After the End of the World (Carter & Lovecraft)

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “‘Next time.’ Ha. Love your optimism. Okay, first things first. Call the cavalry. The Brits might be able to get up the mountain faster than us, and God knows they’re better suited for this kind of bullshit. Then … I guess we start walking…”

  As she spoke, her voice slowed. She was looking at the crate that had been covered with the blue sheet Carter had used as a makeshift shroud. “Son of a bitch. Remember when Nick was talking about ‘solutions’ to the snow for getting up and down the mountain? I figured he just meant chains or spikes or something. This is a Ski-Doo.”

  Carter fetched a pry bar and lifted the lid. Inside was a skimobile in packing material, fresh from the factory. It was also in pieces. “Nick was the mechanic, Emily. I’m pretty handy with engines, but I can’t put this thing together quickly.”

  She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Duh,” she said, tapping his forehead. “We’ve got a camp full of scientists and engineers here. At least one of them is going to be able to get it up and running pretty quickly. You go and call Captain Shoulders. I’m going to kick some doors and do some recruiting.”

  * * *

  The arrival of all the Reich scientists at the dome was a huge surprise to the night shift as they worked on finalizing the installation of the experiment’s systems, even to the German scientists who were on the shift.

  Dr. Malcolm looked in astonishment as the inner door opened and a gaggle of eight scientists led by Dr. Weber entered, shaking snow from their parkas.

  “Hans?” said Malcolm. It was four in the morning. He and the three with him were there because they wanted to be. They called themselves the “night shift,” but there was actually no real shift system in place; they just wanted the project to be under way as soon as possible and were prepared to work long hours to do so. After all, it wasn’t as if there was much else to do on Attu. They had gotten used to working through the nights and the one thing every such night had in common was that nothing unexpected happened. Usually they would drive back down about now and sleep for seven hours, but the snow had made that unsafe, so they planned to work a little longer, and then nap on the cots set up in the dome’s rear, before driving back down when the sun came up. This had been the only break in their routine for the last six days, and now here were a bunch of men and women stamping the snow off their boots, and wearing expressions that ranged from determined to ashamed.

  “Hans? What’s going on here?”

  “I’m sorry, Ian,” said Dr. Weber, stepping forward. “There has been a change of plans. Would you, Hamer, and Cortez please leave? I am sorry, but you may not take a vehicle. You will have to walk back to the camp.”

  “What?” Malcolm could not find anything more intelligent to say for a moment. As he was trying to think of something, the one German member of the night shift walked by him to join her compatriots. “Gabi? What the hell is going on here?”

  Weber spoke again. “I am truly sorry, Peter, but I must insist you leave immediately.”

  “Walk down the mountain? It’s a blizzard out there!”

  “No. It is snowing quite heavily, but I would not call it a blizzard at this stage. It may worsen, however, so you should go now before it does.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without an explanation! What’s gotten into you?”

  Weber looked like a man who had inspected his remaining store of fucks to give, and found it empty. He reached into the pocket of his parka and withdrew a handgun. He aimed it squarely at Malcolm and said, “I will not ask again, Doctor. You, Hamer, Cortez … leave now.” Still Malcolm hesitated, but this time in shock. “I respect you, Ian. You have a fine mind, and it has been a pleasure and an honor to work with you. So, I shall tell you this much. I am sorry to inform you that the ZPE rig at Miskatonic University never worked. With the help of Dr. Giehl here, the results were falsified. We needed to be here. Specifically”—he nodded at the tall steel column dominating the center of the dome—“that needed to be here. We are conducting a scientific project, but not one to which you are privy. That is all I wish to tell you, and all that I have time to tell you. Go now or I shall kill all three of you.”

  It all still seemed too incredible. Malcolm was a great believer in the international brother-and sisterhood of science, that scientists were above political considerations, that scientists looked out for scientists. “You wouldn’t,” he said, and he believed it.

  “He would, Ian.” Lurline Giehl spoke up, her voice colorless, her expression defeated. “He would.”

  Dr. Malcolm looked at her, and suddenly he believed her instead. “Come on,” he said to Cortez and Hamer, “he means it.”

  The Germans stood aside from the entrance as the Americans walked cautiously past them. As they came closer, they saw more of the Germans draw weapons.

  “Kurt,” Weber said to one of his junior colleagues in English for the benefit of the Americans, one who seemed to like handling a gun far too much, “accompany them out and see that they start walking down. If they refuse to go, or try to take an auto, shoot them.”

  “Jawohl!” replied Kurt. It was a small mercy that he didn’t attempt to click his heels, but Weber winced all the same. Gesturing with his gun like a movie gangster, Kurt herded the Americans out.

  Weber caught Giehl staring at Kurt’s disappearing back with sullen loathing. “He wasn’t my choice for the job, Lurline. The son of somebody with influence at Wewelsburg. Politics, even in a matter such as this. It makes one’s heart sink.” She looked suddenly at him, her eyes widening. He smiled gently. “Yes. I’m afraid your orders haven’t been coming from the Abwehr for some time.”

  Chapter 29

  GOING HOT

  Dr. Jessica Lo, tenured professor of high-energy physics at Miskatonic University, was finding much new to get used to in the current project. Firstly, that their partners from the Reich seemed to be so far ahead in the very esoteric field of zero point energy, so far ahead that they were close to unlocking it. The project at MU had been a very definite wake-up call for her and her colleagues, as the Germans unveiled new principles almost daily in the early part of it, while seeming amused in a patronizingly indulgent way that these were wonders to their American colleagues.

  Now it seemed that ZPE was within their grasp, but to close their fingers around it meant shifting the entire project to—as he heard one of the technicians call it—“America’s last ass hair.” She wasn’t keen on Attu, but the project was too glorious and potentially world changing to walk away from simply on the basis of a couple of months’ discomfort. They seemed on the verge of securing a truly miraculous new source of clean energy. The American contingent’s head, Dr. Malcolm, had coined the phrase “God’s own Duracell,” which Lo found fatuous, yet an undeniably striking image.

  Still, there were the thousand day-to-day irritations to contend with. She hadn’t expected simply getting to and from the experimental facility to be so time-consuming and, indeed, terrifying. She did not enjoy ascending and descending Mount Terrible in the slightest, and would generally spend her time during such journeys with her lips tightly set and her hands clasped in her lap, except for the moments when she would reflexively check her seat belt was secure. The food was, so far, acceptable, but she was very aware that soon their fresh supplies would be exhausted and everything would be coming out of the freezers and cans, or reconstituted from powders. The day that happened, and it could not be far away, she regarded with dread.

  Even her ornithological ambitions had been thwarted by an inexplicable lack of birds. They just seemed to hate the eastern end of the island, and she didn’t have time to get over to the west. Besides, after the horror story Dan Carter had told at dinner about how difficult it was to drive across the island once you were off the roads, she was beginning to think she wasn’t that keen to go there after all, even if she had time.

  Still, if there was one thing she really liked about Attu, it was the silence. She couldn’t remember when she had last slept so well.

&
nbsp; Thus, she was in deep sleep when somebody started pounding on her door and demanding she get right the fuck up now.

  She opened the door, bleary and truly not even half-awake. She found the island’s “deputy,” Miss Lovecraft, standing fully dressed out in the corridor. “Get your shit together, Doctor,” she said, showing—thought Lo in a slightly detached way—poor protocol. Then, remarkably, Lovecraft added, “You ever rebuilt an engine?”

  Lo was now fairly confident that she was still asleep. She had never been asked that question in her life before, and it sounded like the sort of thing an unconscious mind might hash together to put in somebody’s mouth. Still, she decided to play along; this dream sounded interesting.

  “No,” she said, slowly, “I’ve never rebuilt an engine. Why do you ask?”

  “Because we need somebody with car-mechanic-type skills and we need them now.”

  “Have you asked Nick Bowles? He seems very au fait with—”

  “Nick’s dead. The Germans killed him. They’ve taken all the cars and we have to build a Ski-Doo fast if we’re going to stand any chance of stopping them from doing whatever it is they’re planning on doing up at the dome.”

  Ah, thought Lo, clearly an anxiety dream based on my misgivings about the Reich contingent. “Dr. Malcolm is up at the dome, I would expect. He won’t let them.”

  Miss Lovecraft frowned at him. “Malcolm’s likely dead by now. Didn’t you hear me? I said they killed Nick Bowles. They shot him through the back of the head.” Her eyes narrowed. “Shit. You think you’re dreaming.”

  She slapped Lo with resounding force, snapping her head to one side. Lo looked at her in total astonishment, her hand on the reddening cheek.

  “Get with the program, Doc. Nick’s dead, Malcolm and the other Americans at the dome are probably dead, the Nazis are on the point of butt-fucking the whole human race with something truly esoteric and I need you to fucking focus. Do I have your attention?”

  Lo blinked, the realization that maybe this entertaining dream was not such a dream after all becoming a full conviction. “The … we don’t use the ‘N’ word,” she said distractedly.

  Lovecraft’s expression of disgust was a thing to behold. “Oh, fuck you.” She turned at the sound of another door opening, and Lo noticed for the first time that she had a viciously functional shotgun slung over her shoulder, the kind used for killing people, not game. Full consciousness came quickly on a wave of adrenaline and fear as she finally processed Lovecraft’s words.

  “You!” Lovecraft shouted down the corridor at one of the techs leaning out of his door in his skivvies to find out what the raised voices were about. “If you had a Ski-Doo in pieces, could you rebuild it quickly?”

  The question caught him by surprise. “I … Well, I guess so.”

  “I could.” Lovecraft looked the other way to see one of the postgraduate assistants pulling on a shirt as he spoke. “I used to work at my dad’s garage in the summer. I reckon I could do it. What’s wrong with Nick? Why can’t he do it?”

  “Nick’s dead. You two get dressed ASAP and come with me to the vehicle shack.” She turned to Lo. “Get everyone else up. Whatever those Nazis are doing up at the dome might kill everyone on the island. Everyone deserves to be awake for doomsday.”

  Lo was finding her center again. Under the circumstances, she was prepared to forgive Lovecraft for the slap. “If that’s true, waking everyone might be an unkindness. Some might prefer to die asleep.”

  “Yeah, well, no. If I’m going to die with my boots on, ain’t nobody going to sleep through it.”

  * * *

  It was near miraculous. Carter took the radio from where he’d hidden it behind a panel in the “sheriff’s office,” switched it on, said, “This is Fleming. Come in, please,” and immediately—immediately, as if waiting on cue—a voice replied, “Reading you, Fleming. Please go ahead.”

  The promptness of the reply caught Carter off guard. “Uh. Yeah. I … uh. Hi.”

  “Hello,” said the voice on the radio.

  “Sorry. There’s a lot going on here. The Germans are doing something. They killed one of us … one of the Americans, and they’ve gone up to the dome. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing it now.”

  “Please stay on the channel.”

  “Sure,” said Carter, although he was pretty sure the radio operator at the other end had already gone. Almost two minutes passed, and then a familiar voice came onto the channel, the marine officer.

  “Mr. Carter? Could you repeat to me what you told our CIS just now?”

  Carter did so, adding, “They’ve taken all the cars, and it’s a long walk up the mountain even in clear weather. We’re trying to uncrate and construct a Ski-Doo to go after them, but, even then, it’ll just be Emily and me. We know they have at least one gun—it’s hard to believe they didn’t smuggle in more.”

  There was a pause of several seconds. Then the channel reopened with a new voice. “Mr. Carter? My name is Trescothick, I’m the captain of HMS Alacrity. Lieutenant Green and his party will be going ashore to assault the dome if need be, but it will be some time before they can reach it. We need eyes on the site as soon as is humanly possible. Would you go up there and reconnoiter for us?”

  “You don’t want us to engage?”

  “Christ, no. It’s bad enough we’re sending foreign nationals to stick their necks out like this without asking you to get yourselves shot. No, just get up there and try to find out what they’re doing.”

  “Captain, there’s only one way into that dome. We can’t get in unseen.”

  “Do what you can. Nobody is asking you to be a hero. At least, not the suicidal kind of hero.”

  Carter hesitated, thinking, then said, “The generators are outside the dome. Maybe we can wreck them and get clear before they come out to find out what the problem is.”

  “That would help, certainly, but don’t get yourself shot over this.”

  “Captain, both Emily Lovecraft and I know how to handle guns. I’m an ex-cop.”

  “And Miss Lovecraft?”

  “She trained as a librarian, and she terrifies me. We’ll be fine. It’s the Nazis who need to look out.”

  * * *

  Carter joined Lovecraft in the maintenance shack where she was standing over Garner, one of the postgrad assistants, and Kelly, a tech, as they put the Ski-Doo together.

  “How’s it going?” he asked her.

  “Fast. These boys know what they’re doing.” She raised her voice, “Do you have an ETA for when it’s going to be ready to go?”

  “Everything’s here,” said Garner. “Just a question of putting it all together. We might be done in twenty, thirty minutes.”

  “There’s no guarantee she’ll fire first time, though,” added Kelly. “The battery’s charging now, but she still might need a jump.”

  “Do the best you can, guys. Nobody’s expecting miracles.” She started to turn away, but leaned back to add, “Though a miracle’d be cool.”

  Carter stepped away and she followed him, asking in a low voice, “The British are coming?”

  “Yep, but it won’t be quick. Getting marines ashore from a sub must be a pretty tricky operation, when you think about it.” He took a deep breath. “They want us to go up the mountain and scout it out for them.”

  Lovecraft took it philosophically. “We were going up there anyway. Hope they’re not expecting us to go Rambo for them. We could always fuck up the generator, I guess.”

  “That’s what I said. We’d have to run straight away, though. The Thule people will come boiling out of there if the power’s interrupted and a firefight would be difficult.”

  “Would it?” Lovecraft looked at him with raised eyebrows. “There’s one way out, and they’re not soldiers. We could keep them bottled up, I reckon.”

  “Maybe so, but that counts as putting ourselves well into harm’s way, and the sub’s captain wasn’t keen on that.”

  Lovecraft
looked at the blue plastic sheet over Nick Bowles’s body. “I liked Nick. I don’t mind getting into harm’s way if it gets him a little payback.”

  “What happened to not going Rambo?”

  “I won’t risk my neck for the Brits, but this ain’t for the Brits.”

  * * *

  Garner’s estimate proved to be reasonable. Nineteen minutes later, he and Kelly were fueling the Ski-Doo. In the interim, Dr. Lo had been out to talk to Carter and Lovecraft, and to look at Bowles’s corpse. Lo was famously even-tempered, but her face darkened as she looked at the dead man’s face. She lowered the eyelids in a gesture from a thousand films and TV series, but then looked at her fingertips. Carter knew what she was thinking from personal experience; on a living body, it would be an intimate gesture, but with a corpse, it was simply lowering a couple of covers on a permanently broken machine. “A man, a good man, reduced to meat,” Lo said. Then, addressing Carter, she asked, “Do you know who did it?”

  Carter shook his head. “No. One of the Germans for certain, but there’s no way to tell which.”

  Lo nodded, and drew the sheet back over Bowles’s face. “If it comes to it, Daniel, Emily, give them the same chance they gave Nick.”

  There was an uncomfortable moment, which Lovecraft broke by asking, “Have you called this in yet, Doctor?”

  Lo shook her head. “The satellite communicator has gone. We’re marooned until Miskatonic starts to wonder why we don’t get in touch tomorrow. They’ll give it a day, assuming it’s a temporary fault, and then they’ll raise the alarm. Even if there’s an aircraft available at Adak Island, it won’t show up for thirty hours at the earliest. If the snow doesn’t let up, God knows how it will land.”

  They were interrupted by the spluttering cough of the Ski-Doo’s engine. It turned over a few times and died. Garner and Kelly, however, were ecstatic.

  “D’ya hear that?” said Kelly as he finessed the air screw. “Damn near first time! Damn near.” He got clear and said to Garner, “Try her again.”