After the End of the World (Carter & Lovecraft)

by Jonathan L. Howard

  There was also the question of the phantom bomber. It would have been peachy keen just to hand that over to the police, but that avenue now had a large, Abwehr-issued Verboten sign across it, so he would just have to hope whoever was behind it didn’t have any more sticks of explosive in reserve. Whoever they were, despite Giehl’s derisive comments about the device’s lack of sophistication, she’d avoided mentioning that they’d still managed to circumvent the alarm she’d put on the detector, an alarm that Carter had triggered without even noticing it was there. So, somebody who wasn’t a complete idiot.

  Carter had made an arrangement to arrive at work half an hour before he was due to take the night shift. Dr. Giehl wanted to compare notes with her American counterpart now that they’d had a chance to consider the events of the night before. He hoped to Christ she hadn’t had a chance or the volition to get in touch with her handlers and ask them about the CIA, because if she had then things could get real shitty real quick.

  He was supposed to meet her in the parking lot by the building’s service door, and he approached it with reasonable apprehension, half-expecting Giehl or some Nazi stooge in a slouchy hat and overcoat to step out of the shadows and shoot him with a suppressed Luger. If it came to that, he’d rather it was Giehl: being murdered by a pretty attractive doctor with a sexy European accent was marginally better than being murdered by some square-headed thug from central casting.

  The reality turned out to be better than being shot by anyone at all, but still not as interesting as he’d expected: Dr. Giehl was not there. Carter checked his watch and found he was right on time. He’d got it into his mind that being both German and a physicist would make Giehl pathologically punctual. It looked like he was wrong. Maybe she’d just got buttonholed at the last minute and was—

  There was a muffled shot from inside the high-energy physics lab and a male cry.

  * * *

  Not being an idiot, Carter reached for his radio before even thinking about drawing his gun. “Sergeant? This is Carter. I’m outside the high-energy building, and I’m pretty sure I just heard a shot fired in there.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the return channel opened. “Carter? What are you doing there? You’re … Wait a minute, did you say there’s shooting?”

  “I think so. I heard a shot, or something like one, then a man shouted and—”

  Another shot, and a high scream. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was the sound of somebody in terror and maybe in pain.

  “Did you hear that? I got to get in there, Sarge. Call APD, and tell them there’s trouble here. Tell them no sirens.”

  The sergeant started to say something, but Carter was already moving toward the front entrance, his issue Walther PPQ M2 nine mil in hand. He would have preferred to go in through the service entrance, but it doubled as a fire exit and could only be opened from the inside by overriding the door alarm and pushing on the panic bar. So, he’d have to go in the front way, and just hope it wasn’t covered.

  The building’s foyer was empty, including the security station. Carter vaulted the desk and landed inside the cubicle. A quick glance around showed no sign of Jenner, the guard he was supposed to be relieving, either dead or alive. He checked the monitors, but every camera in the place seemed to be down. A cursory examination down the back of the unit showed why: every feed cable had been pulled. He could see it would be easy to get working again, but time consuming, and time was probably short.

  He left the cubicle—by the door this time—and stopped by the stairwell leading down into the basement offices. It seemed quiet down there, which was not unusual at that time of the evening. If anyone was still hanging around, they would most likely be on the laboratory floor.

  Aware he was heading into trouble, a feeling he never enjoyed and that he would never get used to no matter how many times he took up the opportunities to walk into it that his life offered, he quickly and quietly climbed the steps to the second story. The sarge had been right: the Walther did sit in his hand much like a Glock. He was grateful for that small familiarity. It was not a moment for discords in his experience to distract him from what might happen.

  He considered going up to the floor above, where he could look down from the mezzanine onto the laboratory and get some idea what was going on. But, two shots had already been fired. He needed to …

  He reached the top of the first flight of stairs and found himself looking at a large pool of blood, leaking out from under the right-hand side of the double doors that led into the laboratory. It was a lot of blood, dark and venous, a creeping shape that shone sharply beneath the strip lighting. Carter couldn’t see how anyone could lose that much and, at best, not be in shock. He stepped over it to the left and braced himself below the window set in the door on that side.

  He could hear voices: one—male—raised and angry, and others answering him. He listened intently to try and make out what was being said, but whoever was doing the shouting wasn’t clear, a product both of being nearly incoherent with rage and—Carter hoped—having his back to the door. Carter made out “destroyed,” “murdered,” and a lot of repetition on “fucking.” Okay, that was likely the shooter. As for whatever was being said back, that was said in low, calm tones, trying to talk the shooter down. More than one voice, there. They didn’t seem to be making much headway, though. Carter noticed that none of the voices had German accents.

  Carter raised his head far enough to look through the very corner of the glass. The eastern side of the lab seemed to be empty of people. He would have to move farther into view himself if he was going to check out the entire area. Hoping he wasn’t about to collect a bullet in the head, he shifted slowly to the right.

  He needn’t have worried. At least, not about that. The man with a drawn gun had his back to the door and was shouting at a small cluster of terrified scientists. Fronting the group was Ian Malcolm, the head of the American side of the team. Carter realized there were three German physicists, and they were all cowering at the back. Then he saw, no, they were being shielded by the Americans.

  Jenner was the man with the gun. Malcolm was telling him to be cool, but Jenner was a long way from being cool. He was walking in short, angry bursts of activity, here and back, here and back, his attention wandering off the group, then back a second later, running his free hand over his scalp as if trying to wipe away his anxiety and anger, and—oh, fuck—was he angry. His finger was also on the trigger, which worried Carter a lot. The Walthers didn’t have a safety catch, instead settling for two internal drop safeties and a firing pin block. In short, they were designed not to go off if knocked or dropped, which was all cool, but the trigger was the safety. All Jenner had to do was twitch his finger and somebody else might get shot, and seeing how twitchy he was right then, that was a likely scenario.

  Carter didn’t have much choice. Jenner had obviously already done one stupid thing and was working himself up to doing another. Carter couldn’t do much from the other side of a door. He could probably shoot Jenner through the window, but he didn’t want to. Ideally, he didn’t want to shoot the man at all, but that meant talking him down since Malcolm wasn’t making much headway, and that meant entering. With plenty of misgivings, he tapped on the door, and waved at Jenner when he swung around to see who was slowly opening the door.

  “Hi, man,” he said, slow and calm, while trying to remember whatever he had ever known about crisis negotiation. He’d been taught a five-step system, but all he could recall was that first came active listening, then empathy, then rapport, then some other stuff he’d have to wing through. Ultimately, he wanted the gun off Jenner and no more shots fired. All he had to do was to remain cool.

  He glanced down and to his right as he stepped into the lab. Lukas was on the floor, the blood pool emanating from his body. He looked very, very dead. “Well, fuck,” said Carter, forgetting to be cool. He looked over at Jenner. “Hey, Pete. What’s up?”

  Jenner’s
nerve slipped still further. “Carter? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here yet!”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t doing anything else, so I figured, heck, might as well go to work a little early.” He nodded sideways at the body. “Man, did you shoot Doc Lukas? Why’d you do that?”

  Jenner didn’t look like he was going to talk for a moment. There was an expression of barely controlled horror running around just under his skin and it might burst out any second now. Whatever else Jenner was experiencing, he had not gone robotic as was often the case with spree shooters, turning off any and all empathy so they could carry on with being assholes without any remaining splinters of humanity getting in the way.

  Carter pulled up his training. Active listening. Okay. “Talk to me, Pete. I’m listening.”

  “My name,” said Jenner, slowly, clearly, stepping back so everyone in the room was in his field of vision, “isn’t Jenner.”

  Carter had a sense of foreboding that all the five-step plans in the world weren’t going to bring this to a conclusion with no further bloodshed.

  “They did it to him, they did.” Jenner gestured violently at the cluster of scientists, causing some to flinch, some to shy away. “The fucking Germans did it to him.”

  “They killed Lukas?”

  “No!” Jenner changed from uncertain to furious in a second. Carter wished he could remember more from his crisis management training. He seemed to be fucking up. “Dave! They fucked with his head somehow!”

  “Dave?”

  “Koznick,” said Dr. Malcolm. “The guard who suffered a breakdown.”

  “No!” Jenner pointed the gun squarely at Malcolm’s head. “Not a fucking breakdown!” Malcolm slowly raised his hands to shoulder height in a sign of submission and surrender. “Those fucking Krauts did something to him!”

  “Hey, Pete, just take a minute,” said Carter, trying to bring Jenner’s attention back to him. “I need to understand what you’re saying. Dave Koznick had something done to him? Something that made him have a nervous breakdown? How?”

  “I don’t know!” Jenner couldn’t stop shouting, which Carter reckoned his crisis management trainer would have described as “counterindicative to a preferred solution.” “I don’t fucking know how they did it, but they did it somehow!”

  “Okay. Just … okay. So, they did this … why?”

  Jenner looked at him like he was an idiot. “Koznick!” He saw no comprehension in Carter’s eyes. “He was Polish! And those motherfuckers”—the gun swept off Malcolm and at the Germans huddled behind the Americans—“they wiped out Poland! Genocidal fuckers! That’s what they do! That’s what they do! Millions dead, and nobody gave a fuck. They’re just tidying up now! Every Pole in the phone book, might as well be a fucking death list!”

  Realization finally came to Carter. “Pete, so if your name’s not really Jenner…”

  “Janowski. My parents changed it to fit in better. That’s what they said. They also said a Polish name is like having a target painted on your back with some people. I told Dave, told him he should change it, but he just laughed … just laughed and said the war was a long time ago. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what those motherfucking animals did to Poland.”

  Carter couldn’t take his eyes off Jenner’s—Janowski’s—gun. What was it? Less than a six-pound trigger pull? Less than half an inch of travel to fire, tenth of an inch reset before the trigger could be squeezed again? Barely a twitch of the finger to let off two rounds. Assuming two rounds fired, then he still had thirteen to go. Three surviving Germans, and four Americans to go through to reach them.

  “But they cared. Hunting us down. Him.” Janowski jerked his head toward Lukas’s corpse. “He was fucking Gestapo!” He spat the word out, but it was a word made for spitting.

  The revelation created a murmur among the Americans. “Gestapo?” said Malcolm. “Are you sure?”

  “I heard them arguing about it! Her! Her!” He jabbed the gun at Dr. Giehl. “I heard her call him Gestapo!”

  “No.” Giehl’s voice was clear. “You misunderstood. I said he was behaving like Gestapo.”

  “No! My German’s fine! You can’t tell me I didn’t understand that! I heard you! I fucking heard you! I—”

  Carter shot him. In the moment when Janowski’s gun was raised to bear over the heads of the scientists as he raged, Carter took his chance and fired. His gun hand had been by his side, so there was no chance of aiming properly, just a snapshot gauged for the right bicep in the hope of disarming him. Maybe it was a bad shot, maybe it was years of training to go for the center of the body, but the bullet hit Janowski in the armpit. He made a shocked sort of whinny and clenched his arms against his body, the gun pointing down. Carter tackled him and took him down, disarming him immediately.

  “Oh, fuck,” muttered Janowski. “Fuck. Dude, you shot me.”

  “Call an ambulance!” Carter barked at the scientists. Malcolm was already heading for a landline handset, cell phones being discouraged around the sensitive gear.

  “Where’d I get hit?” Janowski’s face was gray. “Hurts like a bitch. My whole side. Ribs?”

  “Armpit. I was going for your arm, Pete.”

  “Armpit, huh? Shit. Guess I’m fucked then. All kinds of arteries and shit in there, ain’t there? Yeah.”

  There was a lot of blood. Carter was aware of it soaking into his pant legs as he knelt by Janowski. “Keep your arm down tight against your side. No, wait. Just a minute.” He took out a pocket pack of tissues and stripped the wrapper off. He lifted Janowski’s arm to find the wound. Blood pulsed rapidly from his armpit, obscuring the hole on the shirt cloth, but Carter found it, pushed the wad of tissues on top of it, then pulled Janowski’s arm back down. “Now, hold your arm down. Keep the pressure on it.” Carter pushed Janowski’s upper arm against his body. His hands were covered in blood. “Medics are on the way. You just have to hang on for a while.”

  “Nah.” Janowski spoke as if Carter were suggesting they go see a movie. “Nah, they’ll just get me in the hospital. Fuck. Look after my cat, okay? He’s called Misky. He’s … Jesus, this hurts.” His eyes were looking around at the ceiling. They settled on the glass of the atrium roof. “I can see the stars.”

  Carter glanced up, but the glass just looked like a dark square to him, the glare of the laboratory lights making it impossible to see more.

  Janowski was still talking. “They’ll just get me in the hospital. They’ll get all of us. One way or another, the fucking Nazis will kill everyone. Including themselves … including themselves.” He looked Carter in the eye. “They will get all of us.”

  * * *

  The police arrived to find Constable Carter of Miskatonic Security administering CPR to Constable Jenner, while the sergeant of the guard stood uselessly by with a defibrillator pack in his hand. There was no fibrillating pulse to shock back into beating steadily, however. By the time the paramedics arrived Carter had been talked into giving up, and there was no hurry at all.

  Chapter 15

  2D, 3D, 4D, nD

  It was the beginning of a very long night for all of them. The detectives arrived, and Carter was relieved to see Harrelson leading the investigation. Harrelson seemed less happy to see him. He drew Carter to one side to take a statement, and they communicated in terse little sentences when nobody was nearby to overhear.

  Harrelson’s first informal statement when they had found a quiet corner was, “The fuck, Carter? Bombs and now this? What the fuck is going on here?”

  “I’ll explain what I know, but not now. We got to make this look on the up and up. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, but I’m going to leave out a pile of shit you already know—”

  “And wish I didn’t.”

  “But that can’t go into your report. Also”—Carter looked around cautiously—“this place isn’t going to be taped off-limits, is it? No police guard overnight?”

  Harrelson looked at him suspiciously. “Why?”


  “’Cause I have to put that bomb back.”

  Harrelson snorted. “The fuck you say?”

  “I’m not going to rig it to blow. I’ll leave a wire loose or something. The thing is, your guys are going to search Jenner’s place and chances are they’ll find bomb-making gear, but no bomb. They’re also going to find the tricksy screwdriver you need to open the German instrument cases and put two and two together. Best solution would be to smuggle the bomb to his place before your people arrive, but that’s not going to happen. Just no time. So, I put the bomb back. They find it; loose end tied up.”

  “Yeah? And what if the bomb squad decides to just blow it up instead of trying to defuse it? What are your Nazi pals going to say about that?”

  “I had precisely one Nazi client, he wasn’t my pal by any stretch, and the poor fucker is dead anyway, so Christ only knows how I’m going to get paid now.”

  Harrelson winced. “Cold.”

  “The point is, all this Spy vs. Spy bullshit turned out to be just that. It was down to one guy who got a weird idea in his head and people got hurt. Does it have to be any more complicated than that?”

  “You tell me, Carter. Tell me the story. I’m supposed to be taking a statement here.”