After the End of the World (Carter & Lovecraft)

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “Yeah, it probably could, but we’d end up on this dinky little beach that’s separated from where we want to go by this outcrop here. Last time I checked, this is a Kübelwagen, not a Schwimmwagen, so that’s not an option.”

  “A what?”

  “Amphibious version of what we’re in. Kind of wish we did have one. That would be awesome. We could go fishing. With guns.”

  Carter rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared at her. “How do you know this stuff?”

  She didn’t look up from the map. “I read. Reading’s good. Now, looky here—we head northeast, cross that stream we went over before, north over this one, then back west. That slope looks steep, but it’s not as bad as the one you were talking about to the south, so we should be okay. If not, we’ll find a way around, or maybe we’ll just have to get out and walk the last little way. If we’re good on the slope, you drive down the creek—I mean actually in it if it’s as shallow as the last one—and that brings us out there, at the east end of the beach.” She looked out of the windshield and pointed at the dark strand some half a mile away. “About there. Okay?” There was no reply, and she looked over at him. “Okay?”

  Carter was staring out into the gloomy waters of the bay. “I’ve been so focused on the Deep Thing I saw on the beach, I’d almost forgotten about what made me use the binoculars in the first place. There was something in the bay. Something big. I only saw it for a second, out of the corner of my eye almost, but I did see it. I thought it might be a whale, but then I saw, on the beach…” He turned to her, suddenly animated. “How deep’s the water out there? Is it on the map?”

  “All the Aleutians are along a humongous volcanic ridge. They’re the tops of submarine mountains poking out of the surface. I’d guess the water gets real deep real quick as you go away from shore. Yeah, look.” She pointed at the map. “This ain’t a nautical chart, but it does have a few soundings around the island. There’s one about there”—she looked out at the sea, and pointed to an area at the mouth of the bay not far from where Carter thought he’d seen something—“that says forty. That’s fathoms, so that’s … six feet to a fathom … holy shit, that’s 240 feet deep! You could hide fucking Godzilla in that bay, never mind a whale.” Carter looked at her stonily, and she smiled, a little embarrassed. “Yeah, okay. My bad. Forget I just suggested that a giant primeval monster would be able to hide out there. It was a whale, okay? It was a whale.”

  Carter started the engine and turned the car to head northeast. “Something else to hate about the Unfolded,” said Lovecraft. “No Godzilla movies. And it’s Deep Ones, not Things. Although I’ve got to admit, your version doesn’t sound any lamer than H.P.L.’s.”

  Chapter 24

  BLACK SAND

  The route was frustratingly roundabout, almost three miles to arrive at a point less than half a mile from where they’d started, and it was difficult terrain that meant low speeds and a lot of wariness. More than once Lovecraft was obliged to get out and guide the Kübelwagen across gullies and past potholes. The car was a feisty machine and good on the terrain, but it would only take one mistake to end up stranded if they asked it to perform the impossible. At least the return trip would be easier; most of their troubles had been caused by going so deeply onto the stone table due to Carter’s overreliance on the GPS in the first place. Going back, they would skirt it and be back onto the road that much quicker.

  They drew up at the end of the creek where its bed opened into the beach, and climbed out to survey the bleak strip of black sand beside a black sea, beneath a sky that was growing darker as more clouds moved in. North-northwest, the top of Mount Terrible was already lost in wreaths of stratus. Lovecraft watched the weather close in with a sense of foreboding.

  Carter, meanwhile, was looking the other way, at the sea. “What times does the tide come in?”

  “Hmmm?” Lovecraft turned and looked out at the Pacific, wallowing slowly with an air of oily, indifferent menace. “About three hours. Look at where the grass starts, though. We’re above the high tide mark. The car’s fine as long as it stays here.” She nodded at the waves, barely bothering to break on the beach, viscous and loathsome. “First time in my life I’ve looked at the Pacific with my own two eyes, and just look at the thing. Why couldn’t they have decided Hawaii was the perfect place for their damn experiment? Dan, why we’re here … you don’t think the explanation about radio interference and all that is just bullshit, do you?”

  “What, like there’s something important about this particular place?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Lovecraft took a long breath and blew it out. “I just keep thinking maybe this is another Waite’s Bill, except without the dumb guys and the creepy women. Well, Doc Giehl’s kind of creepy, and God knows, you’re pretty dumb, but you know what I mean.”

  Carter couldn’t get angry with the mild chiding in her tone. “I do, but I don’t see it. This place would have to have history, wouldn’t it? Waite’s Bill had stories going way back. Stuff happened there. What happened here? There was an early-warning station and now there isn’t. End of story.”

  Lovecraft leaned into the car and took out her shotgun and a shoulder bag containing spare ammunition and some survival supplies. She slung it over her shoulder crosswise right shoulder to left hip, and then the shotgun the other way.

  “That,” she said, tapping him gently in the chest with one finger, “is what we call white privilege.”

  “Ah, c’mon…”

  “Seriously, Dan. The Aleut lived here for centuries. Maybe millennia. You saying they don’t count?”

  “Emily, come on now. Don’t put words in my mouth. We know next to nothing about what the Aleut did here. They didn’t leave a written record.”

  “Exactly the point I’m making. Maybe they had their own creepy-ass version of the Waites here, but they died out, or swam out to sea one day and never came back.” She looked to the north; the clouds were thickening. The weather report had said the snow wouldn’t arrive until that evening, but she was beginning to think that was optimistic. She turned her attention back to Carter. “Unless they did. Maybe that’s what you saw from the mountainside.”

  She started walking along the beach. Carter watched her go for a second, then dogtrotted to catch up with her.

  * * *

  There were still drifts of snow from the brief fall of the previous day. Given how cold it was, barely above freezing, it seemed unlikely to thaw before the new fall came. White streaks lay across the dark stone, and the straggly, unhealthy heath grass lay buried in places, a few stalks sticking up through the crust here and there. Under the attenuated light, the snow didn’t look crystalline at all, but more as if it had grown there, a dull, fungal growth sprouting fitfully across a landscape that felt lunar in its forbidding aspect. Lovecraft muttered something along the same lines, and it struck Carter as a poor sort of omen that they were both thinking of fungi and corruption, of the feeble touch of life on that barren island, and of the alien fruiting bodies that might make better use of it.

  A vague memory, something Harrelson had said, slid into Carter’s mind, but before he could grasp it, Lovecraft said, “What’s the plan if we run into a Deep One? Try to talk to it? Shoot it? Run away? Just give up and go insane? I know old man Howard P. would approve of that last one, but I’m open to suggestions.”

  The thought slipped away, leaving the smart sting of something precious or at least interesting lost, leaving only the memory that it was precious or interesting. “I don’t know. Talk to it first, I guess. The one I saw on Waite’s Bill didn’t mind chatting. First sign of trouble, shoot it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Pretty much describes my social life.” Even as she was joking, Carter saw her hand drift down to touch the ATI Scorpion grip on her Mossberg as it hung by her side on a long strap. She’d asked for a 930, as it was a model she was used to, but, when she opened the box, she found somebody had decided a 500 ATI tactical wa
s a better choice. She’d bitched about it some at first, but she got over it quickly and now actually kind of liked the badassery of the pistol grip and of the three shell holders mounted down the left side. Unlike the 930, the 500 was a pump action, but once she got into the habit of a good, positive racking action before firing, she was cool with that.

  Not that she’d had a chance to fire it yet. “This thing had better handle like a 930 if I have to put out some lead. Should’ve got some of the cans and tried it out by the mountain before we got here.”

  “Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” said Carter reflexively, and instantly regretted it. He deserved the sour look Lovecraft gave him. “Sorry. This whole day just keeps going wrong in little ways. I don’t feel confident about this field trip at all.”

  “Chances are we won’t find anything anyway. You could hide a small army around here with all these little creek beds and gullies and runnels and shit. You’d have to be up in a helicopter or something to see them. One fish guy out here? If he wants to hide, we won’t find him.”

  Carter ground his jaw, but more from the knowledge that she was probably right than the negativity.

  That was when they saw the tracks.

  * * *

  The tracks started not far from the eastern edge of the Temnac River where it opened into the bay. They wandered onto the side for a few yards, then backtracked to the river once more. It was noticeable that they reentered the water slightly upstream from where they had originally exited, the line of footprints turning by 45 degrees to the north. The implication seemed to be that whatever had made the huge, finned footprints had returned to the river, nine or ten yards wide there but barely knee-deep at most, specifically to avoid making any more tracks, and was heading inland.

  Lovecraft took out her phone, currently useless for communication, and snapped a picture of the tracks with its camera. “These tracks are huge,” she said in a near whisper. “How big are these things?”

  “The one I saw at Waite’s Bill towered over me,” said Carter. He unconsciously reached for his gun and tested how well it sat in its holster, loosening it for a quick draw. Lovecraft noticed the action and looked apprehensively out to sea and up the river. “It said its size depended on how much it ate. There must be good feeding around here. Seals, I guess.”

  “I read a little about this place before we came out. Seals, sea otters, and all kinds of birds. Seems it’s a badge of honor for bird-watchers if they come all the way out here.”

  “Birds.” Carter looked at her. “I haven’t seen any birds here at all. Have you?”

  She started to say, sure, of course there are birds, but she hesitated, thinking back over the few days they had been there since their arrival. “Yeah, there … No, that was on Adak.” She looked at Carter, her eyes widening. “Shit. How can there be no birds out here?”

  Carter said nothing, but the glance he gave to the tracks was eloquent enough. There was a strange tone in the air, like a moment in the dying of a note from a tuning fork, but held indefinitely. It was below the threshold of mundane perception, but Lovecraft could feel something that paced slowly through them like a ghost wind. She saw Carter look to Mount Terrible, now hidden by low, lambent clouds from a hundred feet up its sides. The weird shit index had climbed too high around here, and the birds had moved away for the time being. Maybe the west end of the island was full of them, or maybe they’d flown away to another island altogether. Wherever they’d gone, they weren’t here. Something had spooked them and, being wiser animals than humans, they’d left.

  Two humans who were beginning to question the wisdom of coming there checked their weapons and started to head up river.

  The river was a fractious thing, and clearly changed its course across the hard land frequently. They found signs within the first hundred yards of their advance that the river had slid its bed this way and that in the not-too-distant past, and even went by where a full meander had been cut off by the river finding a quicker route between the bends. If the Temnac had been much of a river, the isolated meander would have been an oxbow lake, but as it was it looked more like an oxbow ditch.

  The landscape felt primeval and half-formed, massive outcrops and boulders littering the rugged, glacial terrain all around them. They both felt they were in a losing proposition, yet neither wanted to be the first to say it. The landscape could hide a dozen Deep Ones riding mammoths within a mile and they wouldn’t see them until they turned a corner or crested a rise, by which point they’d be pretty much on top of one another and things would probably escalate quickly.

  “What choke has that thing got?” said Carter in a low voice, indicating Lovecraft’s shotgun with a nod. It was in her hands now, and she carried it ready to shoulder at any moment.

  “Bare cylinder. Didn’t think we were coming out here to shoot game, so I figured if I had to shoot, it would be pretty close up.” She looked down at the weapon. “Should I rack a shell in? My instructor would be pissed at me walking with a chambered shell, but I’m feeling a little anxious at the moment.”

  Carter patted his Colt .45 in its holster. “You and me. I got one in the spout myself. Be my guest.”

  Lovecraft hesitated, the wish to rack the gun properly battling with her desire to be as quiet as possible. Finally she girded herself and pumped the action in two sharp, positive actions, as per doctrine. The racking sound seemed to echo around the landscape, silent but for the low groaning heaves of the lazy sea behind them.

  “Well,” she murmured, barely loud enough for Carter to hear, “that was loud.” They moved on.

  Another couple of hundred yards on, they encountered another of the pissant oxbows, but this time the island of land cut off by the old meander on one side and the new course on the other was higher than head height and whatever lay on the far side was hidden from them.

  Carter paused, looking warily up the old course. “What’s up?” asked Lovecraft.

  “We can’t move past this unless we know it’s empty. We have to secure our rear.”

  “We go up there?” She grimaced; by some small miracle she’d managed to keep her boots out of water so far but the small oxbow looked waterlogged, and a small snowdrift had formed at the eastern side. She didn’t like the idea of getting her feet soaked in near-freezing water in near-freezing weather.

  “No, I go up there. You move ahead to where the two courses join up and wait until I rejoin you.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Split the party? Are you serious? Fuck, no, man. I’ve seen this movie and it does not end well.”

  He frowned at her as he drew his pistol. “Come on, Emily. Just do it. It’s not like we have a choice. If we go together we can’t see this arm, and we could be circled around on. That’s more dangerous than us being separated for a few seconds, believe me.”

  “Jesus. Okay. I’ll trust you on this, but if we get ganked by fish guys, I am never forgiving you. Just so you know.”

  “It’ll be fine,” said Carter, starting to move into the oxbow. “Chances are there’s nothing down here anyway.”

  She watched him walk for a few yards, and started northward along the extant river herself. “Nothing down here anyway,” she muttered scornfully. “Famous last words right there, bro.”

  It only took her a couple of minutes to reach the point where the new course split from the old, and she waited by the junction. By her reckoning, Carter had about two or three times as much ground to cover, but given how marshy the ground looked down there, he probably couldn’t make the same walking speed as her. She thought she might be waiting maybe another three minutes before she saw him. She took a position in the groin where the main flow ran directly south, but a trickle still ran into the meander, and she waited there, hidden beneath the overhanging bank of the little island. Two minutes passed. Three.

  Four minutes.

  Carter had never struck Lovecraft as the kind of man who played stupid practical jokes. He especially didn’t seem the kind dumb enough to take up practical jo
kes when loaded weapons were in play. She swore under her breath, trying to control a rising anxiety. Maybe he was just having trouble moving through the mulchy ground. Maybe he was stuck up to his shin in mud. Thing was, Attu didn’t really have too much soil. Sand? Quicksand? Was that really likely?

  Five minutes.

  She wanted to call, but if there was something just around the corner, calling would just tip it off. She tried not to think what might have already befallen Carter in that scenario. She glanced at the shotgun. Yes, it was a frightening weapon, but her intention had been that, should shit and fan rendezvous during the expedition, Carter would be at her side and keeping him apart from a cloud of lead shot would be pretty easy. If he and a potential target were pretty much in the same place, though, friendly fire—a shitty sort of euphemism for shooting one of your own—was too much of a possibility to be ignored. With great misgivings, because she was a far better shot with a shotgun than a handgun, she double-checked the Mossberg’s safety and shouldered it. The Webley felt really small in her hand, but she brought it up in the central axis relock stance Carter had spent a whole five minutes teaching her and, hoping she looked a lot more badass than she felt, she moved into the meander to find Carter.

  She’d taken maybe three steps when she heard a splash in the water behind her. The only things that made sound on the island were people and water, and the water burbled in the rivers that were barely more than streams, or boomed and sizzled onto and off the black sand and stones of the beaches. The water only splashed when something fell in it, or stepped in it.

  She started to pivot, suddenly very frightened, but she was hit in the back before she’d even got halfway through the turn. It was a hard blow, and something powerful and bulky followed it through, sending her sprawling into the shallow lick of water that fed into the meander. She managed to hang on to the gun somehow, but the weight of the shotgun and her pack bore her down into the water and she had to use her left hand to push herself up. She managed to get up, staggering forward to get her away from her attacker, but there was water in her eyes and when she wiped it away with the back of her free hand, she saw it was mixed with blood. That would explain the dreadful heaviness and the difficulty focusing: she’d banged her head when she fell. It was strange that she’d deduced that and not felt it, but no, there it was, pain on her forehead, right-hand side. She’d hit her head, and even under the clouds things were far too bright and there was that trouble focusing, and she was being attacked, and she realized she couldn’t defend herself properly and she was probably going to die now.