Punisher: The Devil of New Jersey

by Poseidon Productions

It is a cold night in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey, a desolate and empty place. For generations it had been home of all kinds of criminals that would come here to hide from the authorizes. It is no different now, as a two story cabin within the Pine Barrens stood, having been occupied by a small group of men.

Inside the cabin sat a young man in his late twenties, he has a scrawny body frame and rat like facial features. His greasy black hair is pulled back into a pony tail, his blue eyes emanated a sick hatred of the world around him. For Alberto De Marco, the son of Marius De Marco, the boss of the De Marco crime family of New Jersey, was having a bad few weeks.

The heir to the family business had been stuck out here for almost a week and a half, all because some good looking woman decided to turn him down when he approached her for sex. The woman, a blonde hair, blue eyed cougar with the kind of curves that would make any man swoon told him that she wasn't his type. When she went to the bathroom at the club that his father owned, Alberto sneaked in, locked the door and proceed to force himself on her, raping her in the bathroom.

However, the woman decided to go to the police and filed a police report. It took a whole lot of bribery from his father but the charges managed to be dropped. However it wasn't the woman he was sent out to the ass end of New Jersey for.

Rumor had it that Frank Castle, the vigilante known as the Punisher had been seen in Jersey City, the base of operations for the De Marco family. Alberto's father worried that his son was being targeted by the Punisher and sent him out to the Pine Barrens to lie low for awhile.

Being born into a crime family, Alberto was used to having an extravagant lifestyle. He wore hundred dollar clothes and jewelry, watched TV from an eighty inch flatscreen High Def tv and ate the best food money could by. Out in this place he called a "Shit hole" he is wearing a hoody, jeans and running shoes, had no TV and was eating TV dinners. He is bored out of his mind and wanted to leave this place for good.

The men with him were not happy about this arrangement either, it was regarded as a crappy assignment simply because the boss' kid couldn't take no for an answer and couldn't keep his dick in his pants. However the soldiers here, roughly eight men did as they were told. They are armed in case someone showed up, five of them had pistols of various makes, two of them had Ithaca Model 37 pump action shotguns and the leader, a high ranking soldier named Mario had a MP5K sub-machine gun. Alberto is also packing a S&W Model 10 revolver.

Two of the men are patrolling the grounds around the camp, looking out for any intruders, one man armed with a Beretta M92F looked into the darkness while holding an electric lantern. He thought he had heard something, a growling of some sort. He knew that there were some predators within the Pine Barrens like bears and bobcats but they were rare do to human encroachment and over hunting. Soon he felt a hand on his shoulder and he jumped in fear as he turned around to see the other man patrolling. Both men were dressed for warmth, coats, jeans and gloves. The man who the other had just scared managed to calm down.

"Little jumpy are we Will?" The man said.

"Maybe you shouldn't sneak up on me like that, Donny," Will said.

"What's the matter, Will," Donny said, "Afraid something will come out of the darkness."

"Well I heard about something lurks in these woods.." Will said.

"Oh spare the fucking ghost stories Will, it's all bullshit to begin with," Donny said in disgust and walked away.

Donny walks to the other side of the area, taking out a pack of cigarettes. He took one out and puts it in his mouth, taking out a lighter from his pocket. As he flicks the lighter on and is about to raise the flame to his cigarette, a muffled shot rang out and the mook took a rifle round to the head. The back of his head explodes in a mess of bone fragments, blood and brains. His body simply slumped to the ground as he died instantaneously.

In the darkness of the woods, a tall muscular white man is crouching on one knees. He has black combat clothes and boots on with black combat gear on as well. He has slicked back black hair and determined blue eyes. His face also has a five day old stubble, having not shaven in a few days. In his hands is a M4A1 carbine chambered in 5.56mm rounds. On it's barrel is a suppressor to make the gun more quite. He also had an angled foregrip on the weapons under barrel and a EOTech Holosight/Night vision magnifier combo on the top rail. In his dual hip holsters are USP .45 Tacticals with laser sights attached to the under barrels.

Frank Castle, known as the Punisher in the criminal underworld has been looking for his target for days now, Marius De Marco thought he could hide his rapist son from him until he lost interest and left. However Frank is not that easy to stop. He hunted down a Capo of the family and beat the answer out of him. Had the man been lying to him, once he had gotten back from this place he would have made the man die a slow and painful death.

It seemed however the Capo's intel was solid. Once he got back to where he had the man chained up, a quick bullet to the head was in order. He had just taken out a guard patrolling the grounds, another one on the other side of the cabin's grounds. He needed to make his away around the perimeter and take him out before going after the rest of the trash here. As he started to make his way around to the other side, Frank turned around and stared into the darkness.

The entire time he was here, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.

He soon shook the feeling away and made his around the cabin as quietly as he could but in this darkness, he could have not seen the ground as properly as he could if it was day time. Just as he got the other man in sight, he stepped on a branch a little too hard, a loud snap sounded. This made the man with the electric lantern whirl in Frank's direction, his gun aiming towards him. Frank soon hit the ground as the man shouted a warning to his buddies while firing off five rounds from his Beretta hand gun.

Frank got his senses back and in the prone position, he put three rounds into the man's chest. The guard let out a death scream as he feel backwards onto the cold ground. Frank stood up and made his way onto the cabin grounds proper. He knew the element of surprise had been lost. As soon as he made it to one of the walls of the cabin, a man with an Ithaca shotgun rounded the corner and fired a spray of buckshot at Frank, who barely managed to dodge the buckshot by hitting the dirt a second time. He again got his weapon up and triple tapped him, two in the stomach and another in the chest.

As the body fell, Frank got up but he felt and heard three gunshots ring out, three .38 Special rounds slammed into his back. His body armor managed to hold but he felt the impact, which threw him off balance. Alberto De Marco managed to get the drop on Frank by sending out one man out the front, while the rest went out the back. The man might be dead but in Alberto's eyes, it was in service to him and the family.

Frank managed to turn around to see the remaining men having gather around, all their weapons pointed at him. Alberto smiled smugly at the prospect of killing the Punisher, it would give his family a huge boost of prestige but would make him a legend.

"Well well well, I guess it's my lucky night," Alberto said smugly, "I came here because you had to be snooping around after I raped that bitch but now I can kill you and get out of this shit hole!"

Frank said nothing, just looking on with disgust.

"I'll see you in hell Castle," Alberto said as he raised his revolver.

However something really weird happened, Frank suddenly saw movement from behind the group. A pair of red eyes that stood taller than the tallest man there could be seen in the darkness. Alberto also noticed that Frank was looking past him and his men, which made him hesitate.

Soon a low, guttural growl sound behind the group and one of the men turned around to see something almost demonic. It is well over seven feet tall, it had the head of a horse, the horns of a gazelle, body and legs of a goat, bat like wings that are almost as big as it, arms and claws like a Velociraptor and a tail of a crocodile. It's skin had patches of black fur on black skin, which seemed weathered with age. It stood on two legs and it's burning red eyes just started straight through his soul.

The man couldn't even say anything as the creature let out a blood curdling roar, which made the rest of the men and Alberto to turn around in fear. Before the man who had turned first could get his P226 pistol to bare, the creature swiped at him with his right claw, slicing off his hand. The man screamed in fear and horror before the creature lashed out with his left, decapitating him with his long claws.

The others began to shoot the thing that just killed their fellow soldier, the pops of hand guns, boom of the only remaining shotgun and the rat tat tat of the SMG of Mario's sounded. Yet it seemed that the fire that they were flinging at the beast wasn't doing anything to it, just tanking round after round. It seemed as if the bullets were going straight through the creature.

The beast soon whirl around and hit the man with the shotgun with it's tail, sending him through the wall of the cabin. Once it turned around, all the men had spent their magazines. They are trying in desperate fear to reload their guns when the creature roared at them again and charged at them. The first man it reached got grabbed by the shoulders and the beast opened his mouth, showing rows of razor sharp teeth. It bit down on the hapless man neck, damn near decapitating him as blood spurt out.

All the while this was happening, the Punisher looked on in what could be described as his version of shock. He didn't expect this to happen but he realized that thing was stealing his kills.

Not if he could help it.

He flicked the switch on his fire selector to full auto on his carbine, shouldered his carbine and dumped the rest the magazine into the direction of the creature and the group. He managed to get Alberto in the back as he tried to reload his revolver, several high powered rifle round entered his back and exited out his chest, his body soon hit the ground like a sack of rocks.

The last man standing is Mario, who managed to reload his MP5K. He bellowed in defiance as he pulled the trigger and fired on the creature that had decimated his group. All this did was anger the creature, who lowered his horned head and charged at the screaming mafia soldier. His right horn impaled the man right in the chest and soon the momentum of the creature slammed him against the wall of the cabin. All the man could do was cough up blood and release his weapon from his grip, no sooner when the weapon hit the ground, the man died.

The demonic beast soon yanked out it's horn from the man and allowed his body to collapse. No sooner than it body touched the ground, the beasts devilish red eyes turned on Frank. It saw him standing there, his giant white skull on his combat vest made him easy to spot. It let out a low growl as it stomps it's way forward towards him.

Frank had already reloaded his M4A1 Carbine and aimed it at the creature, only to remember that the Mafia mooks weapons did nothing to the creature. Whatever this thing is, Frank's weapons weren't going to do a damn thing to it.

So Frank did something he normally do if he was outclassed.

He made a tactical retreat.

Turning on his heels and fleeing in the direction of which he first made his approach to the cabin, he ran as fast as he could. He could hear the beast roar behind him, taking off in a run for his prey and once it picked up some speed, spread it's wings and took to the air.

Frank could hear the thing roar in the air and the beat of it's wings, following him into the air. Frank looked at his wrist, a GPS watch was on it, allowing him to locate his van that had a transmitter on it so he wouldn't get lost. As he pumped his legs as fast as he can, he heard the creature swoop down on him. Frank managed to duck in time to feel the gust of air flow just where he was standing a second ago and the creature roar in frustration. Frank got back up and ran again, having dropped his M4A1. He decided to abandon it, he had plenty of those anyhow.

Even with the monster in hot pursuit and the inky darkness of the Pine Barrens, Frank managed to make his way to his Battle Van. He made his way to the drivers side door and when he opened up the door, he heard a loud thud behind him. He didn't even need to look behind him, he whipped around, unholstering his USP .45's and when he aimed them at the two red eyes of the monster, the twin laser sights focused on the eyes themselves. He fired twenty four shots as fast as he could. The creature just let out a roar of anger at the vigilante.

Frank tossed his guns to the side and entered into his van, which he had parked out onto a rural road close to the cabin. As he climbed in, he pushed a button to start the van, having modified it to not to need the use of keys. As the van roared to life. The beast had closed the gap and rammed it's head into the van, making it shake violently. Soon it's demonic looking horse head looked on at Frank through the window, it's face covered in blood, it's sharp teeth stained with said blood and demonic red eyes glowing with burning hatred.

It soon broke the window of the van, which testified to it's inhuman strength, as the windows were reinforced to withstand machine gun rounds. Frank managed to get his arm up to protect himself from the flying shards of glass and leaned back, reaching behind the passenger side seat. He grasped a sawed off double barrel shotgun just as the creatures stuck it's head into the van. As it roared, Frank took the shotgun and pointed it at the beast point blank range and fired both barrels into the creatures face.

The monster let out a roar and backed off from the window. This allowed Frank to lean up and hit the gas pedal. His souped up van jolted forward as he turned on the bright lights of the vans. He made his way back the way he came and tried to but as much distance as he could between him and the unholy creature that was chasing him.

A mile down the road, Frank's lights picked up the creature somehow made his way in front of him, almost as if he had transported it's self to that spot. It roared in defiance at him, almost challenging him to ram it.

"Challenge accepted, motherfucker," Frank said as he floored the gas pedal.

The Battle Van surged forward as the creature stood there waiting for the van to hit him. However the creature soon took to the air mere twenty-five feet away from the Van and took off into the dark night of the Pine Barrens. It's echoing roar pierced through the night.

Frank simply kept on driving into the night, just wondering what the hell he just experienced. The creature seemingly just decided to leave despite the fact that bullets didn't seem to faze it, having inhuman strength and could seemingly teleport in front of him but it just decided to leave after a long chase.

Frank wondered if the thing just decided to let him go after he challenged it rather than stop or get around it. Frank wouldn't know and frankly, he didn't really care. He was leaving and he hoped he didn't have to come back here again.

For he might have to face down the legendary Jersey Devil again.

THE END

AUTHORS NOTES:

Just wanted to step in here to explain a few things.

First of all, this world is MAX like, no super heroes of any of that kind. I did this because if this was regular Marvel Universe, I think Frank wouldn't bat an eye at the Jersey Devil.

Also, the Jersey Devil has been described by eyewitness differently over the centuries(Since the myth of the creature stretches back to 1735) Some think it's an actual creature while some think of it as some kind of evil spirit. I went with the spirit idea for this one because one of the legends says that a US Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur saw the creature and fired a cannonball at the thing and was said to have gone straight through it with no visible damage, so that's why the creature didn't get hurt in my story.

But you might asked, why did it back off when Frank fired the double barrel at it. The way I think about it, it was surprised that Frank was still fighting back with no fear of the thing. And it let him go because it decided he wasn't worth any more effort seeing as he was leaving his territory.