Sweetwater, Wyoming

Benjamin Martoni’s life wasn’t supposed to like this. He was supposed to live a life of luxury with his foster parents and brother on the sandy beaches of the Bahamas. Benji and his brother and best friend Joshua would spend their days playing on the beach and exploring the island, never dreaming that anything bad could happen.

Then something bad did happen. His foster parents and brother were brutally murdered, and Benji kidnapped back to the States, where the psychotic Barracuda had planned to use him as a pawn against his biological father, Frank Castle. He’d never even been given a proper chance to mourn his only true friend, Josh.

And now here he was, face to face with an armed convict holding a gun at him. The convict had just shot and killed a man in front of him, a man who Benji had willingly said he’d stay with until he passed on from his wounds.

As Benji stared down at the dead man, and then at the blood that had been splattered onto his face and clothes, something inside the boy had finally snapped. The convict smirked, just itching to flay the child alive. The convict was expecting Benji to cry, or even plead for his life, but he wasn’t expecting the boy to run, ducking as he ran past a counter, where the wooden top was splintered by a rifle shot blasting it apart.

“Run, little rabbit, run.”

HUNTING SEASON

By Tobias Christopher

Convict #12

Fred Lowell

Crime: Flaying his son and his friends when they happened upon his basement ‘workshop,’ where Lowell ran a private business of making beef jerky out of whatever animals he could get his hands on, up to and including dogs, cats, and humans. He was caught selling a batch of jerky made from his son to some local hunters, who already eaten a good chunk of the evidence before the police arrived.

“Here, little rabbit,” Lowell said, having locked the doors so that Benji couldn’t escape.  “I got some candy for you. The doors are locked and the only other way out you have to cross my path,” Lowell started going up one of the aisles leading to the backroom. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll knock you out before I start peeling the skin from your bones.”

Benji was in the next aisle, and was on his stomach, watching Lowell walking from under the shelves. Benji looked around for any weapon he had. Currently the boy was in the toy/pest control aisle. He grabbed a jar of cheap marbles from the shelf and opened the lid.

“I’ll bet you taste delicious,” Lowell said. “I can’t wait to cook you up, little rabbit.”

A stream of marbles came rolling out from under the shelf. Before he could stop himself, Lowell slipped and hard onto his back. Benji came running up, kicking the rifle away from him and under the shelf before stepping on the man’s neck.

“You gonna kill be, boy?”

“No,” Benji said as he pulled out two cans of the strongest bug spray from behind his back. “Seeing people die really bugs me.”

Before he could move, Benji unloaded both cans into the man’s eyeballs until they were empty, causing Lowell to scream in pain.

“You son of a bitch, I’m going to kill you!” Lowell shouted as he squirmed around the floor.

“Bigger men than you have tried,” Benji said as he turned to walk away, running right into Barracuda. The large black man just smirked as he punched Benji hard enough in the jaw to send him flying back against the shelf, where he was instantly knocked out.

Barracuda then took a deep breath and calmly walked over to Lowell, who was still on the floor. He gently put one foot on the man’s throat and pressed down, snapping the convict’s neck.

“I told you dumb motherfuckers, the kid’s not to be touched yet,” Barracuda said as he slung Benji over his shoulder and headed toward the door, but not before grabbing a blood soaked hot dog from the heater. Plotting was hungry work, after all.

“So, Barracuda’s got twelve highly dangerous psychopaths working for him,” Chip said as he read through the files while the car headed toward Sweetwater. “But… why are they staying there? Why not just go their separate ways and do whatever the hell they want?”

“Because they all want to take a shot at me,” Frank told him. “I’ve taken out countless killers over the years, kid. I’m the Freddy Krueger of the underworld, the guy that makes the bad guys piss themselves upon even hearing that I’m in town. Barracuda’s most likely using Benji as a trump card, promising them that I’m vulnerable if he’s in danger.”

“Yeah, that’s the other thing,” Chip said. “Barracuda’s got rapists, cannibals and sadistic killers in this group. How’s he keeping Benji safe?”

Frank just stared straight ahead. “The entire town’s probably been slaughtered by now. Barracuda’s probably promised them a feast, with me and Benji as the main course. And probably you as well. Which is why we have to lay low until we find out exactly where Benji is. The second you get him to safety, I won’t have to hold back and take them out.”

“We,” Chip said. “We can take them out. I want to help.”

“No, you’ll protect my son,” Frank said coldly. “If he’s still alive, you’ll be the one who’s going to protect him while I do the dirty work, got it? I kill, you protect. That’s an order.”

“Yeah,” Chip said as he looked out the window. “Got it.”

Convict #11

Jon Paul Kelly

Crime: Murdering his wife and her lover after finding them together by feeding them through a woodchipper. Then after that, tracking down the man’s closest family members and doing the same to them.

The young blonde schoolteacher was the last person left alive in the town of Sweetwater. Every man, woman and child had been slaughtered upon the arrival of the convicts until there was no one left. But Kelly found something… special about the young woman, and spared her in the hopes of having some alone time. The large man with short buzzcut brunette hair dragged her to the outskirts of town where she could scream as loud as she pleased.

“Please,” the woman pleaded as she thrown to the ground. “Don’t do this.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, you might even enjoy it,” Kelly said as a knife stabbed him in the side. He turned and saw Anya standing there with an angered look in her eye. Without saying a word, she furiously punched and kicked at the convict until he was on the ground. She pulled him toward a large rock and placed his head facedown on it.

“Please,” Kelly said.

“You might enjoy this,” Anya said as she curbstombed his head into the rock, killing him on impact. She carefully approached the woman and held her hand out.

“Dead, they’re all dead,” the woman said.

“I have a van a half-mile from here,” Anya told her. “There’s food, water, and a cot in the back.”

“Is there a phone?”

“Any law enforcement would be slaughtered the second they show up,” Anya told her. “You go and take care of yourself. I have a little boy to rescue.”

“We hike from here,” Frank said as he parked the car a mile out of town. “Load up on as many weapons as you can strap to yourself.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to–“

“They’re for me,” Frank told him. “We’re taking everything we have in there, and I need those weapons as a backup if I run out of ammo. We’re hitting those fuckers with every bullet we have, and whatever we find along the way. Take off your shirt, I’ll take some guns to you.”

“You’re not going to shove a clip up my ass, are you?” Chip asked as he lifted his shirt over his head.

“That’s a good idea, I hadn’t thought about that,” Frank said in a serious tone.

Benji moaned, feeling a soreness in his body as he started to wake up. The lower half of the right side of his face was black and blue from Barracuda’s punch and hurt like hell, but he’d recover in time. There was no time to worry about pain right now, not when there were a dozen convicts who wanted to torture, rape, or outright murder him.

As Benji started to pick himself up from the ground, he felt coldness under his feet. As his vision came back into focus, he saw his shoes and socks were no longer there. As he looked around, he realized he was in a corner in a basement. And then he realized why he was now barefoot. The entire basement floor, barring the small corner he was standing in, had been covered from wall to wall in broken glass, with the staircase leading upstairs clear across the room. He could try to Die Hard his way across, but he wouldn’t make it three feet in before he succumbed to the pain of the glass on his skin.

“You’ve got me cornered, for now,” Benji said as he started coming with ideas to escape. “But I’ll get out of here, you’ll see.”

And that’s when Benji noticed the security camera that was pointed in his direction that was on top of the staircase. It wasn’t recording since the red light wasn’t on, which meant he didn’t have much time before his captor checked in on him.

Barracuda walked into the town Emergency Broadcast System, which was able to broadcast all over the small town.

“Attention, every living motherfucker in this piece of shit town,” Barracuda said. “The Punisher will be coming very soon. Hell, the bastard might already be here. His boy is well secured in a secret location, and the one who brings me the Punisher alive will get first shot at the kid to kill however you please. I don’t care what you do to his scrawny sidekick, kill his ass for all I care, but I want the Punisher to die by hand.”

Anya had snuck into the town, having heard Barracuda’s announcement. “Don’t worry, kid, I’m coming to save you.”

“Remember, if we get separated, your #1 priority is that kid,” Frank said as the duo got closer to the town. “The second you find him, you make a break for the car and start driving?”

“And what about you?”

“I have thirteen sons of bitches to kill,” Frank reminded him as they came across Jon Paul Kelly’s dead body.

“Twelve now,” Chip said as he pulled out some printouts. “Face is all mangled, but I’m pretty sure this is Jon Paull Kelly. So either Barracuda’s carrying out executions or…”

“We’ve got back-up already here,” Frank said. “Let’s move, before there’s no one left to kill.”

Barracuda was looking at security footage from cameras all around the town when he saw Anya making her way through.

“Bitch, please,” Barracuda smiled, showing his famous ‘fuck you’ smile as he pulled out a large knife from a sheath, which was his baby and always kept at its sharpest.  “Looks like we got another player up in here. Let’s see how long this one can last.”

“This is a small town, but it’s still fairly sizable to hide a 12-year-old boy in,” Chip said as he looked into the town. “He can be in any one of these houses.”

“Then start searching,” Frank told him. “I’m going hunting.”

“Here,” Chip said, tossing him a walkie-talkie.

“What the hell is this?” Frank asked as he looked at a dog with a fireman hat staring back at him.

“Paw Patrol, Frank, and it’s the best I could do on short notice. I rigged them to carry over a longer distance,”

Frank took the walkie and disappeared into the night while Chip headed toward the first house. As Chip made his way to the back door, he started picking the lock, not realizing that two of the escaped convicts had spotted him and were making their way towards his location.

To be continued!