Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Rad retreated from the bar, transfixed by the man’s chewing. The man wasn’t as big as Cliff, and while he wasn’t exactly a perfect human specimen there was a certain handsomeness hidden behind the grime and grease.

“What are you eating?” Rad asked, peering at the barman’s ever-moving mouth. “You chewing a battery or something?”

The barman stopped chewing and sniggered. “Trust me, you don’t want any of the green.”

Rad’s eyebrow went up. Green? “I guess not”, he said. Then he lifted his hat. It was time to go. “Sir, it’s been a pleasure. I’ll be sure to pass my regards on to the, ah, King.”

He turned and made his way to the door, the barman not saying anything but chewing, chewing, chewing.

When the door closed behind Rad, he thought he heard the barman say “good luck” or “go home”, but he wasn’t sure which.

Harlem was quiet and sharp, the sound of Rad’s shoes on the ice-clad pavement the only noise as he walked onward. The street was lit in a dull orange from the clouds above, and ahead Rad could see the black conglomeration of buildings merge into something much larger, a squat skyscraper of the sort more common to downtown, the shouldered setbacks outlined against the dull sky behind. There was no light, green or otherwise, but the building had to be it. He was on 123rd already. Maybe the King of 125th Street was watching his progress, and would put the light on when he was nearer.

Rad stopped. He hadn’t seen anyone since leaving the tavern, and the trailing footsteps hadn’t reappeared.

Except… there they were. But they sounded different now: not just one set of footsteps but several. They shuffled rather than stepped, a group moving slowly and far away, at least at the moment. Rad thought again that the King might have invited him into an ambush.

Rad ducked into an alleyway that was just a tiny gap between two buildings. The brickwork was rough and layered with ice perfectly clear and perfectly smooth. Rad slid his back along it until he was in the shadows, then ducked down and moved forward to peer around the corner, his hand already reaching for the gun in his pocket.

“They’re following us.”

Rad jumped at the whisper in his ear, turning his head sharply to find a face-full of fur. He spluttered and tried to brush it away, before realizing it was Jennifer Jones’s hat. Rad hissed, and Jennifer shushed him.

“What in the hell are you doing here?”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. In his fright, Rad had pulled the gun from his pocket and was pointing it right at her. Jennifer moved the barrel to one side with a finger, then raised her other hand. In it she held a gun, something large and silver that shone in the night, looking more like a hair dryer than a weapon.

Jennifer smiled. “Your little pea-shooter isn’t going to be much good around here, detective.”

Rad sighed and hunched his shoulders, allowing the upturned collar of his trench coat to touch the rim of his hat. His breath plumed in front of him as he spoke. “You been following me too?”

“All the way from your office,” said Jennifer. Then she laughed. “Don’t look so surprised, Mr Bradley. You’re not the only detective in the city.”

Rad looked Jennifer up and down. She was wearing the heavy overcoat, this time topped with the fur-trimmed hat.

“You’re not made of metal too, are you?” asked Rad, not sure if he was serious or not.

Jennifer smiled again. “I’m as real as you are.”

Rad opened his mouth in surprise, but Jennifer looked up sharply, her free hand waving Rad to keep quiet.

She leaned across Rad to see out into the street. Rad raised himself up to see over her hat.

The black buildings around them looked like theater flats, the streetlight casting a circular pool of dull yellow light.

Something appeared in that light. Rad held his breath and shrank back, but Jennifer edged forward.

It was a man, a big man, walking with a limp so bad he was dragging his left leg behind him. In fact his whole body was stiff, the arms locked straight, the man’s back so rigid it was like he was made of…

Rad ground his molars together. The man’s torso was flat and shone in the streetlight, a seamless, rounded thing of metal. His arms were metal too, but the boxy forearms ended in human hands. The bad leg was human, except for the foot, which was nothing more than a rectangular shape from which rigid pipes sprang, traveling up the entire limb in parallel before turning at a right angle and connecting to the man’s pelvis. The other leg was entirely mechanical, as artificial as the arms and torso.

The man didn’t have a head. There was a short metal stem, a neck, with thinner pipes waving about six inches out from the end of it as the creature moved.

Rad recognized enough of the creature to feel the adrenaline pump through his body, making him dizzy and nauseous.

It was a robot sailor, one of the human-machine hybrids manufactured from the citizens of the Empire State to crew the Ironclads that sailed off to war. The thing was incomplete, the human and mechanical parts badly mixed, the whole thing fragile and broken and twisted.

Rad felt his mouth fill with a sour taste. He glanced down at Jennifer, but before he could speak she pulled back into the alley and raised her hand for silence. Rad gulped and risked another look out to the street.

The broken machine was just the first. As it limped forward, others followed, each a twisted mix of human and robot, none complete, all moving with difficultly and perhaps, Rad thought with a growing sense of unease, pain. They were silent, the only sound the shambling, shuffling of their problematic movement.

Rad counted an even dozen, exactly the crew complement of one of the great Ironclad warships. The last Fleet Day had been two years ago, six months before everything changed. Rad knew the naval shipyards down near the Battery were still in existence, but he also knew that they were empty, abandoned by the navy once Wartime ended. They didn’t make Ironclads anymore, nor did they make any more crews.

The group on the street was not an ordered rank of robots. They looked like a collection of spare parts, both mechanical and human. Rad suddenly wondered what had happened to all of the crews that must have been prepared for the last great sailing, the one that had been close to happening before Wartime ended.

He had a feeling he was looking at it, and his stomach churned.

“What are they?” he asked. He knew the answer but he wanted to hear it from someone else. The robot gang had stopped under the streetlight, and a couple of them — one with a big square metal box for a head, attached to a very human neck and chest, and another that was the exact opposite, the human head looking ridiculously small on top of the wide rectangular body — seemed to scan their surroundings.

Looking for them.

“I’m hoping your friend will be able to tell us,” said Jennifer. She pulled back into the shadow of the alleyway and pointed with her gun towards the north, towards the vast black building that loomed over the whole area.

Rad followed her gaze. “You think the King has something to do with this?”

Jennifer glanced sideways at Rad, then her eyes were back on the street. “That what he calls himself?”

“So I’ve been told. King of 125th Street.”

“Which matches the directions you were given.” Jennifer nodded. “It’s all connected — our friend Cliff and the army of robots; these poor creatures in Harlem. Something big is about to go down.”

“So what’s your plan? Follow me to this King character?”

“You bet. You got an invite.”

Rad pursed his lips. “Guess you tapped my phone?”