James Axler – Way of the Wolf

“Are you coming, Albert?” The voice sounded like something from the last gasp of a grave.

The robed figure put the self-light to a lantern hanging from the boat spire behind it. The wick caught, flaring up like it had been dry for days, before the heat pulled the oil through the strands. Then the robed figure threw the self-light onto the dark water of the underground river.

Albert could see that it was a river now, could see bits of flotsam along the left. With the lantern light going now, he also saw they were bits and pieces of corpses. An arm floated by, missing three fingers and whose stubs showed they had been gnawed off by some kind of animal.

“No, I’m not coming,” Albert replied.

“Stay there and you’ll die,” the robed figure whispered.

“And if I go with you?” Albert demanded.

“Oh, you’ll still die.” The robed figure chuckled, and it was the sound of dry bones rubbing together. “But it’ll be later.”

“Fuck you,” Albert said, pointing his blasters at the boatman. “You can’t make me go.”

“No.” The boatman settled the hurricane glass over the lantern. It was tinted a light blue, the color of a vein beneath a light covering of flesh. And it was in the shape of a fat-bodied spider, with ruby-colored mandibles protruding from its fierce mouth. With the wick burning and shifting inside it, the legs looked as if they were moving. “But I can make you stay here.” He picked up a long pole made up of what looked like shin bones. “Mebbe it’s worse than what you think might be up ahead.”

Albert turned as the earth shivered behind him. Without warning, the smooth slope of the short beach leading to the river ruptured in dozens of places. Things that might have once been human surged up from the ground.

Lifting a blaster, Albert fired at the nearest one, expecting to see the .38 load knock the thing on its butt. Instead, a puff of dust rose from the thing’s chest, and it kept coming.

“Your choice,” the boatman declared. “Mebbe you should think about the boat less traveled by.” The dry bones laughter echoed mockingly throughout the huge cave.

Greenish saliva dripping with maggots crusted the undead creatures’ mouths as they came for Albert. Their chests were alive with eel things that looked every bit as hungry as their hosts.

Albert fired both .38s empty, but the flying lead didn’t slow the undead things at all.

“Time grows short, Albert. You have to go to the lady in the lake if you want to survive.”

Abandoning his position, Albert raced for the boat, his boots thudding against the hewed logs. The boatman had already pushed it out into the current, so he had to leap to get there.

“Who are you and what the hell is this place?” Albert demanded breathlessly. His hands shook as he struggled to reload his weapons. He scanned the beach anxiously, watching the undead things walk into the water. He shivered uncontrollably, thinking how the creatures might walk out under the water and gain on the slowly drifting boat.

“My name is Bob,” the boatman said, “and hell is precisely what this is.”

“Where are the others?” Albert demanded as he snapped the cylinders closed on the .38s.

“There are no others,” Bob answered. “You are the only one.” He turned his tattered face toward the center of the river.

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? Why I was scheduled to pick you up. I assure you, I had much better things to do. Napoleon was all set to conquer Europe again, but he didn’t know Joan of Arc had risen once more to lead William’s troops into battle. Or that General Custer had crossed the Atlantic after winning at the Battle of Little Bighorn to help the Germans.”

Listening to the boatman speak made Albert’s head hurt. Some of what the robed man said made sense, but it was all jumbled up in there, as well. He pointed his blasters at the boatman. “You say you’re taking me to see the lady in the lake.”

“Yes.” Bob regarded him calmly. “That is your destiny. It has always been your destiny.”