by Len Wein
She paid him no mind. She walked to the sidewalk and joined the nocturnal procession.
Stopping on the damp lawn, he saw at least twenty people now, coming along all the side streets, heading for the town square. They all moved in that same shambling way, eyes fixed straight ahead. He drew in another deep breath before loping out to the sidewalk and trailing Linda.
The girl was nearly half a block ahead of him now, making up one of the file of pedestrians.
“Linda, what’s wrong here? Can’t you hear me when—”
Pam!
He hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on behind him. Intent on Linda, he’d allowed someone to sneak up on him.
Rick was never sure what he had been hit with. Whatever it was it sent him stumbling into the gutter.
A second smashing blow over the head stretched him out in the street. The moonlight disappeared. The night closed in around him.
Seven
The driverless car came rolling down the early morning street. It moved faster and faster toward the five small children who were crossing the unguarded intersection on their way to the small country school.
The six-year-old blonde girl saw it first. She cried out and dropped the handful of wildflowers she’d been bringing to her teacher. The other four turned to look, but were unable to move. They were hypnotized by the ton of bright painted metal which was rushing toward them.
Then the ground began to shake. A huge green shape shot out of the wooded area next to the roadway.
Thrunp!
The Hulk planted himself between the car and the kids. The runaway vehicle smacked to a dead stop against his massive body and accordioned into a mangled pile of ruined auto parts and twisted metal.
The man-brute grunted once, softly, as he effortlessly picked up the shattered car and deposited it almost disdainfully against the curb. Then, tentatively, he lumbered over to the cluster of stunned and silent children.
For a moment they stared at one another, the monster and the youngsters, the Hulk’s heavy emerald head cocked to one side in obvious fascination. Then, his decision made, the Hulk swept the startled children to the sidewalk with short, shooing motions of his awesomely powerful hands.
Four of the children scurried instantly, dashing to the opposite sidewalk. There they huddled, watching the man-brute cautiously, their eyes wide.
The little blonde girl didn’t budge. She stood crying, staring at the trampled bouquet lying at her feet. “All my flowers got wrecked.”
The Hulk studied the tiny face, the tears rolling slowly across the freckled cheeks. Finally, he placed one massive hand, as gently as he could, on her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” he grumbled softly.
“How’d you make the car get smashed like that?” she asked, gazing up at him, unafraid.
“Hulk is strong.”
“But what are you doing here? You don’t go to school with us.”
“Hulk slept in woods.” He gestured. “Then Hulk heard car, heard you scream. Hulk came to help.”
“You sure ran awful fast. I bet you can run faster than Maggie Thompson, even.”
“Maggie . . . Thompson?”
“Yeah. She’s in the third grade and she thinks she’s so fast.”
“Hulk is fast, too.”
A car came churning up the road, its angry horn shattering the morning stillness.
The Hulk gave the little girl a careful nudge. “You go to school now.”
“My name is Emily. Is yours just Hulk?”
“Just . . . Hulk.” The jade-hued giant escorted her across the street.
The four other children backed away from each thudding step the Hulk took toward them.
Brakes squealed. “What in blazes is going on here?”
The car stopped short in the middle of the road, and a chubby man with rimless spectacles bounded out. “That car is damned well smashed to pieces, and . . . good God!”
Obviously, the fat man saw the Hulk more clearly now.
“The big green man broke the car so it wouldn’t hurt us, Mr. Marcus,” a little red-haired boy called out to the man in the street.
“Go on, kids,” ordered Mr. Marcus, who ran the town’s only movie theater. “Run inside now. Then tell your teacher to call the police.”
The Hulk glared. “You would call more puny humans to bother Hulk, little man?”
Mr. Marcus swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple protrude. “You just leave these kids alone, you monster!” he ordered nervously as he backed toward his car.
Snarling, the Hulk charged the idling machine. “You just leave Hulk alone, little man—or Hulk will smash!”
Kasmack!
He caved in most of the hood of Mr. Marcus’s three-month-old station wagon before loping away into the woods.
The green phone buzzed.
With a throaty chuckle, General Thunderbolt Ross snatched up the receiver and clamped it to his ear. “What?”
“We have some good news, sir.”
“So tell me already.”
“The Hulk was spotted some fifteen minutes ago in the town of Harlansville, Missouri. Apparently, he was attacking a defenseless group of schoolchildren who—”
“The Hulk doesn’t attack little kids,” said Thunderbolt Ross. “Your witnesses are cockeyed. I’d wager all they really saw was an ordinary pervert.”
“Pervert or not, sir, this fellow was seven feet tall and bright green.”
The general leaned back in his swivel chair, tugging at his moustache. “Yeah, that’s our boy,” he said. “Okay, we’ll get him this time.” He hung up the green phone. Then he picked up a red one and punched out some numbers.
“Field Team,” came the crisp answer after only one ring.
“They’ve located the Hulk in a town called Harlansville, Missouri, wherever the heck that is,” Ross barked into the phone. “Bring him in . . . use Operation Peapod.”
“Operation Peapod? Are you certain—”
“You heard me! Now, get hustling!” He pronged the phone, then steepled his fingers and chuckled. “We’ve got him now! This time we’ve finally got him!”
Eight
The sunlight splashed against his face. Moaning, Rick rolled over in bed.
“In bed?”
He sat up suddenly, causing another, and more intense, moan. His head throbbed, and his stomach felt as though it were filled with bowling balls and broken glass. Sitting up so rapidly had made him dizzy, as well.
Swallowing, planting his hands palms down on either side of himself, Rick waited out the spell of wooziness.
He was, he noticed, dressed only in his undershorts. That was the way he usually slept, and so waking up that way shouldn’t have been so unsettling.
Except that last night Rick had followed a procession of the good citizens of Crater Falls along the midnight streets of the town. And one of those good folks had bopped him over the head.
Gingerly, he reached up and felt at the back of his head. “Ow,” he remarked, locating a substantial bump. A very real bump.
“Obviously,” he reasoned, “they didn’t want me to follow them last night.”
He put his bare feet on the floor and gritted his teeth against the wave of nausea that this latest movement visited upon him. Someone, very considerately, had hung his clothes over the room’s lone chair. Did a neater job than he usually managed to do.
“Now, where the hell was that parade of zombies headed?” Cautiously, treating his body like an extremely delicate machine, Rick stood up and managed to get himself dressed. “Wherever it was, they didn’t want strangers horning in.”
He moved to the window and stood for several minutes watching the street below. Linda was in on it, too, pretty homespun Linda. That really bothered him. They beat him up, hauled him up here, and dumped him. And she never lifted a finger.
“No, but she couldn’t,” he reminded himself. “Sure, it was Linda I saw marching away from here last night, except I’m damned certain she’d been
drugged or something.”
Why? That’s what didn’t make any sense. Everybody had looked just as mindless and zombie-like as Linda. So who was doping the people on such a scale? And how? By dumping drugs in the town water supply? By sending out brain-control messages over the local radio station?
“However they’re doing it, and whoever’s doing it . . . we’re talking about a big operation.” Rick turned away from the window and the bright street. “For all I know, the whole damned population of Crater Falls goes trucking down Main Street at night.”
What exactly was going on in this nice little town?
Linda looked pretty; Slim Reisberson looked tired.
“Guess I overslept,” said Rick as he settled into his place at the kitchen table.
“Well, since it’s your first day on the job, I’m going to let you get away with it.” Linda smiled, perfectly naturally. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that she knew what had happened to him last night.
“You know,” remarked Slim, “it’s getting so even my morning coffee don’t perk me up. I feel lazier than the millionaire dog that hired the midget to scratch his fleas.”
Rick watched the mechanic while helping himself to cereal and milk. “From the look of you, Slim, I’d guess you were out on the town last night. Got all the telltale signs.”
“Nope, I was in the sack by ten last night and I slept right on till that darned alarm ripped into me this morning.” He yawned before pouring himself a second cup of coffee.
Sprinkling substitute sugar on his breakfast food, Rick said, “Maybe you ought to see a doctor.” He was convinced Slim thought he was telling the truth. Yet, Rick was certain the man had been part of that ghostly march last night.
“Aw, I been to Doc Hedley, and all he says is I’m working too hard,” Slim informed him. “Give me some tonic to take, which turns out to be about ninety percent alcohol. Stuff cheers me up, but it don’t take my tiredness away for long.”
Rick ate his cereal in silence for a moment. Then, turning to Linda, he said, “I’d like to call on Dr. Stern before I start my chores this—”
“Oh, Rick!” She was staring at him, rising up in her chair. “I just noticed your poor head. It’s all caked with blood. Why didn’t you say something? What on earth happened?”
A very good performance, or did she really have no idea how his injury had come about?
“Must be the new environment,” he lied. “I rolled out of bed last night and banged my head against the chair leg.”
“I’m so sorry. You’d better let me clean that off and put something on it.”
“Take her up on the offer,” advised Slim, leaving the table. “You go to Doc Hedley and he’ll soak you for five bucks. Well, sir, believe I’ll drag on down to the garage. Bye, folks.”
When Slim was gone, the girl came around behind Rick’s chair. “That’s a nasty looking bump, Rick. You should have come to me as soon as it happened.”
“Happened in the middle of the night. I wasn’t too wide awake, Linda. I just crawled back into bed,” he said, turning so he could study her face. “Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted to wake you up.”
“That’s ridiculous. If anything like this happens again, you come right down to me.”
“Isn’t likely anything like this’ll happen again.”
“I sure hope not.” After she had finished tending to his wound, Linda sat down and poured herself fresh coffee.
“So, can you spare me for an hour or so?” Rick asked. “I know it’s not a terrific way to start a new job, except I’d really like to catch Dr. Stern this morning if he’s back.”
“He isn’t,” said the girl. “I already tried to phone him.”
“He’s been gone longer than usual, hasn’t he?”
Nodding, Linda said, “I am sort of worried about him. Not that much can happen to him in Crater Falls, I suppose. Still, he may have had an accident out in the woods.”
Pushing his half-full cereal bowl aside, Rick rested his elbows on the table. “Maybe I ought to go hunting for him.”
“I don’t know, Rick, there are several square miles of countryside you’d have to search, and you don’t really know this area well at all.”
“I’m pretty good at finding things,” he told her. “When you’ve been on the road as long as I have, you get used to new places pretty fast.”
She said, “Tell you what, we’ll make an expedition of it. I’ll come with you.”
“Hey, that’ll be fine. Can you spare the time?”
“I think maybe I’d better,” the frowning girl replied.
Nine
He came thumping down the grassy hillside, out of the shadow-striped forest and into the glare of the midday sun.
“Hulk has walked a long time,” he muttered.
The bright meadowland stretched all around him for miles, dotted here and there with mounds of rocks and boulders. There was no sign of life; he was for the moment the only person in the world.
The green giant trudged on. He saw rocky hills on the horizon, hills where he should be able to hide until everybody stopped looking for him.
“Always they look for Hulk,” he reminded himself. “They never stop.”
A flock of birds wheeled up out of the woods behind him and scattered across the clear blue sky.
“Bah! More trouble!” In glancing after the retreating birds, he’d seen something else.
Far off, a half-dozen dots bobbed in the sky, blurring, then coming into focus and blurring again.
“Planes! Stupid people try to hurt Hulk!”
The emerald colossus spun on one huge heel and started bounding back up toward the shelter of the wooded hillside he’d recently left.
For a few seconds, the Hulk thought the woods were coming to meet him. Trees were rising up along with brush and chunks of mossy ground. It was all tumbling down the hillside at him.
Then came the two military tanks, huge growling machines bumping clear of the forest, their mounted cannons pointing at the Hulk like accusing fingers.
“Go away!” he warned. “Or Hulk will smash!”
The tanks kept rumbling toward him. With a chesty roar, the green giant ran to the nearest pile of boulders. He hefted up one of the largest, one almost as large as himself, and sent it hurtling through the air.
Smang!
The boulder dropped down on the tank, snapping its cannon in half and producing a massive dent in its body. The surviving tank began following a zigzag course, keeping the cannon trained on the Hulk.
He, in the meantime, had selected another formidable boulder. He lifted it as though it weighed no more than a beachball and sent it whirring into the tank.
Kasmash!
The hillside shook and the high grass swayed as the green giant ran down and away from the two disabled tanks.
“Hulk warned you!”
He checked the sky. The helicopters were much nearer, although they didn’t appear to be moving toward him as rapidly as they might have.
Down below him he spotted dust clouds rising far to his left. A line of Jeeps and military transport trucks was grinding along the country road.
“More puny humans try to hurt Hulk!”
He became aware now of yet another sound—a distant whine cutting across the sky.
Three jet fighters were rocketing into view. The Hulk didn’t realize it, but Operation Peapod was in full swing.
“Attention, Hulk! Attention!”
Down on the narrow road a Jeep had halted and a portly man with a red-flushed face and a bullhorn was addressing the Hulk from the bonnet of the machine.
“We have this entire area cordoned off! You will not be able to escape!”
“Hulk always escapes!” he roared. Snatching up first one boulder and then another, he started them cascading down across the meadow.
“We are giving you a chance to surrender peacefully. Otherwise, we’ll take whatever measures . . . what the hell!”
Kaslam!
The three jets were nearly overhead. Missiles belched out of their undersides, zooming down at the Hulk. They exploded all around him, and suddenly he was engulfed in a thick bluish gas.
It was unlike any gas they’d tried on him before. This stuff made the massive green man feel suddenly weak and strange.
“No! Hulk will fight puny gas!”
He began flapping his arms, flapping faster and faster, making the green flesh of his broad chest bead with sweat. He achieved the required windmill effect and the debilitating gas began to disperse, to drift away across the slanting meadow.
The jets banked and made another pass at him. Again their rocket mounts went to work, and more missiles came hurtling down.
Two of the three projectiles had a small green circle stenciled on their sides, and one of these landed a few feet from the green giant. The regular missile had exploded and new gas was already thick around him. Then, out of the rocket with the green circle, a bubble began to grow.
The missile hissed; the bubble grew and enlarged and rolled over the Hulk. In a moment he was inside it, like a gum-machine prize trapped in plastic. He was inside the huge bubble with enough gas to knock him out.
“Bah! Puny humans cannot trap Hulk! Hulk will smash your puny bubble!”
But the bubble was composed of an incredibly tough synthetic. Once its target was caught inside it, the substance hardened. And even the massive green fists of the Hulk couldn’t crack it, couldn’t even dent it.
“Hulk will escape, little men, and then Hulk will crush you all!” he promised, pounding desperately against his transparent prison.
He struggled in vain. They’d caught him snugly inside their impervious plastic pod.
But still the Hulk kept smashing, pounding, pummeling, until the final moment when the bluish gas pushed him over into unconsciousness.
