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Chapter 58 : The Inferno
🕑 Added 2025-08-19 06:15:43 +0000 UTCChapter 58: The Inferno
Garfield Lynns stood across the street from Sunset Gardens Retirement Home, watching the flames from his earlier work dance behind the windows. He hadn't planned this specifically – he'd been flying over Gotham looking for something, anything, to burn when he'd spotted the retirement home.
The young couple's incineration outside had been an unexpected bonus, a delicious appetizer before the main course. The man had survived, unfortunately, but he'd seen enough to understand true helplessness. That would have to suffice for now.
"Please!" came a muffled voice from somewhere inside. "Help us!"
Lynns adjusted his flamethrower, the mechanical wings on his back folding with a soft hum. The building was already burning nicely – old construction with lots of wood and fabric. He'd sealed the main entrance with his initial blast, but there was still work to be done inside.
He stood and approached the building's side entrance.
The side door's lock melted away under a concentrated stream of flame. Lynns stepped inside, breathing deeply through his mask's filters. The smoke carried the scent of burning wood, melting plastic, and charred flesh.
"Who's there?" called a trembling voice from the hallway.
Lynns turned toward the sound and saw her: an elderly woman in a pink bathrobe, probably in her eighties, shuffling toward him with a walker.
Mrs. Lewis.
"Oh, thank goodness," she gasped, relief flooding her face. "Are you here to help? The fire alarm is going off and I can't find the staff—"
The stream of napalm caught her center mass, instantly igniting her robe and hair. Her scream was brief – her vocal cords were destroyed within seconds – but her body continued to burn as she collapsed, writhing silently on the carpeted floor.
Lynns watched with delight as the flames consumed her.
Everything burned the same way in the end – flesh, fabric, dreams, hope. Fire was the great equalizer, reducing everything to ash and carbon.
A new sound caught his attention – several voices coming from deeper in the building. Lynns advanced down the hallway, his footsteps muffled by the thickening smoke.
The retirement home's layout was simple: a central common area surrounded by individual rooms, with a dining hall and activities room on the ground floor. Most of the residents would be gathered in the common areas for evening activities or in their rooms preparing for bed.
He turned the corner and found them.
A group of eight elderly residents huddled together in the main common area, several in wheelchairs, others leaning heavily on walkers or canes. A few staff members – young women in their twenties – were attempting to guide them toward what they thought was a clear exit.
"Don't panic, everyone," one of the staff members said, keeping her voice steady despite the obvious fear. "We're going to get out of here together. Mrs. Peterson, can you move a little faster?"
Dorothy Peterson, the ninety-one-year-old crossword puzzle enthusiast, was struggling to keep pace with her wheelchair, her arthritic hands shaking as she tried to turn the wheels. "I'm trying, dear," she gasped. "But the smoke is making it hard to breathe."
Frank Wilson sat slumped in his wheelchair nearby, the wooden cardinal carving he'd been working on still clutched in his hands. At his age, the former construction worker had survived industrial accidents, military service, and decades of hard labor, but his body was failing him now when he needed it most.
"The exit's blocked," reported another staff member, returning from the front of the building with soot filled face. "The whole entrance is on fire."
"Then we'll try the back," the first woman replied, though Lynns could hear the desperation slipping into her voice. "Everyone stay together."
Lynns stepped into the doorway, his figure outlined by the fire spreading behind him. The flamethrower felt heavy in his hands — solid, familiar, and reassuring.
"Going somewhere?" he asked, the voice modulator distorting his words into something mechanical and cold.
The group turned toward him as one, their faces shifting from hope to horror as they registered his appearance – the flight suit, the wings, the weapon in his hands.
"Oh God," whispered one of the staff members.
"God's not here," Lynns replied flatly. "Just me."
He opened fire.
The stream of napalm swept across the group like a scythe, catching three residents immediately. Their screams rang out as their clothes and skin caught fire, but Lynns kept moving, calmly picking off the others before they could escape.
Frank Wilson tried to wheel himself away, but his chair moved too slowly. The flames caught his legs first, then spread upward as he desperately beat at his burning clothes with his old hands. The wooden carving fell from his grasp, catching fire as it hit the floor.
Mrs. Peterson had fallen from her wheelchair and was frantically crawling toward safety. Lynns followed her progress with the flamethrower, painting a line of fire that encircled her.
She looked up at him with eyes that held no anger, only confusion and sadness.
"Why?" she whispered.
"Because everything burns," Lynns laughed, finished her off.
One of the staff members had made it to the back exit and was trying hard to open the door. She pounded on the metal, screaming for help, as he approached from behind.
"Please," she sobbed, turning to face him. She couldn't have been older than twenty-five, probably someone's daughter, maybe someone's girlfriend. "I have a little brother. He's only seven. He needs me."
"So sad. Then you should have chosen a different place to work," Lynns said, and set her ablaze.
The execution continued room by room. Lynns quickly moved through the building, using his flamethrower to flush residents out of hiding places before burning them alive. He left the bedridden for last — they couldn't run or resist, only lie there as death rolled toward them in waves of scorching heat from above.
By the time he reached the second floor, the building's infrastructure was beginning to fail. Support beams groaned under the heat, and portions of the ceiling had begun to collapse.
He was in the process of burning a cluster of residents on the first floor – five elderly women who had barricaded themselves in a bathroom – when the window beside him exploded inward.
Batman landed in a crouch, his cape billowing around him as broken glass scattered across the floor. His cowl was pulled low, casting his face in shadow, but Lynns could see the fury in the set of his jaw.
"Lynns," Batman growled, recognizing the pyromaniac immediately.
"Well, well," Lynns said, turning away from the bathroom door. "The Bat arrives. Come to watch the show?"
"It's over."
Lynns laughed, a harsh metallic sound through his voice modulator. "Is it? Look around you, Batman. I've barely gotten started."
Batman was already moving before Lynns finished speaking. A batarang struck the flamethrower's fuel line, causing pressurized napalm to spray wildly across the hallway.
But this wasn't their first encounter – Lynns had anticipated the move, activating his wing system and launching himself upward to avoid both the attack and the burning spray.
"You know my tricks by now," Lynns called out, circling near the ceiling. "But I know yours too."
He dove toward Batman, flame-thrower blazing, but the Dark Knight was ready. Batman rolled aside, using his cape to deflect the worst of the heat, and came up with his grappling gun already aimed. The hook caught Lynns' left wing mechanism, sending him crashing into the burning wall.
"Still the same weaknesses," Batman said coldly, advancing on the dazed pyromaniac.
"Why do you keep doing this, Firefly?"
"This is art, batman," Lynns corrected, circling Batman in the burning hallway. "Fire is the purest form of transformation – it strips away all pretense, all lies, all weakness. It reveals truth."
Lynns snarled and ignited his backup flamethrower, but Batman was already inside his reach. A precise strike to the weapon's control mechanism sent it spinning away, while an elbow to Lynns' throat sent him stumbling backward.
"Getting slow in your old age, Lynns," Batman said, pressing his advantage.
"Getting sloppy yourself," Lynns gasped, activating a hidden incendiary device on his belt. The explosion forced Batman back, giving Lynns room to maneuver.
What followed was a brutal fight. Both combatants knew each other's capabilities intimately from previous encounters. Lynns used the burning building's layout to his advantage, trying to corner Batman with flame while using his flight capability to stay mobile.
Batman countered with superior tactics and equipment, using smoke grenades to obscure Lynns' vision and explosive batarangs to damage his wing systems.
The end came swiftly. Batman feinted left, then drove his right fist into the damaged wing mechanism on Lynns' back. Sparks flew as the system overloaded, sending the pyromaniac crashing to the floor. Before Lynns could recover, Batman was on top of him, zip-tying his hands behind his back.
"Wait!" Lynns gasped as Batman hauled him upright. "You need me! Who else is going to give you this kind of challenge?"
"Gotham will survive without you," Batman replied coldly. Batman contacted Commissioner Gordon on his comm unit. "I need emergency services at Sunset Gardens Retirement Home. Multiple casualties, structure fire, and one suspect in custody."
"Firefly again?" Gordon's voice crackled through the static.
"Yes. It's bad, Jim."
"How bad?"
Batman looked around at the burning building, at the charred remains scattered throughout the hallways, at the sheer scope of the massacre that had taken place.
"Real Bad," he replied.
By the time the fire department and paramedics arrived, Batman had managed to extract the five women from the bathroom – the only survivors of Firefly's rampage. Three were suffering from severe smoke inhalation and would require extended hospitalization. Two were catatonic from shock.
Outside, the scene was chaos. Fire trucks battled the blaze while paramedics treated the survivors. Police officers established a perimeter and began the process of accounting for the victims.
And in the center of it all, propped against an ambulance with severe burns covering thirty percent of his body, Martin Reeves drifted in and out of consciousness.
"The suspect is secure," Batman informed the lead detective, nodding toward the patrol car where Firefly sat in the back seat, still unconscious from Batman's assault.
Martin's eyes fluttered open, focusing on Batman with difficulty. His face was a mass of blistered flesh, his voice reduced to a barely audible whisper.
"Please," Martin gasped, each word clearly causing him agony. "Kill him."
Batman knelt beside the ambulance gurney, his expression grim behind the cowl. "He'll face the law."
"Law?" Martin's laugh turned into a coughing fit that brought up blood. "He burned her alive. She was... we were going to..." His voice broke, and tears mixed with the fluid leaking from his burned flesh.
"The system will—"
"No," Martin interrupted, his voice gaining strength from pure rage. "Kill him. Please. I'm begging you. He doesn't deserve to live."
Batman remained silent. In the background, Firefly was beginning to stir in the patrol car.
"She was everything," Martin continued, his words becoming increasingly slurred as the pain medication took effect. "Everything good in this world. And he just... he just took her away like she was nothing."
"I can't," Batman replied quietly.
Martin's response was a scream of pure anguish that echoed across the scene, a sound of grief and rage so raw that it made everyone within earshot stop what they were doing. He thrashed against the restraints holding him to the gurney, his burned body protesting the movement, but his fury overpowered the pain.
The scream devolved into sobs as Martin's strength finally gave out. His head fell back against the gurney, his eyes closing as unconsciousness claimed him once more.
From the patrol car nearby came a new sound – laughter. Firefly was already awake and watched the scene through the rear window.
"See you soon, Batman," Firefly called out,"This was fun. We should do it again sometime."
The laughter continued as the patrol car pulled away, taking Garfield Lynns to a cell where he would await trial, leaving behind only the burning ruins of Sunset Gardens and the broken remnants of the lives he had destroyed.
Comments
Radiant Tiefling
Thank you for the chapter.
tyler saylor
And this why I will never like Batman he is coward because he knows these people are supposed to die but he can't kill them because he believes in the very system he knows is corrupt
