by Len Wein
For a moment, the man-monster paused, glancing around in confusion at the endless sprawl of cypress, mangrove, cocoa-plum, and sea-grape trees. Off in the distance, brilliant spikes of orchids formed crude yet beautiful hanging gardens in the hammocks.
“What is Hulk doing in this place of mud and water? What has happened to the puny humans Hulk was fighting?”
In characteristic confusion, the green Goliath scratched his shaggy head. “Hulk does not know. Hulk never knows. But maybe now Hulk will finally be left in peace.”
Aimlessly, the man-brute began to lumber through the mossy bog, staring in bemusement at the small creatures who fled in terror as he approached. For a time, he ambled on in silence, then all at once, he paused, his lantern jaw slack in amazement. On a mossy log before him perched a radiant monarch butterfly, unmoving, seemingly unafraid of this awesome intruder.
Enchanted by this rare display of beauty, the Hulk reached out a tentative hand to touch the fragile creature, then paused. Something inside him, some primitive animal instinct, suddenly sensed danger.
A snarl on his lips, the man-brute whirled, to find a quartet of crocodiles slithering silently toward him. “Bah, it is only lizards,” said the Hulk with disdain. “Go away, lizards. Stop following Hulk. Hulk does not want you.”
But the hungry reptiles definitely wanted him.
Almost before the man-monster could react, the crocs were upon him, their razored jaws clamping tightly about his arms and legs. Roaring in mindless fury, the Hulk grappled with his new tormentors, churning the brackish waters around them into a foaming froth.
The sound of the savage struggle brought the inevitable watchers to the water’s edge; mostly squirrels, raccoons, and otters drawn by a kind of primal curiosity. But there was one creature summoned near by its bizarre empathic nature. The creature was somewhat humanoid in shape, standing almost eight feet tall, though hideously hunchbacked. It was covered entirely by moss and muck and dripping strands of rotting saw grass, and its “face” was framed by two carrotlike protuberances, and lit by two unblinking crimson eyes. A third carrotlike protuberance formed the creature’s nose. Once, in another life, a seeming eternity ago, the creature had been a human scientist named Ted Sallis, the inventor of the experimental serum that had so hideously transformed him, but now this shambling, muck-encrusted mockery of life was nothing more than a—Man-Thing!
But even as the Man-Thing stood silently watching, still another spectator lolled lazily in the moss-draped branches above the battle, its slitted eyes casually studying the conflict raging below, biding its time, waiting with characteristic patience . . .
Until the moment was right to strike!
“Huh? Now snake attacks Hulk too. Tries to strangle Hulk. But Hulk will—”
At that instant, an emerald foot slipped on the slimy bottom mud, and the rest of the jade giant’s protest was lost beneath the swirling waters, along with the green Goliath himself.
For several interminable seconds, the Man-Thing’s unblinking orbs gazed at the churning, bubbling mire, then he shambled forward. For, although he could not think as such, the murk-dweller could somehow sense that this strange newcomer to the swamp would perish without his help.
But, for once, it seemed the Man-Thing’s unnatural instincts had failed him. For an awesomely powerful green-skinned figure suddenly erupted from the murky morass—alone.
Still snarling, the Hulk reached down into the muddy water, and lifted a writhing reptilian bundle high over his head. In some incomprehensible manner, he had actually tangled the crocodiles and the yards-long constrictor into a crude ball. Then, with less effort than it would take a normal man to toss away a wadded ball of paper, the Hulk hurled the struggling mass high out over the sprawl of mangrove trees, and completely out of sight.
Then, with almost comic deliberation, the man-brute dusted off his massive hands, and snarled. “There! Next time, puny lizards will think twice before they bother Hulk. Hulk wants to be left alone—and Hulk means it!”
With a dispassionate eye, the Man-Thing watched as the Hulk lumbered away in triumph, then the slimy swamp beast turned and likewise shambled away—in the opposite direction.
The cool night breeze had finally dried the dripping Hulk when, at last, he ceased his relentless lumbering. His rage finally abated now, he paused, looking around, to find himself in a quiet clearing, the earth firm beneath his feet for the first time in hours.
“It is . . . quiet here,” the Hulk said softly, as if afraid of disturbing what he had found, “and Hulk is . . . tired.”
Glancing around, the man-brute noticed a fallen log at the very edge of the clearing, moss growing thick and soft along one side. “Hulk is tired . . . and Hulk will sleep.”
Typically, the emerald behemoth had already forgotten his towering rage of several hours earlier. Like an animal, he pressed himself flat against the grassy sward, then curled up with his head against the fallen log, using it much like a pillow.
Moments later, the glade was filled with the unusual sound of raucous snoring—a sound that, slowly, inevitably, grew softer, as the terrible anger that drove the Hulk faded into oblivion. And, as his pounding pulse rate began to slow down, a remarkable change came over the incredible Hulk. Within seconds, the monster’s massively thick body began to dwindle in size, growing smaller, softer, until it became the thin frail body of a man.
And Doctor Robert Bruce Banner slept the sleep of the deservedly exhausted, unaware that he was no longer alone in his swampy sanctuary.
Dawn broke through the tangled mangroves in splintered columns of rosy light, a particularly energetic beam striking the slumbering Bruce Banner squarely in the eyes. Banner awoke with a start, his eyes snapping open instantly. And the huddled figure who stood watching him from behind a sheltering tree bole flinched visibly at the sudden movement.
“Wh-where am I?” Banner asked, staring around at his swampy surroundings in customary confusion. There was one thing certain about sharing one’s life with the incredible Hulk; it made for an overabundance of rude awakenings. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the backs of his hands. Banner rose to his feet, trying to make some sense out of the jumbled fragments of memory he still shared with his emerald alter ego.
“Let’s see,” said Banner, as he counted on his fingers. “I remember having dinner at an old diner in the town of Belle Glade, Florida, and not enjoying the meal very much. Then I remember two big goons in black-leather jackets, asking me for a light. And then—oh, God, and then! They shouldn’t have tried to mug me, shouldn’t have made me angry, shouldn’t have made me . . . change. I can’t remember what the Hulk did to them, but I do vaguely remember what he did to that town. He reduced it to so much—”
Snap!
“Eh? That sound . . . like something stepping on a twig. I’m not alone here. Someone—or something—has been watching me from the shadows. I can almost feel it.”
Cautiously, Banner moved across the clearing in the direction of the sound—and his unknown observer broke from cover in mindless panic. Banner gaped at the fleeing figure in astonishment.
“Lord, it looks like . . . a man,” Banner thought. Then he shouted, “Hey, wait, fella! Don’t run away! There’s nothing to be afraid of! I want to talk to you!” But the figure ran on through the undergrowth, unheeding.
“Blast it, mister, come back here.” Banner hollered, as he took off in pursuit. “I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to ask you a few questions!
“Do you hear me?” roared Banner, as he closed the gap between them. “Either you stop now—or I’m going to have to stop you!”
And with that, Banner hurled himself across the narrowing gap between himself and his quarry, tackling him about the ankles, bringing him down.
“Now why don’t we talk about this like civilized—huh?” Banner stood over his fallen prey in disbelief, not quite certain what to say next. Several interminable seconds passed as the frail nuclear physicist stared down at th
e figure sprawled before him. The figure was human—that much at least was certain—and it was a man. It was also quite bald, its softly sculpted body entirely devoid of any hair. And its complexion bore a sickly gray pallor. The man was clad only in a clumsy loincloth of saw grass and leaves. Even though Banner himself only wore a pair of tattered purple trousers, he suddenly felt somehow overdressed. But the most unnerving thing about the fallen figure was the sound it was making; a faint whimper, like the cry of a wounded animal.
Banner saw the primitive fear mirrored in the bald man’s eyes, and approached him, cautiously, softly. “Hey, I’m sorry, fella. I didn’t mean to get violent. Believe me, that’s very unlike me,” Banner crooned gently. “Who are you? What are you doing way out here alone? Can you speak English?”
But again, the bald man did not answer, though the uncertainty, the horror, that burned behind his eyes spoke more eloquently than mere words ever could.
“C’mon, fella, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Banner said, putting his hand to his chest in a self-effacing gesture. “Look at me. I’m just like you. I don’t want to frighten you, or hurt you. I just want to be your . . . friend.”
Smiling tentatively, Banner reached out to the figure whimpering before him. “Here. Give me your hand. Let me help you up,” Banner offered. “It’s the least I can do after knocking you down.”
At first, the bald man was hesitant, but something in Banner’s soothing tone calmed him. At last, he reached out his pallid gray hand.
“That’s the way, buddy,” Banner said, as he put his arm around the bald man’s cold shoulders, and led him back to the clearing. “Let’s find ourselves a place to sit down. You and I have a lot to talk over.”
As the bald man followed his lead, Banner thought, “Poor guy, must be an escapee from some local asylum. He doesn’t stand a chance of surviving out here much longer by himself. And there’s something about him, a kind of mindless innocence, that reminds me of the Hulk. I can’t just abandon him here. I guess I owe the child in my emerald alter ego that much at least—not to mention what I owe to myself.”
An hour of patient attempted conversation in the clearing, sitting on the mossy log that shortly before had been the Hulk’s pillow, yielded nothing. As near as Banner could ascertain, the bald man was utterly mute, and intelligent on only the most primitive, simple level. “There’s nothing I can do for him—or me—except to find us a way out of this mucky mess,” Banner muttered softly at last.
“Come on, pal,” he said, turning to his bald companion, and urging him to his feet. “We’ve got miles to go before we sleep.”
With the cool dispassion of the scientist that he was, Bruce Banner studied the position of the mid-morning sun. “We’d better head north,” he told his companion, knowing full well he was not understood. “From what I remember about the geography of the Florida Everglades, that’s our best shot at hitting civilization of a sort.”
“Assuming, of course, we manage to make it that far alive,” he added mentally. Then he cursed himself for his pessimism.
As they walked, Banner noticed his companion stealing furtive glances to either side of their path, his eyes darting back and forth like the moist eyes of a frightened squirrel. Obviously, the bald man was searching for someone. “Maybe his warders,” thought Banner, without really thinking.
Smiling, the thin physicist patted his companion gently on the back. “Look, I don’t know who you think is after you, pal, but I think you can probably stop worrying about them. Take a good look around you. We’re smack in the middle of 4,000 square miles of smelly swamp. There’s nobody else alive out here for miles in every direction except you and—”
“There be our prize, me buckos. Take ’im!”
The voice was cold, harsh, and totally unexpected. But the shocking voice was nothing compared to the shocking visage of its owner. The speaker appeared to be a pirate. That’s right, a pirate—a character straight out of the seventeenth century, clad in pegged pants, brocaded waistcoat, and silk shirt open to the waist. Beneath a broad-brimmed upturned captain’s hat, his black hair was clumsily braided, and bound in rings of gold. In his hand, he carried a broad cutlass that gleamed in the hazy sunlight.
And worse, he stood at the head of an entire pirate crew, each one uglier and more foul tempered than the next, and all brandishing a most impressive array of deadly cutlery.
“Sweet mother of mercy,” whispered Banner, who stood transfixed, refusing to believe what he was seeing, firmly convinced the heat and the humidity had begun to affect his mind. His bald companion clung to Banner like a child, pleading for his protection.
“Stand aside, mate,” the captain of the crew shouted to Banner. “ ’Tis ol’ Baldie we come fer. We have no truck with ye.”
With uncustomary courage, Banner stood his ground. “Look, I don’t know what circus you characters escaped from, but I’m not going to stand by and let you take anyone—least of all my talkative friend.”
“Weigh yer next words carefully, mate,” warned the pirate captain. “I tell ye we have no squabble with ye, but we mean to have ol’ Baldie—even if it’s over yer corpse!”
As the bald man cowered back against the bole of a broad mangrove, Banner did his best to look threatening. “I’m only going to tell you this once, Blackbeard,” he said, “but if you pick a fight with me, you’re letting yourself in for a lot more than any of you can handle.”
“Am I now?” asked the pirate captain, as he stepped forward suddenly. “Well, Captain Horatio Skragg ain’t never met the man he couldn’t take, with the edge of his blade, or the back of his good right hand.” And with a single savage backhand blow, he sent Banner sprawling.
Lying awkwardly on the sward, Banner wiped his bleeding mouth with the back of one hand. “Okay, mister, I warned you,” he snarled under his breath. “I’ve taken a lot of bruises in my time and, frankly, I’m sick of it. Nobody is going to knock me down anymore—without getting flattened in return!”
Even as he finished speaking, Banner lunged forward, driving himself into Captain Skragg’s midriff, sending the buccaneer stumbling back into the thick of his fellows.
“All right, ye scurvy scut, I gave ye yer chance,” Skragg screamed at the defiant Banner. “At ’im, lads! Let daylight through him!”
Like a pack of howling wolves, the bloodthirsty pirates swarmed over the waiting Bruce Banner, and in an instant, the slender scientist was lost beneath the press of snarling bodies. The sudden, violent exertion as Banner struggled to save his life had the usual result.
Where once Robert Bruce Banner lay smothered beneath a mound of struggling flesh, now a monstrous green-skinned Goliath rose to his feet, shrugging off the little men who clung to him like the proverbial duck sheds rain.
“Go away, puny humans,” roared the man-brute angrily. “Hulk does not know what Hulk is doing back in swamp, but Hulk did not come here to be attacked by more little men. Leave Hulk alone, puny humans—or Hulk will make you sorry!”
But even as the jade-hued giant ranted, two of the pirate crew stole behind him. Unseen by the Hulk, they grabbed the terrified bald man, and started to carry him off; and then, at last, the bald man spoke.
Or, rather, screamed.
The bald man’s howling resounded across the clearing, and a twisted fragment of memory somewhere deep within the incredible Hulk’s feeble mind responded to the urgent cry.
“No!” roared the brute, as he leaped forward, the sheer ferocity of his lunge causing the two startled pirates to drop their terrified burden. And before they could move, the Hulk grabbed the two hapless seamen, clutching their heads in his oversized hands like a child would hold two apples.
“Hulk will not let puny humans take quiet man away! Quiet man is Hulk’s friend! And Hulk needs all the friends Hulk can get!” Thus saying, the green Goliath slammed the two struggling pirates together, their heads making a sickening hollow sound as they slumped into unconsciousness.
“Now Hulk an
d quiet man are leaving here,” snarled the monster as he helped the bald mute to his feet, “and Hulk will smash anyone who—huh?”
The clangor of tempered steel interrupted the man-brute’s diatribe, as two other pirates swung their cutlasses at his back, only to watch them shatter against his almost-impenetrable flesh. “Rum an’ thunder,” muttered one of the buccaneers. “This big green bilge rat ain’t nothin’ human!”
The Hulk did not deign to reply, save to slap the two cutthroats across the clearing with the back of one monstrous hand. The remaining pirates charged as one, as the Hulk braced for their attack. “C’mon, me hearties,” shouted Captain Skragg. “That lizard-livered lubber can’t take us all! This time we’ll cut ’im to ribbons!”
“Hulk warned little men, but they would not listen! Stupid humans never listen—and they always regret it!” With savage fury, the monster slammed his awesome fist into the ground before him, creating a shock wave that spread across the clearing, toppling the attacking pirates like tenpins, the impossible vibrations hurling several of them straight up into the air.
“You!” snarled the Hulk at the airborne Horatio Skragg, as he cocked back that monstrous emerald fist. “You are the one who told the others to attack Hulk, so you are the one Hulk will—”
“Stop, Hulk! The battle is over!”
At the sound of this new voice behind him, the Hulk turned, allowing his intended victim to strike the ground once more, battered but otherwise intact. “Who—?” the man-brute asked in confusion.
“Do not strain your feeble brain trying to recognize me, Hulk. For, though I know more about you than is imaginable, we have never met. Those you have been fighting here belong to me, as all things worth possessing belong to—the Collector!”
As the Hulk stood snarling, an ancient yet ageless figure stepped into the clearing. An ordinary-seeming man, his face was lined and patterned with age, yet his walk was brisk with youth. Silvery hair swept neatly back, he could have passed for a typical executive, had this been Wall Street and had he been dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit. But this was the heart of the Everglades, and instead he wore a curious cloak and rust-brown tunic that gave no hint of his natural time or place.
