"Splash-"
A pungent liquid splashed over the ragged cardboard and moldy mattresses.
"Burn it! Pour all of it the fuck on! That bastard who dared stick his nose in today-I want him roasted!"
The bald thug's roar erupted beneath the Interstate Bridge, brimming with undisguised brutality.
Then came a scratch. A windproof match pierced the darkness of Gotham's winter night, tracing a deadly arc through the air before landing squarely in the gasoline-soaked heap of garbage.
"Whoosh!"
An orange-red wall of fire shot up instantly, following the trail of gasoline like a maddened serpent, ravenously devouring everything beneath the bridge.
Bruce's eyes snapped open.
There was no high-tech alarm from the Batcave, no gentle wake-up call from Alfred. What woke him was a savage tearing sensation in his lungs and heat so terrifying it nearly singed off his eyebrows.
He had slept too deeply. Physical exhaustion, extreme hunger, and the low fever caused by the infection in his feet had stripped this master tactician, trained in the world's finest methods of enduring stress, of even the most basic vigilance down in Gotham's underbelly.
"Cough, cough... Help! Help me!"
An agonized scream came from beside him. It was the old man wrapped in a tattered blanket, the one who had kept coughing.
Bruce rolled over and scrambled up. The space beneath the bridge had become hell on earth. Thick smoke billowed, and the highly toxic fumes from burning plastic filled every inch of space.
The dozens of homeless people who had crowded in for the night now scattered like rats from a disturbed nest, shoving and trampling one another in their frantic rush to escape.
No one bothered with the old man who had fallen at the edge of the flames. Someone even stepped straight onto his already crippled leg while