Hulk

  “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.

  She glanced out the window, saw it was going to be a nice, sunny Maryland day, and then trotted down the stairs while tossing on her robe.

  “Dad?” she called.

  “Down here,” he said somewhat unnecessarily.

  She walked into the kitchen and skidded to a halt, caught off guard.

  There was a well-groomed young man wearing an ROTC army uniform, and he was the one cooking breakfast. Thunderbolt Ross sat at the table, sipping coffee, and he gestured for her to come in. The young man turned and grinned at her. He had black hair, slicked back, and a pencil-thin mustache that he probably thought made him look older.

  Caught off guard, Betty was still wearing the very short nightgown she’d slept in and her hair was in disarray. Her robe had been hanging open and she pulled it more tightly around herself with one hand while making vague and futile efforts with the other to pull her hair into line. “Uh, hi. Did I just wake up in an alternate universe where you have a son?”

  The young man at the skillet laughed. “She’s funny. You didn’t tell me she was funny.” He looked back at Betty. “How do you like it?”

  “It?” she said, unsure of what he was referring to, but a bit suspicious of the possibilities.

  “Your eggs.” He nodded toward the stove top.

  “Oh! Uh, scrambled, I guess. Dad . . . ?”

  Ross, who was busily studying the newspaper, nodded absently. “Yes, you like them scrambled.”

  “No, I know that. I mean . . .” And she sharply inclined her head toward the young man.

  “I think she means ‘Who the heck is this dashingly handsome fellow cooking up eggs?’ ”

  Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Betty laughed lightly at that. “Well, I don’t know about the ‘dashingly handsome’ part, but . . .”

  “This is Glen Talbot,” Thunderbolt Ross said. “Out here visiting his uncle, Colonel Talbot.”

  “Ah. Okay, so, welcome to Fort Meade, Maryland,” Betty said, being as affable as she could considering it was first thing in the morning. “Significant for—well—not much, really.”

  “Well, I hear you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” Glen said, deftly mixing the eggs in the skillet.

  She looked in confusion at him. “Why not?”

  Ross set down his newspaper. “Yes, ah . . . I was going to tell you this, Betty.”

  “Oh!” Talbot looked a bit chagrined. “I’m sorry. Did I spoil the surprise?”

  “Surprise?” Her befuddlement grew.

  Ross cleared his throat and said, “We’ve been reassigned, Betty.”

  “Awwww, no.” Betty sagged into a chair at the table, dropping her head into one hand. “Not again. I was just starting to get used to this place.”

  “I know it’s difficult,” Talbot said sympathetically as he flipped the eggs onto her plate. The aroma wafted up from them, and she had to admit they didn’t smell bad at all. She poked at them experimentally and took a bite. Didn’t taste bad, either.

  “Actually, it shouldn’t be so unpleasant this time, Betty,” Ross told his daughter. “In fact, it may be like old times.”

  She started to get excited. “Italy? Back to Italy?” She’d loved the time they’d spent there, two years ago, and had hated that it had only lasted a couple of months.

  “No, not Italy. Desert Base.”

  Slowly Betty lowered her fork, letting it clink down onto the plate. “You’re . . . not serious.”

  “Very serious.”

  “Do we have to?”

  Talbot looked curiously from Betty to her father. “Is there a problem with Desert Base? I hear Nevada’s pretty nice, actually.”

  “We have some . . . unpleasant memories of it, that’s all,” said Ross.

  “Yeah, if you consider we almost got killed when it blew up and, by the way, my mom dying there a week later ‘unpleasant.’ ”

  She was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, which was unfortunate because she knew that attitude put her father on edge. But he maintained his cool, which was to be expected since they had a guest.

  “Sorry,” mu
mbled Talbot. “I had no idea.”

  Her heart softened a bit. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. But at least, knowing the army, it’ll be temporary . . .”

  “Permanent, actually,” Ross said. “At least as permanent as such things are.”

  Betty couldn’t believe it. Of all the glorious places they’d been to, that damned desert was where they were being stuck for good? “I thought the place was leveled!”

  “It was rebuilt. I’ll be taking command of it.”

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, convinced that there wasn’t a teenager in the world who was having a worse day than she was.

  Bruce Krenzler, hard at work in the lab at school, had his attention drawn away from the slides he’d been studying under the microscope by a specimen of a very different sort. Specifically, a lovely girl who had just entered the room and was looking shyly in his direction. Bruce became so flustered that he almost knocked over some test tubes, but caught them at the last moment and prevented a spill.

  Her name was Alice, and he had noticed her any number of times. She had never given him so much as the time of day . . . and that was literally true, because he’d asked her what time it was once or twice between classes, and she’d just breezed right past him. But now she was sauntering right over to him as if they were the best pals in the world.

  “Hi, Bruce. Whatcha doing?”

  “It’s cool. Uh, you can check out the DNA, you know, the proteins,” said Bruce.

  “Can I see?” asked Alice, sounding genuinely interested.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  Alice leaned in closely over the microscope and he became aware of the heady smell of her perfume. “You know,” she said, “I really get turned on by brainy guys.”

  Bruce stepped back, scarcely able to believe where the conversation was going. For years he had been gawky and awkward and utterly tongue-tied when it came to the opposite sex, and now this lovely young girl had actually noticed him and was being nice to him, and maybe they could go out some time and who knew what the possibilities might be, and this was just the most incredible thing that had ever happened to him . . .

  At which point, while stepping backward, he tripped and fell over a stool. He went down bruisingly with it, tangled in the crashing metal, and as he lay there in a heap, he heard a chorus of laughter. He twisted around to see a group of other students watching, and realized with rapidly burning anger that it had all been a setup, that Alice had been coming on to him for the amusement of some of her friends.

  “Poor Bruce,” said Alice, and she was laughing the hardest of all. “You’re such a nerd.”

  Bruce’s face filled with anger, then his whole body started convulsing. He grabbed the side of the table, lifting himself up, and, flailing, scattered everything, including a lit Bunsen burner. The burner struck the spilled liquid from one of the test tubes, which just happened to be alcohol, and immediately ignited it. A fire roared to life in a heartbeat, and the others ran screaming from the room.

  Bruce staggered to his feet, staring at the fire, and the burning was reflected in his eyes as his body started to convulse again. He fought to contain it

  . . . smash it, bad things will happen, smash it . . .

  just as he always did, for reasons long forgotten but deeply ingrained. But the images of the laughing kids kept coming at him, and for once, just once, he wanted to cut loose . . .

  . . . and suddenly an automatic fire alarm started to clang. The overhead sprinkler system snapped on line, and cool water soaked Bruce to the skin, calming him. He stood there, letting it come, letting it extinguish the fire in front of him—and the fire within—at least temporarily.

  desire

  Betty strode along the main Tarmac of Desert Base. A typical blast of heat rolling off the desert hit her in the face, but she had readapted to it by this point. Her father came right after her, shouting, “Hold it right there, young lady! We weren’t finished talking!”

  She moved with the coltish grace that had become hers as she hit her late teens. She was clad in tight-fitting jeans and a Metallica T-shirt that her father absolutely despised, which was why she wore it at least twice a week. Some passing soldiers glanced at them, and Betty snapped off, “Eyes front, soldiers!” They promptly found something else to be interested in as Thunderbolt Ross came up behind her.

  “I said we weren’t finished talking!” he snapped at her.

  She turned and looked him angrily in the face, making her the only person in the area who was capable of doing so. “When did we start talking? When do we ever start? You talk, I listen. That’s about as far as it goes!”

  “That’s as far as it needs to go,” Ross told her. “Is it true? What Glen told me? That you broke it off with him?”

  She drew herself up. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Why the blue blazes would you do that?”

  “Because I only went out with him to make you happy, Dad, believe it or not. And he was talking about marriage. About building a life together.”

  Ross’s eyes widened. “And what’s wrong with that? He’s an up-and-coming lieutenant! I brought him out here because he’s going places and—”

  “And because you wanted to hook him up with me. I’m not stupid, Dad. You’ve had your eye on him ever since Maryland.”

  “And what if I did?” demanded Ross. “I’m just watching out for your best interests.”

  “It’s my best interests if this was 1962! You want me to get married and be a good little army wife, throwing nice demure parties when hubby brings home officers, raising as many children as my husband chooses to produce, and otherwise keeping my big mouth shut!”

  “It was good enough for your mother!”

  Her face went ashen, and she could see that the moment the words had escaped his lips he regretted having said them. Before he could recant them, she said coldly, “I’m not Mom. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to live up to her example. Maybe I should have just died and then you’d be happy.”

  “Betty!” He looked taken aback. “Now you’re just saying things to try to hurt me, is that it?”

  Indeed, that was true, and she was as sorry for it as much as he’d been moments earlier. But she wasn’t about to back down, not now. She looked at the tops of her sneakered feet and said, “You just don’t understand, that’s all.”

  “Then explain it to me,” he said. “We’re both intelligent people. You should be able to explain why you tossed aside a man like Glen Talbot, why you—”

  She sighed in exasperation. “Dad, Glen isn’t what you think he is.”

  “Oh? And what do I think he is?”

  “You. You think he’s a young version of you. But he’s not, I’m telling you. I got a chance to know him . . . really know him. He’s always making plans. . . .”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” demanded Ross. “We need more strategists in—”

  But she shook her head. “Not strategies, Dad, and maybe ‘plans’ isn’t even the right word. ‘Schemes’ is probably more accurate. He’s got a lot more up his sleeve than his arm, Dad. I mean, we’ve had our disagreements, heaven knows.” He rolled his eyes at the understatement, but she continued, “But there’s one thing I’ve never doubted, and that’s your love for this country. You place it and its citizens and your responsibility for protecting them above everything. Even me.”

  “That’s not true, Betty.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said, and forced a smile, “and that’s not automatically a bad thing. And maybe someday, when I’m older, I won’t take it so personally. The point is,” she continued before he could interrupt, “Glen’s an opportunist. An opportunist and a power seeker. I just . . . I just know it. Watch your back with him when I’m not around.”

  “Oh, really. And where might you be going?”

  She took a deep breath, preparing for the plunge. “I’ve been accepted to Berkeley.”

  “What?” He gaped at her. “That’s absurd! What do you need with college? For
that matter, you’re only a high school sophomore!”

  “Dad, did you ever look at any of my transcripts? All I’ve taken are accelerated courses and extra credit on top of that, and aced them all. While you were busy getting Desert Base organized, I was blowing through high school. You were just too busy to notice. I nailed my SATs and got accepted for early admission.”

  “You couldn’t have applied,” Ross said defiantly. “You have to have a parent sign the application form—”

  “You did. I slipped it in when you were at home doing some paperwork. You’re so conditioned to signing next to wherever someone sticks a Post-it note, it was no problem.”

  “Oh,” he said, and then rallied. “And what about application fees? Where did you get the money?”

  “From Glen in exchange for sexual favors.”

  “Betty!”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at the abrupt purpling of his face. “I borrowed it from my friend Kelly, Dad. I promised her she’d get paid back as soon as you got past your hissy fit over my being accepted.”

  “I’m a general in the United States Army, Elizabeth,” he said stiffly. “I’m not prone to ‘hissy fits.’ ”

  “Dad . . .” She moved toward him, but didn’t touch him, for he stood so stiffly, radiating anger, that she was afraid to. “Dad, I want to be a scientist. Not an army wife. Not even an officer. I want to work for a private lab somewhere and do research and live my own life. Not your life, or the life that the son you never had might have lived. I’ve been offered a scholarship; my way will be paid. They’re that impressed with me.” She paused, and then added in a small voice, “Why can’t you be?”

  A long moment passed between them, and she could almost sense him pulling away from her.

  “Do what you want,” he said finally, and turned and walked away without saying anything further.

  It was the last thing he said to her for more than half a decade.

  Bruce Krenzler lay on the floor of his room, stacks of books spread around him, reading. He looked up as his mother entered and dropped down on the floor beside him.