Hulk, Peter David [best ereader for academics .TXT] 📗

By Peter David

Story by James Schamus

Screenplay by John Turman, Michael France, and James Schamus

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

Contents

Title Page

Quote

PART ONE

suspicion

love

instinct

sabotage

awakening

desire

PART TWO

repression

one year later . . .

hints of jealousy

said of old soldiers

in dreams, the knowledge he seeks are memories he cannot grasp

accident . . . or fate?

a daughter and son lost and found

a sacrifice too great?

connections

mutagenic traces . . . but of what?

what am i?

meetings of great portent

crossing purposes

unwise provocations

PART THREE

dogs of war

betrayal or salvation?

unbalance of power

going home again . . . or not

playing with fire

the devil you know

what man hath wrought

his anger unbound

found again

sins of the father

the cross of red

Copyright Page

“Oh soul, be changed to little water drops

and fall into the ocean, never be found.”

—Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

suspicion

David Banner had just made his son, Bruce, angry, and discovered that he rather liked it.

David had an attitude of quiet-yet-desperate genius about him, with eyes that glittered with intelligence and a foxlike face that suggested not only cunning but also an insatiable desire to learn the truth about things. His hair was thick and brown and he wore it combed back. He was dressed in the suit he’d worn to work that day. It wasn’t unusual, however, for him to spend time with baby Bruce from the moment he came home until his wife, Edith, told him that dinner was served.

David sat on the floor, keeping a wary eye on the kitchen. He heard Edith within, banging around pots and pans and doing whatever the hell it was she did that made most of their dinners taste so vile. But his focus at that moment wasn’t on how her beef Stroganoff was going to turn out, but instead on the activities of his infant son.

There was Bruce, six months old, crawling along nicely. He had been developing swiftly in terms of his assorted motor skills, even though the boy himself had been small at birth and probably wasn’t going to grow up to be any sort of Goliath. He was also, however, overly dependent on the pacifier, sucking on it with vacuumlike force whenever he had the opportunity. David was glad about that, because he could make use of it.

He watched warily as little Bruce crawled across the shag carpeting of the modest living room. The room had been baby-proofed, with rubber bumpers put on the sharp edges of the coffee table and little inserts slid into the electrical outlets so that tiny fingers couldn’t work objects into them and sustain a shock. At that moment, Bruce was crawling toward the overstuffed recliner, the one with a large piece of electrical tape on one arm to prevent some errant stuffing from poking any farther out. Making little ah-ah noises like a tiny train engine, Bruce crawled all the way over to the chair. He was wearing a sleeveless red-and-white-striped outfit with leggings so he didn’t get rug burns on his knees. She was thorough, Edith was. It was something that David would have loved about her very much, presuming he had, in fact, loved her, rather than hating her now with a burning passion because she had forced him to provide her with this . . . this crawling, mewling monstrosity for her amusement. . . .

Still . . .

Still, Bruce provided opportunities. Unwanted opportunities, to be sure, but opportunities presented themselves when they saw fit, and as a man of science, David Banner had to accept them and roll with them.

David Banner watched raptly as Bruce hauled himself up to stand, balancing as carefully as he could on his skinny little legs. The sucking on his pacifier continued so loudly that Banner was certain they could hear it all the way down at the military base where he worked. It was a nice theory, actually, how far the sound of Bruce’s sucking would travel, although he wasn’t going to have the opportunity to test it.

There were, however, other theories to test.

Looking once more to make sure his wife was otherwise engaged, David Banner moved quickly over to baby Bruce and yanked the pacifier out of his mouth. The shock of the pacifier’s departure totally bewildered Bruce, so much so that he lost his balance and tumbled backward, landing hard on his back and striking his head on the floor for good measure. The carpet cushioned some of the impact, but it was painful and startling nonetheless.

Bruce Banner’s face twisted in infant fury and reddened. He was getting ready to uncork a major bawl, and his father kept glancing at the kitchen, muttering to his son, “C’mon, c’mon,” wanting to have as much time as possible to observe the child’s reaction.

And then it came, the veins bugging out at his temples, his eyes closing. An ear-splitting howl blasted out of the child’s throat like a cyclone through a wind tunnel. The first cry was relatively soft, but he had two good lungsful of air for the second, and that was when he really kicked it into high gear.

Banner watched him raptly, looking for some small sign.

“What happened?” came Edith’s voice from the kitchen.

“Nothing! He fell! It’s nothing!” David called back, having no desire at all for his wife to come in, because he didn’t want her to see what he was seeing. Little Bruce’s arms were beginning to distend at the elbows, to grow and expand and twist into positions that could only be described as deformed. And it wasn’t just his arms that were deforming. It was his entire body. David could see it under the little outfit, see the bumps and ripples bubbling on Bruce’s skin. And his face, God, look at his face. With the upper brow starting to slide forward, Bruce looked like a Neanderthal. David felt as if he were watching millions of years of evolution