Years ago, in a moment of weakness, Frank Castle spent the night with a woman he’d saved from being murdered. This resulted in the birth of a child that Frank never knew about until the day a mob boss blackmailed Frank into killing for him.

 That went about as well as one would expect for the mobster. Frank then placed his illegitimate son named Benji in the care of a loving foster family, who would soon be brutally slaughtered under the order of Barracuda, a mercenary who had zero mercy for anyone or anything.

 Barracuda had also freed 12 of the country’s deadliest convicts to aid him in his vendetta, hiding out in a small town and murdering everyone who lived there, knowing that The Punisher would come for his child.

 The only flaw in Barracuda’s plan? He didn’t count on young Benji having inherited his father’s survival instincts…

Town Without Pity

By Tobias Christopher

 Having picked the lock of the first house he’d come across, Chip slowly snuck in to start searching for any signs of Frank’s son, going from room to room with a small flashlight to help him search through the darkness. In the living room, Chip found the bodies of the family that lived there, arranged on the couch with their throats slashed.

“Damn,” Chip whispered to himself. Before heading forward, he carefully closed the eyes of each family member, ending with the youngest daughter on the end of the couch. “Bastards. Who does this to an innocent family?”

As Chip got to the stairs, something grabbed him by the hair and slammed him face first into the wall, causing a framed photo of the family to fall and shatter. Chip fell to the floor, still conscious as he tried to get his bearings.

“What do you say?” a man’s voice asked. “Want to take turns with this one? He looks nice and firm.”

“He reminds me of my old cellmate,” the other man told him. “He was a real screamer, but damned if he didn’t hold my interest for five years. Hold him down, I call first dibs.”

Frank took to higher ground, searching through binoculars at the darkened town for any sign of light. Light would indicate life, and that would lead him to someone who might know where his son is.

As he looked for any trace of life, he thought about his son’s future. He obviously couldn’t be a part of Frank’s war, and Frank knew he couldn’t give up his war to be a father. That Frank Castle had died that day in the park when his family died in a hail of gunfire. There had to be a place in the world where Benji could go where he’d be safe. Where he couldn’t be used against Frank, where he could grow up a healthy, well-adjusted person.

As Frank rounded the corner of a house, he came face to face with another escaped convict. A large muscular Asian man with rose tattoos all over his body, one for each of his victims. Frank immediately recognized him from the file that he’d been given, which only made his blood boil due to what he’d been guilty of.

Convict #10

Jin Yang

 Crime: Killing women who rejected him and dissolving their bodies in acid. One of his victims having been a 17-year-old high school girl.

 Yang threw the first punch, only to have Frank duck and uppercut him. Yang was barely phased, only cracking his neck and attacking again.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you,” Yang told him as he punched Frank in the side before slamming him back against a wall, getting The Punisher into a choke hold with his arm. “I’m only going to make you wish you were dead.”

“That’s your problem right there,” Frank choked out as he pulled out a hidden knife in his sleeve, slamming up through Yang’s throat and through his mouth. “Never leave the enemy alive.”

Yang gurgled blood as his dead body crumpled to the ground. Frank adjusted his trench coat before simply stepping over the man and continuing on.

Benji’s shirt and pants, having been folded and layed on the glass shards to pad his feet from touching them, had become his bridge toward the staircase. Slowly walking across the blue jeans, he carefully put his shirt down in front of the jeans as he picked up the pants to shake any loose shards from underneath before laying it in the front of his shirt for the next part of his journey. If he could make it to the staircase before the security camera turned on, he might have a chance…

Convict #9

Kyle Moffatt

Crime: Dismembering his mother-in-law with a samurai sword at Easter, then hiding her parts for the children at a local church to find during their annual Easter egg hunt.

Convict #8

Nicholas Parks

Crime:  Stalking his favorite celebrity, then kidnapping and killing her when she refused to fall in love with him.

As Kyle held Chip down, Nicholas yanked down Chip’s pants and boxers, tossing them to the side before crawling on top of him when Kyle let Chip’s arms go.

“Don’t worry, baby, it’ll only hurt for a minute,” Nicholas told him. “Do me a favor and scream.”

“Do me a favor,” Chip said as his hand reached around on the floor before he grabbed a glass shard. “Try not to bleed too much on me.”

Chip stabbed him in the throat, pushing the shard in as deep as he could. Nicholas squirted blood all over him before falling over dead.

“I don’t think you’ll have that much luck with me,” Kyle said as he cracked his knuckles. “Come on.”

Chip just sighed as he grabbed his boxers and flung them at Kyle’s face, distracting him enough for Chip to rush him, sending the convict falling on a firepoker that rammed right through the back of his head and through the front of his mouth.

 “Two more of these creeps down and no sign of Benji,” Chip said as he grabbed his pants and the walkie-talkie. “Frank?”

<Find Benji?>

“Not yet, but I just had a run in with two of Barracuda’s circus monkeys,” Chip told him. “They’re dead, but I’m moving onto the next house. ”

<I just took out one of them myself,> Frank said. <Keep me posted.>

 “Great.” Chip said as he realized that not only was he covered in blood, but his pants had been ripped as well. Then he noticed the family’s son was about his height and build before heading upstairs to the young man’s bedroom…

Barracuda had left the EMS building to head back to the house where he’d stashed Benji. As long as the brat was still in the basement, he didn’t care if he tried to walk on the broken glass. It’d probably incapacitate him, which would keep him out of the mercenary’s hair and make him easier to kill after Frank Castle was dead.

<Barracuda, we have a problem.>

 “This better be good,” Barracuda said as he picked up his walkie.”I have shit to take care of.”

<Parks & Moffatt are dead. It’s a bloody mess here.>

“Alert the men,” Barracuda told him. “The Punisher’s here. The second you get a location, call me.”

“Four houses and nothing,” Chip said to himself as he ate a sandwich he’d made in the last house. He was starving and it’s not like the man living there would need the food anymore, having been found with his neck snapped at the front door. He’d grabbed a pair of board shorts and an AC/DC t-shirt from the first house, having no other real options. “Benji’s in this town somewhere. I’m not going to let that kid down.”

“What if you can’t save him?” the boy with the bleeding head wound asked as he sat on a bench. The hallucination of Chip’s once-thought-dead-but-now-actually-alive brother stared up at the brother whose immense guilt caused the ghost boy to be so very real in his mind. “What if he ends up like me? Alone in a hospital bed with no family to visit me?”

“I get constant updates on your condition,” Chip said as he started walking. “The second you wake up–”

“Isn’t the same as actually being there,” Morgan told him. “Ever think that having my big brother around to give me encouraging words might help? That my only living flesh and blood might want to try to actually put in some God damn effort?”

“I thought by now if I stopped taking my meds you’d have… stopped coming,” Chip told him. “Now that the real Morgan is–”

“I am the real Morgan,” the boy said as he pointed to his head wound. “Maybe I’m not a hallucination anymore. Maybe I am the real deal and I’ve giving you some fucking pointers on how to get me back to the land of the living.”

“That’s not possible,” Chip said with a laugh. “You’ve always been the manifestation of my guilt.”

“Dude, we live in a world where guys can shrink to miniscule size and insert themselves into the anus of a mad Titan, I’m pretty sure ghost kids are a possibility,” Morgan told him as he tried to take Chip’s hand. “Or are you too far gone to actually want to help me?”

Convict #7

James Bullock

Crime: A former surgeon who planted bags of cocaine inside of his patients that were planning to travel to other states, where agents were waiting to subdue and extract the bags at the right time. Got arrested on a trip to a medical convention where he’d been tried and convicted after one of the bags accidentally tore open, killing a 10-year-old boy who’d just received a brand new heart.

 As James snuck around the park to look for any sign of The Punisher, he didn’t notice silently dropping down legs first from a jungle gym, where she wrapped her legs around the man’s neck and snapped with no effort at all. The man’s body fell dead to the ground as she took his walkie, waiting for word on anything useful that would help her.

Frank had found the lights on at the convenience store where a slaughter had recently taken place. There were two dead bodies far apart from each other and a child’s shoe sitting near the counter. Frank picked up, realizing it was Benji’s as he looked at the shoe, he started having flashbacks of another horrible day.

The day where Frank’s beloved wife and children had been massacred in Central Park, their lifeless bodies on the grass where Maria had tried to shield her children with little success. Frank closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to keep his emotions in check and looked around. There was no excess blood beyond that coming from the two dead bodies, which seemed to be a good sign where his son had been concerned.

“He’s still alive,” Frank told himself. “Just have to figure out where Barracuda would stash him where he couldn’t cause trouble.”

As Frank put the sneaker into his trenchcoat for safekeeping, he saw Barracuda walking down the street.

“Of all the good luck.” Frank smirked as he made sure his gun had enough bullets in it…

Benji had finally made it to the staircase in the basement, only to find the door at the top of the stairs locked. “Yeah, right. I was raised by a mob family, you moron, I can pick a lock in my sleep.” Benji tore off part of his sleeve and picked up a piece of glass from the floor that could help him pick the lock.

Chip had made to the house that Benji had unknowingly been locked in. He kicked the door open and pulled out his gun, making his way inside, not knowing what to expect. “Come on, kid, be in there.”

As he headed upstairs, the basement door slowly opened as Benji carefully made his way to the exit. Meanwhile, Anya had snuck through the back and started making her way through the house with her own gun drawn. As she walked up the back staircase, she barely missed Chip as he headed back down stairs and noticed the basement door open.

“He’s here, I can tell,” Anya said as she found the other child sized shoe and a pair of socks sitting on the floor. “I’m getting closer.”

While Chip was investigating the basement, Anya headed down toward the main level just as she heard the basement stairs creaking. She carefully aimed her gun, ready to kill whoever wandered up the stairs.

As soon as Chip emerged, he saw Anya standing there with her gun drawn. Both of them immediately froze. As much as they’d changed since seeing each other as children, they both immediately recognized the other.

“It’s you,” Anya whispered.

“I don’t believe it.” Chip told her as they immediately snapped back to reality before pointing their guns at each other.

“Where’s the boy!?” both asked in unison.

Frank had Barracuda in his sights with a gun that looked small, but would blow the large man’s kneecap off as if it were a firecracker blowing up a Twinkie. He didn’t want Barracuda dead, at least not until he had his son’s location.

“Don’t worry, Benji, I’m coming to find you.” Frank said as two more of the convicts were coming up behind him, one with a ball bat and the other with a crowbar.

TO BE CONTINUED…