by Alex Irvine
Then, yelling, the remaining bully bolted from the shadows. An enormous, muscular arm reached out after him. He was dragged screaming into the darkness, and a moment later, his body was flung back out into the open, sprawled on the factory floor.
“We’ve got a bogey of some kind,” one of the commandos said. “Please advise.”
“That is the target!” Ross roared. “Use every tranq you’ve got! Do it now!”
Two of the soldiers advanced toward where the giant lurked between enormous liquid tanks. They rapidly fired their tranquilizer darts into the darkness. The projectiles fell to the concrete floor, their needles bent as if they’d hit a wall.
A massive foot stepped out of the shadows and crushed the darts. The beast charged, heaving the bottling tanks out of the way with unbelievable strength. The creature then stomped toward the commandos.
Soldiers whipped out their submachine guns. “Go live!” one screeched. Bottles exploded around the factory, and the bullets ricocheted off the roof. The commandos pulled together into a tight formation, moving through the factory and searching for their target.
Blonsky and his partner ducked behind a bank of machinery. The body of one commando landed nearby, hitting an ON switch. The machinery roared to life, trundling broken bottles down the belt with loud clanks and bright blinking lights.
Between another set of vast tanks, Blonsky saw that the creature was on the move. His partner opened fire, but the tanks prevented a clear shot.
Blonsky spotted a set of stairs to the catwalks above. He raced for it while his partner backed up two other commandos firing at the creature. They could see they were hitting it, but the bullets were bouncing off, ricocheting into machinery and pinging to the ground. The creature didn’t even slow down.
Up on the catwalk, Blonsky peered down as the creature disappeared into a cloud of steam in an open middle area. His partner pulled an antipersonnel grenade off his belt and hurled it into the steam. The soldiers ducked for cover.
The grenade hit something and detonated, rocking the factory. The beast’s massive form was outlined by the explosion, but then steam covered him again.
The soliders waited. No way anyone was walking away from that, Blonsky thought.
Then the pounding of heavy feet shook the floor. A roar and sickening sound of tearing steel echoed through the room. Out of the steam, a gargantuan metal tank lurched forward, like a gigantic sled, pushed by the giant. It clipped the supports of the catwalk under Blonsky and smashed into the soldiers on the ground. The commandos screamed as they got caught in the heaving machinery. It smashed into the far wall of the factory, rupturing in a fountain of green guarana soda.
In the van, the soldiers’ cameras blinked off, the monitors turning black. All Sparr and Ross could hear over the microphones was moaning.
Inside the factory, Blonsky sprinted along the catwalk above the creature, looking for a clean shot. He got one when he reached the corner. His bullets raked across the beast’s shoulder blades.
He was humanoid but the size of three men. Four, maybe. And green. His skin looked like it was stretched to the limit over unbelievable masses of muscle.
Enraged, the creature spun around, swatting the bullets out of the air with his giant hands.
Blonsky reloaded his weapon, his eyes remaining locked on his target. But then he froze in awe as the beast stepped out fully from the shadows.
The creature glared up at him with rage, then snarled and flexed his shoulders, grabbing a forklift and hurling it easily up at Blonsky like he was throwing a baseball.
Blonsky dove to the side as the machinery crashed into the catwalk where he’d just been standing. The catwalk lurched and Blonsky hung on desperately.
The creature grabbed a steel block of machinery off the assembly line and hurled it. This projectile wasn’t aimed at Blonsky. With an earsplitting crash, it smashed a gaping hole through the wall of the factory.
“No!” General Ross shouted. He was not going to come this close and then miss Bruce. He pulled the van’s door open and dashed outside.
“Sir, no!” Sparr shouted.
Ross had just reached the side of the bottling plant when the wall exploded in front of him. He ducked around a corner for cover, then peered around the edge.
The giant stepped out of the hole, his eyes glinting as he looked around. Then he took off running.
Ross watched, his chest heaving, as the beast barreled away into the night.
CHAPTER 8
After the factory, Ross’s team searched Bruce’s apartment. A forensics technician inspected Bruce’s homemade lab while Sparr riffled through his belongings.
“The stuff in the bottles were basic lab chemicals,” Sparr reported to Ross. “He was cooking something, but there’s no trace of it. He zeroed the place. Not a scrap of paper. Like he knew we were coming.”
“He didn’t know,” Ross replied. “He’s just always ready to leave.”
Then Blonsky entered the apartment, carrying Bruce’s backpack. “I knew something was different before I shot the first tranq,” he said. “He had it on him when he bolted.”
“Tell me that’s what I’m hoping it is,” Sparr said. She took the backpack and emptied it, pulling out a laptop. A grainy printout of a picture fell out, and Blonsky picked it up.
“Is that a girlfriend?” Blonsky wondered, examining the photo of Betty Ross. “She helps him maybe?”
General Ross snatched the picture of his daughter out of Blonsky’s hands. “She is no longer a factor,” he said. “We closed that door to him long ago. He’s alone. He wants to be alone.” He tapped the laptop. “But see if he’s been talking to anybody.”
Blonsky stepped between Ross and Sparr. “Forgive me, sir,” he said “But does somebody want to talk about what went down in there? Because he didn’t lose us and he wasn’t alone. We had him and something hit us. Something big.” Getting frustrated when Ross didn’t respond, Blonsky raised his voice. “It threw a forklift!”
Calming himself, he added, “It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, it’s gone,” Ross said.
“If Banner knows what it is,” Blonsky swore, “I’m going to track him down and I’m going to put my foot on his throat and—”
Ross cleared his throat. “That was Banner.”
Blonsky shifted nervously. “You’re going to have to explain that statement, sir.”
“No, I don’t,” Ross replied. “You’ve done a good job. Pack up and get our men on the plane. We’re going home.” Then he strode out of Bruce’s apartment.
Sparr and Blonsky started after the general, dumbstruck.
Bruce woke to birdsong in the forest. He’d fallen asleep on a rock at the base of a waterfall.… Well, “sleep” wasn’t really the right word. Somehow the creature had run out of rage, or energy, here. Then it had just stopped, and Bruce had become himself again. He looked at his hands, his pale and ordinary hands. His only clothing was a shredded pair of pants. He had to hold them up as he walked. Groaning, he followed a muddy road out of the woods until he reached a paved highway cutting through the mountains.
Bruce waved down a truck and leaned in the passenger-side window. “Can you help me?” he asked the driver in Portuguese.
“No habla portugués,” the driver replied.
Spanish? People in Brazil didn’t speak Spanish. Which meant, Bruce realized, that he was no longer in Brazil. But… “¿Dónde estoy?” Bruce asked. Where am I?
“Guatemala,” the driver said.
Guatemala? That was all the way north across Central America from Brazil. Somehow Bruce had traveled more than three thousand miles while he was… while the monster had been loose.
“I’m going to the next town,” the driver added in Spanish. He didn’t ask what Bruce was doing in the middle of the rain forest dressed only in a pair of pants that barely stayed up.
“Will you help me?” Bruce asked.
The driver leaned across and
opened the door. “Get in.”
When Bruce was in the truck, the driver gave him a blanket and helped Bruce wrap it around his shoulders. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home,” Bruce said. The driver nodded and drove on, not asking any more questions. Bruce was grateful for this simple act of kindness.
Bruce got across the border from Guatemala into Mexico, and slumped exhausted in the main market of a small town in Chiapas. He had to rest. A boy put a few coins into his hand, thinking he was a beggar.
The coins didn’t amount to much, but they were enough that he could get a shirt and a pair of pants at a nearby stall. The vendor gave him things in his size, but Bruce looked at the pants, thinking about what he would do if the Hulking Monster came back. He’d need something… “¿Tienes más… stretchy?” he asked, and the vendor smiled at his bad Spanish. But she found him a large, stretchy pair of pants. They were comically big on him, but they might hold together during a transformation.
Dressed again, Bruce felt better. He got something to eat, and then he kept going.
Blonsky walked with General Ross back into the command center at the Everglades base. “I’ve run into bad situations on crap missions before,” he said. “I’ve seen good men go down purely because someone didn’t let us know what we were walking into. I’ve moved on to the next one because that’s what we do, right? I mean, that’s the job. But this?” He stopped walking, and General Ross did, too. “This is a whole new level of weird,” Blonsky said. “I don’t feel inclined to step away from it. So if you’re taking another crack at him, I want in.”
He wanted to get back at Bruce for what had happened in the factory, but Blonsky also wanted more. He’d seen the creature’s unthinkable power… and he wanted that, too.
“And with respect,” he went on, “you should be looking for a team that’s prepped and ready to fight. Because if that thing shows up again? You’re going to have a lot of professional tough guys running for their mamas.”
Blonsky could see Ross thinking, but all Ross did was dismiss him. It wasn’t until a few days later that Ross called him in, and Blonsky got a whole new understanding of what they were up against.
“Let me emphasize that what I’m about to share with you is tremendously sensitive, both to me personally and to the army,” Ross said as he and Blonsky walked through a hanger. It was filled with helicopters and armored vehicles. “You’re aware that we’ve got an infantry weapons development program. Well, in World War Two, they initiated a subprogram for biotech force enhancement.”
“Yeah, the Super-Soldier program,” Blonsky said. He’d heard of it.
“Yes,” Ross said. “An oversimplification, but yes. And I dusted it off, got them doing serious work again. Bold work. Across the hall, they were trying to arm you better.… We were trying to make you better.”
“Banner’s work was very early phase. It wasn’t even weapons application. He thought he was working on radiation resistance.” Ross smirked. “I would never have told him what the project really was. But he was so sure of what he was onto that he tested it on himself. And something went very wrong.” His smirk changed to a real smile, the kind of smile someone got when they had a secret. “Or it went very right.”
Ross started to get down to business now that he’d begun to let Blonsky in on the secrets of the Super-Soldier project. “As far as I’m concerned, that man’s whole body is the property of the US Army.”
“You said he wasn’t working on weapons, right?” Blonsky asked.
“No.”
“But you were, weren’t you? You were trying other things.”
Ross saw that Blonsky was starting to put two and two together. Good, he thought. Blonsky might be just what he was looking for. “One serum we developed,” he said, “was very promising.”
“So why did he run?” Blonsky asked.
Ross stood. “He’s a scientist. He is not one of us. Blonsky, how old are you? Forty-five?”
Blonsky bristled but tried not to show it. “Thirty-nine,” he said.
“It takes a toll, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“So get out of the trenches. You should be a colonel by now, with your record.”
“No, I’m a fighter,” Blonsky said. “I’ll be one for as long as I can. You know, if I could take what I know now and put it in the body I had ten years ago, that would be someone I wouldn’t want to fight.”
Perfect, General Ross thought. He wants it. “I could probably arrange something like that,” he said.
Recruiting was easy when you identified the right man for the job, he thought.
CHAPTER 9
Bruce headed toward the US border using any means of transportation he could find. He rode in the backs of trucks with migrant workers; climbed through hilly, rugged terrain; and hitchhiked whenever he could. When he couldn’t find a ride, he grabbed some sleep—mostly outdoors or in the doorways of locked stores in small towns. He slept badly, plagued by nightmares of what had happened in the factory, but at least he was under the radar. In this way, he stayed one step ahead of Thunderbolt Ross… and he also stayed away from people as much as he could, fearing that the monster would get out again.
He’d started thinking of it as the Hulk. It was a separate thing from him, or at least he wanted it to be. If he gave it a name, that helped him keep it apart from the real Bruce Banner in his mind.
It took a long time for Bruce to travel through Central America and Mexico, but he finally reached the border of Texas. He crossed at night with a family of immigrants, helping the kids cross the rocky desert.
Then he made his way toward the East Coast, keeping to the smaller highways.
CHAPTER 10
Seventeen days after the incident in the Racinho Favela bottling plant, Bruce arrived at Culver University. After so long out of the country, a commonplace sight like a college campus looked surprisingly foreign to him.
He strode over to a big stone building—the Maynard Hall of Physical Sciences—and watched the students and faculty enter and exit the hall. During a quiet moment, Bruce climbed up the stairs and peered through the entrance’s window.
There was a checkpoint with a metal detector and a guard. Bruce knew he shouldn’t be heading that way at all.
On the directory board, he saw a listing for Cellular Biology—Dr. Elizabeth Ross. Just seeing her name gave him chills, and Bruce hurried away.
He didn’t go far. He sat on a bench, waiting.
Finally two women walked out of the building.
Bruce froze as he got his first look at Betty Ross in years. She was as beautiful as he remembered, although her hair was longer and bangs covered her forehead.
He watched as Betty got coffee with her friend from a cart. The women sat at a small table in the sunshine, then said good-bye after their break was over.
Bruce had an overwhelming urge to run to her, but before he could move, a man approached her with a smile. Betty smiled back, and they embraced. Bruce felt like he’d been punched in the stomach as they linked arms and walked away together.
She’d moved on. She’d forgotten him. Maybe she even thought he was dead.
Bruce walked to the edge of campus and spent the rest of the day wandering the city thinking of what he could do next. After nightfall, hungry and alone, he had an idea. He headed for one of his favorite off-campus hangouts, Stanley’s Pizza. Stan, a thickset man in his early sixties, was an old friend. Just as Stan flipped over the sign on the door to CLOSED, Bruce knocked. Stan jumped like he’d seen a ghost and then opened the door.
The two old friends settled down to catch up at a table in a private back room. Stan brought pasta with his special sauce, and Bruce scarfed it down. He hadn’t been eating much since he left Brazil.
“There’ve been so many rumors—” Stan started.
Bruce smiled. “Stan, I give you my word,” he said, “whatever you’ve heard about me isn’t true.”
Stan patted Bruce
’s leg. “Oh, I know it. I always knew it. But you know how I felt about you two… Have you talked to—”
“No,” Bruce replied, ducking his head sadly. “She doesn’t know I’m here. She’s with somebody?”
“His name’s Leonard,” Stan supplied. “He’s a head shrink. They say one of the best. But a really nice guy. Reminds me of you a little… Sorry.” Stan clapped his hands once, changing the subject. “Bruce, what can I do to help you?”
“I could use a place to stay for a few nights,” Bruce said.
Stan opened his arms wide. “You can have the spare room upstairs.”
“That’d be so great,” Bruce said. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d slept in a bed. “And there is, um… there is one other thing.”
The next evening, Bruce set off on a bicycle, dressed in a Stanley’s Pizza Parlor uniform, which included a T-shirt, hat, and sunglasses. After a few stops to deliver pizzas, he biked over to Maynard Hall and carried two pizzas up to the muscular guard at the lobby’s security desk.
“Hey, pal, I got a delivery on five,” Bruce told the guard.
The guard looked confused. “I don’t think there’s anybody up there.”
Bruce let out a groan. “Oh man, I’m gonna be in so much trouble if I don’t collect. You gotta let me try.”
The guard didn’t look impressed. “Tell you what,” Bruce said. “I got an extra medium. Take it on the house.”
The guard looked at the free pizza and thought about it, but just for a second. Then he nodded toward the elevators, letting Bruce through the checkpoint.
“You are the man,” Bruce said, and got moving.
As he headed down the hallway toward his old lab, Bruce suddenly started to feel nervous. This was the place where the experiment had ruined his life. But maybe that could change. Maybe now it could be where he put his life back on track.
The setup had changed in the last five years. Bruce could see through the glass walls around the lab, that instead of physics equipment, it now held computer terminals, with large supercomputer arrays along the walls. A graduate student sat at a terminal, staring with bleary eyes.
