Junkyard Batman

Chapter 4

They let me leave, at least eight guys watching me wide-eyed. I must have been the first guy to beat Bane in a brawl.

But it won't happen again. I fought dirty and there is no way he is letting me get to his nuts a second time.

So now I'm standing in full bat-gear in front of a closed utility office at four am under a street lamp. I genuinely look like a jackass. Like a convention nerd waiting for his parents to pick him up.

And right on time, Al pulls up with the station wagon. He's got the windows down, cigarette dangling from his lip.

"How was yer night?" he asks.

"Okay. Was naked for a bit. Chased after food. The usual."

We drive home in tired silence.

I slept like a baby for almost a solid day. After that, here is what I did.

I took the station wagon around during the day with my binoculars. It was honestly nice to get out and just cruise, seeing kids playing in the streets and people walking to work or whatever their hussle is.

Swinging by the surplus store, I secretly hoped to see that girl again. No dice, so I just buy some mask filters and flares. I remind him again to come by the yard for what I owe him.

I return to business. I tag on my map every vending machine I can find. Furthermore, I eye them over from a distance, seeing if they have salt and vinegar chips. And sure enough, seven machines throughout the city do. And each of those machines have the first two slots for the chips empty, so anyone perverted enough to want salt and vinegar chips would have to pay three times for their first bag.

I don't dare put change in to try and buy any. Odds are the machine won't process my request anyway if they have already hacked it. And I'm hoping Bane didn't tell anyone how I came to meet him, just that Batman is out there.

I want to set up cameras on each vending machine, but I can't. I just don't have the money for that many cameras on a closed network.

So I rig a single camera, battery powered with an external harddrive of memory, and a zoom lens. I hide it pretty well across the street and hit record. I figure I'll wait a week or so to come back for it.

And that week is spent practicing with my launcher and working out. I'm riding high after beating Bane, but I'm also terrified about the next time I have to square off against him.

Al spots me on the weights, and after muscle failure we move to the launcher. The net is working well, launching over a wide enough area to snag a few me-sized men, so we tackle the voltage.

Youch.

It takes only an hour for my burn marks to show. I've got a checkered pattern on my forearms and I am aaallll done with being electrocuted. I'm going to vomit if I take another jolt. We zapped me three times, twice under the net. Not even Bane could handle this.

Al still insists on cranking the power just a fraction more. "Yeh want them knocked out," he says. "but no catching old folk or people with weak hearts."

As we're gnawing on ribs that night, I'm gazing at Al's oil-drum smoker and wondering if we could repurpose a shipping crate into something similar. Not a smoker. Sorry, that was confusing. But I'm thinking of my welding tools and a Caterpillar digger that partially works and then I have an idea.

"Yep!" I say, jumping from my lawn chair. Uncle Lu nearly spills his hot sauce. "We drag the digger out here. Right here. Dig a long ditch for one of those shipping containers we have, and place it in the ground. Then I cut a hole in the top. We'll have a trapdoor to keep my launcher, flares, armor, and all that inside."