The Hulk landed heavily and bounded over to another wall. His fists punched through to the outside and then he was roaring like a crazed animal and tearing massive pieces from the steel-reinforced structure.
After several minutes of this, the green-skinned behemoth stepped back, panting heavily and surveying his handiwork.
Then, with a final blow to the decimated wall, the Hulk turned his back to it and set off in search of further whole things that he could reduce to little pieces.
Kreee-eek . . .
The Hulk looked over his shoulder.
The steel-reinforced wall groaned as, suddenly, two of the walls supporting what was left of the ceiling and severely weakened by the Hulk’s pounding fists, collapsed under the weight. Steel and concrete rained down on the floor, clattering and crashing as they fell. The remaining portion of ceiling tilted, hanging suspended by several beams before breaking loose and falling to the ground, bringing down the entire far side of the huge hangar.
The Hulk watched this final destruction from the opposite side of the room. Even as the tons of debris crashed to the floor in a shower of dust, his brutish face twisted into a savage smile of pleasure, and he laughed.
“Ha! Hulk likes that!”
Twenty-Five
Normally, I hate to leave a friend to handle that kind of trouble by himself, but . . . The amazing Spider-Man looked down to the floor of the hangar where the Hulk was busy swatting aside a group of armed security men. Well, let’s just say ol’ Green-eyes seems to be able to take care of himself without any help from yours truly.
Spider-Man began crawling along the ruined ceiling toward the door that had remained open after letting the guards into the hangar. He quickly lowered himself on his webbing and swung through the open doorway and into a long, well-lit corridor.
The Web-slinger dropped lightly to the polished metal floor and looked around. In the hangar beyond the corridor he heard the sounds of the Hulk’s rampage of destruction but in here there was silence. Three doors were set on either side of the corridor, with a seventh door at the far end.
How come Monty Hall’s never around when you really need him?
He stepped lightly over to the nearest door and pressed his ear against it. Nada!
The next three doors proved equally disappointing and, as the Wall-crawler headed for the next one in line, his head began to tingle a warning.
Now what?
Spider-Man turned to find himself face-to-face with the security guards and orange-clad men who were retreating into the corridor away from the Hulk. The man in the lead, a guard with a pistol grasped in his hand, saw the Web-slinger first and stumbled to a halt.
“Hey,” the man yelled. “There’s the other one!”
“Hiya, kiddies. What’s the matter, doesn’t little Hulkie want to play with you guys anymore?”
A dark-haired man in a jump suit leaped from the group and leveled his gun at Spidey. “Yeah? Let’s see if this one can be shot!”
“Oh, I can be shot, all right,” Spider-Man nodded.
Bang!
Spider-Man leaped up, his fingers sticking to the ceiling as he hauled himself from the bullet’s path.
“But first, one of you dummies is gonna have to learn how to shoot straight.” He dropped from the ceiling and landed on top of the closely-grouped men, his gloved fists swinging. He felt his hand connect with bone while he kicked another man’s legs out from under him. He spun around and slammed his hand against a uniformed chest and shoved. Spidey whirled again and chopped another man across the bridge of his nose before grabbing an arm swinging a gun butt at his head and twisting it hard behind the owner’s back. The man howled in pain and fell to the floor where another guard tripped over him and smacked his head against the hard floor.
Despite the Wall-crawler’s strength, the overwhelming number of men was threatening to drag him down. Hands plucked at his costume and arms. No good. I’ve got to extract myself from this mess and take on these slobs on firmer ground!
Suddenly, Spider-Man relaxed, allowing himself to be pulled down as he curled his lithe body into a tight ball. Shouting and swearing, the guards swarmed over him, throwing themselves in a pile over the Wall-crawler’s body like a football team on their opponent’s ball carrier.
Spidey tensed beneath the pile of bodies and, just as suddenly, exploded upright, throwing the men off him. He jumped to the wall and scampered to the ceiling where he hung upside down by his toes and fingers. The men were already staggering to their feet, looking around for the Web-slinger. Half a dozen of them, however, remained sprawled on the floor, unconscious.
Not a bad start, Web-head. Now that you’ve set yourself up with a neat little split, let’s see if you can score a spare by knocking over the rest of these pinheads!
The Wall-crawler waved to the men below. “Yoo-hoo, boys. Up here! Sheesh, you guys are really awful at hide-and-seek, y’know?”
He fired a thick blanket of webbing at them. Four of the men dove out from under the falling net before they could be ensnared beneath it. All the others, however, were trapped, trying to fight their way free of the thick, sticky substance. Spider-Man dropped to the floor to deal with the remaining men.
“Okay, friends,” he said lightly. “We’ve fooled around with these kid games long enough. It’s time to get serious.” He started walking toward them. “I challenge all of you to a game of Scrabble at ten paces!”
The only one of the four in a guard’s uniform rushed at Spider-Man, his gun raised over his head like a club.
“Ah-ha. I see you accept my challenge.” Spidey sidestepped the guard’s clumsily swung club and lashed out his fist to chop down hard on the man’s shoulder. With a howl of pain, the man stumbled forward. “Okay, here are the rules: you guys are supposed to try to bash my face down my throat while I—,” Spider-Man said as he dropped the man with a right jab.
“—Scrabble your brains.”
Spider-Man turned back to the others. They had spread out, one man to his right, a second to his left and the third directly in front of him.
And he’s the one I’ve got to watch out for! He’s almost as big as Greensleeves and twice as ugly!
The man before him was big, well over six feet tall with a barrel chest and thick, muscular arms. The two men at his sides moved in first, feinting with their hands as if making a grab for the Wall-crawler’s arms. Hey, if that’s what they want, who am I to deny them their pleasure?
Spidey allowed the man on his right to latch hold of his wrist and then, a moment later, the man on his left did likewise.
The tall man before him grinned in evil pleasure as he walked toward Spider-Man, pounding one large fist into his palm.
“This is going to be a real pleasure, weirdo,” he breathed.
Spider-Man smiled to himself as he said, “A fundamental rule of the hero game, gentlemen, is the use of the bad guy’s own evil intentions against him.”
The man planted his feet firmly in front of the spread-eagled Spider-Man. “Sounds like you do that by boring them to death!”
“On the contrary, muscles, I do it by taking advantage of their stupidity.”
Spider-Man swung his arms together before him, swinging the two men who held him together with a sickening sound of bone crunching against bone.
The big man seemed to loom over him now and Spider-Man dropped the others to the floor and threw a hard right into the man’s stomach. The man grunted but still fell toward him with outstretched arms reaching for the Wall-crawler’s throat. The Web-slinger leaned out of the way and swung his right fist into the man’s jaw with a force that snapped the man’s head back. One of his muscular arms wrapped around Spidey’s neck and dragged the Web-slinger to the floor.
Spider-Man rolled out from beneath the big man but did not seem able to break his choking stranglehold. The Wall-crawler pounded on the man’s neck with his fist several times before the form went slack, releasing his grip.
Breathing hard, Spider-
Man got to his feet. With scarcely a glance at the trapped or unconscious men on the floor, he turned his attention to the remaining doors.
There was nothing until he came to the one at the end of the corridor.
He could dimly make out the sound of people and electronic gear behind the solid-steel sliding door. There was no knob or keyhole anywhere on the flat surface, just a glass plate set into the wall beside it with the outline of a palm print etched in black on it. Spidey pressed his palm to the plate and waited. Nothing happened.
Don’t tell me you were really expecting it to work for you, Mr. Parker?
He stared thoughtfully at the door, the final obstacle between him and the destruction of the deadly satellite orbiting the Earth.
“Ah-hah!” he exclaimed suddenly and rushed back to where the fallen guards lay. The Web-slinger hefted one man in an orange jump suit over his shoulder and took the unconscious man back to the sealed door to the control room. He braced the limp man against the wall and pressed his hand to the steel plate.
The door slid open with a soft mechanical sigh.
Spider-Man allowed the unconscious man to slide to the floor and ran into the room.
All heads turned at the sound of the door opening. They had to tear their eyes from the view screen where the Hulk could be seen turning away from an outside wall that had seen better days just an instant before the roof gave way and tumbled to the floor, knocking out the cameras. The screen went black at the same moment Spider-Man heard the thundering roar of the collapsing hangar and felt the building shake.
“I think that means the jig’s up, ladies and gents,” Spider-Man announced.
Pendergast took a step forward from the control console, his handsome features contorted in a look of rage. “Not in the least, Spider-Man,” he spat. “There are still guards and . . .”
Spidey jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Not anymore, good-looking. I just finished sending them all off to a place very far away from here called sleepy land.”
Pendergast swung back to face Prof. Warner and Dr. Irvine, his cold gray eyes flashing madly, seeking help. “The maser,” he said quickly. “Use the maser, Warner!”
“Are you insane?” the bearded scientist exclaimed as he recoiled from the tall man in horror. “You don’t seriously expect me to turn the maser on myself!”
“Use it, damn you!” Pendergast screamed and lunged at the console. His tightly clenched fists pounded at the controls, frantically searching for the button that would end the threat of the Web-slinger and his monstrous companion once and for all.
Spider-Man charged across the room and yanked the hysterical man away from the console. He threw Pendergast to the floor and planted himself between the man and the control console. “Cool it, fancy pants!”
Pendergast struggled to his knees, tugging at his tie. “Get him, damn your eyes,” he screamed to the stunned, seated technicians. “Kill him before he ruins everything!”
“Mister,” Spidey shook his head in disgust, “you’re starting to get on my nerves.” His gloved fist cracked against Pendergast’s jaw, knocking the man to the floor, senseless.
He turned at the sound of feet running toward him and fired his webbing at the two technicians rushing at him. The web fluid wrapped tightly around their ankles and they crashed to the floor.
“I don’t advise anybody else trying that,” Spidey warned the rest of them. “Next time, I’m liable to forget myself and hurt somebody.” He turned to study Prof. Warner’s control panel. “What I would do, though, is hightail it out of here as fast as my little legs could carry me, ’cause as soon as I figure out what’s what on this furshlugginer thing, I’m gonna do my darnedest to finish off the work started by my big green friend.”
Nobody moved.
Spider-Man started to speak but was interrupted by Prof. Warner brushing by him. “Listen to him,” the bearded scientist yelled. “It’s over for us here. Finished! Get out!”
The Web-slinger looked at the scientist with surprise.
“I am a realistic man, Spider-Man,” Warner said softly.
“And what about you, Doc?” Spidey asked Irvine.
The scientist clutched the soaking handkerchief in his hands. He glared with hate-filled eyes at the costumed youth. “Are you giving me a choice?”
Spider-Man shook his head.
Dr. Irvine turned on his heels and joined the procession of men and women rushing from the control room through an exit across the room.
Spidey’s hand hovered uncertainly over the control console. “How does this work. Doc?” he asked Prof. Warner as the bearded scientist walked slowly to the exit.
Warner, stopped and turned around. “You’re going to destroy my satellite,” he said simply.
“I can’t leave it up there.”
The professor shook his head and started walking again. “I said I was realistic, Spider-Man,” he said without looking back. “But I can’t help you. I won’t try to stop you, but I can’t tell you how to destroy three years’ worth of my life’s work.” Within seconds, Spidey was alone in the control room.
He scanned the console. Sheesh! I wonder which one of these turns on the automatic coffee maker?
What the hey! Life’s no fun if you don’t take a chance every once in a while!
The Web-slinger jabbed at buttons on the console. Words flashed across the screen in front of him, but, as far as Spider-Man could see, nothing else happened. C’mon, man, you’ve had enough training in computers in school to be able to figure out at least some of this gobbledygook! He flipped switches and twisted dials and, suddenly, new information crawled rapidly across the screen and Spidey looked it over carefully. Now this is more like it! If I read this right, the satellite’s on a standby mode, ready to fire as soon as the target coordinates are fed into it!
The Web-slinger’s fingers flew across the computer keyboard, typing out information to be radioed 23,000 miles into space. I just hope to God I know what I’m doing!
Beep! Beep! Beeeeep!
A screeching alarm sounded throughout the deserted control room as the word “Warning” flashed green on the screen. Yep, I must’ve done something wrong, which in this case is right.
And just to make sure nobody sneaks back in and undoes my good deed for the day . . .
Spider-Man slammed his fist into the top of the console, buckling the metal and sending sparks flying. He ripped the cover off and reached into the mess of wires and transistors inside, tearing them out by the handful until the computer console was reduced to nothing more than a pile of ruined, unrecognizable junk.
That done, Spider-Man turned and headed toward the door. Now to get tall, green, and ugly and blow this joint before this joint blows!
But before the Wall-crawler could reach the exit, the wall in front of him exploded into the room in a roaring rain of concrete and steel.
“Holy jumpin’. . .”
That was all Spider-Man could get out before he was buried beneath the collapsing wall.
Twenty-Six
The Hulk tumbled backward as the floor before him erupted in a shower of red-hot concrete chips from the pencil-thin crimson beam that shot from the sky. Foot-wide craters appeared in a straight line along the floor as SpySat, following the orders transmitted to it by Spider-Man, fired after the big green man’s rolling body.
The red-hot ray splashed across his legs, singeing his pants and eliciting a roar of agony from the emerald Goliath. The maser beam continued along its path, blasting the debris that covered virtually every foot of the floor with molten slag. It flashed into the deep launch well.
A geyser of flame exploded from the pit as the machine struck pipelines running beneath the steel-plated bottom. An earth-shaking explosion shook the building.
The Hulk lay sprawled on the floor watching the progress of the flashing maser with an expression of bewilderment on his broad face. He could not understand what was happening anymore. He had done as the bug-eyed man had told him and
demolished the big building. So why had the light come back to bother him now?
With a grunt, he climbed to his feet and lumbered across the wreckage-strewn floor, through the wall of flame billowing from the pit, to the other side of the hangar. He shoved petulantly at the debris all around him.
“Nothing left to smash,” he grumbled angrily. “Hulk better go look for bug-eyes now. Maybe he can tell Hulk what to smash . . . huh?”
The Hulk hunched over as the maser beam suddenly turned from its path and skimmed across his back. He bellowed in pain and anger and swiped his big green hands futilely at the air. In his blind rage, the man-brute stumbled over a beam from the ceiling and crashed into the one wall still left standing. It cracked in several directions.
He whirled, his back to the wall, in time to see a crimson flash from the sky coming toward him. He threw himself to the floor, the heat of the beam searing across his back and blasting into the weakened wall.
With a thundering roar, the wall collapsed into the next room.
“Holy jumpin’ . . .”
The Hulk’s head jerked around and his beady eyes narrowed. Had he heard something in the next room . . . ? Somebody had cried out when the wall fell. Somebody whose voice he recognized . . . bug-eyes!
The man-monster roared out Spider-Man’s name and sprang to his feet and into the chamber revealed by the collapsed wall. His eyes darted about frantically and then he started to heave huge chunks of concrete aside. The blocks flipped through the air and crashed into consoles, through the view screen, and caused small explosions to erupt throughout the room, followed by electrical sparks that fizzled and turned into fires.
After long, agonizing seconds, the Hulk shoved aside a piece of wall and spotted a patch of color beneath the dull-gray concrete. It was bright red.
“Don’t worry, bug-eyes,” the man-brute breathed heavily as he pushed aside the remaining wreckage. “Hulk will save you, friend.”
Marvel Novel Series 11 - The Hulk and Spider-Man - Murdermoon Page 16