Hulk (2 page)

He stared at the entry for a long time. He tried to cast his memory back to what his state of mind had been when he’d written it. Had he known, even then, what he was going to do? Or had he been trying to build up the nerve to face the inevitable?

The phone rang, the noise cutting through the still air so loudly that it caused him to jump. He grabbed up the phone and said, “Banner.”

“Banner,” came the sharp, challenging voice of Ross. “Sorry to call you at home. Is this a bad time?”

Any time I talk to you is a bad time.
He felt a distant pounding behind his eyes, and rubbed them.

“No, Colonel, not at all. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a report here regarding your data from the animal studies. There appear to be discrepancies in your results.”

The pounding increased. It looked to be the start of a long, long night.

love

It was difficult to differentiate Christmas from any other time of the year out in the desert, but the Banners did their level best, as did everyone else in the neighborhood. That wasn’t particularly surprising since there was a great deal of common ground for all the residents. Everyone either worked at Desert Base or else was a family member of someone who worked there. The town didn’t even have a specific name as such. It had just sprung up in proximity to the base out of necessity.

The small, artificial Christmas tree, the same one the Banners pulled out every year, glittered in the corner. Bruce, now three years old, was gallivanting around the room astride a hobbyhorse while Edith took films of his pure childish joy with a Super 8 camera.

David, for his part, was feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time. It had been ages since Ross had expressed any suspicions about, or even overt interest in, his work. His newly relaxed attitude had spread to how he treated his wife and son, and they had been grateful for the change. He watched Bruce jump around a bit more, and then reached into his briefcase and extracted two small, floppy cloth dolls. It was hard to tell what the bizarre-looking animals were supposed to be, specifically. They had long ears and whiskers, but the feet were closer to cat paws than they were to rabbit feet. They were somewhat mutated-looking, really, which was probably what drew Banner to them when he’d spotted them in the Base Exchange, looking rather shabby and forgotten on an upper shelf and marked down to fifty cents each.

“Bruce,” he called, and the boy turned and looked. His face immediately lit up with an ear-to-ear smile, and he dropped the hobbyhorse as if it had leprosy and bolted toward the two dolls. He jumped up and down, David holding them just out of the boy’s reach in amusement. He finally relented and gave them to him when Edith good-naturedly chided him about “tormenting the boy.”

And then he and his son played with the stuffed toys.

Just . . . played.

He didn’t conduct any experiments on him. He didn’t seek out any mutagenic properties. He didn’t try to find ways to excuse himself so he could make notations in his journals. He. Just. Played.

For one evening, David Banner had a taste of the nice, ordinary life he could have had and which, he knew on a fundamental level, would never be his. And because of that, as the boy laughed with that pure, unbridled, unrestrained laughter that only children can command, David Banner discovered there were tears running down his cheeks. Tears in mourning for that which he would never have, and that which he could never be.

“It’s my fault . . . it’s all my fault,” he whispered.

It was a horrifying discovery for David Banner to make, that he loved his son. That was a development that simply didn’t fit into the overall plan. And he resolved that that night, that very night, he had to reestablish the status quo.

Edith had been invited over to a friend’s house to make a fuss over their new baby. In point of fact, both Edith and David had been invited, but he had begged off, citing a sudden headache, and insisted that Edith go on without him. As soon as she was gone, with Bruce settled down for the night, David went into his study and pulled out a syringe and a test tube.

“Need blood samples,” he muttered. “It’s the only thing that will do. Have to study the mutagenic properties. Absolutely the only thing that will do.”

He padded upstairs and opened the door to Bruce’s bedroom. There was the boy, in his pajamas, smiling and bouncing the two floppy dolls around without a care in the world.

David smiled and said, “Bruce, I need you to do something. Give me your arm.”

The boy obediently extended his right arm. He had no reason to doubt, no reason to have any suspicions. He blinked in surprise when his father gripped his wrist firmly . . . and gasped when a hypodermic was driven into his arm, whereupon he let out a shriek like the damned consigned to the abyss.

“David! What the hell are you doing?”

He yanked the syringe clear, spattering drops of blood, and Bruce was howling in hurt and fury as Edith stood in the doorway. Perhaps she’d forgotten something, perhaps she’d gotten bored quickly, perhaps she’d been seized with some massive fatigue. It was impossible to say, and in the final analysis, it didn’t matter. Like a thief in the night he froze there, and between Edith’s yelling and the boy’s howling, he had no idea where to look first.

And then Edith went dead white and pointed, her finger trembling. David turned to see what she was looking at.

It had been several years since the famed “tendinitis” incident, and Edith had more or less managed to file away the distant and unwanted memory; perhaps, she had even chalked it up to an hallucination. But what she was seeing now was far, far worse than the previous episode.

As Bruce shrieked in protest, his feet began to swell, his arms distorted, and the entire right side of his head bulged out. Then they receded but other things bubbled and rippled, his skin undulating as if a swarm of bugs were making their way beneath the surface and spreading throughout his body. Bruce seemed oblivious to it, so caught up was he in the hysterics of his tantrum.

Edith Banner let out one loud, horrified yell, and fainted dead away.

The heavy thud of her body hitting the ground caught young Bruce completely by surprise, enough to cause him to stop crying. The bubbling of his body promptly stopped and his crying was replaced by wide-eyed whimpering as he saw his mother lying insensate upon the floor.

David looked from his son to his wife and back again, and saw a perfect opportunity. He pointed a quavering finger at his son and snarled, “You did this, Bruce! You
hurt your mommy
!”

“N-no,” Bruce stammered out, his lower lip trembling, his eyes like saucers and his skin the color of curdled milk.

“Yes!” shot back David, advancing on the child, stepping over the prostrate body of the boy’s mother. “Because you yelled! Because you cried! Because you weren’t a big boy!

“See? See what happens when you get upset? Bad things happen!
Very bad things happen when you get upset! Bad things happen to your mommy, and to you! And if you let yourself get upset, even more bad things will happen! Do you understand? Even more bad things!
”

“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry!” And Bruce’s chest started to convulse as his breathing speeded up. He looked on the verge of apoplexy.

David stabbed his finger in the boy’s face. “
You’re doing it again!
You’re getting upset! You’re going to start crying or yelling or shouting! Don’t do it, or more bad things will happen! Maybe your mommy will even die, and it will be all your fault!
Do you want that? DO YOU?
” And when the boy frantically shook his head, his father continued, “When you start getting angry, you just smash the anger! Do you hear? Smash the anger!
Don’t let it take you!
Smash it! Understand? Are you going to let the anger get you? Are you?”

Bruce shook his head even faster, so violently that it looked as if it was going to topple off his neck. He wiped the tears from his face with the backs of his hands.

Very softly, David knelt down and held the boy’s face between his rough hands. “Good. Very . . . very good boy. Now lie down, go to sleep.”

“But Mommy . . .”

“I’ll take care of Mommy. I’ll make sure she’s okay.” He lifted Edith to a sitting position and, a moment later, shifted her weight so he was cradling her in his arms. “Daddy will take care of everything. You go to bed . . . and remember what we discussed.”

Without another word, young Bruce scrambled into bed. David had already secreted the tube of blood in his pocket, and he clicked off the light. It left Bruce in darkness, except for his night-light on the opposite wall, which was a small, green bulb. David exited the room, carrying Edith, while Bruce stared raptly at the green glow and burned his father’s words into the deepest recesses of his memory.

When Edith came to, she was lying on her bed, and David was staring down at her.

“What happened?” she whispered. “What in the world happened? Did you . . . did you see Bruce? And . . . you were taking blood from him . . .”

She tried to sit up, but his strong hand kept her in place. “David.” She endeavored to shove away his arm. “
David!
Tell me now! Tell me, or I’ll take him away. I swear I’ll—”

“If you do, you doom him.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What—?”

He licked his suddenly dry lips, and said, “I’m the only chance he has of being normal. But I have to continue my research. And you”—he pointed at her fiercely—“you have to shut up. You have to keep it to yourself, or they’ll take him away from us, lock him in a room, and dissect him. Me, too, for that matter. If you say you love him . . .”

“Of course I love him,” Edith said desperately. “He’s my son!”

“He’s more mine than yours. That much is certain.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out, rising from the edge of the bed and wiping away a coat of sweat from his forehead. “Edith, I had . . . have . . . theories. Things I wanted to work on involving mutations . . . mutagens. Tinkering on a genetic level that would allow the body to heal itself . . .”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does that have to do with anything . . . ?”

He turned to face her and, his words laden with the heaviness that can only come from a great unburdening, he told her, “They wouldn’t let me use human subjects.”

She stared for a long moment, her growing disbelief obvious. “You . . .” She couldn’t speak above a whisper. “You . . . experimented on Bruce?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Then . . . what . . . ?” And then she got it, her hand fluttering to her mouth. “On yourself. Oh, my God, David. You . . . you did something to yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Before we conceived Bruce. Conducted experiments on yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my God,” and she looked in the general direction of Bruce’s bedroom. “He . . . you passed it on to him.”

“Yes,” he said once more.

Edith turned to him, grabbing at his arms. “Get it out of him! Whatever’s been done to him, cure him! You’ve got to!”

“And I intend to,” David lied to her.

“Is it possible?”

“Yes,” he lied once more. And now it was his turn to take her by the arms and draw her close. “But it stays between us. Otherwise . . .”

“They’ll take him away. I know. And you’re right. And I’ll trust you, David, to do right by Bruce, because I know you love him. It explains so much . . . so much . . .” And then she looked up at him, her eyes flashing fire. “If you fail him, David—or if you hurt him in any way—I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

“I understand,” he said, and he truly did. The problem was she didn’t. But she would.

Eventually she would, if it was the last thing she did.

instinct

David Banner was just checking the readings on the latest cyclotron experiment when he saw General Thunderbolt Ross barreling toward him. Banner took a deep breath to calm himself and forced a smile, even though his immediate instinct was to head the other way.

Instead, he said, with a joviality he didn’t feel, “Why, hello, General. The new rank sits well on you, I have to say.”

“In my office, Banner,” Ross said without preamble.

Banner rose from his workstation, and pointed at the cyclotron. “This might not be a good time, General. We’re right in the middle of accelerating the atomic nuclei of gamma part—”

“Do I appear to care, Banner?” He took a step closer, his mustache bristling. He was a barrel-chested man with graying hair cut to regulation army shortness, and the brusque manner of one who has nothing but distaste for civilians, since they didn’t take well to orders. “It will keep. Now get over to my office, on the double.”

“Very well,” said Banner coolly after a moment’s consideration. “Lead the way.”

“Get out of the way.”

Bruce Banner was playing in the street with his friend Davy when suddenly a bigger boy, whom Bruce had seen around from time to time, blocked their path. His name was Jack, as Bruce recalled, and although to an adult he would have looked like a child, to a child he looked like a giant.

Bruce knew that he was no danger to the boy. Jack was far wider than Bruce, and taller, and Bruce was a skinny and unthreatening four-year-old even under the best of circumstances. He did precisely as he was ordered.

The bigger boy smiled lopsidedly, and said, “Thanks, runt,” and suddenly Bruce knew that something bad was going to happen, because he always had a sense of these things. Sure enough, Jack had a large stick in his hand, a twisted branch he’d snapped off a tree somewhere. He swung it and struck Bruce on the side of the face, leaving a line of blood where it had hit.

Davy let out a yelp of anger on his friend’s behalf, but Jack ignored him, shoving him aside, and aimed the stick again at Bruce. He swung for the same spot, and hit Bruce again. Bruce staggered from the impact, but didn’t fall.

Nor did he cry. His face remained utterly impassive, even though one side of it was running with blood.

“C’mon! Aren’t you gonna try to hit back?” Jack challenged.