Junkyard Batman

Chapter 10

The Batmobile roars like a red-eyed lion, shaking the windows of the concrete jungle that is Gotham's Southside. I pass an overturned compact car and groups of people in PPE chatting with flashlights. Few cars are on the street because the smart people stay home.

Several stragglers cheer as I speed by, their phones high, but I see them poking at their devices in frustration in the mirror as I tear through the street.

It is obvious there has been some rioting, but I mostly see peaceful protestors. Seems if there was rage in them, it is spent. Many of them nurse head wounds and weep on the sidewalks as they splash their eyes with water.

I can see how the escalation occurred. The national outrage over police brutality has hit a tipping point, especially if it is racially fueled. So the people took to the streets all over the country. And the police came, and two swarming crowds of fools, one broken-hearted and the other overtaxed and racist, clashed.

And Riddler's people strike, delighting in the chaos. They burn police cars and amplify everything they can.

I see a few of the question-marked headcovers, splashing every window they see with hammers. I realize how right Al was. I'm always going to be stamping out these little fuckers. But right now there is an occupying force in my city, and they must learn that is something Batman will not abide.

This is my town.

On the news I saw the brass penguin down the street from Vicky Vale as she was dragged off camera by her hair. I know where the epicenter of the abuse is, so I head towards Gotham's uptown district. The pristine stretch of themed cocktail bars and expensive restaurants. Where poor people like me serve the food they can't afford.

There are police cruisers up ahead. I ponder if I should gun it, and just barrel through, but they spot my red headlights. Guns rise for a moment, but then lower again. The cops all look at each other until a weathered sergeant steps out, waving me forward.

Maybe he thinks... I'm an actual tow truck?

Slowly, I roll up. He eyes over the Batmobile. It's clear he recognizes it. Approaching my door, he motions for me to roll down a window. He clearly doesn't get that the tiny window in my ballistic shield-door isn't something that moves.

Do I risk it? Do I open this door a crack to talk to a cop? A cop that certainly has orders to pounce on me for embarrassing them on national TV when they abused citizens? Hell, I kicked one in the ass. I still have his gun.

Yeah. Yeah, I do risk it. They haven't fired at me and I'm getting a promising... conspiratorial vibe.

I crack the door open. Through my mask I decide to be all cheeky.

"Is there a problem, officer?"

It's what Al said a boy like me should say to the police if I'm ever pulled over. That and to keep both hands on the wheel.

The weathered sergeant leans in. He's of mixed ethnicity, like me. Maybe with some hispanic.

"Get these assholes out of our city," he demands.

Gotham. We have problems. Serious, deep-rooted problems of ugly inhumanity that reflect the nation as a whole. Apathy and the permittance of evil have rotted us to our core.

But we still are a city. With an identity. And the president screeches that we are thugs when he sends his own thugs into town, pulling our reporters about and beating our mothers and sons.

While regulating the GCPD to just wall the area off. The police are just sitting here at the outskirts of downtown, sealing off a section of the playground for the militarized, nameless enforcers to do with us as they will. To send a message to other cities to demand they submit.