Marvel Novel Series 02 - The Incredible Hulk - Stalker From The Stars

by Len Wein

  Ten

  The forest was growing increasingly silent; the shadows seemed to be deepening. They were moving in single file along a wooded path, Rick in the lead.

  “You notice anything odd?” he asked the auburn-haired girl.

  “Getting quieter,” Linda replied. “Fewer birds singing, fewer animals chattering and rustling around.”

  “What’s the reason?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing I can think of. We are getting closer to the crater, though that shouldn’t make any difference.”

  “Oh, yeah, the famous crater which gave Crater Falls its name,” Rick said, grinning. “What is it, anyway? I mean, it’s not a volcano or anything?”

  “Legend has it the crater was caused by a huge meteor,” Linda replied, “meteor that probably struck hundreds of years ago and is still buried down under the ground.”

  “Hasn’t anybody, a team of scientists, perhaps, ever excavated?”

  Smiling, she said, “Our crater is sort of a landmark, and it’s the town’s only claim to fame, just about. Dig it up and what’s left? We’d have to re-christen ourselves Hole-in-the-Ground Falls, or No-more-Crater Falls.”

  Rick laughed with her. Then, gradually, a frown began to furrow his forehead. Finally, he said, “There’s absolutely no noise now, not a single damned bird warbling, not even a leaf rustling.”

  Moving closer, Linda took hold of his hand. “It is strange, Rick. You think maybe we ought to head back?”

  “Not quite yet, but we’d better be cautious.”

  “I wonder if this is why Dr. Stern comes out this way so often—because of the silence.”

  “Don’t think so, unless it ties in with his research,” answered Rick, keeping hold of the girl’s hand and moving, more slowly, ahead on the leafy trail. “Did he mention the crater to you?”

  “He is interested in it, though he never told me why. There’s something out here, in this whole area surrounding the crater, which fascinates him.”

  “And he brings equipment with him, stuff to test for radiation levels and such?”

  “I don’t know one instrument from another, Rick, but yes, Dr. Stern is usually loaded down with some of his gadgets. I remember kidding him once about—”

  “Hold it.” Rick suddenly halted, let go of her, and bent over to pick something up. “Well, here’s a scientific instrument, although anyone could have lost it.” He held his palm toward her, showing the smashed compass he’d spotted on the path.

  Linda inhaled sharply. “I’m fairly certain that’s his,” she said, pointing at it. “I remember seeing it on his desk, Rick. He must have dropped it, then stepped on it.”

  “It got dropped, but it’s too mangled for just getting stomped on.” Rick dumped the remainder of the compass in a pocket of his jeans. “Besides, Dr. Stern would probably have picked it up again.”

  “Then, what do you think—”

  “Wait now.” Rick had glanced to his right. He saw something, or a hint of something, in the deep shadows some fifty yards off. “Over there, among those trees.”

  “I don’t see . . . oh, I do—some sort of glow.”

  “Yeah, a faint green glow.” He patted her twice on the arm. “Stay right here, rooted to the spot, while I go to—”

  “I grew up in this town. I know how to travel through the woods without the benefit of a trail.”

  “I’m certain you do, except if that’s what I think it is the farther off you stay, the better.”

  “What do you mean? Some kind of radiation?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  “Then you ought to—”

  “I seem to be moderately immune to this particular kind of radiation, because . . . well, on account of something that happened a while ago.” Not wishing to explain further, he left Linda on the narrow trail and cut into the shadowy woods.

  The greenish glow guided him like a beacon. He moved steadily toward it, ignoring the thorny brush and tangled branches which tore and slapped at him.

  “Be careful, Rick,” Linda called.

  Her voice sounded very far away.

  Rick’s certainty as to what he was going to find was mounting. The silence and shade encircled him, cutting him off from the girl. He pressed on, working toward the glow of green.

  And then he was looking down at the body of a dead man—a dead man whose face was contorted, whose limbs were twisted. His hiking clothes were tattered, and his corpse pulsed with an unearthly green glow.

  “It’s Dr. Stern,” Rick recognized at once, “but what killed him?”

  Obviously the doctor had been exposed to tremendous gamma radiation. There was ample evidence, though, that he’d also been attacked. By animals or by humans? It wasn’t clear.

  Shaking his head, swallowing hard, Rick began to back away from the green-glowing corpse. As he became aware of the outside world again, he heard a thrashing behind him.

  “Rick, what is it?” He turned and saw that Linda was making her way toward him.

  “Stay right there. I don’t want you to get any closer.”

  He ran, stumbling, snapping twigs underfoot, right to her. “Stay away, damn it!”

  “Is it Dr. Stern?”

  He reached the girl, put his hands on her shoulders, then caught his breath. “Yeah, it’s him. He’s dead.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly, lowering her head. “He was a very . . . brilliant man. Such a shame he . . . how did he die?”

  Putting an arm around her shoulders, Rick headed for the trail. “There’s a possibility he was murdered, since—”

  “Nobody in Crater Falls would . . . this isn’t the sort of place where people get murdered.”

  “It is now,” Rick said, “or at least I’m inclined to think so. What’s your law-and-order situation?”

  “We have a sheriff, Sheriff Anmar.”

  “Okay.” Rick nodded. “We’ll hike back into town and report all this to the sheriff.”

  “But can we just leave Dr. Stern here?”

  “We have to. The radiation he’s giving off . . . well, I don’t think it’s safe to handle him. We’ll have to warn the sheriff of that, too.”

  Linda wiped at the corner of her eye. “All at once we’re talking about Dr. Stern as though he’s just an object, something to be disposed of.”

  They reached the trail. “Didn’t mean to,” Rick said. “The thing is, Linda, at this point we simply don’t know what killed him. Look, it could kill us, too.”

  “I understand. It’s only that . . . all right, let me make sure I know exactly where we are, so I can give Sheriff Anmar the location.”

  As they started back toward town, Rick said, “Got a hunch this is only the start of something bigger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not,” he answered, “exactly sure.”

  Eleven

  “Quite comfortable, actually, old man.”

  “For a cell.”

  “You persist in looking at the situation that way, eh, Doctor?”

  Bruce Banner was sitting on the edge of a narrow bed. His room was a cube, with walls of incredibly strong metal. They’d been painted a somber shade of blue. There were no windows, and the one door could be opened only from the outside.

  “Isn’t that what you call the place a prisoner is kept—a cell?” Banner asked Quartermain.

  The handsome blond man said, “You’re rather a special case, old boy.” He paused to grin. “And that may well be the understatement of this century. Face it, Dr. B., you are unique.” He took a few steps toward him. “When apprehended, you were in the process of rending valuable government property asunder at an impossible rate of speed, laying waste to vast stretches of peaceful countryside.”

  “You’re talking about the Hulk,” Banner cut in, “not me. I did none of those things. None of them!”

  “Ah, you’ve placed your finger squarely on the nub of the problem,” said the SHIELD agent. “When they popped you into that plastic pod and let the
gas do its work, you were an enormous greenish chap. Yet somewhere between there and Gamma Base you returned to this form I see before me—mild-mannered, witty, urbane—”

  “That always happens. The Hulk goes away and I return,” said Banner, hands gripping the edge of the bed. “How’d you knock him out so efficiently? He should have been able to break out of that bubble.”

  “New invention of Gamma Base.” Quartermain leaned casually against the metal wall near Banner’s cot. “I must tell you, you keep all the lads around here on their toes. Always coming up with new and better Hulk traps. You’ve inspired more scientific breakthroughs than the space program or—”

  “It’s not me they’re trying to catch!” Banner insisted. “It’s the Hulk!”

  “Exactly, old man.”

  “Then why do you keep hounding me?”

  “Because you’re in the same unenviable position as that chap in the story by Robert Louis Stevenson. The good doctor was a perfectly respectable sort, but that Hyde fellow was another bag of goods altogether,” said Quartermain.

  “There’s no parallel. I didn’t willingly ask to share my body with the Hulk. This thing that’s happened isn’t anything I ever wanted.”

  “Seems to me, sport, the parable does apply. One shouldn’t tamper with nature’s secrets or one is liable to get a cosmic kick in the slats.”

  “Why do they keep you on the payroll? You’re obviously too much of a wiseass to get along with Thunderbolt Ross.”

  “On the contrary, the old boy dotes on me,” returned Quartermain, folding his arms across his broad chest. “And, in case you haven’t guessed it, he’s watching this little tête-à-tête at this very moment.”

  “Your mikes and cameras aren’t that well hidden.”

  “The good general is a bit sheepish about approaching you directly as yet. Thinks you may bear him a grudge because of the somewhat drastic way he got you here to Gamma Base.”

  Banner said, “You guys work like cops—the tough one and the nice one. Right now it’s your turn to play nice guy, to soften me up.”

  Giving a mock gasp, Quartermain said, “My boy, I assure you I am a nice guy. I am also a prince of good fellows, and a man among men. You really ought to lend an ear to my spiel.”

  Banner stood, facing him. “Don’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? I am not the Hulk. I’m sick unto death of being persecuted as though I were. I have to live like some damned runaway slave from the last century and—”

  “This copout simply won’t work, old man,” interrupted Quartermain. “You are Dr. Bruce Banner, respected scientist, and you are also the bloody Hulk, enormous green weirdo. You have to face that fact, my friend.”

  Banner looked away from him. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted in a low voice. “But I never asked for any of this, never wanted—”

  “Come now. Who does ask for the dreadful things life dumps on one’s doorstep now and again? What we all have to do, don’t you see, is learn to grin and bear it.”

  “Okay, fine, Quartermain. I’d like to do that, but on my own. In solitude. I never should have gone into government work in the first place.”

  “Old man, if you keep forcing me to deliver obvious home truths,” said Quartermain, “I’m going to start feeling like your blooming psychiatrist and charge you an outrageous fee for my time. What happened back at the gamma bomb test, that’s the past, the dead past. All we have to work with is now.”

  “And now I’m a prisoner.”

  “Our guest,” corrected the SHIELD agent. “A fellow we very much want to help.”

  “Help is one way of putting it.” Banner sat again on the cot. “What you guys here at Gamma really want to do is study me, poke and probe, take me apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in this enlightened government of ours hasn’t suggested you find out how to mass-produce Hulks. Sure, make a whole army of ’em and send ’em off to invade Africa or Cuba or whichever country it is we think we have a foreign policy problem with this week.”

  “An army of Hulks?” Quartermain chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to be sitting in the reviewing stand when they passed by on parade.” He unfolded his arms, placed his hands on his hips. “Enough of this verbal fencing, Banner. I truly do think we can help you here—not exploit, mind you, but help. You hate the Hulk. Very well, let us find out where he comes from and how to control him.”

  “Company line,” said Banner scornfully. “Cheap propaganda to make me into a willing guinea pig.”

  Quartermain looked directly at the other man for a moment. “You have my word that such is not the case,” he said evenly and slowly. “If you really do want to kick this green-giant habit, Doctor, then what say we knock off the self-pity and get down to the job at hand?”

  For a silent moment the two men watched each other.

  Then Banner said, “Okay, I’ll trust you. What next?”

  Quartermain told him.

  Twelve

  Sheriff Anmar was big and wide. On the porch of the boardinghouse, he was scratching a thumb through his short gray hair. “If you say so, Miss Linda.”

  “Look at me, Sheriff,” the angry girl said. “I’m grown up and you don’t have to address me as though I were still in pigtails!”

  “Shucks, Miss Linda, I ain’t trying to—”

  “Could we backtrack a minute?” suggested Rick, who was standing near the porch railing. “I’m not quite clear yet as to why you came over and started accusing me of being a practical joker.”

  “Now, there’s no need for everybody to get mad and jittery,” said the sheriff. “Miss Linda says she’ll vouch for your honesty, young fella, and I got to admit you made a favorable impression when you reported this alleged death to me this aft—”

  “Alleged?” said Rick and Linda together.

  “That’s what I been trying to tell you,” said the sheriff. “There’s no sign of a body out there in the woods. Me and Gilbert Fox traipsed all around the spot you told me about, Miss Linda. Spent more than an hour.”

  “Are you sure it was the right place?” Rick asked.

  “Young fella, me and this girl here are natives of Crater Falls. When Miss Linda gave me directions, she knew what she was doing, and I darned sure know how to follow them up,” said Sheriff Anmar. “So I’m telling you, I don’t know what you think you saw, but it ain’t there now.”

  “It was there,” persisted Linda. “Dr. Stern’s body—we saw it!”

  “Hold on, now. When you came busting in on me this afternoon, you told me you didn’t actually see Doc Stern, Miss Linda. It was this young fella here who went near the body.”

  “I saw it glowing.”

  The sheriff made a dissatisfied tisking sound. “In some of the bigger towns hereabouts, I hear tell as how folks have hallucinations from taking—”

  “We weren’t on drugs, Sheriff,” said Rick. “I saw the dead body of Dr. Stern in the woods today. He’d obviously been exposed to a massive dose of Gamma—”

  “ ’Bout three years back, Old Man Mott thought he seen a flying saucer,” said Sheriff Anmar. “That was the last time we had anybody green reported in the vicinity.”

  “Honestly, Sheriff, you’re being incredibly stubborn,” said Linda. “I think I’m a little more in control of my faculties than Mr. Mott. There was a green glow in the woods. Granted, I didn’t get close enough to see the body. Rick did, though, and he’s not a liar.”

  After giving his scalp another thorough rubdown, Anmar said, “How come you knew it was Doc Stern?”

  Rick sighed. “I explained that this afternoon. I’d met him before, through a friend of mine, when he was doing government work. I came to town to visit him because—”

  “Okay, okay,” said the sheriff. “So you knew what the doctor looked like. But it is possible, isn’t it, you was mistaken about what you thought you saw—”

  “It wasn’t a stray weather balloon, Sheriff, or swamp gas, or light reflected off the clouds,” Rick assured him. “
I am not goofy. This afternoon in the woods near the crater I found the body of Dr. Rudolf Stern. I don’t have any idea why it isn’t there now.”

  The sheriff switched to his chin, started scratching at that. “Maybe I could send over to Lee’s Landing and borrow the bloodhounds they got.”

  “What must have happened,” said Linda, “is that someone moved the body.”

  “Why’d anybody do that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, but if Dr. Stern wasn’t there, then somebody or something moved him.”

  “We did find some trampled places out there, Miss Linda. But it’s hard to tell exactly what happened, since you and this young fella was roaming all over thereabouts,” said Sheriff Anmar. “Anyhow, we sure didn’t find any sign of a dead man.”

  There was a silence. The light of the day was dropping out of the sky.

  After a few seconds, the sheriff said, “Well, Miss Linda, I’ll see what else I can do about this. Probably tomorrow we’ll give it another try. Night, now. Night, young fella.”

  After he’d gone lumbering away, Rick turned to the girl. “You don’t think I made it up?”

  “Of course not,” Linda assured him. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “What did happen to the body?”

  “Maybe,” said Rick, “it’s better if we don’t find out.”

  “Jeez, it’s possible nobody ever sleeps in this damned town.” Rick, fully dressed, sat back from the window of his room.

  The night was overcast; the street below was dark. Still, Rick was able to see the mysterious procession as it got going. Silently, they came easing out of their darkened houses, shuffling along like shadows, murmuring strange words, their faces dead. A town of sleepwalkers.

  The boards out in the hall creaked. That must be Slim, dragging off to join them. No wonder the poor guy is tired, thought Rick. He’s moonlighting and doesn’t even know it.

  Very faintly, the sound of the front door opening and closing drifted up to Rick. He stared down and saw Linda go floating out of the house.

  “She’s one of them; that’s certain.”