Hulk (3 page)

Bruce made no move.

Jack threw the stick down and poised there, fists cocked, and bellowed, “See? Got no stick! C’mon!
C’mon!
”

Bruce began to tremble, and at first Davy thought he was trying to avoid sobbing, but that wasn’t the case. Instead he was shaking with suppressed anger. No cry escaped his lips. He just stared and stared, and finally Jack lowered his fists in disgust. “Baby! Chicken baby!” he snarled and turned away.

And still Bruce just stood there . . . and said nothing.

David Banner stood in front of Ross, trembling with such fury that he couldn’t manage any words. Ross was leaning against his desk, holding up lab reports. “The samples we found in your lab, they were human blood,” Ross said with the satisfaction of someone who has just had a suspicion, long denied, finally confirmed. “You’ve ignored protocol.”

“You had no right snooping around in my lab. That’s my business,” said David.

“Wrong, Banner,” said Ross. “It’s government business, and you’re off the project.”

And David Banner screamed with rage. He cursed at Ross, he bellowed about the army’s ingratitude and shortsightedness. He questioned Ross’s parentage and, for good measure, almost took a swing at him before good sense made him realize that Ross could probably kill him.

“Shut down whatever you’re working on, Banner,” Ross said icily, never once coming close to losing his temper despite Banner’s extended rant. “You’re off the project and off this base.”

Realizing there was nothing to be said but something to be done, David Banner exited the office and headed off to carry out General Ross’s last order to him.

“You want it shut down,” he snarled, “you got it shut down.” And as he stormed away, the same angry, unreasoning, infuriated thought kept going through his mind:

It was all Bruce’s fault.

If Bruce hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have been using the boy’s blood in experiments and, consequently, been found out. If Bruce hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have had Edith yammering at him about finding a cure for his condition. If Bruce hadn’t been born, David could have experimented at his own pace, on his own schedule, and in his own way. But the arrival of Bruce, and the freak way in which the mutagens in his blood had reacted, had thrown everything off.

David Banner had been working nonstop for week upon week, and it had taken its toll on his already fragile psyche.

He headed down to the cyclotron to do what needed to be done there. After that, he’d head home and attend to the monster who had ruined his life.

“Bruce, you’re hurt,” said an alarmed Edith Banner.

She’d been sitting and having a quiet afternoon coffee with her friend Kathleen from next door when Bruce was hauled into the kitchen by Kathleen’s son, Davy. Davy’s words spilled out: “Jack hit him with a stick, but Bruce wouldn’t even hit him back. He just stood there shaking, and—”

And then she saw it. Just for a moment, she saw Bruce beginning to tremble just from the recounting of the incident, and there was a telltale bubbling of his skin. Kathleen and Davy were too distracted by the blood on his face to notice the odd distortions of his arm, and then, just like that, they were gone. Bruce let a relieved breath hiss through his front teeth—an overstressed engine letting off steam—and his mother sighed in silent relief as well.

“It’s okay,” Bruce said, as much to himself as to his mother.

It was the work of but a few minutes to get Bruce’s face cleaned off and a bandage applied. Fortunately the cut wasn’t especially large, nor did it require stitches; it had simply bled a good deal. In no time at all, Bruce and Davy were running back outside. Kathleen, shaking her head, settled back across the table from a wan but smiling Edith.

“Strange; he hardly made a peep. Any other kid would’ve wailed his head off,” Kathleen observed.

Not wishing to dwell on it excessively, Edith simply shrugged and said, “That’s Bruce. He’s just like that. He’s just so . . . bottled up.”

Professor O. T. Wren, a lean man with an occasionally distracted air but incisive mind, had been working with David Banner on and off for the last year. He found Banner to be an aggressive researcher, but somewhat unpredictable. Professor Wren had heard through the grapevine that Banner had had some sort of altercation with General Ross, and strongly suspected it had not gone well for Banner. Deciding that an avuncular approach to the problem might be in order, he sauntered down to Banner’s workstation near the cyclotron to talk with him.

When he arrived, all of Banner’s material was gone: all the work papers, everything, cleaned out. He stood there scratching his head, puzzled, and then he realized something else.

The cyclotron was shut down.

Completely shut down.

And the second this horrified realization hit him, the alarm bells around the huge particle accelerator began to sound in a unified blast of noise.

“Oh, my God,” said Professor Wren, and ran to sound a general alarm throughout the base.

And as he did that, David Banner drove at high speed across the desert, heading home to settle accounts with that little monster of his, once and for all.

sabotage

The one thing that gave Thunderbolt Ross’s day any meaning was running toward him.

“Daddy!” Betty cried out. She toddled toward him, all of two and a half years old, in a yellow sundress and her hair in pigtails. Ross stepped down out of the jeep that he had driven back to his home, a modest white A-frame with a neatly trimmed lawn. He went down on one knee, scooped Betty up, and held her high in the air, swinging her around in a circle. Betty let out a delighted squeal and shouted, “Again!”

“No ‘again,’ little girl. Last time I did, I wound up wearing your lunch on my uniform jacket.”

“Not lunch. Ice cream,” she said proudly. “We went for ice cream, and then I got sick on you.”

“How charming you remember that,” he told her, but he didn’t sound charmed about it. He set her down, and she promptly wrapped herself around one of his legs. “So what did you do today?” he asked.

“Played,” she informed him. “Mommy had a headache. She lied down.”

“Ah,” was all Ross said, and his gaze flickered toward the house. He knew all about his wife’s headaches. Betty understood that every so often her mother needed time to rest. Betty didn’t understand about something called brain cancer. She didn’t need to. All too soon, she’d have to deal with it, but not yet. Not yet.

Then Ross heard the phone ringing inside his house, but as he started toward it, there was an abrupt, frantic honking from a car horn behind him. He turned and saw a small convoy of cars and jeeps. In the lead was one of his aides with Professor Wren, one of the scientists from back at the base, in the backseat. In the passenger seat was Colonel Billings, Ross’s second in command.

“Billings, what’s wrong?” Ross said immediately.

Billings wasted no time. “Sir, I’ve had to order an evacuation of the base.”

“
What?
Why?”

“It’s the cyclotron, sir,” Professor Wren stepped forward, looking extremely flustered. “It’s been shut down.”

Ross felt as if he’d missed something. “Shut down?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And why is that a problem?”

“I didn’t understand either at first, sir,” Billings started to say, “but . . .”

Turning toward Wren, Ross said briskly, “Professor, I keep the military aspects of the base running. I know jack-all about the science half. So why don’t you tell me why turning something off is worth evacuating the base.”

“General,” Wren said, talking calmly with great effort, “the cyclotron has been running for over a decade. It’s not like . . . like a light switch or a Buick that just gets turned on and off when it’s needed. This is a seventy-million- dollar Tandem Accelerator Superconducting Cyclotron. It’s . . .”

“It’s really large; I’ve seen it. Big, cylindrical, blue . . .”

“Yes, all true,” said Wren, “and shutting one down properly is a very lengthy and involved procedure. We never do a cold shutdown of a cyclotron. Ever. Understand, General: The cyclotron holds about 2,000 liters of liquid helium, maintained at a temperature of minus 270 degrees Celsius. Shutting it off cold, as was just done, means that the core temperature will eventually rise to room temperature. The liquid helium will then convert to 2,000 liters of helium gas, enough to fill approximately 1 million balloons. It’s like . . . like putting water into a pot, screwing a lid on tightly, and then putting the pot on a burner. Sooner or later—probably sooner—there’s going to be an explosion.”

“My God,” said Ross, beginning to grasp the immensity of the situation. “How big an explosion? What type? Nuclear?”

“From the cyclotron itself? Probably not.”

“Probably?”

“I’m not an expert on cyclotron explosions, General!” Wren said in obvious exasperation. “I’m not sure what we’ll get! And need I remind you there are other potentially explosive materials in the lab as well. When the cyclotron goes . . .”

“I understand the problem, Professor,” said Ross, and he turned to Billings. “Is the base clear? Are we far enough away where we are right now? How long have we got?”

“Evacuation was almost accomplished before I came out here, General,” Billings told him. “According to the professor, the farther away the better . . . and we’re not sure how much time we have.”

“I make it twelve to fifteen minutes from now,” Wren said helpfully.

“Wonderful. Who in blue blazes did this?”

And then he knew, and before anyone could respond, he answered himself. “Banner. David Banner.”

“He was the last one logged into that station, sir,” said Wren.

“Billings! Get my wife taken out of there, and bring her and Betty to safekeeping. I’m commandeering one of the jeeps and going after Banner.”

Betty apparently heard that, because she dashed over to her father and cried out, “Daddy! I want to come with you!”

“You can’t, sweetheart.”

“Please!
Please!
”

The child was bordering on hysterics, and Ross didn’t have any time to stand around and discuss it. “Fine!” he said, and practically tossed her into the back of the jeep. He pointed to one jeep filled with MPs and shouted, “You! With me! Billings, can you and Wren get another jeep to get my wife out of here?”

“One’s on the way, sir. ETA, one minute.”

“Excellent!”

Ross gunned the jeep forward, with Betty holding on in the back and calling out “Daddy! This is fun!” as the jeep sped away toward the Banner house.

Ross hurtled down the road, chewing himself out for not having anticipated this. He should have had MPs escort Banner down to his workstation, should have made certain the fool didn’t try something exactly like this. Ross knew that nothing would come from berating himself, but nonetheless he was furious because, in his confidence and arrogance, he had allowed it to happen.

He checked in the rearview mirror; the MPs were right behind him. Just ahead of him, down the road, was Banner’s house. He saw Banner’s car parked outside at an odd angle, and there was shouting coming from within. And suddenly someone cried out as Ross pulled the jeep up to curbside.

From the backseat, Betty observed it all without comprehending any of it. Then she peered toward the top window of the house and saw a little boy there. She started to bring up her hand and wave very tentatively.

And then, suddenly, from far, far in the distance behind her, the air was split by an ear-shattering explosion, and the sky filled with light, and that was when the screaming truly began.

awakening

The screams came this night as they came many a night. The gray-haired woman sprinted down the hallway with a speed that belied her years and threw open a door. She flipped on a light and teenage Bruce Krenzler sat up, staring around blankly. His hair in disarray, his pajama shirt soaked through with sweat, Bruce Krenzler clearly had no idea why the woman who he called Mom had suddenly taken it upon herself to burst into his room.

The light from the hallway revealed the room of a typical teenager, with posters festooning the walls. Except instead of posters of rock bands and the like, they were posters that featured the entire play
Hamlet
in tiny print and a photo of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. The furniture was simple and unadorned and surprisingly neat—except for the bed, where the sheets were twisted into knots.

“Another nightmare, Bruce,” said Mrs. Krenzler. It was part explanation and part question.

Slowly he nodded, comprehending, but he clearly wasn’t going to be of much help when it came to specifics. “I don’t know; I don’t remember,” he admitted.

His adoptive mother smiled patiently. “Well, that’s probably better then, isn’t it,” she said cheerfully.

Bruce, squinting against the light from the hallway, said, “Probably. Yeah.” Whereupon he rolled over and fell back into a deep—and, mercifully, dreamless this time—sleep.

Betty Ross woke up screaming.

She sat up in bed, her chest heaving, gasping for air like a nearly drowned swimmer. Her long, dark hair hung in her face and she reflexively pushed it back. The images were fading quickly, but it didn’t matter; she knew what they were. She’d had the dream so many times that they were second nature to her.

She’d once tried telling her father about them, but he’d simply said dismissively, “It’s just dreams, Betty. They don’t mean anything. There’s too many real things happening in the world to worry about things that are unreal.”

And, as was usually the case with her father, that was that.

He hadn’t always been that way. When Mom had been around . . .

She knocked that train of thought right off its rails. What point was there in dwelling on it? It would just end up making her miserable, and if her father provided her little consolation when it came to dreams, he was of even less use when it came to talking about Mom.

Her nose wrinkled as she smelled eggs being cooked up downstairs. That was unexpected. Dad wasn’t usually one for making breakfast. Usually he’d just be off to work, leaving Betty on her own to get to school. At most, she’d see him heading out the door and barely have a chance to wave to him.