw the tears freefalling down her young face and felt her helplessness as he gazed upon the shimmering glint of the knife pressed tight against her throat. His eyes darted to Zsasz’s other arm, listening to the cocking of the gun it held – the one that was pointed directly at the hostages.

“Hello, Batman,” Zsasz smiled darkly. “So good to see you again.”

Batman cursed under his breath. Without the element of surprise, he simply wouldn’t be fast enough to stop both the gun and the bullets.

Keep him talking, Batman thought. “Victor Zsasz. The pleasure’s all yours.”

Zsasz laughed harshly. “Cute.”

Wait for him to make the mistake, Batman thought. Then, you can..

“Now kick over that utility belt over here,” the madman grimaced. “I’m not going to be felled by one of your ridiculous little gadgets again.”

Dammit, Batman thought angrily. Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy…

The dark knight palmed the batarang, slowly reaching into his cape and pressed two buttons on his utility belt. Unlatching with a soft click, Batman pulled the connected weave of pouches off of his waist and tossed it to the floor. He gave Zsasz a look of deadly fury, still holding his batarang.

“Still too close to you. Kick it over here.” Zsasz pressed the sharp blade against Nemina’s trachea, almost gagging the girl as the blade drew a tiny drop of blood that spilled down across her outstretched neck. The madman growled furiously. “Now.”

Batman kicked the belt across the room, watching it helplessly as it emerged from the dim shadows from the hallway and was fully engulfed in the lights of the flickering television.

Zsasz smiled. “Much better.”

“What do you want?” Batman asked, knowing full well what the answer would be. He watched the religious zealot shift further back into his chair, exuding an air of confidence now that the Batman was supposedly unarmed. The dark knight studied Zsasz’s every movement with meticulous precision as the killer answered his question.

“I’ve gone to great lengths to keep these Zombies alive until you arrived. I’ve been waiting so patiently.” Zsasz spoke, glancing excitedly as Mrs. Wilkins struggled against her bonds.

So stupid! Batman swore to himself. I must have tripped an alarm by opening the laptop. Rookie mistake. Get us all killed…

The madman heard a choked cough from Mrs. Wilkins, bemused as blood began to spill from her broken nose onto her gag. Batman tensed, hoping to see Zsasz’s attention focus on the woman, distracting him from Nemina and giving him the slightest of openings. Instead, to his horror, Zsasz clutched the girl tighter even to him, whispering perversely into her ear. “Exquisite. See, I’ve got the perfect spot for her tally on my body. There is a bare spot on my left thigh, perfect for five more little scars. The mother. The father. Two daughters, and lovely little Nemina here…”

Batman looked upon Zsasz’s shirtless body, noting each deeply-cut scar upon his exposed skin. Each and every scar was a murder. Batman’s blood boiled beneath his cowl, but he couldn’t let his fury get the best of him.

“But you, Batman…I’m saving your scar for an area directly on my chest. For your Deliverance shall be the greatest victory of them all.”

“Is that so?” Batman growled.

“Indeed. For you are a Zombie that fights for the other Zombies. Surely even you have noticed the general malaise the Zombie population has for one another. The faithless drones that move through life like faceless ghouls, moving from task to task with all the emotion of a wind-up toy.”

“People are more than that, Victor. Even you know that, somewhere inside that mind of yours…”

“Faceless. Ghouls.” Zsasz snarled, leaning forward and eying the Batman with wild hatred and rage in his gaze. “Marching from moment to moment with less than a thought in their wind-up toy minds. They are nothing. Less than nothing. They must be Delivered into the Light in order to be saved.

“Through callous murder?”

“I do not murder, Batman. I save those who do not know they must be saved. The world…”

“The world wants nothing to do with your sickness, Victor. The world abhors serial killers like you.”

“LIES!” Zsasz screamed, pressing his knife hard against Nemina’s exposed carotid. “VICIOUS LIES! I do not kill! I save! None of the ghouls care for their fellow man, tossing out scars and pain as if they were candy in this Hell they have created for themselves! The Zombies, by definition, are emotionless automatons. Look at their dull, lifeless eyes, gazing soullessly at you with minds lined with nothing but cotton and wool! THEY ARE NOTHING, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? NOTHING!!”

Zsasz paused, beads of sweat running down his enraged face, waiting for a cold, calculating response from the dark knight but instead receiving only silence. The religious zealot cooled down with a sigh, the blood draining from his face. With a harrumph, his collected demeanor returned as if it had never left.

“You, however, are an enigma to me. You are perhaps the one Zombie that truly cares for his fellow Zombies. Alas, your efforts are disastrously misguided. You needn’t fight for these pitiful creatures. They won’t be Saved that way.”

“Only you can save them, of course.”

“Why yes, Batman, of course I can,” the scarred maniac smiled, leaning towards the Batman and into the light. “Only I can show them the route to the Chosen Realm. Only I, God’s heavenly priest, his holiest of divine conduits, can guide them into Salvation.”

“Typical sociopathic delusions of grandeur.”

“…what did you just say?”

Batman smiled. “You justify your wanton acts of murder with the delusion that you are a godsend to the people of Gotham, initiating salvation through slaughter. In doing so, you make yourself the most important piece of your delusion…”

“You stop that! They’re not delusions! Their Divine Reality! You’re sounding like those shrinks at Arkham, the Unbelievers…”

“…murdering the defenseless not only gives you purpose, Zsasz, but makes you feel in control of the world. Your fanatic religious tenets are merely the defense mechanisms of a little child who lost his parents. Tell me, how in control did you feel when both of your parents died…”

“THAT’S ENOUGH!!” Zsasz screamed, leaping from the chair and swirling the gun over toward Batman in a blind rage. Batman smirked, squeezing a button hidden inside his glove. Before the zealot could fire off a round or slice Nemina’s throat, the utility belt on the floor popped and the flashbang grenades attached to the sides all went off at once, coating the room in a fluorescent bright light. Batman tightly shut his eyes against the flash blast to avoid the amplification of light through his night vision goggles. He threw the batarang in his hand at Zsasz’s last known position.

Diving to the right, Batman deftly avoided the wild shots of the handgun as his own metal weapon hit true upon Zsasz’s crown. Listening for the shriek, Batman opened up his eyes to the rapidly-fading light, picked up his utility belt and fired his grappling hook at the villain in one smooth, continuous motion. The grapple hit Zsasz’s right wrist dead center, causing him to involuntarily drop the blade that was drawing blood from Nemina’s throat.

Batman quickly wrapped his belt around himself and snapped it into place, dodging Zsasz’s blasts as the killer sprinted for the front door and slid out into the hallway beyond. Breathing out again once the shots died down, he glanced over at the hostages – scared, but alive. The dark knight looked down upon the frightened girl, still shaking in abject terror.

“Nemina, I assume.”

“…who…how did you know my name?” Nemina asked in the tiniest of whispers, bringing her eyes to meet those of the vigilante. Her eyes were glazed over with tears and her body shook in terror. Yet, there was something else burned into her gaze that told Bruce Wayne the story of how terrible the last week had been for the young girl. As did the deep incisions that Zsasz had made into her forearms; clearly a sadist’s work. He wondered if there was anything left of her inside.

“I’m…” He paused, trying to find the right words to soothe a terrified teenager suffering from the kind of horrors she’d had to endure under Zsasz’s imprisonment. “I’m a friend. That’s all you need to know,” Batman said as he lifted her chin up and looked upon the wound. “Got to you in time. No serious injury.”

Batman kneeled next to the Wilkins and quickly untied them, assessing their injuries as he did so. The husband had lost a lot of blood and the wife was badly battered, but both were fairly stable at the moment, though unconscious. The daughters were screaming bloody murder and clutched at their parents tightly, but the important thing was that they were alive.

Batman whipped his eyes back around to Nemina, who was rubbing at her wrists. Clearly, the repeated handcuffing had done a number on them.

He looked into Nemina’s eyes. “There’s little time, so listen to my instructions carefully. Call 911. Lock the door behind me. Do not, under any circumstances, let anyone who is not me, or the police into this apartment.”

“O-o-okay, Mister Batman,” she whispered, wiping a tear from her face. “I’ll do what needs to be done.”

“I’ll be back.”

With that, he whisked out the door in swift pursuit.

The Hallway Outside
Seconds Later

Zsasz had a ten second head start, but was momentarily blinded by the grenades, slowing him down somewhat. Unfortunately, many of the items within the belt were now fused and useless, thanks to the extreme heat that the grenades had generated when he’d had to detonate them remotely. He’d had to ditch the gas and smoke pellets altogether due to their high volatility potential. However, the heat had not affected the batarang caches and some of the simpler weapons. The belt would be useless to him otherwise.

Batman clicked on the night vision goggles once more, engulfing the otherwise darkened hallway in sparkling emerald light. Zsasz had shot out most of the lights along the hallway, leaving a long trail of darkness for the dark knight to follow.

His cape fluttered behind him as he tore through the hallway like a man possessed. Turning the corner, he found two lifeless limbs sticking out of a doorway – the gunshot wound to the chest still smoking from his still corpse. Clearly he had opened the door to simply see what the loud banging noises outside were…

Batman’s eyes lit up with a furious rage.

“ZSASZ!” The dark knight’s scream echoed throughout the darkened corridor, his stampeding feet no longer concerned with ninjitsu stealth or subterfuge.

He followed the trail of darkness down the corridor, screaming fiery fury the whole way down. There would be not one more death caused by the madman, Batman swore upon everything he held dear. Victor Zsasz would be stopped here and now, and dragged back to Arkham in disgrace. The shadowy vigilante’s lungs and heart surged with righteousness and power, and the Batman continued his chase, listening to the breaking of glass and the resounding clang of reverberating metal.

Not one more, Zsasz! Not one more! Do you hear me?

Batman couldn’t tell if he’d thought it or said it aloud. Then he heard the sounds of more gunshots in the distance, quickly silenced.

NOT ONE MORE!

He crunched over the broken glass with only one thought burning through his addled mind. The caped crusader ran full stride to the stairwell’s thick metal door and kicked it open in a fit of blind anger. The lights here were naturally blown out too by Zsasz’s gunshots, and Batman knew that Zsasz probably had some spare clips on him to be throwing away bullets so quickly. Otherwise, he’d be out of bullets by now.

The dark knight peered over the edge of the railing, gazing down into the darkness below, listening for Zsasz’s footfalls despite the thick, heavy carpet that padded the entire stairwell. The door closed behind him and thoughts suddenly swam together in his unbelievably exhausted mind.

Broken glass. Break in case of fire. The clips in the case, hanging empty. Clips wide enough for a fire extinguisher…

Batman twisted his head to look behind him right before a tremendous weight slammed against his right temple with devastating swiftness. Before he could react, Zsasz brought the extinguisher down upon his temple a second time, knocking out the night vision and sending the beleaguered hero into a swirling vortex of shimmering darkness.

“You piece of shit Zombie!” Zsasz growled as he brought his boot into his adversary’s stomach as hard as he could, doubling him over before stomping at him relentlessly while holding onto the guard rail for support. “You won’t stop me from doing my holy work, do you hear me!”

Batman felt the impact of each stomp, but the extremity of the force was absorbed by the kevlar weave of the suit. However, his head was pounding horribly and Zsasz’s words were weaving in and out of reality.

A concussion, certainly. That second impact must have cracked the helmet, drove it against my head…

The stomping stopped suddenly, and Batman groaned. He looked around, listened to the cold silence of the stairwell, and gazed into an inky void no longer brightened with night vision light. With the concussion, things seemed to be moving despite the lack of visual cues in the expansive darkness. Nevertheless, the struggling vigilante had to shake it off quickly. For – despite the lack of sound – the murderous Victor Zsasz was still with him, somewhere in the dark…

With the knife, and with the gun.

CHICK-CHACK.

Cock of the hammer, helmet damaged. Kevlar weave still had problems with direct gun impacts and judging from the cracks in the helmet, a direct gunshot to the head would end his crusade here and now.

That, and Zsasz had the advantage. His eyes were finely adjusted to the darkness, while Bruce’s were still coping with the black.

Bullets wasted on the lights. Extra clips. He’d have had all the time in the world to reload.

Move.

Now.

BLAM!

Batman dove down toward when he imagined Zsasz’s feet were, hearing the bullet’s whiz through the air as it moved just inches from his head. Clutching onto the black space where Zsasz’s leg was, the dark knight had the frame of reference he needed to do the only takedown he had time to do given the darkness and the gun.

He took the sword-blocking blades that lined the forearms of his gloves and slammed them into Zsasz’s right knee. Hard.

“GAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Zsasz screamed, crying out in pain. He fired more shots reflexively before feeling a hard block to the inside of his wrist force his hand into releasing the gun. The villain dropped to his knees before Batman felt for the blade he knew had to be in the killer’s other hand and ripped the weapon from the wounded monster. The dark knight growled furiously before giving Zsasz a hard knee to his unprotected gut, doubling him over in pain.

“It’s over, Victor,” Batman scowled as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs from his belt and cuffed Zsasz to the guardrail. “You’ve taken your last victim.”

Batman heard Zsasz coughing up blood in the darkness, and was confused to see that – as his eyes began naturally adjusting to the darkness around him – that there was the faintest blur of a wide smile on Zsasz’s face. The tired vigilante thought about Nemina and her nightmarish ordeal with the sociopathic murderer, and yanked the beaten prey to his feet. A yelp of pain left Zsasz’s cracked lips as he was forced to put pressure on his badly-injured knee.

The dark knight brought his scowling face close to Zsasz’s smirking one and narrowed his eyes at the madman. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re right, Batman…I’ve taken my last victim.”

Something about how Zsasz said the word ‘I’ve’ deeply bothered the besieged crusader.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Zombie in the hallway was…unexpected,” Zsasz paused, writhing in the pain of his shredded knee muscle before continuing. “He’s already being carried with me…on my calf muscle right here. The tally I made right before you came charging in, but….other than him, I never really intended on marking my skin with any tally marks tonight.”

“You never intended…?” Batman trailed off as another dark puzzle assembled itself in his mind. His troubled thoughts drifted back to minutes ago, inside the apartment…

Something else burned into her gaze…how terrible the last week had been for the young girl.

Deep incisions that Zsasz had made into her forearms. Tally marks. A sadist’s work, or the way to keep score.

He wondered if there was anything left of her inside.

“I’ll do what needs to be done.” she whispered, wiping a tear from her face.

Do what needs to be done.

His mind snapped back into the present, processing the information as Zsasz began laughing fanatically, like a madman possessed.

Batman ran back to the Wilkins family as fast as he could, and burst through the worn wooden door like an avenging angel, but Nemina Verde was long gone. An empty tripod stood silent witness to the slaughter inside the lonely apartment, the camera that was once attached to the tripod also nowhere to be found.

The dark detective’s stomach turned at the still bodies of the once-struggling Wilkins family, eyes vacant, cold and lifeless. He saw that the cuts along their throats were jagged and crude. Cuts that looked like gashes more than slices, as if the knife was bucking in her hand as she did the deed. Cuts that couldn’t have been made by a professional murderer.

Cuts that were instead, made by one who was learning.

Gotham City Police Department
Commissioner James Gordon’s Office
The Dark, Quiet Time of Regret

Commissioner Gordon lit up another cigarette, feeling the cool taste across his lips and wishing it would wipe away the hard lines of age etched into his weather-beaten face. Just five years ago, he’d been practically a young man, teaming up with the Batman to tackle the means streets of Gotham. The shadows in the streets seemed to bother him less then, he thought. The weight of the Commissioner’s chair had made the days since then stretch a little bit longer, and seemed to make the lines of age cut just a bit deeper.

No, that’s just hogwash, he thought to himself. I’m as fit as I ever was.

James Gordon tapped the burnt ash from his guilty pleasure into the ashtray, thumbing through the files he’d pulled on Victor Zsasz and Nemina Verde. He looked at the young woman’s face as he heard the easy flutters of a cape outside his opened office balcony window. He looked at the intruder’s reflection off the screensaver, watching the hooded vigilante’s approach with a renewed vigor in his tired eyes.

“They seem to get younger and younger these days, don’t they?” Gordon muttered to the man in the black cape, placing the Nemina file to the side of his desk.

Batman slinked around the police commissioner’s high-backed leather office chair and placed his gloved hand atop the file, noting the young woman’s smooth features and her striking blue and green dyed hair.

“Far too young, I’d say,” the costumed hero muttered absently, the soft winds from outside fluttering through his dark black cape as he picked up the police file and began reading over the newest entries.

The police commissioner pulled up his glasses, rubbing at his tired bloodshot eyes. “So, do we label Nemina Verde a psychotic serial killer now, or just another victim of Zsasz’s abuse?”

The dark knight paused a second, and Gordon saw the imperceptible slump of his shoulders again, underscoring the difficulty of this most recent case. He listened to the detective grinding his teeth together and rubbing his fingers across his chin before answering the question with but a single word – uttered in that low, gravelly voice that still managed to put a chill in Gordon’s bones: “Yes.”

The commissioner’s wavy eyebrows lifted up for a second before he shook his head and sighed. “Yeah, I’d say so too.”

James Gordon rubbed the bridge of his nose before taking another drag of his cigarette.

“Those things will kill you,” Batman said.

“What, and knife-wielding, gun-toting madmen won’t kill you?”

He leveled his eyes at the commissioner, who simply smiled.

“My mistake, old friend. You’re too stubborn to die.” James Gordon pulled out the Victor Zsasz file and tossed it over to the Batman, flipping it over to the latest entry before doing so. “You’ll be happy to know that Victor Zsasz is back at Arkham, heavily medicated following this deplorable thing he’s done. Not just the murders, but that damn site…”

“Zsaszed.com?” Batman growled.

“Zsaszed.com,” Gordon confirmed, pushing his glasses up before waking his desktop out of sleep mode and showing Batman the previous screen. Both men grimaced at the sight of the website it displayed.

“The video at the center of the screen is the Wilkins family murder. We’re guessing Nemina Verde uploaded it after she fled the scene. Ten thousand hits as of last night.”

“Disgusting,” Batman grimaced. “We’ve got to shut this down.”

“Don’t think we haven’t tried. I’ve had our IT department chasing this down. We’ve tried to shut this piece of shit down at least fifty times this past week. We’ve drawn up warrants, and killed servers and ISP’s throughout the borough, and investigated every lead, but Nemina keeps moving the site around. We just can’t seem to get at it, no matter what we do.

“Worst part is the copycat stories I’m hearing,” Gordon sighed, tapping his fingers in frustration against the solid oak desk. “A drill sergeant in Nevada that wiped out his whole squad, claiming that their lifeless, soulless eyes told him to. A boy in Virginia used his father’s hand-cannon on his stepfather’s head, claiming that the stepfather was a Zombie himself. There’s a story in France about a restaurant owner shooting a man on the street for crying out loud. Italy, France, Sweden, Switzerland. We can’t legally connect them together yet, but the circumstantials seem to correlate with site viewership.

“This goddamn site has even started a section where viewers can upload their own murder videos as well! We’re expecting the murder rate to almost double for the rest of the month. At least in Gotham, anyway. Worldwide, I couldn’t tell you. I mean, Christ’ sake…what is wrong with these people?”

“Psychotics attract psychotics,” Batman said grimly. “The sickness spreads like wildfire.”

Commissioner Gordon heard the tightening of leather as Batman clenched his gloved fists almost too tight. He sighed heavily, taking another hard drag and breathing out a lungful of smoke into the dimly-lit room.

“We’re trying to link Zsasz’s use of the cameras and his set-up of this despicable website as clear premeditative planning and motivation. Try and get this insanity plea overturned so we can ship the little prick to Blackgate and finally get him on trial for these killings. Problem is, most of his money is still in the Caymans, where we can’t get to it. Rich bastard. Lets him tie up proceedings for a very long time. Not to mention the lawyers he brings in…I mean, Jesus Christ. Forget it…”

Gordon pressed his cigarette hard into the ashtray and suddenly realized Batman’s silence during his rant. The Batman was deeply entrenched in the Verde file, clearly brooding more than he usually did. Gordon knew exactly what the dark knight was thinking.

“You couldn’t have known she’d Stockholm like that. Not that quickly.”

Batman scowled. “The signs were there, Jim. The signs were there, and I didn’t recognize them. I should never have left her…”

Gordon stood up from his chair and placed a hand on his old friend’s shoulder, looking him straight in the eye. “There was no way you could have known for sure. Despite this urban legend myth you’ve got going on the street, you’re only human.”

Batman glowered at him darkly and crossed his arms.

Gordon patted the dark knight on his shoulder and walked over to the cabinet, glancing at a picture of his own family. His wife – now ex-wife – and little Barbara, so grown up now. He traced her outline with his thumb, thinking of the wonderful moments they had shared as a family all those years ago. He closed his eyes and sighed, thinking about all the families recently lost to the terrible blade of Victor Zsasz.

“There are some battles you win, and some you lose,” he sighed. “We lost this one today, Batman. Tomorrow, we’ll get up and we’ll fight another.”

Gordon placed the framed photograph back on the cabinet, regarding the empty office with a knowing smirk.

“However many it takes, old friend. Until we get it right.”

Ashford Motel
The Red Light District
Laying Low

The girl with the deep, dark circles under her eyes sat quietly in the dark room, bathing deep inside the looming shadows and penetrating darkness. She stared at the computer screen with eyes long bloodshot, not feeling the intense burning sensation produced from three long, sleepless nights.

The motel had been cheap – easily affordable on the stolen wallets of the late Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins. Zsasz had taught her how to elude the police and keep off the radar, living off the stolen cash from their victims. Nemina had picked this place specifically, because it was the best place to her knowledge to avoid the kinds of people who asked questions, and believed in things like right and wrong. Places like this would be her new stomping grounds until she could pull some things together.

Though the thin walls, she could hear every lurid, sweaty act of the tenants next door. Wiping her own sweat away from her forehead, the sounds of sordid lovemaking did not disturb the young woman in the slightest. Nemina simply stared at the computer screen with a blank zombie gaze, her mind elsewhere.

She looked down at her forearm, rhythmically counting each of the seven gashes along the skin. Each gash was a memory of terror and pain emblazoned into her heart and her soul for all time. Each gash was a life extinguished, a gentle soul she’d guided into Salvation.

She placed her soft fingertips atop each of the seven slices Zsasz had inflicted upon her arm. As her delicate touch slinked across each scabbed incision, Nemina could feel the tickle of these seven tender kisses warming her soul. She smiled. She guided her hands up to the gentle swelling on her lip and her cheek. The bruises were healing quickly enough, and the stinging pain was tragically fading with each passing day. The loss of the pain was making her miss Zsasz more and more. Memories were all she still had of him. Of both of them.

Nemina cut four more long gashes into her body, remembering the sweet torments the Wilkins had suffered by her hand. She knew Batman would understand someday. If he had been there in that same room with her, and not distracted by Zsasz or the thrill of the hunt, he would have seen their doe eyes pleading with her to shepherd them into the Light. Nemina hadn’t wanted to – oh, how badly she hadn’t wanted to – but how cruel would it have been to allow that poor family to live out their menial existence without emotion, or excitement, or even the thrill of being alive?

Oh yes, Batman would understand the truth someday, just as Mister Zsasz had so selflessly helped her understand.

Nevertheless, Mister Zsasz had only been half right. Yes, the Zombies were trapped living monotonous, pointless lives. Yes, it had been up to the both of them to free them from the cold weary darkness of life’s cruel touch, but it wasn’t the killing that set these mindless dolls free. It was that fear – that terrible fear she saw in each of their eyes as she lunged for the kill – which gave her actions meaning. The absolute dread that came from knowing one’s existence was coming to an end, that death was just a blade’s breadth away…few could know how important it was to feel such things.

For it was in those final moments of terror in her victims’ wide doe eyes that any of the Zombies were ever truly alive. Deep in her heart, she knew that those were the only times they even felt anything at all. If only she’d been able to prolong that terror – that could’ve been her greatest gift to them.

Alas, this was not to be.

She shook her wooly mind from its reveries, gazing upon each of the hits her videos were receiving. Mind buzzing, she read all of the comments about each upload, but did not respond. She knew the police department was monitoring this website, and she could give them nothing to trace back to her. Certainly not if she was to continue their holy mission.

Nevertheless, as each new viewer-submitted video of copycat murder flickered onto her screen in that dark room, only one word escaped her lovely ruby lips in response:

“Slice.”

“Slice.”

“Slice.”

“Slice.”

“Slice.”

FIN

Next Issue:

The knowledge of Zsasz’s capture comes as bittersweet comfort in the wake of the widespread effects from Zsaszed.com, and in the wake of the Dark Knight Detective’s growing guilt. Batman must come to terms with the tragic events of this issue, and the fact that Nemina is now forever lost.

Nevertheless, the job of the Batman is never done. For while trying so hard to save poor Nemina, his lapsed presence has not gone unnoticed, and there are many tragedies in the city that need tending. Not to mention the neglect Bruce Wayne’s personal and professional lives have suffered following the close of the Nemina Case. Explore the many ways Batman must defend the dark city he holds most dear in “The Many Masks of the Batman.”