Hulk

  Ross remembered the Hulk’s ability to survive on a single breath from the encounter with the gas. The situation wasn’t promising, and Ross was beginning to realize that this wasn’t simply a case of man against man. This was man against a force of nature . . . and unfortunately, in such conflicts, man always came up on the losing end.

  It also meant that Ross might have some hard decisions to make. There was always the possibility that Banner was going to head away from the city. On the other hand, he might make a beeline right toward it.

  And if, in his rage, he did choose a direct assault, he might not just stampede around in open view. Ross knew there were underwater drains that emptied into the bay not far from the city’s edge; the Angry Man, if he spotted them, might make his way in through one of those. If that was the case, he could cause a kind of structural havoc not seen since the World Series earthquake back in 1989.

  Ross leaned into his radio unit, and when he spoke, it wasn’t without effort. “Legends Dash one, two, three, four, prepare to go weapons hot. Subject Banner may be heading toward city. You are authorized to engage. I will give you vectors shortly.”

  “Uh, roger, T-bolt,” said the pilot designated Legend Dash two. His voice was somewhat cautious, as if he knew Ross was aware of what was about to be said, but felt he needed to say it anyway. “Be advised we are hanging serious weapons here. This stuff is gonna cause a lot of damage if we start shooting into downtown San Francisco.”

  “You are cleared to fire on the target, Legend,” said Ross. “Let me worry about collateral damage.” And he knew it was indeed his worry; he’d likely be drummed out of the military for it. He had no illusions on that score. American citizens like their military maneuvers nice and tidy and devoid of casualties . . . particularly civilian casualties, and most particularly American civilians. In addition to signing the death warrants of the citizens, he was signing the death warrant of his own career, as well. He was looking at court-martial, loss of rank, possibly even jail time. Because the howl would come for somebody’s head, and as the president had pointed out, it was an election year. Ross just never suspected he was going to be the one who got elected.

  “T-bolt, Legend Dash one, roger. All units are weapons hot,” said the F-22 pilot.

  Ross’s face was grim. It then occurred to him that there was one weapon he had not yet employed, and although it killed him to admit it, it was possibly the only one that might prevent widespread damage.

  “Take us to Tactical Base West,” Ross abruptly ordered.

  The pilot glanced back at Ross to confirm what he’d just heard. Ross nodded without repeating it and, with a small shrug, the pilot did as he was ordered.

  A cable car rang its bell and moved toward Market Street. No one on the car, or anywhere nearby, expected this to be anything other than an ordinary day, despite the odd military maneuvers some of them had spotted occurring near the Golden Gate Bridge. There had been rumors flying around of some sort of monster traipsing around atop the bridge, but the general thought was that it was some kind of hoax that had probably originated on the Internet, as so many things seemed to these days.

  Nobody saw the small crack in the street that followed the cable car’s path, almost as if the cable car was leaving it in its wake. And then other cracks began to radiate outward, widening, becoming bigger, heaving upward.

  Pedestrians started to notice and jump out of the way, and naturally the first thing that occurred to them was earthquake, except there seem to be no rumbling or shifting beneath their feet. Cracks were just starting to appear everywhere, for no discernible reason.

  Water mains began to break. At each fire hydrant the caps flew off and water blasted out in all directions, soaking anyone standing nearby and making it even harder for passersby to stay on their feet as the sidewalks became slick. Cars were blasted as well, sent careering into one another, either from the direct impact of the spray or else from trying to get clear of the geysers that seemed to have unexpectedly turned up everywhere.

  San Francisco was officially under siege. It was just that no one realized it yet.

  found again

  Betty Ross sprinted toward the tarmac as her father’s Black Hawk settled down. The side door slid open and she saw his face as he gestured for her to clamber aboard.

  She had been more stunned than she’d thought possible when the call had come in that he was picking her up. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for her dad to make. Obviously he felt that whatever input she might have to make regarding Bruce was of such importance that it necessitated her being brought into the conflict. On the other hand, normally his overwhelming impulse was to keep her safe. He had proven that time and again whether by assigning guards to her or ordering her off Desert Base. So bringing her in now was completely against his nature, which indicated to Betty just how desperate he must be.

  She clambered aboard and the chopper pilot barely waited for the door to slam behind her before he took off. Without having to be told, Betty slapped a pair of earphones on her head so she could speak to her father, since the pounding noise within the Black Hawk made communication without such a device almost impossible.

  “Dad,” she said with a brisk inclination of her head.

  For just a moment, a look of helplessness flickered across his face, to be replaced just as quickly by grim frustration. “Betty, I don’t know what choice I have,” Ross said. “I have to destroy him.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “You can’t. Enraging him only makes him stronger. And you’ll destroy San Francisco in the process.”

  He nodded grimly, and she realized she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. That was really the reason she was here: because the situation seemed hopeless, and he didn’t know where else to turn. He was like a macho redneck, lost on the interstate, sucking it up and stopping to ask directions. It would have been kind of sweet in a way, if the stakes hadn’t been so high.

  “There’s only one way to stop him: Give him some breathing room,” said Betty.

  Ross pondered that, and she knew exactly what he was thinking: He could give the Hulk breathing room, sure, but how much breathing room was the Hulk going to give San Francisco?

  . . . wet . . . stupid, more water, more water, hate more water, can’t smash water hate stupid, dark, dark, smells . . .

  With each step through the storm drains, the Hulk pushed up with his elbows. He wasn’t doing it to wreak havoc on San Francisco, although that’s what was occurring. He was just doing it to make more room for himself.

  Finally he came to a juncture point and looked up in surprise when he saw daylight filtering through a manhole cover. He clambered upward, not pulling himself up on the ladder, but rather simply pushing himself toward the surface with the power of his hands braced against either side of the vertical tunnel.

  He poked his head through the manhole cover and squinted against the light of day. With a low growl he climbed out of the sewer, reeking, and surveyed his surroundings. He was standing at a steep intersection, with steps leading down to it from the hill above.

  At least fifty people on the sidewalks or crossing the street froze when they saw the monster emerge from the sewers. It was like a moment on the African veld, when a herd of antelope are momentarily paralyzed upon seeing a lion rise up, fierce and terrible, from the high grass. For long seconds, nobody moved. Both parties—the people of San Francisco and the Hulk—looked equally surprised to see each other.

  And then the Hulk let out a roar that shook windows and rattled doors within a three-block radius. The bellow snapped the spell, and as one the people tore away from him in all directions. This proved to be a major inconvenience for the combined forces of the military and the SFPD, all of whom were struggling toward the scene like salmon swimming upstream. All the shouts of “One side!” and “This is a police matter!” went unheeded as people seemed far more interested in distancing themselves from the scene than obeying orders.

  S
everal soldiers glanced at one another and, operating with a single thought, unleashed a short burst of automatic fire into the air. They weren’t worried about upsetting people; there was already panic in the streets. The unexpected burst of noise did, however, cause the sea of bodies to part, and the cops and soldiers were able to plow their way through.

  Several SWAT trucks barreled forward, converging from all directions, and the drivers of those vehicles didn’t give a damn about anything that might be in the way. They entered the terror-filled area and barely slowed, leaving it to the pedestrians to move. This the pedestrians did, albeit with effort and much hurling of profanity

  . . . kill them smash them smash them all . . .

  while meanwhile the skies overhead came alive with a fleet of helicopters, bristling with armament. The F-22s were speeding toward the scene. They were intended as a last resort, to be used only if the ground forces were annihilated by the Angry Man. But when the hundreds of National Guardsmen and soldiers and policemen arrived on the scene, and the SWAT teams took up stations on buildings overlooking the Hulk’s position, all ready to unleash whatever firepower they were packing, the Hulk didn’t appear at all intimidated. The F-22s roared past overhead and he tilted back his head and howled his challenge. A Black Hawk helicopter arced past as well, looking for a place to set down.

  When a terrorist attack brought down skyscrapers in the midst of the greatest city in the world, many commented that witnessing it was like watching a big-budget action movie come to life—minus the comfort of knowing it was all pretend. For everyone on the scene the day the Hulk came to San Francisco, it was like witnessing a monster movie come to life. And again the citizenry lacked the comfort of knowing that at the end, the lights would come up and everything would be normal. Staring into the face of such unparalleled rage, every person there knew beyond question that the very concept of “normality” had undergone a stunning and permanent change.

  Nobody was nearer than two hundred feet, so that a gigantic circle radiated out with the Hulk at the center. He bellowed defiantly, shook his fists once again, as if daring someone to get within range. No one was suicidal enough to take him up on it.

  He roared once more, and it resounded off the streets and the buildings. Then there was the sound of several hundred hammers being cocked and rounds being chambered, and one other sound which caught the Hulk’s attention.

  A simple, steady klik-klak of a woman’s high-heeled shoes.

  It was so completely out of place in the moment that the Hulk couldn’t help but notice it. He growled, but it sounded more like a question than any sort of threatening noise. Somewhere in the distance, the voice of Thunderbolt Ross was heard coming from a blaring radio, ordering, “All units, hold your fire,” but the Hulk paid it no mind.

  His mind was filled with thoughts of destruction, but her scent penetrated the haze of anger, and the images and thoughts and sensations associated with her came into direct conflict with the drive to destroy.

  . . . smash . . . want to . . . want . . .

  . . . Betty . . . ?

  One careful step at a time, making no sudden moves, Betty Ross approached him. She knew every person watching was convinced that the moment she drew within range, the creature would pound her into paste, and it seemed unlikely that all the firepower in the world would be able to act fast enough to prevent it. But if she was aware of the mortal danger she was putting herself in—and she most definitely had to be—she didn’t let it show at all. She kept her chin up, her gaze level.

  And to the shock of everyone—with the possible exception of Betty herself—the Hulk dropped to his knees and let out a cry of pain and shame. He sounded like a mortified child caught at being naughty.

  She came closer still, came within arm’s length, and the Hulk, a creature who could have broken her with one twist of a huge paw, winced, flinched back. But she came to him, touched him, caressed his face, and made gentle “shushing” noises, as if she were reassuring a terrified infant, telling it that everything was going to be all right.

  . . . Betty . . . oh, God . . . Betty . . .

  The Hulk’s body began to contract. Fluids emerged from every pore as the monster shrank before the eyes of the onlookers, and there were gasps, followed by a stunned silence, as the Hulk dissolved into the form of a slim and utterly harmless human being. Only the noise of the choppers and circling planes shattered the stillness of the morning.

  Bruce Banner looked at Betty with an exhausted half smile. “You found me,” he said.

  Betty took a quick glance around. “You weren’t that hard to find,” she said, seeing morbid amusement in the moment.

  “Yes,” said Bruce, “I was.” And Betty knew that he was referring to something else completely, and she began to cry.

  “Hey,” Bruce continued softly, and now he was the one who was comforting her. “I’m just grateful we got the chance . . . to say good-bye.”

  And they clung to each other then, two people surrounded by the physical wreckage left in the wake of the Hulk, a symbol of the emotional wreckage of the couple themselves.

  Several hundred miles away, Monica Krenzler watched CNN’s footage of an as-yet-unidentified, dark-haired man clinging to a young woman, sobbing piteously in the midst of the real-life horror show his life had become. Monica’s tears as she watched were more copious than his.

  In his cell at the Joint Tactical Force West brig, David Banner sat upright on his cot and smiled.

  “Soon,” he whispered. “Very, very soon.”

  Soon he knew they would come for him. Soon he knew that he would be brought to see his son. Soon he would be invincible.

  “Can I get a pizza in here?” he called to the guard. No answer was forthcoming. He reminded himself to kill the guard as soon as he was the greatest power on earth.

  sins of the father

  In a grudging, almost perverse way, Bruce Banner had to admire the ingenuity of the scientists at the base. They’d come up with a rather clever way of keeping him immobilized, having rigged up the entire thing in an otherwise empty airplane hangar.

  Essentially, he was positioned on a large platform between two huge electromagnetic arrays. The entire area was illuminated by immense klieg lights, making it that much easier to see Bruce—not that he was doing much of anything interesting. He just sat on a cot, staring at one of the arrays with vague curiosity.

  He had every reason to be interested. The arrays were large enough and powerful enough that, although they likely wouldn’t have much effect on the Hulk other than to annoy him further, they would be able to incinerate Bruce Banner in a matter of seconds. He would be the most powerful pile of ashes in California.

  It didn’t matter to Bruce. None of it did. He had examined the situation, turned it over and over in his mind. With all that, he hadn’t come to a conclusion that was substantially any different from what he’d already intuited back in San Francisco. He’d clambered back to reality and found Betty, like a drowning man surfacing and gasping in lungsful of air. But even in that moment of joy and salvation, he had known instantly that it was going to be temporary.

  He was, quite simply, too dangerous to live.

  Betty Ross had come to much the same conclusion as Bruce. The only difference was she was far more unwilling to accept it.

  She was at the far end of the hangar, watching him on monitors that had been rigged up near a communications truck. Thunderbolt Ross was addressing her and several other scientists and high-ranking officers who she didn’t recognize.

  “Here’s the deal,” said Ross. “He stays on the base here until we get final word from C Three on how to dispose of him. The slightest hint he’s putting on weight, or he starts curling his lip a little too meanly, or he starts looking like an avocado, we turn up the juice and he’s incinerated immediately.” He hadn’t been looking right at Betty as he spoke, but now he did. His expression softened slightly, but only slightly. This wasn’t a situation where he was going to try to s
ugarcoat it for her. “Betty, you’d better prepare yourself for the orders we’re going to get.”

  “We’ve established a two-hundred-yard perimeter, sir,” said a colonel whose nametag identified him as Thomas. “If we deploy the electromagnetic array, there should be no collateral damage.”

  “It’ll be a hell of a show, though,” said Ross. Betty shuddered when he said that, and he looked as if he immediately regretted having made the comment. But he’d said it, and, frankly, he was probably right. The electromagnets would unleash a light display that would look like the Big Bang, except the intention would be to destroy, rather than create.

  Betty looked around at the soldiers who were stationed at the controls. They looked to be on hair triggers, tense and waiting for the slightest sign that the lethal device should be activated. Hell, they were so keyed up that if Bruce chose that moment to sneeze, they’d probably fry him, and get a medal and commendation into the bargain.

  God, what had she done? Because of her, Bruce was now helpless. But what other options had been open to her? Do nothing and let him destroy San Francisco? Well, if he’d leveled it, no more worrying about climbing those damned hills. She wanted to laugh and cry at the thought, and managed to keep herself from doing either through an impressive display of self-control.

  Then she heard a personnel transport truck pull up, and she knew, even before the doors were opened, just who it was that was in there. Guards jumped down and opened the back, and David Banner—in chains—was led out of the vehicle, escorted by the troops. He passed Betty and Ross, making eye contact but saying nothing. His escorts pointed him toward the open end of the hangar. Betty watched him approach the hangar, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to kill him or . . .

  No. On second thought, she did know.