Crunch. Something that sounded like a freight train landed on the hood of the sedan and; Cross whipped around again staring forward. In the darkness he saw light from the highway reflected off dark green skin, sweat glistening over green veins and muscles. -AS Cross drew his gun, he saw two giant, green arms reach down, saw ten green fingers clutch the windshield itself and tear it II away in one chunk, which the creature let fly. The windshield sailed into the distance and Cross stared at the disappearing glass. Then he felt the jaws, of life grab him by the lapels and drag him through the front of the sedan. “Drop the gun, came a deep voice.
Cross didn’t move. He held onto the gun, just as he felt knuckles the size of plums bruising his breastbone. He looked down to see his feet dangling over the hood, and a few feet below that, the Hulk’s own legs, impressed in the hood of the car as if it were a papasao chair.
£i-“You don’t seem to grasp,” said the Hulk, pulling Cross close, “that resistance is beyond futile.”
There was a human in there, thought Cross. He .vas eye to eye with the Hulk and he could see it, the red-veined eyes, the lack of sleep so evident. He knew all aiong that he was dealing with a mutated Robert Bruce
Banner, brilliant guy, but it could be so easy to-forget. But the eyes locking with his now were scary, not because they were those of a beast, but because they were those of a very smart, very dangerous man.
Cross dropped the gun.
“I’m not going to ask you why you’re following me,” said the Hulk. “You’ve followed me everywhere since New York. I’m sick of it. I want it to stop. Do you understand?’ ’
Cross opened his mouth and closed it. He nodded, slowly.
“Did you see the accident?”
“What?” Cross shook his head. Was the Hulk interrogating him?
The Hulk shook his head and stepped off the hood of the sedan, setting;Cross, down on the front of the hood. Cross winced as his coccyx collided with thi crumpled metal. “Did you see the accident?”
“How could I miss it?” Cross stared. He could tp, maybe. Yeah: Right.
The Hulk scratched ins chin, looking over the hill where Cross could still see the dancing lights from the emergency vehicles. “It’s just so .. J Have you heard of Galactus?”
'“Who?”
“Galactus. Big guy. Huge, cats planets.”
“Galactus. Yes,” Cross spoke slowly, having no idea where this was going.
“I mean planets. The whole thin? A.nd there was the Beyonder: a guy the size of the cosmos, no real limits at all. I’ve been whisked to the other side of the worl because he "wanted me to be. He could destroy the world. Like that!” The Hulk brought up a mammoth green arm; and curled his hngers, about to snap them. Cross ducked. He had heard that being too close to one of those finger-snaps could be deadly. The Hulk seemed to remember this and stopped his hand before the thumb and finger collided. “You get the idea.”
“I’m sorry, but.
‘‘You’re supposed to watch me, right?”
?-J‘Ah ... yes.®
“Right, then. Shut up.”
“Okay.’jM
[|Sj‘So here’s the clincher. The Fantastic Four, they beat Galactus with the regularity of the Super Bowl. The FF save the universe all the time. I helped beat the Beyonder. And we all rejoiced, because we used these amazing powers to stop these mega-beings. Do you begin to follow me?”
Cross opened his mouth. Tom told me to shut up. This was turning weird.
' ‘The point is, Galactus makes sense to mel Isn’t that rich? I’m accustomed to that. The Beyonder wanted to erase the world, or whatever. I can deal with that” The Hulk turned towards the flashing lights in the distance, placed his fists on his hips.Ir‘This I can’t—I can’t figure it.”
/ ¥.‘It was an accident.”
“Wait a minute. Did you call EMS Cross said, “Yes.”
The Hulk nodded, his mouth turned downward. “Good. Good.”
Good? You wrecked my car!
“Listen,” said the Hulk, turning back to look at Cross. He fished in the front pocket of his giant black Dockers and pulled out what appeared in the darkness to be a wallet. It was dark leather, but Cross was pretty sure there were blood stains on it. “Morgan’s the same way. There are things that make sense .to him. Budgets make sense to him, so do national security threats. This isn’t gonna make any sense to him. ^The Hulk flipped the wallet to Cross, who caught it and opened it up. There
was a driver’s license inside, and it belonged to a redheaded kid called David Morgan.
“Oh, no.”
“Did you know Morgan had a son?”"
“No.” Why would he? The boss of SAFE was a very businesslike man, to put it kindly.
“I knew because I knew. No big deal. But that’s him. That... was him/’ The Hulk brushed at his eyes, his voice rumbling. “He didn’t make it.”
“You ... I saw you get one ...”
“The passenger. He was lucky. He wasn’t impaled on the handle brake.”
“You pulled him out.”
Right.” The Hulk stared at the horizon. “Who cares . Just one of those things. Galactus makes sense to me, here I’m just a wrench.” The Hulk put his giant g; een hands in his pockets and slumped for a moment. “So you go, Agent Cross. I gave you that wallet for a reason, so that someone other than the police can get the news to Morgan first. Do you understand? Does that make sense to someone like you or me? No national security threat here, just a really, really bad thing. And all we get to do is open doors and carry messages. Can you handle that?o Cross folded the wallet and put it in his pocket. “I can handle that.”
The Hulk sniffed. His face was mottled with soot. “And stop following me. If Morgan wants to talk, tell him to give me a ring. But I’m sick of being shadowed. Tell SAFE you’ll just waste more vehicles and someone could get hurt.” The Hulk was already walking away, leaving Cross on the crushed hood of his car. Cross pulled out his cell phone and distinctly heard the Hulk grumble as he leapt into the air, “I want to be left alone.”
The voice rambled through the dank tunnel, reverberating through the sludgy walls and dripping pipes:
“O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried night and
day before thee___”
The creature that was once called Emil Blonsky knelt on a scarlet rug in his inner sanctum, pouring the eighty-eighth Psalm out of his heart and his wretched, Abominable mouth.
“Let my prayer come before thee, incline thine ear unto my cry,”
Once he had been a man, a man of Georgia and the Soviet Union, a soldier and a spy. And now he was this. The singer of the Psalm, cut off from the world above by his new shape and his new voice.
‘ ‘For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.”
In his mind flashed images, one after the other, and he rocked on his scaly knees and tried to send the demon images away, singing out the Psalm, becoming one with the Psalmist:
“I am counted with them that go down into the pit; as a man that hath no strength.”.
Flashing images in the gamma-irradiated mind, scattering salamanders and crickets chirping, echoing the Psalm, and there oefore him, Nadia, and Georgian fields, and the Western beast called the Hulk. And all around him, beyond the sanctum, stagnant pools and smells of death and decay.
“Free among the dead, like the slain that he in the tomb, whom thou rememberest no more, and I am cut off from thy hand.”
It was true, all true, and the creature rocked on his
knees and wailed out the words, hearing them gurgle in the dripping sludge. Forgotten.
“Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit! In darkness! In the deeps!”
Forgotten by Nadia, forgotten by humanity, forgotten by his country, forgotten by God himself!
“Thy wrath lies hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with thy waves!”
The Hulk, that beast, and those weapons, all of them, and the one gamma gun, and he had stepped befor
e it as his superiors told him, seeking power for them, seeking revenge for them, and what had he become? Forgotten! Forsaken!
“Thou hast put my acquaintance far from me .. ’£■
Nadia! Mother! Father! Russia! And what was he now, what did they call him, far above, where the world did not stink and salamanders did not root and he had no place?
“Thou hast made me an Abomination unto them!
‘ An Abomination!”
The word roared from the Abomination’s mouth, tearing through the caverns below the city and bouncing off the bricks and pipes, frightening secret unmentionable crawiing things into the cracks, and lie rocked violently on his knees, claws before his chest. The creature threw out his hands to his sides, and cried out, gurgling and cacophonous:
?/‘An Abomination I shall bel"
For what seemed like an eternity, the Abomination sat, claws dangling at his sides, leaning back where he knelt. He listened to his breath slowing and the delicate timing of the drips from the pipes. As his own subsided he heard breath from elsewhere in the sanctum and opened his glimmering red eyes. ‘?Who is there?’ ’
A figure stepped from the shadows, and in the dimness the Abomination could see the trim figure of a woman, black ha'r pulled back to reveal a gaunt, serious face. She answered, “Sarah Josef, comrade.”
His words came slowly. “You have been watching me.” It was neither a question nor an accusation, merely an observation.
“The eighty-eighth Psalm, yes?” The woman stepped closer and dropped down, sitting on her haunches. “The Psalm of the forsaken Abomination?7 ’ She tilted her head and he rose in his place, and even though she stood up he still towered over her by at least a meter.
“Yes.”
“Good news. We have not forsaken you.”
The Abomination made an expression approximating a sneer and nodded, and walked over to a large console built into a grungy wall. The console seemed to be an organic part of the underground itself, a dark tumorous piece of technology. The Abomination sat on the stool that seemed to grow from a dark, metallic arm jutting from the dripping wall. He tapped the keyboard and the monitor came to life. “No, you have not, my friend.” Sarah ran a finger along the edge of the console and regarded the dripping walls. “Your—sanctum—is to your lilting?”
“Yes.”
“So lonely,” she said, with u strong note of care in her voice.
“Not always,” said the Abomination. “Once there was a city here, in the tunnels. A city of the lost and forgotten, the huddled refuse of the world above. And I was their comrade and their protector. I told them stories and they accepted me as a man and a brother.” More images flashed in his head, the unmistakable sound of gunfire echoing in the tunnels, bodies slapping against the wet concrete, screams of innoccnts. ‘ ‘I was used by enemies above as an excuse to clean the tunnels out. Even the Hulk had a hand in it, an act I would likely have thought below Bruce Banner, who never had the stomach for slaughter. All of them,”J he whispered, “young and old, women and men. My family Tom by bullets from crooked police in riot gear. No, it was not lonely then. But now it is a tomb.”
“All of them?”
He looked up. ‘ Some of them survived. Scattered deeper in the tunnels. I do not think we will ever be together again. People learn lessons when they feel pain. The lesson my underground family learned was not to trust. Not to feel safe.” The green lip curled. “But I will have my revenge.”
She shook her head, and the barest hint of a smile appeared. “I think you need a little light.” .“My time for light, my dear,” said the Abomination, as he read the files that scrolled past his eyes, “is past “At URSA we believe the past can come around again.”
“Who knows? You may be right,” said the Abomination. Who knew, indeed? It had beer Sarah who had approached the Abomination. When she found him below the streets and spoke to him in Russian, he took one look at her and her standard-issue sidearms and nearly squashed her like the tadpoles he expected to feed her to. But she identified herself, not as KGB, but URSA. URSA was a new group, made up of KGB refugees and political discontents hellbent on a familiar ideal: a return to the strong-military, Communist, West-hating Soviet Union of old.
“Bah,! the Abomination had said to her then. “The Soviets hung me out to dry, What do I want with a return to that regime?”
“Not that regime,” Sarah had replied after she found her breath and began to explain herself. She had recovered from nearly being strangled. The Abomination found her refreshing, and that is why he let her talk. ‘ ‘A new regime, a purer Communism.”
“7 am not interested.”
“Listen to me and tell me again when I’m finished, she responded. “It is at great expense that URSA has located you and I will not return until we have talked.’’ The Abomination looked around, as if he had other things to be doing. “Talk.'’
The agent composed herself before beginning. She wore a gray jumpsuit and she stood with her hands on her hins, an authoritative stance. “Bad deals happen, |2j she said, “when only one side benefits. The other side feels used, cheated, and finally refuses to cooperate.”
“Yes.”
“Good deals happen when both sides benefit, multiple party deals when all sides are satisfied. URSA understands this and wishes to make a deal with you. As a gesture, shall we say, for the.old regime’s mistreatment of such an agent as Emil Blonsky.”
The Abomination tilted his nead and stared at her. “What you may have heard ii some seminar could not possibly even hint at the trutnSB®
She stared at him, and the Abomination detected the slightest tremble in her voice. “I think you are wrong about that ’ ’
“Go on, little girl/'
“It is our understanding that you bear something of a grudge against the United States and especially against the Hulk.”
“You are underinformed. I bear a grudge against almost everybody. I find it easier that way to keep them all straight.”
“All right, then,” she said. ‘Then at least we’ll share a common enemy or two. URSA would like to see a little chaos here. You enjoy chaos, I understand. Something you said a while back about bringing it all down around their ears.”
“I did say that.’fi
“We can help you. Whatever you want. I’m in charge of the American theater and you, Emil Blonsky, promise to be my most powerful ally.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
There it was again. A tremble, faint, hidden back there, a personal stake hiding behind the austere mask, eveiy agent’s Achilles’ heel. “Why do you say that?” The Abomination strode over to stand before her and he crouched so that he could look her in the eyes.. She barely flinched when she was struck by the rank breath that flew across her face. “You want me to be an agent? For you? You and this URSA of yours? I am through with serving masters, and I do not see anything here that is about to change my mind.”
“We can help you, ’ she said, suddenly more vulnerable. “Helping one another, we both benefit.”
‘ ‘Yes, yes, you said that. Very nice speech, little sister, but what is it, why are you here? What is going on? You’re not afraid of me, I can tell that.” He studied her carefully. “You think highly enough of yourself to feel confident you could escape me if I tried to kill you again and I don’t think you frighten easily, so what is it? So I answer no, and you ask again, and still I say no, and you go away and that’s that. Yet here you are, trembling.”
It was true. She was. She averted her eyes like a junior officer being dressed down.
“You want me to join you—why? Why me,” the breath blasted in her face, ‘really?”
“Because you and I—”
“What? You and I whatT’ The Abomination waited for a second and looked at her. He had had enough torturing of this girl for one day. “Go home, little girl. Go tell your masters that a resurrected Soviet state would do me as much good as the old one did, and I am not interested.’ T-
&n
bsp; She slumped only slightly and turned, and maneuvered out from the space between the Abomination and the wall. Sarah moved away, towards the ladder leading
up to the world of light. The Abomination turned and sat on a pipe, contemplating the dank water.
Her hand was on the first rung and she was swinging herself up to the ladder when he muttered. “Sarah....” She stopped and hung there looking back at him.
' ]‘iSarah Josef did you say?” >
She hung there still, staring at him, only the white knuckles showing her edginess.^j‘Yes;”
“Come back, Sarah.” She dropped to the ground and the dank water splatted out around her feet..
“I set,” he said. So long, so: very long, but if he-reached back, yes, there was still pain there, too. So many other pains abounded, but yes, it did still ache a bit, didn’t it? “We do share a bond. It is revenge you wan!;”
“Yes/’ she said, looking up at him. It seemed to him she was looking at him like an uncle. ‘iRevenge I think we both would like very much. Every side, benefits.”
The Abomination nodded his massive, scaly demon’s head. “Very well, Sarah Josef,” said the gamma creature. “Tell me more about this URSA. And tell me about yourself.’^
And that was the beginning of their curious relationship. Indeed, URSA had taken good care of Sarah Josef’s new charge—-they had set up his sanctum below New York exactly as he had requested, had even helped him set his own plans to work, beginning with the assault on the Langley Theater.
Hgjsrhe Langley assault proceeded to your liking?” j.f “Perfectly,;1^ said the Abomination. “The equipment was marvelous.”
Sarah looked at him and reached into a' zippered pocket and retrieved a disk, and laid it on the console.
‘ ‘My employers want me to reiterate that we hope you will have as much success holding up your end of the bargain with us* ’
The red eyes flashed as the Abomination slid the disk info a drive and began to tap at the keys. “Tell them you
have nothing to worry about, Sarah. I am grateful for your help, and find it serendipitous that so many of our goals coincide.-’’ He looked at her carefully. She was young, really, as young as Nadia had been when they had gotten married, as young as he had been, all those years ago, in Istanbul, when his career had begun its downward trajectory. “We both have something personal in this.”
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