Antenna Syndrome Read Free Page A

bonus, if I could find his missing
daughter by the weekend.
    I rolled the fridge aside and stashed most of the
money in my floor safe, keeping some on me for operating funds. I
turned off the lights to save electricity and dialed the air
scrubber down to a low whisper. Pocketing my pistol, I shouldered
my tote bag and locked the office.
    These days, everyone carried a man-purse, because
there was no telling when, where or why your foray into the city
could take a wrong turn and leave you stranded with no resources
but your own. In my bag I carried spare ammo, a knife, first aid
kit, energy bars, water, vaporizer refills, flashlight, rope,
pry-bar, DDT spray, hand-cranked generator, environmental
protection and, of course, a roll of duct tape.
    As I rode the elevator down, a dazed cockroach the
size of a small mouse fell out of the overhead vent. I stomped on
it fast and hard, crushing it under my heel. I hated bugs, and now
they were everywhere. Ever since the Brooklyn Blast, the little
bastards seemed to have come forth and multiplied with a
vengeance.
    Entomologists speculated that the low-level
radiation which was causing neurological disorders and all kinds of
cancers in humans had had almost the opposite effect on insects,
stimulating both their activity, growth and reproductive cycle. We
the people didn’t understand it and we sure as hell didn’t like
it.
    Before I left the elevator I put on my eMask, a
micro-fiber balaclava fitted with goggles, nasal respirators and
mouth filter. As I walked through the lobby, I tried not to kick up
a dust storm of boric acid. It was still drizzling outside but,
with both a gun and a fistful of dollars in my pocket, I felt
better than I had in a long time. Nothing like a job to take a
man’s mind off his worries, of which I had many.
     
    ~~~
     
    I walked down the block to a parking compound run by
a Korean family. These days nobody left their car on the street,
for fear it’d be towed, stripped or vandalized. My 2016 Dodge
Charger was a beast for gas but I’d got it hybridized five years
ago when gas rationing kicked in, so now it ran on electricity,
hydrogen or compressed natural gas.
    Mr. Kim also had a sweet deal on some black market
farm fuel, and kept my tank full in case I had to make a midnight
run to some godforsaken place where service stations declined to
operate. I banged on his door and raised the eMask so his security
camera could see my face.
    “Good day, Mistuh Savage.” Mr. Kim buzzed me in. A
pump shotgun stood propped behind his desk. He punched an intercom
and barked something Korean, in the middle of which I heard
“Charguh.”
    A minute later, my ride squealed to a halt in the
passage outside his office. One of his sons got out and beckoned to
me. I climbed into the Charger, locked the doors and headed up
Tenth Avenue.
    I’d installed an air scrubber in the car so it was
safe to remove my eMask so long as I kept the windows rolled up.
Traffic was a fraction of what it used to be, but there were still
people on the streets, most with face masks and respirators, some
with radiation burns and twitchy limbs. Life went on, as it had in
other times and places. Berlin, London, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had
all pulled themselves out of the wreckage. Now it was New York’s
turn.
    After the Brooklyn Blast, despite the panic,
evacuations and radiation effects, some people had actually clung
to their neighborhoods, refusing to let the city die. I passed a
Greek restaurant with a terrace where some old guys were playing
backgammon, wearing nothing more than cheap paper filters over
their mouths. In an OTB saloon across the street, punters sipped
drinks through straws inserted beneath their respirators, placing
bets on long-odds fights, games and races, hoping to score the big
win that might buy them a one-way ticket to a cleaner place.
    I turned onto 42nd Street, drove cross-town and
joined a moving lane through the toll plaza for the Midtown Tunnel.
Toll charges were