Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

The barman had returned, steaming cup of coffee in one hand. He was frozen in the doorway, his eyes wide, locked on the object in Rad’s hand.

Rad held the thing up by one end but before he could say anything, the barman dumped the coffee on the bar, spilling nearly half of it, and reached across to push Rad’s hand away. Rad snatched the rod close to his chest.

“Hey!”

“Put that damn thing away, Jesus,” said the barman. He kept his hands out, his eyes scanning the empty bar behind his single customer. He was breathing heavily and quickly.

“You know what it is?” asked Rad.

The barman leaned across the bar, his face an inch away from Rad’s. Rad grimaced; the barman’s breath was hot and smelled of acetone. As he leaned back, Rad saw the barman’s eyes were bloodshot. The man was either sick or high on something.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” said the barman. “It belongs to him, to one of his machines.”

“Who?”

The barman was very still, his eyes on Rad’s. Rad raised an eyebrow and the barman nodded.

“You don’t want nothing to do with him,” he said.

Rad shook his head and slid off the stool. Enough was enough. As he moved, the barman jerked forward again and grabbed Rad’s forearm tightly. Rad shook it off.

“Bud,” said the barman, “you wanna watch yourself. It’s not safe.”

“So I’ve been told,” said Rad.

The barman flicked his head at the object in Rad’s hand. “You’re not from round here, are you?”

“Downtown,” said Rad.

The barman pursed his lips like he was going to whistle appreciatively. He leaned in to Rad, like a conspirator. Rad found himself getting closer to the man, his nose assaulted by the acidic smell of his breath.

“I heard things were rough, downtown .” The barman said it like it was another place altogether. As far as Rad had seen, that seemed to be exactly the case.

“That so?”

The barman nodded, his eyes glazing over, almost like Rad wasn’t there. He chewed and swallowed and spoke.

“Yeah, man, I heard there were riots, and that they’d tried to storm the Empire State Building.” The barman tried to whistle but his lips did nothing but pass a narrow current of air through them. The tang of acetone was strong and Rad couldn’t stop his nose crinkling.

“I heard there was a hijack, ” the barman said. “I heard the police tried to come down on a crowd in an aerostat, but the people, they stormed the ship and took it over and were flying it around the place.” He moved his hands in the air, clearly impressed.

Rad said nothing. The barman was right; since the cold had set in and Carson had abandoned his post, the city was full of disturbances.

There was a light in the barman’s eyes. “I heard there were others, in the city. Y’know? From the other side . Infiltrators, all secret-like, on the down-low. Coming in and stirring things up, right? Trying to overthrow the Commissioner, get their own kind in.”

“The other side?” asked Rad.

“Yeah.” That fire again, fighting its way out of the barman’s bloodshot eyes. “I heard they were called ‘Communists’. From New York.”

Rad frowned. “ Com-you-what-now ?”

“The Reds…” The barman almost whispered it, and let it hang in the air along with the stench of his breath.

The man was deranged, whatever the hell it was he was chewing pickling his brain. So he’d heard the news from downtown, about the riots and protests, but infiltrators from New York? The Fissure had closed.

Time to change to subject. Rad pulled the metal rod out again but kept it close to his chest. As soon as it came into view, the barman’s eyes widened again and they darted around the empty bar.

“Jesus, mister, you gonna give me palpitations, I’m telling ya.”

Rad’s eyebrow went up again. “You know someone called Geiger?”

The barman shook his head, quickly. “Never heard of no Geiger, but then I don’t know his real name.”

The mystery man. Rad’s caller, he had no doubt about it.

“Who?”

The chewing paused, and this time the barman ran his hand through his greasy hair.

“Either you’re playin’ me, or you’re about to walk into the spider’s parlor with a clue, mister.”

“I came here because I was asked to,” said Rad, raising the tube to his eye line. “Someone wants this back. Sounds like you know who.”

“Oh, mister, mister,” said the barman, backing away and holding his hands up like Rad was asking him to open the register and start counting bills. “You gotta turn around now. Go back downtown.”

“What’s so bad about uptown? Who lives up there?”

“Mister, everyone knows. Maybe not downtown , but around here, nothing goes on that doesn’t have something to do with the King.”

Rad sniffed and placed the rod on the bar. The barman’s eyes were glued to it. Rad watched the barman as he slowly spun the rod on the damp wood top.

“Who’s the King?”

“Come on, mister!”

Rad stopped moving the rod and waited until the barman dragged his eyes from it to Rad’s.

“Who is the King?” said Rad with more force.

The barman shook his head and dragged the towel off his shoulder only to slap it back across the other. He folded his arms and nodded again. “You must know who he is, if you said he wants that back.”

“Can’t say I caught his name.”

The barman shook his head again. “King isn’t his name. King is what he is . The King of 125th Street.”

Rad smiled. “Seems a funny place to be king of.”

The barman didn’t seem to like this. His eyes hardened and the thin smile vanished. “But that’s where he told you to go, right?”

Rad held his breath for a moment, then let it out slowly. The creepy barman was right. The instructions had been simple: come to 125th Street, come at night. That was all Rad had got. He’d looked it up on a map back in his office but the map hadn’t shown anything except a street like any other, running across the upper part of the city, west to east, at a bit of an angle.

“The King of 125th Street…” said Rad, mostly to himself, but his words elicited more vigorous nodding from the barman.

“Lives in a castle.”

Rad glanced up from the bar to the barman. “Lives in a… castle?”

“There’s a light on the top sometimes, green one.”

“Huh,” said Rad. He was getting closer. Whoever this King was, he was involved with something fishy involving robot gangsters and a warehouse full of strange equipment and an army of tin soldiers. He could pay the King a little visit, find out more, and take the information to Jennifer Jones.

“But, mister, come on,” said the barman, pleading. “You gotta go home. Toss that thing in the river and forget you ever came to Harlem.”

Rad smiled and pocketed the rod. He lifted his hat from the bar and placed it on his head. The hat was still cold from being outdoors, and Rad could felt the moisture on the rim against his scalp. Rad patted the pocket of his trench coat, feeling the dead weight of the pistol in it. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

The barman sniffed. “You don’t know what’s out there,” he said. Then he stood back and folded his arms. Rad watched as he chewed, and he saw that the man’s saliva wasn’t black, it was green. He thought back to the antifreeze in Cliff’s hip flask. Suddenly a reason why the barman was interested in the metal rod came to mind. Rad gasped.

“You a robot?” he asked.

The barman’s thin lips split into a lizard grin and he slurped a mouthful of green saliva before leaning back in across the bar. “What, are you crazy? I’m as real as you are.”