Previously Abraham Stroud has faced down a Vampire Colony in Southern Illinois in Vampire
Dreams, a werewolf enclave in the Michigan woods in Werewolf‘s Grief, and a Zombie Army in
New York City in Zombie Eyes. Now Abe, a former Chicago cop turned archeologist and
Vampire slayer, faces his most vicious foe ever when Creole-Cajun blooded bayou wulves comes
at him in:
BAYOU WULF
An Abe Stroud Archeologists-digs-too-Deep novel by Robert W. Walker
4th in the Abe Stroud Horror Novel Series
When the Louisiana Bayou folks calling themselves members of the Bayou Wulf’s Clan turn
out to be real werewolves, it’s a bit late in the day for archeologist Abraham Stroud, whose
bayou dig puts him and his people directly in harm’s way. In fact this wulf coven has created a
safe haven for their kind—Oasis, Louisiana, an entire town filled with Bayou Wulves, many
fathered by Bayou Wulf itselt--their disputable and dubious leader.
Ever imagine a werewolf having a penchant for reading the classics and naming his progeny
after the Christian heroic figure of Beouwulf?
Bayou Wulf knows what terror mankind can wreak on were-creatures. He is wise enough to
fear us and in particular one man: Abraham Stroud who is capable of unimaginable horrors.
As a werewolf child, Bayou Wulf witnessed the annihilation of his kind in his Michigan at
Stroud’s hand. And now Stroud is in Bayou Wulf’s new territory believed always to be a
paradise and a safe haven with a great country club and a great 18-hole golf course where
werewulves play in sanctuary from the likes of mankind. Bayou wulves love the game.
ONE
Oasis Bayou, Oasis County, Louisiana 3:10 AM, March 14,2011
There came a strange sound to Dr. Abraham Stroud‘s ear, but then Stroud‘s ear was always to
the ground—two grounds in fact. Where he slept atop the Louisiana bayou earth made one
ground. The second came of that pesky steel plate in his head, which ‗grounded‘ him in two
worlds. It kept him alive in the reality other humans enjoyed, the so-called normal world, yes,
but it also kept him attuned and in touch. It acted as his private, built-in, high-frequency radio to
the paranormal world.
All things paranormal.
He lived with one foot in the parallel dimension where space folded like floating dunes
on the wind—and where messages in the form of images and symbolism reached him, tapped
into his mind like a strange electric current made of fine silver strands.
That steel plate he‘d earned in Vietnam proved a hard reminder of death he‘d faced down
somehow, and nowadays the plate served him well, as it had during that time along the Spoon
River in Illinois, in the deep black woods of Michigan, and in the subterranean worlds below
both Chicago and Manhattan. Yes, the plate in his head had saved him on more than one
occasion, so he listened to its reverberations now as it spoke in its tuning fork language of
impending doom and danger. Or was it a mere damning toll due to his own recklessness at
coming here to do an archeological dig in the swamps of Louisiana as a front to a fishing
expedition into the supernatural.
All around him the night life of the bayou pierced both the black world of this god
forsaken place as if combating for his attention and in direct competition with the eerie warning
bell ringing through him now. Bullfrogs, slithering life, mating calls of horny alligators, insects
the size of small dogs chirping, all of this music of the night had turned into a horror for Stroud‘s
fevered brain.
―You were a fool to come here…and to bring young students along….‖You‘re a damned
idiot, Abe,‖ he muttered to the tent peak overhead.
The plate kept him awake most certainly at such times as this, their third night at the
encampment. Still they‘d seen nothing like what Dr. Janklow believed would be on display—
some sort of bayou wolf species. Ridiculous, he wanted to believe, but Danielle Janklow enjoyed
a well-earned reputation in dark-side archeology.
Reverberating within the spiral structures in the inner ear again now, Abe heard the
bushes rustling and the guttural howling of what most assuredly sounded like wolves out there.
He even saw them in his mind‘s eye out there, circling, working as a unit, a pack, all fixed on
their campfire at the center of the dig.
But wolves in a bayou swamp where they searched for evidence of Jean Lafayitte and his
band of pirates? What sense did it make unless Dr. Janklow‘s instincts and observations were
spot on? The wolves may well be werewolves and not your normal North American common
grey Canis Lupus – a pack animal, a social creature, a hunter and quite carnivorous—in fact a
wolf would and could consume any flesh whatsoever. So reports of men killed and ripped apart.
These killings had long been attributed to alligator attacks, but Dr. Janklow believed an
altogether different theory of the crimes. She had gone so far as to gain forensic evidence to the
effect that the bones and flesh had been torn apart by jaws completely unlike those of a gator.
And if she were right?
Why else was the howling and braying at the furtive moon—slip-sliding in and out of
cloud cover—so insistent inside Abe‘s head? His steel plate had never before failed to pick up on
anything out of the ordinary, triggering that sadly depressing certainty of dire days ahead. Why
else would these sounds take such hold of him—washing through the snail shell of the cochlea to
brush through the 10,000 microscopic hair cells that moved in response like wheat in the wind?
How far off were the sounds, the howling like hunting dogs having treed a possum or a
raccoon.
When the sounds had first hit the steel plate in his head, the horrible noise bounced and
resounded throughout the deeper recesses of his brain, filling the fissures with dread and then
returning to the inner ear, waking him to stare at his Rolex. The LCD face read 3:16 AM.
―Nothing like a ringing in the ears to irritate a man,‖ he mumbled to himself, knowing
sleep proved now an impossibility.
He sat up, intent now on listening to the howling to be certain…for he must be absolutely
sure and convinced that fate or whatever drove this tired old world‘s inner mechanisms was
asking him to uncover and destroy yet another werewolf coven like the one he‘d obliterated in
Michigan years ago. He hated the thought of it. Not simply because he‘d believed his
mercenaries had destroyed the last werewolf on the planet, but because it had been a heart-
wrenching, gut-wrenching experience as he had watched not only the big, dangerous males
become trapped and blown to a million pieces and buried below a mountain, but he‘d watched as
his hired army had also killed the females and the werewolf children.
Those images had never completely left him.
He‘d sentenced the entire coven to utter destruction.
Had some of them escaped? To rebuild here in an area named Oasis County, Louisiana?
Were they now populating a small town some fifty miles to the north also called Oasis—some
forty miles west of Diamondback, a place called Oasis? An innocuous dot on the map? A place
so small it left no room for a man to spit?
Anyway, this was Dr. Danielle Jamlow‘s theory, and hell, she was acutetly intelligent and
sharp-witted; tongue of a demon in fact if you didn‘t know better, if you didn‘t allow for her
brash style of debate. She could carve a man up in three sentences as quickly as the fictional
Zorro could slice his Z into stone. Besides, Danielle had shown Abe some damn compelling
evidence in the way of bone finds. Still, nothing was as compelling to Stroud as tonight‘s sense
of kismet inside his head—the threat he felt, a threat so strong as to have him, like a dog in heat,
sniffing at the air for prey.
Again multiple howlings in a cacophony of evil and blood-lust rose from the surrounding
darkness. Primal sounds in a chorus. Abe tried to count the separate howls and stopped at
sixteen.
Each howl had its own distinct tenor.
All of them closer now.
Sounds of a pack.
Everyone in camp remained asleep it seemed, oblivious to the noise rising in the night.
Abe tried desperately to determine precisely how close or how far the animals, wolves, or
werewolves might be in relation to their campsite and the dig. Were they merely on a routine
hunt for prey? Or had they spotted his and Janklow‘s camp lights? The pack certainly sounded
excited at the prospect of a good kill and a great feast. ―Damn it,‖ he said under his breath, ―if
they are werewolves, then they‘re definitely on the scent of human prey—us.‖
He shivered. No amount of fire power on hand could stave off such an attack as he
imagined the worse case scenario. While he had weapons for protection and had in fact passed
out weapons to every student in the event of ‗trouble from gators‘ as he‘d put it, if this were as
Dr. Janklow believed, then the kids on the dig were as good as dead—despite all the guns on
hand.
even if they were fully loaded with silver bullets.
Abe had learned to trust his instincts. He knew he must act, must awaken the camp –
despite the god awful hour. He must let everyone think him mad, everyone but Dr. Janklow. He
imagined she must have taken a Valium or something stronger to get some sleep, and she had
been drinking heavily at the campfire earlier, else she‘d have already rushed his tent, shouting
something like, ―You hear it now? Just as I told you—werewolves in the bayou country!‖
The fact she hadn‘t rushed to his tent with such remarks told Abe she was out like a light,
possibly with earplugs, soft music playing at her bedside. How else might anyone get sleep on
these rickety Outfitter camp cots?
―It‘s definitely not a natural howling as from a normal wolf or rabid dog out there in the
swamp,‖ he spoke to his dog, Pongo, a Dalmation with ears pointed, alerting on the howling.
―No bobcat for sure.‖
Then came an eerie silence, a complete end to the howling.
The long silence was next suddenly replaced by the sound of an animal being ripped
apart, limb-by-limb. It suggested the victim of a lion hunt, feeling itself being torn apart and
watching its heart being snatched and devoured. Impossible of course. But the sound of it
continued here at base camp Bayou Oasis, Louisiana.
He and his people had come to find a fortune. All graduate students, and all experts in
their field, they were prepared to do an archeological dig that might or might not turn up
evidence of pirates and perhaps even the infamous Jean Lafitte himself. Success on any level
would mean a wealth of artifacts—items several museums awaited. And they waited with large
checks in hand.
At least that had been Abe‘s cover story for getting out of teaching and onto this leave,
but the dean of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University, then had to go and insist that he take
his class with him on the dig—―For X-perience,‖ as Dean Holcraft had put it. Holcraft had
himself been a field archeologist before a massive cave-in almost buried him alive, after which
his brother, a medical examiner, had taken him in until his convalescence had ended, but Rory
Holcraft would never again lead a dig, so they made him chairman of the department instead.
X-perience indeed.
The sound of terror outside his tent and on the periphery of their camp continued.
Just as Stroud got to his feet and was about to rush from tent to tent in an effort to rouse
everyone and get a fiery torch in each hand, young Jason West rushed to Stroud‘s tent and tore
open the flap, shouting,―The local assholes are trying to scare us off, Dr. Stroud.‖
Stroud held a hand up, nodding, blinking back the pain that came—at his age—with
hauling himself off a rickety cot, not to mention the shooting pain coursing through his head.
While the others might be disturbed by the noise, Abraham got it double, thanks to the plate in
his head, but who had he to complain to? No one but God and He didn‘t care to hear it.
―Is it working? The scare tactics?‖ Abe asked of his next in command on the dig.
―It is for the women ahhh…in particular.‖
―Does everyone believe that it‘s a hoax?‖
―Fifty-fifty.‖
―What does Dr. Janklow say?‖
―Danny—she insists we call her Danny, and she keeps hitting on the girls or haven‘t you
noticed—and if I get hit with one more whiff of her perfume—a‖
―Never mind that now. What does she—‖
―Sheee says it‘s animal in nature and normal to the area, and nothing to concern ourselves
with, as long as it‘s not happening in the center of camp or coming for our food.‖
―Smart lady. Tell everyone I believe the same, to remain calm, and not to panic but it
might be time to locate the guns we passed out to everyone.‖
―You agree with Dr. Janklow, do you?‖ Jason challenged him.
Stroud saw the younger man‘s beard twitch, no doubt disappointed that Stroud did not
say it was the local fools attempting to frighten them out of the swamp. ―I think it‘s one of those
Deliverance things, Dr. Stroud.‖
―Do I have to ask if our provisions are properly stowed away from camp?‖
―No, no sir, Dr. Stroud.‖
―Thanks for your concern, Jason, but it‘s going to be all right. Listen.‖
―What? I don‘t hear anything.‖
―Correct and silence is golden. The attack—whatever it was, gator or man—it‘s done,
over, kaput. Whatever it is, it‘s a pack, and the prey is dead, and the hunt is over.‖
―I hope so…hope it is just gators but I‘ve never heard gators howl so loudly,‖ he joked.
―Whatever it was, they‘ve settled in to their meal. Unless a fight breaks out among the
wolves or quarry dogs or warthogs out there. Rest of the night oughta be calm. So—‖
―So get some sleep. I‘d love to. G‘night.‖
―Early diggin‘s tomorrow.‖
Jason West exited Abe‘s tent. However, Stroud had not stopped hearing the noises out
from the campfire. Stroud‘s steel plate remained disturbed. Such intensity only came by way of
the supernatural or supernormal in one fashion or another. The faint odor on the wind infiltrating
his nostrils and connecting with his brain felt like and smelled like sweat and blood-smeared
wolf fur. An odor he‘d not thought of since that long ago war in that remote Michigan forests.
It was then he realized that while he and Jason had talked over matters, Pongo had
managed to slip from the tent.
―Damn it all,‖ he muttered, as he exited the tent to go in search of Pongo. Outside, he
stumbled about shouting in whispered tones, ―Pongo! Pongo!‖ But he got no response, and he
could see no sign of the dog he feared somewhere out there and in great jeopardy.
TWO
An hour later he‘d not found a trace of his Dalmatian. Sleep for the others hadn‘t gotten far when
another and even more horrific sound erupted, and this time it came from inside their camp.
Stroud had returned to his tent, hoping to find Pongo snuggled atop his sleeping bag, but no such
luck.
Abe now grabbed his 9mm Glock in his left hand, the .45 revolver in his right and flashed
for a moment on the risky business of his having given all his students firearms for protection out
here, while he raced to the center of camp, prepared to fire at whatever was among them.
Others in camp came running as well, flocking about their campfire and their leader,
following a natural tendency to do so. They wanted answers, and they wanted them now. ―What
in hell‘s going on‖ came from the group like a mantra, while Pongo, disturbed by all the
commotion came rebounding into camp as if from a holiday, but he now wouldn‘t stop barking
until Abe grabbed and gently held his snout, which Pongo knew meant to be quiet.
Some of Abe‘s crew carried shotguns and rifles and handguns as each had selected his
and her own weapon of choice from Abe‘s small arsenal carried in a steamer trunk. They‘d all
been told by Stroud that this particular dig could entail some ―trouble from the locals‖ and that it
might be necessary to defend themselves.
Most of the students took this to mean alligators, snakes, or other reptilian nuisances. Abe
had his own personal arsenal as well. He‘d come to this dig armed to the teeth as the Louisiana
Bayou was in and of itself no less dangerous than the Amazon Delta. Some in his team knew of
Stroud‘s history with all things supernatural; in fact he‘d become something of a beacon for the
supernatural. Not that conventional weapons could always frighten off supernatural beasts, but
clutching a shotgun to one‘s shoulder—in most circumstances at least— made a person feel
safer.
―There!‖ shouted Stroud, pointing at some dark creature of the night as it dragged away
some unconscious and likely bleeding member of his archeological crew. Stroud fired repeatedly
at the figure dragging off one of his people. The thing looked like some mad hunch-backed, hairy
Grendel that‘d escaped mythical history for modern day.
And obviously, the damn demonic thing‘d gotten hold of its prize. But the monster—
whatever it was—absorbed the bullets with no reaction beyond a flinch as if only stung by a bee.
―Who‘s missing?‖ shouted Stroud. ―Who is it that thing is dragging off? Who‘s not
here?‖
Jason West said in a near whisper, ―I‘m afraid it‘s Dr. Janklow…Danielle.‖
Stroud gave chase, Pongo at his heels, and just before disappearing into the thick green
vegetation of the bayou, Abe shouted over his shoulder to the others to remain behind and
together. ―No one alone for any reason! These are hunters, these creatures! And you‘re their
prey.‖
―What‘s he talking about?‖ asked one young assistant.
―What was that thing he shot at?‖ asked another. ―What‘s out there?‖
―He hit it several times,‖ Jason assured the others. ―Likely bleeding to death as we
speak.‖
―B-But the bullets did no good,‖ said another.
―Build up the damn fire,‖ replied Jason. ―It‘s the only thing standing between us and
that…that thing out there.‖
Penny Williams grabbed Jason‘s arm and said in his ear, ―Dr. Stroud implied there‘s
more than one.‖
―All the more reason to get up a blazing fire!‖ shouted Jason, doing his best to sound as
commanding as Abe, all the while fearing he failed miserably. ―Keep your eyes open.‖
―But what is it?‖pleaded Morris Krieger. ―Jason, you know something! We‘ve a right to
know.‖
―Yeah,‖ agreed Penny. ―Stroud may not come back.‖
―Stroud‘ll be back. He‘s faced worse and come back.‖
―Case in point which became a case study in a Charles L. Grant book—New York—
zombies,‖ Mary Lou Syddons added.
Jason quickly put in, ―Now each of you,without going out of camp, find something to
burn, each of you.‖
Mary Lou Sydons immediately threw an empty crate she‘d been holding onto; it‘d been
used as a chair in her tent. Others followed suit, and soon the campfire had become an
impressive bonfire.
Even so, some thing with an alien shape none of them had ever seen before stepped out of
the darkness and toward the fire, prompting several of the terrified archeology students to raise
their guns, Jason among them. When Jason realized that he was not looking at a many-tentacled
monster, but a huge man carrying what appeared to be a dead Dr. Danielle Janklow, he shouted,
―Don‘t fire! It‘s Stroud!‖
Stroud, hefting Dr. Janklow‘s body, entered the seemingly protective circle of light the
others had created, where he laid the body of his colleague close to the flames, carefully
wrapping her in blankets.
―My God, is she alive?‖ asked Morris.
―She is…but barely,‖ replied Abe. ―Gotta get her out of here and to a hospital ASAP.
Damn sure wish I had my helicopter. She‘s lost a lot of blood, and she‘s in a coma brought on by
traumatic shock‖
―Nowhere in this swamp to land a helicopter,‖ muttered Jason like an afterthought.
Stroud flipped Jason a set of keys. ―Get my Land Rover over here now, Jason. Every
second counts.‖ He quickly pumped a syringe filled with anti-venom that had been developed as
an antidote to a were-bite the last time Stroud had encountered werewolves years before. This
meant that this particular vial he used was dated, but it was all that he had on hand. He next gave
her a strong dose of painkillers, praying the meds might be enough to save her.