Running from paparazzi and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police kept Batbaby out of touch with his union and his freakazoid buddies. A scab paparazzi had shot him with a dart. The dart a sub-dermal, GPS transmitter in his backside. Batbaby kept moving so the scabs couldn't get pictures he didn't get paid for. Only one of the camera jerks had his frequency, but that bastard barely let him get in a day's sleep, and he had no clue why the RCMPs wanted him. So far, the ULTCFP -- Union of Tabloid Creatures Freaks and Photographers -- hadn't done squat about his situation.

So, he's southbound out of B.C. on the I-5 under the trailer of a semi-rig carrying frozen Alaskan King claws to restaurants in Portland, Oregon. Occasionally, the flash of headlights lights up the white lines; otherwise, the night's a hum of tires on pavement. It's kinda lullaby-time stuff -- in a soothing, take your head off if you fall sorta' way.

But there's no sleep for the weary. A big hairy fist punches through the floorboard and almost knocks Batbaby in his bulbous, Batbaby eyeballs.

Batbaby takes a deep breath and tightens his locking-grip toes on the undercarriage struts and I-beams. The hairy hand pulls back up into the reefer caboose. White mist drifts out -- freaking cold, white mist.

Bigfoot -- his own lonesome, haggard self -- puts an eyeball to the hole, and he peers down at the road.

"Big Bunions," Batbaby says. Of course, he uses the proprietary Union of Licensed Tabloids Creatures Freaks and Photographers secret language.

"Batbaby! Whoops and happy joy! I'm so glad to see you."

"You can say that again. What gig gots you in the ice box with sushi?"

"Freezing my hair white. The RCMP sold me down to the states for experiments. Super Soldier stuff. No PR. No licensing at all. Not a dime for hardship. I won't even get an action figure out of this. You know the drill."

"Sure do. I did some forced pro bono time in a night-vision DOD project."

"What are you doing under there?"

"Covering ground. GPS sub-dermal tag. Gotta keep moving till the union sorts it out."

"How about you help me get out of this truck? Most of the floor's reinforced, and I can't make a hole big enough to climb through. Even if I did, I'd leave fur on the pavement trying to climb out."

"No can do, big boy. No strength for it. Night vision and short flights, I'm your guy. Ripping steel? Not a chance."

"So stop the truck and open the back."

"You know the union rules. We don't exist. We can't be seen unless we're under contract."

"Screw the union. I'm in a reefer truck like so much cow on the way to the slab in a mad scientist's lab. You're hanging from Peterbuilt stabilizer bars over meat-grinder pavement. Did the union get us these jobs? I don't think so. What have they done for you lately? "

"Got me a cool million for a syndicated comic strip."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And I'm a damn decent cartoon hero, if I do say so."

"So if you got the cool mil, how come you're hiding under the back of a semi?"

"Told you. GPS in my butt."

"And if they catch up?"

"Tons of pictures. No licensing. No agents. Free shots for the paparazzi. Market saturation. My value goes to hell, and lots of inbred, white folk chase me around trying to get a piece of my DNA ass for testing."

"Union can't fix that, now can they? So, I tell you what. Tonight, you exist and I exist. We help each other, then we go back into the shadows and do good by the contracts. If we get seen and then disappear quick, our value spikes for six months. What do you say? I'm freezing in here. I'll be a yeti by the end of the night."

"Sweet deal for you. What do I get? I'm still a freakin' beacon."

"I can fix that."

"Get it out?"

"Precision, surgical bite. I can get it out and take it north. Way north. I mean, I'm going so far north I'll be living in spinning compass land. Me and Santa Clause are going to be best buddies."

"Cold there, too."

"There's sub-zero walking with the white bears and then there's sub-zero on the marble slab. One I can live with. The other puts me at the end of an anal probe -- or worse."

"Yeah. Okay. I'll see what I can do. I think I can get this rig pulled over."

"Go, Batbaby."

Batbaby crawls along the undercarriage of the truck. The pavement runs by at an even 70 miles an hour, and the fumes of diesel exhaust and grease bug his sensitive proboscis. Wind snaps at his little wings, but his lock-grip, bat-claw fingers and toes (along with his perfect night vision) make the crawl doable. He makes it to the coupling and cab chassis and grabs electric cables and the pneumatic hoses hanging from the rear of the cab. He takes a pause. A huge red pentacle in a circle decorates the midnight blue metal-flake back panel of the cab. The shovel, spade, and axe in the tool rack have fresh dirt on 'em. He shakes his head. "Nah," he says, "not on the I-5," and he climbs up onto the roof.

Okay, bad move. Dumb. He lands on the wind deflector over the sleeper and slides down it like a greased baby on a swing set slide. He hits strip of cab roof over the windshield. Yellow running lights light him up like a leather statue on a stage, and wind rips at his batbaby wings. His little batbaby claws scratch at midnight blue metal flake. He's in the open and vulnerable as hell. He grabs the first thing he can and gets a grip on the dual air horns mounted behind the CB and cell antennas. He hunkers down against the wind. A silver PT cruiser with Washington plates flashes by and cuts in front of the truck. The trucker lays on the horn. Batbaby's head is near split in two from the airhorn. He loses his grip. Trucker punches the brakes. A quick pop. Not a lock-up, but it jerks things a bit and Batbaby is half-deaf and over the front and hanging by his toes from the CB antennae, wind pressing him into the windshield -- and right in front of the driver.

So he's seen for sure. So much for union rules.

Whatever dumb ass plan he had to gremlin the truck is gone. He presses his stub nose and huge eyes against the windshield and grins his pointy-tooth grin. "Hisss." he says.

The trucker sits in the cab. He has on headphones, a wrap-around mic, and sunglasses. Sunglasses, of all freaking things, and in the middle of the night on the I-5. Like he's some rock star in a Peterbuilt dressing room.

"You're an idiot," Batbaby says to the windshield.

The trucker turns on the windshield wipers. Face still in the shadows, his hands come up into the green glow of dash lights, and the son of a bitch hits the wash switch. Batbaby feels the little motor whine under the hood. Washer fluid squirts up and splatters the window. Drops of green ammonia shit hit Batbaby's eyes.

"You freaking asshole!" Batbaby screams. He spreads his stubby Batbaby wings and catches a little air from the back blast against the windshield. He lifts back and does a sweet, lock-toed, three-sixty pole dance around the antennae above the truck.

He grabs the over-door handhold to steady himself, then he sets to grooming his face and clearing his eyes. Course, his big, pointy ears are fine. Over the ringing from the horn blast and the huge roar of the wind, he can still hear a gnat sigh, and what he hears makes him just about as pissed off as a Batbaby can get.

"Yeah, Mamma Geek. The big chicken's in the freezer, but I got some trouble here on the I-5."

Batbaby grips the over-door handle and puts his oversized pointy ear to the roof of the truck.

"We got some Batbaby bullshit on top of the rig."

Pause.

"No, I don't know if he knows about the cargo. He's just doing weird shit on the hood and windshield."

Pause.

"Coincidence? I don't know."

Pause.

"I can't bring him in too. You know I can't do that. People will look for him. For the sake of the Big Red evil himself, that guy has a syndicated cartoon."

Satan? Batbaby figures something evil is brewing here on the I-5. This ain't copping a free photo. It ain't union breaking bullshit. This ain't even US government. This is them other guys -- the dark side. Oh my.

The sunglasses suddenly make sense. Freaking blood trucking vampires.

Headlines run through his batbaby brain: Vampires Kidnap Big Foot for Satanic Rituals. Mutilated Bigfoot Corpse Found on I-5. Vampire Bigfoot. Undead Sasquatch Terrorizes Highway. No matter how he slices and dices the story, it ain't good for the big guy. They got him on ice, but it's hot as hell where his soul's going.

Okay, Batbaby figures it ain't long till dawn and the truck has to be where it's going, or at least stop at a safe house, if old pale-and-sunglasses is going to sleep through the daylight. After all, it takes a bat to know a bat.

So, what's a Batbaby do when confronted with the true evil of the undead -- damn scabs that never signed the contract -- the kind of things that make bad headlines and worse friends?

He reaches into his little marsupial Batbaby pouch and pulls out his pointy-crowned, crying virgin of Guadalupe figurine. This one's the real deal. He picked it up on a song while he was on a paid photo shoot in the Yucatan caves.

Batbaby Colony Found in Mexican Caves.

He kisses the virgin, swings down over the side of the truck and uses it like a freaking yawara stick to shatter the window in the driver-side door.

He's in, but the trucker's a vampire and quick as smoke in the wind. The breaks on the big rig lock up tight, and that eighteen wheeler skids and slides and back-and-forths.

Batbaby attacks tooth and nail and virgin of Guadalupe. He digs in to the blood sucker. The big rig skids to a dead stop on the shoulder.

Bat fight ensues. Vampire transforms into mad as hell big-ass, bad bat. Batbaby, well he's just Batbaby after all. Sharp teeth and some screwy DNA, but nothing supernatural about him. He bites and claws and flaps his stubby wings.

"Freaking undead scab," he says.

"You are under my power," says the flannel-and-shades vamp. But of course, that doesn't work: Batbaby eyeball power and virgin-in-grip and all. The battle is epic, and in the end, Vampire takes the virgin to heart.

Dust to dust.

So, Batbaby opens the back end of the rig. Bigfoot is as good as his word, as always. He nips little Batbaby on the ass and pops out the GPS.

Batbaby and Bigfoot climb into the cab. They find a trip computer with a map route and destination on the screen.

"Alvord Desert," Bigfoot says. "There's nothing out there but salt flats."

"I figure that bad boy vamp was taking you to some unholy ritual."

Bigfoot nods. "I suppose there might be some other good-hearted freaks out there that need a little non-union help."

Does Bigfoot take that GPS North? Hell no. Bigfoot's got scruples. Once he's seen a flannel shirt full of vampire dust and the trip map in the cab, he figures he's got a duty.

Batbaby? He figures he gots to clear the name of living batfolk everywhere.

'Course, that's a different headline.

Secret Vampire Lair Under Oregon Desert.

The End

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