The Hulk was a missile, arms outstretched, hands locked like claws, ready to grab onto whatever ended up in his grasp, and as we zeroed in he saw Emil leap into the air.
The Hulk hit the ground on the other side of the fence that surrounded the field. The Abomination was leaping
and removing the long, brown coat he wore, the hat falling to the side. In the distance Bruce could hear the helicopters and sirens. He looked over his shoulder and saw the hovercars zipping across the field, intent on catching up to him.
Something slammed into a car with the ripping force of an ICBM and the Hulk looked back to see a Mercedes explode. He saw the roof of the vehicle pulled downward, windows busting out, the entire vehicle collapsing like a tent into the hole in the asphalt left by the Abomination as he dove through it. The Hulk bound into the air, flipping, pointing his feet downward, and followed. The crumpled Mercedes disappeared from around him and he fell in darkness, underground once more.
The hole burrowed by the plummeting Abomination ended and Bruce landed, sinking his feet into the wet concrete of another sewer tunnel. He looked ahead of him, then in the opposite direction. In the distant gloom, he saw the Abomination standing, shrouded in shadow and half-hidden by the comer, waiting for him, “Emil!”
The figure disappeared, and something like laughter, gurgling and raspy, echoed through the tunnel.
The Hulk stood still and breathed. Overhead, in the distance, helicopters and hovercars circled. He closed his eyes for a tenth of a second and let the vehicle sounds disappear from his mind. Deep within his breast a savage beast was growling. This entire fiasco with Emil was too complex for the savage to understand. The savage never would have been in this situation.
Not complex. Simple Get him.
Bruce felt a wave pass over him, a tingling arc charging through gamma-irradiated muscles, and he heard the laugh of the Abomination. The beast told him to move. But it was Bruce who did so.
It would be so much simpler if I were still that mindless, savage Hulk. Hulk would smash, and smash, until nothing was left. Hulk would not be fooled by ploys or computer messages or idiotic poetry or attacks on his sense of guilt and honor.
The giant began to move again; less than a second gone, and his legs and arms began to sweep in long green arcs.
But it is not simple. It will never be simple again.
Long, green arcs, hands reaching out to clutch pipes as the Hulk burst down the tunnel. Slithery creatures stood up on hind legs and swiveled their heads, watching the green blur moving through the dimness, feet slamming against wet slimy concrete, cymbal crashes in the symphony of drips and drops in the murky shadows.
Around a comer, the Hulk sped, spinning as he turned, realigning himself, and now in the distance he saw Emil again, stopped momentarily. About fifty yards away stood the demon, feet balanced on a ledge, and the tunnel seemed to open out. The Hulk saw the shimmer of artificial light coming into the tunnel from the space beyond. Emil looked back and saw the Hulk, and both men leapt at once.
The Hulk sailed into the air, past the mouth of the tunnel through which Emil had just flown, falling. Emil had gone farther out and now sailed downward. The Hulk saw the creature’s legs and grabbed on in the flickering red light. The two gamma giants travelled twenty feet, falling, the Hulk wrapped around the legs of the Abomination.
Emil looked down at his feet and kicked.) ‘-Finally we have it out.”
The Hulk cursed as the scaly foot collided with his jaw. He looked down just in time to see a network of metal platforms and walkways, before the tumbling pah-collided with the first one.
Metal shrieked and gave way, the gamma giants tearing through girders and steel tubes. The Hulk felt the rail-ng of a walkway below flatten out on either side as he came to a slamming stop crosswise on the metal, and he
winced again as Emil’s weight came down on top of him.
Bruce looked around quickly at the red-lit room. They ;eemed to be inside a great, concrete barrel, lit here and there by a shimmering light, metal walkways travelling from tunnel opening to tunnel opening, here and there the monotonous rust and slime interrupted by a metal wheel or meter. They were in some part of the water treatment system, a gateway of sorts.
Emil stood up on the walkway and picked up Bruce by the hair. Bruce felt the Abomination’s kick in his ribs and he shot out his fist, felt it connect with razor teeth. He fell backwards with the force of Emil’s kick, taking out more metal as he went, grabbing onto another walkway. Bruce slammed into a walkway and the air rushed out of his lungs as the metal pressed into his chest, but it did not break. Now he looked down for a brief moment, saw the pool, thirty or so feet below, swirling and murky. This is treatment? The Hulk heard the metal groan as he flipped over, throwing himself back up, finding the railway next to Emil and flipping again, landing both feet in Emil’s chest. Emil tumbled backwards, but managed to get a spring off the metal girder as he passed, and he shot out to the concrete edge of the barrel. Emil caught onto the lip of another tunnel and looked back, hanging there, and shouted across the chasm.
“Dr. Banner, this is so much fun. ’ ’
The Hulk sprang, landing on the wall, nands digging into the concrete and catching metal underneath, and he held himself in place, pounding his fist into Emil’s solar plexus. “You killed them back there, Emil. You killed them to make a point. You’re insane!”
Emil grunted with Bruce’s blow and laughed, let go of the edge of the tunnel and let himself slip beneath the Hulk on the wall. Bruce looked down and saw the Abomination slide along the dirty concrete, grab a ladder, twist, and spring,, and the demon was sailing again. A clawed fist caught nim in the jaw as the figure passed, and Bruce twisted around. He brought his free hand up to his mouth and felt the flow of blood, so rare. F.mil landed with a crunch at the lip of another sewer tunnel, on the other side of the barrel.
“Heh,” growled the demon. Bruce hung there, bleeding, watching Emil clinging to the twisted metal, the red lights bouncing off deep green, scaly skin, and he saw the insanity. It was evident even in the curious twisted way Emil hung there, like a gargoyle, or a gamma-irradiated ape, enjoying the show Bruce was putting on. “You idiot,” said Emil, hanging there, breath rasping. “More fun than a barrel of gamma giants, no? You and I could keep this up for hours.”
Bruce shook his head. "Emil—”
“We can be gods, in our own way, bashing one another’s head into walls and feeling almost nothing. Doesn’t it get you going, Hulk? Doesn’t it make you thirst for more? To know that only someone like myself can give you this kind of workout?”
“You’re wrong,” said the Hulk. “There’s always the Thing.”
“Cheesecake,” said the Abomination, and the Hulk was in the air again, fists outstretched, a green missile. Emil threw up a hand and deflected Bruce’s fists upwards. Bruce’s body rolled, but before Emil could deliver a blow the Hulk brought his knees square into Emil’s chin. The concrete barrel shook as Emil’s head busted the concrete behind him and he lost his grip on the wall. They began to fall again.
Twisting and spinning in the air, this time the metal girders they hit barely squealed as the gamma twins tore through them. The Hulk saw his sparring partner smiling and laughing, and suddenly the air turned to liquid as they hit the pool below.
Two tons of dense green flesh hit the murky water and plunged, and the Hulk opened his eyes under the water and saw only blackness, the slightest hint of red light ?nimmering through, as he and Emil sank another fifteen feet.
The Hulk’s feet hit concrete and he slipped and settled onto the slimy ground, limbs flailing through the stagnant morass. He saw the shadow of Emil, settling to the bottom with him.
Emil scuttled backwards for a moment, like a crab, and the Hulk looked around him. Why Emil, you take me to the nicest places.
They were at the bottom of the barrel, a Lwenty-foot circle surrounded by curving concrete walls, laced with a hundred pipes of unknown origin or use. Some
thing slick and primitive brushed by Bruce’s leg. He looked down, then back at the shadow where Emil had been. In the water swam shimmering silver things, snapping and slithering, as if someone had created a dark reflection of a dime-store snow globe and shaken it.
The shadow had moved. Bruce cursed and looked around, and then Emil had him, coming from above, claws grabbing his throat, clawing at his eyes. The Hulk clamped his eyes closed and grabbed onto Emil’s arms, trying to slam the demon back against the rusted metal wall, but he was moving through molasses, and the two merely floated back.
The Hulk had run into this problem before. There were benefits to weighing a ton and having extremely dense, thick, quickly-regenerating skin. He could count those benefits on a hand, and Doc Samson advised him to do so just about every session. Buoyancy was not among them.
Bruce began to use his elbows, slamming back against the Abomination, one side after another. The slithering thing below moved past his feet as he danced, causing the thick water to shimmer, the slithering silver creatures flying in all directions. Suddenly Emil was slipping, and had to use h s arms to right himself. The Hulk pushed away, let his tremendous weight settle to the bottom, and spread his legs, spreading his toes out to cover as much area as possible. He felt mud, alive with tubular, squirming life, squish between his toes, as he forced his toes down and ground them into the concrete. He lowered himself slowly, thick water flowing around him, and then let go. The dense body began to move, the Hulk’s leg muscles springing up, stretching out, and he let go of the concrete and felt the water sailing past him.
Sure would hate to end up on the bottom of the ocean, thought Bruce. I’d end up having to walk to shore.
The Hulk burst through the black surface and the red light filled his eyes. He breast-stroked to the edge and grabbed a large pipe where it was fused to the wall and began to pull himself up, then yanked hard, lifting himself fully out of the water. In the end, he was nimble. Big and dense, but nimble. The Hulk found his place at the mouth of a lower tunnel and looked back down at the pool of sludge.
The black water was trembling in the red light, betraying movement below. Bruce stared, waiting for the Abomination to resurface. Briefly, Bruce considered jumping back down there, but decided scuffling in that goo was not worth it. He would wait.
Black water burbled and waved and something burst from the surface, a dark green set of head and shoulders. Emil held back his head and roared, holding up his arm, and in the red light Bruce saw that he was not alone. Something bone white and thick, a snake of some sort, ten inches wide easily, had wrapped around Emil’s chest and Emil had it by the throat, a long, fanged mouth hissing and snapping at him. The albino snake snapped again at Emil’s face and Emil began to pull. Bruce saw the thing slowly stretching with Emil’s arm, uncoiling from around the Abomination’s scaly chest. Then the Hulk heard another sound, as the snake uncoiled completely, held below the jaw by one green claw.
Emil was laughing. The Abomination’s red eyes stared into the pink eyes of the albino serpent and his laughter howled, profane and deadly. The creature writhed in the red light, the white, scaly body dancing on the water like a pressurized hose, black water dancing all around the two, and Emil looked up at Bruce.
“I am as one gone down to the pit,’ said Emil. “You can never catch me here.”
Suddenly black water flew and the Hulk saw a white-scaled body flying towards him, a fanged mouth spitting and tumbling as Emil flung the creature up at Bruce’s face. Bruce held up a hand and felt the creature clamp down on his wrist, causing just enough of an indentation to hold on and begin to wrap itself about him. Bruce cried out in surprise and blinked at the black water in his eyes. The creature was huge, and now it wrapped around his ankles. The slime on the bottom of the tunnel’s mouth gave below his feet and he fell backwards.
The Abomination was still laughing. The Hulk looked across the barrel and saw Emil at another tunnel mouth. “You never cease to amuse me, Hulk! I play the mne and you dance. That is what you are, Hulk! A house slave, a performer. You were better off stupid, because now you amuse the world and you have to know how useless you are.'”
Stop wasting time, Bruce thought, and he squeezed the serpent and slammed it against the wall. The thing snapped at him and he felt bones snap and saw the pink eyes roll. “Emil, I’m tired of—” .
Emil’s laughter echoed from the tunnel entry and Bruce shook his head, sliding the serpent off of his body. His cotton pants were practically black with muck. Enough. The Hulk sprang across the barrel and into the tunnel. He saw the shadow of the Abomination, moving faster now, laughing all the way. Bruce began to run.
Rats and snakes running for their lives, spider webs tangling in his hair. The tunnel proceeded nearly a mile before a turn, no possible exits, and Bruce doggedly pursued, hearing the cement thunder as he passed by. Putting me through paces, amusing himself with my perfonnance. What is this, Emil? What is your game?
The tunnel ended a few hundred yards ahead. Bruce saw a ladder lit by a red light. He slowed as he got closer, looking around. A trench of muck, an indentation in the tunnel, began a few yards before the end, and Bruce hopped over to one side and continued running along the seven inches of semidry floor. He reached the ladder and looked up.
There was a portal, shut and cobwebbed. Bruce reached up and touched it and realized that no one had gone through there for years.
The water in the trench moved, and Bruce looked down. A scaly, demonic giant began to sit up, black water and silver worms flowing off his scales. He sat there at Bruce’s feet, and the water ran away from his glowing red eyes.
“Hm,” he said. “Dead end.”
“What is this, Emil?” You could have escaped at any time. “What are you doing?”*
“Bruce,” Emil said, a serpent in the pool. The red eyes blinked away the water and he sniffed. ‘I’m really going to miss you.”
“Let’s go, Emil,” Bruce sneered. “That’s enough.” He moved towards the trench where Emil sat and the Abomination looked up.
“Go? Oh, absolutely. The only difference between us,” he said, “is you have no idea of the extent to which I’m willing to go.”
Emil sprang again, catching Bruce in tne chin as he smashed into the roof and sailed. The Hulk staggered back and looked up past the falling chunks of concrete and rusted metal and saw light and air, heard running water. Emil had led him to the surface. Bruce sprang quickly through the hole Emil had left. I’m not losing you this time.
Bruce went twenty feet in the air and began to fall, back and saw Emil on the-—tiles’! The Hulk set down on slick tile and shuddered. There was white tile and metal Furniture everywhere. Someone began to scream. Not the surface. Not quite. Just a much more inhabited part of the underground. They were in a large, circular room about an eighth of a mile in diameter. Scattered throughout the area were people, young, old, families, all admiring one another and various brightly-colored purchases. All around the perimeter were the familiar corporate logos of a dozen different fast-food eateries. He heard high heels clacking on stone and saw a man and a woman scrambling Up a wide stone staircase. Above the staircase was a sign: WELCOME TO THE MOLE COURT.
Great. There had to be a hundred people here, scarfing food in a safe, air-conditioned underground environment. And the Abomination had just burst among them.
Something rumbled and ripped. Emil roared and the Hulk looked back in time to see a table flying at him, a massive, white, formica-topped table, chunks of concrete and mesh dangling from the legs where Emil had tom it free. The table smashed into the Hulk and he batted it aside with his hand, sending it flying, then he gasped, followed it with his eye.
The table sailed, spinning toward the far comer. Bruce yelled in terror as a sandy-haired kid looked up from a plate of kung pao chicken and a comic book and opened his mouth. The kid hit the deck as the table sailed past him, the dangling mesh swiping a piece of white concrete lined with tom linoleum across the tabletop, sendi
ng chicken flying. The table slammed into the granite wall on the other side with a massive harangue, right next to the Insta-Wok, and the neon sign identifying that particular establishment sputtered in electronic torment. The Hulk watched the kid scramble towards the staircase, turn back, grab the comic, then hightail it out of there, fanboy dedication at its best.
Got to get him out of here, the Hulk thought. He saw the Abomination tearing across the food court. People were beginning to run, some for the exits, some in the wrong direction. Madness in pinstripe.
The Hulk bounded towards the Abomination, looking down. God, so many people to be avoided. Someone howled in pain and Bruce saw the claws on Emil’s feet dig into a man’s leg as Emil trampled him and the man rolled out of the way.
“Never," cried the Abomination, grabbing onto another table. “You will never know the extent to which I am willing to go!” People got out of the way and scrambled as Emil grunted and began to tear another table out of the floor.
The Hulk snarled as he hit the Abomination with both fists, flying into him, both of them toppling and slamming against a counter. “To do what?" he cried. “You want to have it out, you want to destroy me, let’s do it, but not here." He had Emil pinned beneath his legs and was pounding his fists into Emil’s face, and Emil was swiping his claws at him. A couple connected and Bruce felt green blood fly from his cheek. -
“Here is perfect!" Emil growled. “I don’t wantjow.” Emil rolled to the left, bringing the Hulk with him, then rolled to the right forcefully, and they tumbled over. Emil was on top, clawing at the Hulk. “I have no intention of killing you. We could run across the city duking it out, and I might have to hurl you into a volcano before we actually die. Don’t you understand, you fool? I want to crush you by crushing everything around you.” A claiw swiped Bruce’s lip and tore slivers of green flesh away. “I want you to know how useless you are, how meaningless.”
“And wnat," Bruce growled, bringing up his knees, “pray tell, are you?” He kicked, hard, and Emil sailed backwards across the court, slamming into one of the reinforced, tiled columns that littered the place.
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