Hulk (21 page)

This time there was no deliberate pause or smugness. David replied immediately and angrily, his voice dripping with bile and bitter sarcasm. “Oh, I bet you and your Betty would love to destroy it. But would you
really
, even if it meant killing yourself? I don’t think so.”

Bruce wasn’t so sure about that. He was slowly becoming aware of just what it was that was moving through his bloodstream, brought to full life by the combination of the nanomeds and gamma radiation. Had Bruce been left to his own devices, it was possible that—with his tendency to repress his emotions and fears—he might well have led a normal life—a life full of loneliness and emotional deprivation, but normal nonetheless. Well, relatively normal.

But it was becoming clear that the nanos and rads had had some sort of catalytic effect on him, triggering biological shifts and changes of which he could only guess. But if they had caused some sort of revision of his biological makeup, then perhaps it was possible to find a way to reverse the effect. Anything that was done could be undone. It didn’t seem much more complicated than that.

And then David Banner said something that complicated things very, very much.

“And as for Betty,” he told Bruce with a chortle, “I’m sending her a little surprise visit from some four-legged friends of mine.”

The room, the world, seemed to go dark around Bruce Banner, seemed to skew at an angle. Suddenly there was a thudding pulse in his temples, and he had to fight to hear the words from the other end of the phone. “You see, I’ve managed to culture some of your very own DNA, Bruce, and the results, while unstable, are powerful,” said David Banner.

“What
about
my DNA?” demanded Bruce.

His father ignored the question. “Let’s just wait and see what Betty makes of the results!”

“No!” shouted Bruce. “You’re crazy! I won’t let you! You—!” But then he looked at the small readout on the phone and saw that there was no longer a connection. His father had hung up.

Utterly frantic, Bruce ran to the front door, pulled it open, and found Glen Talbot standing there, a smile on his face.

“Inside, asshole. I want to talk to you,” said Talbot.

David Banner whistled a late 1950s pop tune called “Betty My Angel” as he removed the headset and went into the yard. Everything was moving so perfectly, falling into place so ideally, that it was one of those moments where he couldn’t help but think that there was some higher purpose to all that had happened to him, some higher power that was moving in most mysterious ways. It was odd; he’d never thought of himself as a particularly devout man, or even a believer. But with all that was occurring and falling his way, perhaps—perhaps there was something to this God thing after all.

Well, why not? Man was, after all, supposed to have been created in God’s image. That being the case, man should be as deft and adept at creating as that which had brought him into existence. And certainly David Banner had been holding up his end in that regard.

As he walked out into the yard, he was greeted with growling so vicious that it bordered on the obscene. Three feral voices snarled low and deep, sounding more like huge semis with busted mufflers than anything alive. He continued to whistle “Betty My Angel” even as he contemplated Betty becoming a genuine angel. It gave him a satisfied feeling. Let her be God’s problem instead of his.

He held up Betty’s scarf. Since she’d left it, he’d been careful to keep it isolated in a plastic bag so it wouldn’t get any other scents mixed in with it. Now he waved the scarf, teased the dogs with it, kept it just out of their reach even as the waving caused them to go into berserk fits of barking.

When he’d gotten them sufficiently worked up, he let fly the scarf. Huge teeth powered by great, green muzzles tore into it as flecks of jade spittle flew from their maws.

“Now, fetch!” said David Banner, and they understood what he wanted, for they had been well trained to start with, and the processes he’d inflicted on them had only made them more intelligent—not to mention more ferocious. “Fetch and let nothing stand in your way!”

The sun had not yet quite set, but the full moon was already visible high above the horizon. The dogs, like gigantic gamma-irradiated wolves, leaned back on their haunches and bayed at it.

If Glen Talbot had heard the chorus of canine ululation, he might well have joined in.

Everything that he’d done—the planning, the maneuvering, the precise and far-reaching Godlike manipulation—everything from striving to put Bruce and Betty together, to arranging for Bruce’s nutball father to be kicked loose from the hospital so that the screws could be jammed in ever more tightly, everything was coming together precisely, like cogs in a great machine. In his mind’s eye, Talbot could see Bruce Banner being mashed between those cogs, and in so suffering, unleashing tremendous untapped energy.

Talbot couldn’t, of course, have anticipated the accident that sent the nanomeds and gamma radiation coursing through Banner’s bloodstream. But that was the true beauty of a really great plan: When something unexpected occurred, it played perfectly into the overall scheme without causing the plan to miss a beat.

So now, when faced with the frantic scientist, it was all Talbot could do not to laugh in Banner’s face and tell this brilliant researcher—who unquestionably thought that he was so much brighter, so much more intelligent than Talbot—that he, Banner, was just a pawn in a vast chess game. With Talbot moving all the pieces.

“Talbot, listen! It’s my father. We don’t have much time. I think he’s going after Betty,” Bruce said, the words spilling over one another.

Talbot stepped inside, kicked the door closed behind him, and approached Banner. He made sure to display a proper amount of ire, throwing a total non sequitur at Bruce to keep him off balance. “So, you think you can go behind my back, get Ross to cut me out?”

Banner blinked, an owl caught in the wash of a spotlight. “What are you talking about?” said Banner. “I’m trying to tell you, we need to get help—”

With a swift maneuver. Talbot kicked Banner’s legs out from under him. Banner dropped on his back to the floor and Talbot pressed a shoe into his face. “You pathetic freak,” he said tightly, his jaw twitching with an anger that came all too naturally. “Tomorrow, after I convince Ross, you’ll be carted off to spend the rest of your life in some tiny, solitary hellhole. And I’ll take over your work. But in the meantime,” and his voice became more and more intense, “you’re going to tell me what the hell happened to your lab. You didn’t happen to steal anything important from it last night, did you?”

Talbot’s heel was crushing Bruce’s mouth. Even Talbot had to admit to himself that he was impressed by Bruce’s tenacity, because all he could talk about was the woman.
“I swear to you, believe me, Betty is going to be killed.”

Unsure of whether he believed Banner or not, but certain that he didn’t especially give a damn, Talbot pushed down harder. “If I can state the obvious, it’s
your
health I’d be worried about right now.”

Bruce desperately grabbed Talbot’s leg with both hands, grunted, struggled, but couldn’t overcome Talbot’s strength and skill as Talbot ground his shoe into Bruce’s face. He did so with a cold calculation that even an experienced scientist might have envied, provided that experienced scientist wasn’t busy getting his face kicked in.

Talbot had studied the records concerning Bruce Krenzler, aka Banner, far too thoroughly to be engaging in such brutality simply for its own sake. Granted, he was enjoying it, but that was merely a bonus. The bizarre incidents involving young Banner’s form had involved, according to all evidence, stress situations—so much so that Banner himself, in his psychological development, had locked away anything in his makeup that might trigger a response to stress. Now, though, the course of events had taken on a life of their own. Talbot had helped set the roller-coaster in motion; all he had to do was hold on for the ride.

He began to worry, though, that Banner might lapse into unconsciousness rather than provide him with what he wanted. So, satisfying himself with a final kick, he removed his foot from Banner’s face. Bruce rolled over in pain, and propped himself up.

“Talbot—” he grunted through swollen and bleeding lips.

Talbot raised an eyebrow, amused. “Yes?”

“You’re making me angry.”

And Talbot really, really wanted to laugh at that. “Oh, am I?”

Banner managed a pained nod, then made what undoubtedly passed for a threat when coming from a ninety-pound weakling who was literally getting his head kicked in.

“I don’t think you’ll like me when I’m angry.”

At which point Banner staggered to his feet, and Talbot took a quick step forward to drive a punch into Banner’s gut.

It didn’t land.

It was at that moment, that terrifying moment, as Talbot found his fist immobilized by a strength that dwarfed his, and was only growing exponentially with every passing second, that he fully and truly appreciated the wisdom of the old axiom: “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”

. . .
Hurt me hurt us hurt me pain make him pain hurt smash crush him let out out get out smash yes yes . . .

As the sweat poured down Banner’s body, it soaked his shirt, and then the shirt ripped and there was

. . . pain so much pain good out stretching bending ripping rip tear smash . . .

exhilaration and a feeling of release, and Bruce Banner was a man who had been blind his entire life and was suddenly blessed with vision, and it was a vision filled with rage and anger and joy and lust and fury, pure unbridled fury, a volcano of fury exploding, an ocean of fury that wouldn’t be held back anymore, and there was Talbot shaking and clearly terrified and he didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered anymore except

. . . Betty . . .

and the name, that name slammed through the pain, cut across the hot wires of Banner’s wrath like a great pair of pliers, giving the transformation form and purpose and direction.

. . . smash him smash SMASH . . .

Talbot, a grown man, was whimpering like a child.

For all his research, for all his conviction that he had covered all the angles and anticipated everything that could possibly happen, he had never come close to truly guessing just what it was that he’d had a hand in.

All at once, he had an inkling of what it was like for those first scientists testing atomic bombs, and coming face-to-face with the potential for unprecedented destruction they had helped unleash.

The major difference was, in this case, that the face involved was green and snarling and filled with undiluted rage.

The face still bore some resemblance to Bruce Banner’s, but it was widening and flattening out. It was like watching
Homo sapiens
devolve, tumbling down the evolutionary ladder and enjoying every rung of the plunge. There was rending and tearing of cloth, the shirt splitting down the back, the sleeves becoming mere rags. He’d been wearing a pair of sweatpants, and they at least were stretching somewhat, but the lower legs were being torn apart.

Banner was screaming, but it was hard to tell whether it was in pain or in release. His skin tone was changing completely, skewing from pink to light green and then to a deep jade. Insanely, he let out a loud, primal, vibrant laugh, then more screams of pain, more transformation, bigger, bigger, then a deafening roar.

Talbot hadn’t come straight to Banner’s home. He’d gone to the lab first, and he’d heard a word bandied about by some of the security guards. A word whispered in fear and dread by men who’d claimed they’d caught a glimpse of a slope-shouldered, slouching beast of a creature. Talbot had discounted much of it as fish stories, these tales of a hulk. He’d been sure that Banner had gained some sort of strength, undergone a transformation, but one had to allow for exaggeration even in the cases of eyewitnesses.

There had been no exaggeration. What there had been was the Hulk.

. . . kicked hurt hurt when kicked kick him smash kick . . .

Talbot fell back onto the couch, throwing his arms up as if such a pathetic defense could even begin to ward off the advancing green Goliath. The Hulk, not even slowing down, delivered a furious kick to the couch that sent it, and Talbot, crashing through the front window and out onto the lawn.

. . . out out Betty out . . .

Driven by imperatives he couldn’t begin to articulate or comprehend, the Hulk exited the house by the most expeditious means possible: He simply walked through the front wall. It didn’t slow him down for a millisecond. Wood and plaster shattered before him, sending debris flying everywhere, and then he stood there covered in white powder and howled into the darkness like a great primal ancestor of mankind, spat back up from prehistory.

The MPs barely had time to react to the sight of Glen Talbot making his explosive appearance on the front lawn, propelled via a couch, before they were confronted by a howling monster. It looked around with feral intensity, as if seeking something to tear apart with its massive bare hands.

Acting as one, they whipped out their guns and started firing. The Hulk flinched, more from the noise than anything else, and perhaps propelled by a residual memory that these little flying pellets were supposed to be lethal. They were, as it turned out, anything but. At most they were vaguely irritating, bouncing harmlessly off his green hide, and the Hulk made wide, sweeping gestures with his arms as if brushing away a swarm of wasps.

. . . hurt little hurt hurt them . . .

Somewhere within the primal recesses of his brain, the Hulk make the connection between the small, stinging bits of lead and the men who were standing there with hunks of metal in their hands pointed at him. They were a good ten feet away, but the distance afforded them no protection at all as the Hulk vaulted it in one jump and plowed through them, tossing them aside with a swing of each arm. One went down with a loud crack, breaking several of his ribs. Another tried to leap out of the way and got caught in the sweep of an arm that was like a tree trunk, only harder, and was sent flying across the lawn to land in a heap some yards away.