Back to the Pines
For more than six months in 2025, coastal and Southern New Jersey saw a never-ending stream of jumping lights in the night sky – moving lights that traced highways, coastlines and developed areas. Jerseyans – never a bunch to bellyache about anything for long – simply cracked on with life and adopted a “Oh yeah…. that’s a Drone” indifference.
Even the President – who swore to everybody that he was “going to get to the bottom of it” – later announced as an afterthought, “Yeah…those Drones in Jersey….I know what they are. Don’t worry about it”. And the people? Everybody was just left hanging. Nobody got any information at all. Our Imperial President told everyone “Don’t worry about it.” In Jersey-speak: Fuhgeddaboudit.
He was satisfied – but if you still wanted an explanation – go scratch your ass.
So, in the Pine Barrens, Drones are a way of life now. No big deal.
This is all convenient because Per L’Enfant has the tech ability – and Hyne has the money – to Drone-Scan the entire Wharton State Forest, Basto Village and the Mullica River with military-grade software that “sees” moving life forms on the Earth’s surface that register below-normal body temperatures.
Like Vampyres.
Humans have a body temperature of (usually) 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Vampyres clock in at between 64 degrees and 71 degrees Fahrenheit. The body temperature sensors on L’Enfant’s Drones can easily lock in these numbers and provide high-resolution light-enhanced video of what they’re looking at on the ground.
L’Enfant is using four military-grade drones, each a with hover duration capability of eight-to-ten hours to fly a grid pattern of the Pine Barrens every night. Programed into their Drone ID codes is a “Friend or Foe” sign identifying them as official New Jersey State Police airframes on routine “Fire Wise” Forest Fire control reconnaissance. The Pine Barrens skies are an open book to Hyne and his team.
On day three of his East Coast (US) time watch of four computer monitors – each one of which is recording real-time video feed from a dedicated Pine Barrens Drone – L’Enfant breaks “Com” silence to the rest of his team at precisely 3:00AM.
“PAYDIRT – REPEAT PAYDIRT. GPS PINPOINTS SIX BLOODBAGGERS ONE-MILE NORTHEAST OFF NJ ROUTE 679 ON A STRAIGHT TRAJECTORY TO THE MULLICA RIVER – LOOKS LIKE OUR FRIENDS ARE EMERGING OUT OF AN UNDERGROUND CHAMBER INSIDE THE HARRISVILLE PAPER MILL RUINS IN THE WHARTON STATE FOREST.”
Hyne responds immediately.
“Alright, Boys. Time to Nut Up and Cut Up. We got GPS fixes on our target. Let the Bloodsuckers enjoy their evening – it’ll be their last. Our Gulfstream is ready to go, New Jersey ETA at Atlantic City Airport is 6:00PM. Dress for success and don’t forget your weapons. Meet me at the jet in one hour. Over and out.”
The Pine Barrens
The Harrisville Paper Mill Ruins, Wharton State Forest
Hyne and his team ride from the Private Hangar at Atlantic City Airport to Wharton State Park in a “borrowed” commercial ambulance. The chances of their being stopped or otherwise interfered with are low to nil. The driver, Bobby Rossi, lets them off at the Harrisville Pond Parking Area on NJ Route 679. Rossi will be up all night at the Hammonton Diner in Hammonton drinking coffee until they call for their ambulance pickup and chauffeured drive back to AC Airport. He’ll make more money in one night than he makes in a month – and he’ll keep his mouth shut. Rossi’s a Jersey Boy – he’s worked a number of jobs for the Philly Mob and he knows the score. In South Jersey, “Rats” get killed. And Rossi is no Rat.
The Harrisville Pond Parking Area is pitch black. Generally, streetlights are not allowed inside the Pine Barrens. Hyne and the boys pile out of the ambulance and head to the trail that tracks towards the Mullica River and the Harrisville Paper Mill Ruins. They keep twenty feet apart and staggered at all times – Fremd, Chen and L’Enfant wearing night-vision goggles. Hynes’ natural ability to see in night conditions give him a flexibility and peripheral vision advantage – so he takes “point” and directs their forward progress with hand signals through the groves of stunted pines, oaks and bramble that is the Pine Barrens habitat.
Hyne can smell that his team is at maximum testosterone – all Hell-bent to prove their tracking and fighting skills to their commander. Their blades are sheathed but ready for action. Everyone is in black, snug-fitting tactical outfits with exterior carbon-fiber chain-mail shoulder, arm and torso sleeves. Their gloves are Kevlar and titanium weaves, capped with wrist guards or “bracers”. Trousers are Kevlar – ankle-strapped into Special Forces footwear, custom-fitted and layered onto their feet in stages of bespoke wrapping before the final shoes are sewn. Full-spectrum protection. Each man carries a backup blade of their choice – some variation of Dagger or Stiletto – and a Glock loaded with Silver Nitrate and Sulphur Rounds.
Hyne is hoping to surprise his prey at the Paper Mill Ruins – but keeps vigilant for movements around them in the dense forest. He’s encouraged at how his boys are keeping up and making almost no sounds at all.
Ten minutes passes. Then twenty. A half-hour – and Hyne still sees no movement that could be his adversaries. Then – to his right. A shadowy grouping of five – clearly Bloodsuckers – weaving through the brush, grunting and groaning as they step around fallen trees and forest debris. Oblivious to their surroundings, more concerned with their pathway through the thorned bramble than danger from an ambush. They’re tall – and well-built. Not showing signs of any illness.
“Good” Hyne thinks to himself. “A proper baptism by fire for my soldiers. Tonight they’ll earn their supper”.
Hyne raises his fist – meaning “STOP”. Everybody freezes and squats down, watching the grouping of Vampyres make their way towards them from the opposite direction. Apparently, they’re using the Wharton State Park trail network to raid the sparse human quarry that this neighborhood provides. Good to know. Every hunting ground needs a roadmap.
The five get closer and closer. They’re walking straight into a trap. Fifty feet away. Forty feet away. Thirty.
Then – suddenly – they stop. Somewhere in the distance, Hyne hears a weak, bleating sound. It’s like an animal – but anguished. A tormented sound.
The Vampyres look back from whence they came – and immediately reverse course. Something is calling then back.
Hyne raises his fist again, keeping his men frozen. They watch their prey disappear deeper, further into the darkness. When the Vampyres are about sixty feet away, Hyne signals everyone to move forward. He’s hoping that the Vampyres are heading back to their Coven “Nest”.
The pursuers move ahead – a bit more briskly so as not to lose sight of their targets. At about one hundred feet away, they see the outlines of tall, decaying brickwork and cavernous openings in the ground – obviously the collapsed remains of paper kilns and pulping vats that produced raw material for newspapers and book printers over a century and a half ago. These are the ruins of the Harrisville Paper Mill, founded in 1891. A multi-acre complex and industrial development that employed everyone that wasn’t smelting Bog Iron in the Pine Barrens at the time.
Hyne watches as a lead Vampyre makes his way through an archway into a descending interior – obviously the entrance into a chamber or warren. The other Vampyres rush inside behind him. They, too, seem strangely motivated to get inside quickly.
This is Coven “Nest”. Hyne is certain of it.
Hyne signals his guys to spread out along the crumbling walls of the ruin while he approaches the archway.
It’s time for some tricks.
At Hyne’s request, The Old Ones shared with him the secrets of altering light refraction and bending photon spectrums – the techniques of simulating invisibility – that Simon Magus mastered from the Priests of Karnak and Abydos in Egypt centuries ago. He took to it like a child to its mother’s milk. This was precisely the edge that he needed to complement his newfound prowess in vision and muscle strength. The ability to “smoke” himself – quickly fade into a whisp of nothingness and deceive the eyes of an adversary into thinking he vanished – was invaluable. The trick? Being invisible is not as important as someone thinking that you are invisible. The Magician’s art is manipulating the mind of another to see things he doesn’t – or see nothing at all.
Hyne carefully creeps along the decrepit structure, slipping himself deep inside at the very moment he “smokes” himself.
Before him is a catacomb – a tall, cavernous amphitheater of failing bricks and disintegrating masonry. Standing at the far end of it – about sixty feet away – is a tall, hooded Vampyre raising his claws to five others as if he’s about to speak. Hyne gestures to his men outside to be ready to charge in, blades swinging.
The tall Vampyre begins to utter sounds. – his speech is mottled. Indistinct. And there’s viscous filth dripping down his chin from his eyes and nose. This fiend has KURU – advanced stage. Hyne even notices a characteristic rotten stench that he’s spewing forth, fouling the already stale air inside the cellar.
“ARRRGHH….TERRARGHH…..AOUSSPYCH….TRRRAGGUN!!!”
Hyne loudly clears his throat – twice for effect – and shows himself. His voice is as sarcastic as it is acerbic. He lays it on thick.
“YOU BLOODSUCKERS READY FOR POKER NIGHT? ‘CAUSE WE GOT ALL THE ACES!”
His soldiers charge in at the moment Hyne’s Bowie cleaves the skull of a Vampyre closest to him. As half of its head slides downwards and falls off – spraying the Vampyre next to him full of blood and brains – Hyne swings the Bowie around again, decapitating the fiend completely.
The tall Vampyre up front screams and bares his claws, lunging forward towards Hyne, only to catch talons-full of smoke and nothingness. Hyne then greets him with a Bowie chop to his eyes that trepans the crown of his diseased skull completely off. The skullcap flies sideways as the Vampyre’s eyes roll upwards into his roofless brainpan. The thing’s knees then collapse under him. Feculent slime bubbles up from the insides of its head cavity and cascades down to the mud floor as the body twitches and spasms in a putrid dance of death.
Xen Chen slices off a Vampyre’s arm and then turns his back to it and deftly drops to one knee to thrust his Chinese Wodao behind him, disemboweling the limbless, unlucky fool in a graceful, dramatic demonstration of Chinese swordsmanship. He then springs up and swipes off the Vampyre’s head as its intestines collect in a stinking, bloody puddle on the dirt floor.
Per L’Enfant calmly strides up to a Vampyre and smiles, a burning French Gaulois cigarette between his lips.
“Mind if I smoke?”
He then feints left on his opponent and slams his Katana down on the things right shoulder, severing its arm clean off. He then strikes the left shoulder, completely cleaving that limb, too. The Vampyre screams at the top of its lungs, as limp as a puppet with its control strings cut, its severed arms oozing blood on top of his feet.
L’Enfant then drives his noble Japanese blade straight into its throat and – with a masterful flick of his wrist -slices off its head like he’s done it a thousand times before.
Three Vampyres remain – now screaming and crouching – preparing to launch themselves at Hyne and his men. Dirk Fremd fearlessly throws himself into the center of them, knocking them down like bowling pins and chopping his Bowie knife at any Vampyre body part that is within its lethal arc.
Hyne, Chen and L’Enfant move in.
It’s cleanup time.
Soon, only a pile of heads and revolting moist stench remains. Hyne sheathes his Bowie. He places his signature leather “Hyne Stag Patch” next to the skull-sculpture for any future Vampyre snoops to see – marking his turf like a wild animal pissing on a kill site.
Hyne surveys his crew like a proud parent.
“Job well done, Gentlemen.
Spread out and check the ruins for stragglers. Meet me back here in fifteen.
Beers are on me.”
*NO PART OF THIS WORK PRODUCT IS AI*
Copyright, 2026 – Jon & Jedediah Croft
www.bogironfoundry.com
Email: vlchek1@gmail.com
