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[indent][sub][i]Issue 01[/i][/sub][/indent]
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There are over eight million people in New York City, mashed in together and desperate for their own little slice of foxhole. Tonight there might as well be two: me and [i]it[/i]. I thought once I got back out into the city I’d have a second to breathe and be home again. I’d take a couple big gulps of that shitty, polluted, delicious New York air and my head would be set straight. The fog would disappear and so would I into the streets I knew better than my own face.

Instead all I could think about was the thing clinging to my skin and the sweat running off every part of my body. It was finally [i]asleep[/i], or something like it. In the lab, in that cell, it latched onto me with its sick darkness and spread until it covered me, molded to me. It was everywhere, forcing its tendrils through my body, evaluating, [i]tasting[/i]. I’ve done terrible things to my body -- been slashed, shot, filled with shrapnel. I’ve pulled bullets out of my chest without anesthetic, feeling the long metal tweezer deep in my flesh every inch of the way. I could handle this, the burrowing feeling around my heart and liver, the waves of tension and pain radiating across my skull, even the way my sinuses filled with ooze and threatened to burst. Then the [i]voice[/i].

It sounded like someone was whispering to me from the space between my ears. Its speech barely held together, made up of sickening moist slaps and grinding, guttural consonants. It sounded like a still-bleeding pile of offal had found a way to speak. It called itself [i]Venom[/i], and it needed to get [i]out[/i]. I was the only one it had found that seemed strong enough. It said the others [i]broke[/i] before they could try. How long would it take me to break, it wondered?

I didn’t answer it with my words. I couldn’t, suffocating on darkness. I remembered a time from out on deployment, when the rain was coming down harder than the bullets and the wind screamed and begged like a dying man. A bolt of lightning darted over camp and detonated the biggest, oldest cypress around and covered the whole platoon in wood chips and embers. The core of the tree became an inferno, blazing and roiling inside like a portal to Hell itself while its outsides hissed and spat at the oncoming rain. The next morning, all that was left of the tree was a glassy, obsidian-black stump that radiated heat like a furnace. You could feel that heat, standing by that stump, for weeks and months. I think it still burns today. It still does, inside me.

It took the lead. It fought like an unchained bull, rushing through and goring everything in its path with unbelievable strength. It took the form of a massive man, all tooth and muscle, sealed around me like a coffin as it did its work. It smashed out of our cell and killed everything left in the lab within an hour. Then it [i]ate[/i]. It took us to their bodies like a keen vulture, picked out the morsels it found most interesting and slurped them into its bizarre gullet. Then, as quickly as it formed, it faded away. The coffin opened and receded beneath my skin. The voice went quiet.

I had hope it spent itself in the killing. Maybe after all was said and done I could piss the fucker out like I’ve done a hundred other poisons I’ve put in me. I found the way to open the door to the lab after an hour of searching and got out into the sewers. The rot and garbage smelled like home. Then the shakes started. Figured I might die like the others -- they went pretty quick. ‘Venom’ must have had his use of me. It would devour me and attach itself to the next chump who didn’t expire on contact. Maybe it had eaten enough to stand on its own. It felt like a thousand beetles swarmed through my insides, devouring my muscles and my organs, and every step I took made them angrier.

I managed to trudge my way out to the streets and into the ruins of some smashed up homeless camp. Not unusual in this city. I was used to the law overstepping their bounds. But this one looked bad. The burn marks on the trodden-on tent vinyl did not tell a happy story. Neither did the dried, anonymous blood that I found myself hoping was very old. That part hoping was the same part that still raged against the madness that plagued this city. It was the part that knew all the drug dealers and the dirty cops, the human traffickers, the suits, the scum were all still out there, rampant, begging for punishment. It was the part I learned to quiet in the cell. I had enough of raging and breaking my knuckles on the walls. I already doled out plenty of punishment. I remembered David Lieberman, my oldest friend. He was with me from the beginning, my eyes and ears on the web. After that first year of being the Punisher, he would always ask [i]why[/i] we had to keep going. We had long since killed the men from that day in the park. I always had some justification for him. Something about drugs or guns proliferating, gangs, cops, The Reach, or about anything else within reach. Could I look him in the eye and tell him the same now? I still felt the alien eating away at me, but maybe I had enough time left to find out.

I fished a set of holey jeans and a shredded coat from the camp and made my way to Lieberman’s. It looked the same on the outside, a ramshackle converted tenement held together mostly by hope and Dave’s shitty DIY jobs. As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t the usual spit-and-span look. His door was hanging half off its hinges. Like someone had broken it down. I saw a chair in the doorway, propped up feebly as if it would give the door any of its stability back. Dave was still living there, alright. I pushed my way inside and found him in his living room.

[color=darkkhaki]“[i]Frank!?[/i]”[/color] Lieberman was on his knees, stuffing a hurricane of clothes and what had to be every electronic he owned into a too-small suitcase. What hair he had left was as much of a mess as his house. Lieberman dropped an L-pad on the hardwood as soon as he saw me. He put his head in his hands. [color=darkkhaki]“This is the craziest fucking night of my life…”[/color]

[color=#bababa]“Finally moving to Florida?”[/color] I asked. Half a joke. He always talked about the problems in his neighborhood, how it was no place to start a family. But his eyes were bloodshot, his whole pudgy frame shaking. Even on the worst nights of the Punisher, when the gangs and the cops were all out for blood, he was sat in here behind his desk without worry, chaining his nicotine patches and staying in touch all night. Now I saw there was a packet of the cigarettes he tried so hard to quit wedged into his shirt pocket.

[color=#bababa]“What did you get into? I thought you were all about laying low.”[/color] I asked. Lieberman was always the careful one. While I ran around on my crusade with no mask and no concern for myself, he erased digital trails and security footage. He would sabotage security measures and detections, and had even wiped himself from multiple government databases.

[color=darkkhaki]“A man broke in here tonight and managed to spill everything I was stupid enough to keep over the years…”[/color] Dave shook his head. [color=darkkhaki]“They’re going to come down on me like the hammer of God.”[/color]

[color=#bababa]“We’ve gotten around the cops before.”[/color] I said. The NYPD was almost as slow as it was greedy. They could have reformed since I was away, but if I knew anything about the Police union in the city, I doubted it.

[color=darkkhaki]“It’s not the cops I’m worried about. It’s The Agency.”[/color] Lieberman said. He bit his thumbnail that was already bitten down. He looked ready to tear it off.

[color=#bababa]“Agency?”[/color] I grunted out the question. I could feel the creature around what I was sure was my heart, plucking it like some crude instrument. But still I stood.

[color=darkkhaki]“You don’t know?”[/color] Dave struggled for a moment, saw the faraway look on my face. [color=darkkhaki]“They’re… They’re ‘the Punisher’ for guys like us.”[/color] I could almost laugh. Spend five years in a cell, and get out only to find they’re coming harder than ever. It figured. But if anyone was asking for it, it was me.

[color=#bababa]“Don’t we deserve it, Lieberman? The things we’ve done?”[/color] I rasped. I’ve killed too many men for either of us to remember. Every street corner around held the memory of that bloodshed. Did they all deserve it? I thought so. But the more I thought about it, the more it became ‘hope so’.

[color=darkkhaki]“We’re not the only ones who will eat shit for this, Frank. I’ve got -- I’ve got --”[/color] Lieberman stammered. As he spoke, the door to his basement swung wide and a pair of little feet padded in.

“Dad? What’s going on?” There was a little boy at the top of Dave’s stairs, wearing a Knicks t-shirt a size too big. He looked a lot like Frank Jr. used to, the dark hair and the big, mysterious eyes. Except for the scales in neon colors that ran all over his body, peeking out at his neck and all over the backs of his hands.

[color=darkkhaki]“David Jr! Back downstairs. Finish packing, [i]now[/i],”[/color] Lieberman said. The boy yelped and fled back into the dark of the basement. Guilt sat in my throat. Dave managed to make a life for himself, and I already ruined it. Now I was exposing them to the thing soon to eat me inside out. I had to go.

[color=darkkhaki]“He’s a mutant, Frank,”[/color] Dave said, like I couldn’t tell, [color=darkkhaki]“they’ll kill him.”[/color] Mutant bigotry was nothing new, especially on the force. I’d seen a lot of young officers drummed out on trumped up violations for trying to fight against it. There was no telling how rampant it was in this ‘Agency’, but Dave’s look gave me a pretty good impression.

Before I could say anything, move to go, I heard a scratch and crackle outside. The telltale sound of a bullhorn turning on. Dave had run out of time. In my earlier days I would have heard the approach, the wheels crunching on the gravel or the hum of an overtuned cruiser engine. Instead, our new arrivals got the first word:


[b]“David Lieberman! We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”[/b] It was some overeager trooper, excited to make his first big bust. They showed fast. It didn’t sound like they were expecting me. I had to stay to give Lieberman a chance, as much of one as I could give him dying on his living room floor.

[color=#bababa]“You still keep the pump in the same spot, Dave?”[/color] I forced myself over to his mantle, ignoring the feeling of alien fibers worming through my muscles.

Dave’s jaw dropped. [color=darkkhaki]“You’re not armed?”[/color]

[color=#bababa]“Get downstairs. You two need to get out in the confusion. Go to the old spot. I’ll hold them as long as I can.”[/color] I hoped it would be long enough. I only had so many shells, and there was no telling how long I could resist the alien once the shots started coming. As long as Dave could get out, everything would be alright.

Lieberman nodded too many times and scurried to the basement door. I reached up inside the fireplace and closed my hands around a wooden stock. It was the same sawn off pump-action shotgun I’d stashed with him since I became the Punisher. So he could better protect himself, I told him. I just hope he maintained the damn thing.

[color=darkkhaki]“Frank? When did you change?”[/color] It was Lieberman, looking back at me from the top of the stairs.

[color=#bababa]“We’ll catch up later, Lieberman,”[/color] I said. We wouldn’t. This would be the Punisher’s last dance.

[color=darkkhaki]“Your [i]clothes[/i], Frank,”[/color] Dave said.

[color=#bababa]“What?”[/color] I looked down at myself and beheld the skull I had worn for five years, the one that now lived in my dreams and the nightmares of countless others.

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