by Len Wein
“Where’s the phone?”
She gestured at the hallway behind her. “Right in the hall—it’s the only one.”
Banner stepped inside the house with her. “How far away is your room?” he asked, moving to the phone table.
“Down the hall, in the other direction.”
Everything in the hall was neatly in place. There was no lingering evidence that anything unusual had happened. “So you wouldn’t necessarily have heard him.”
“Not if he simply used the phone, Mr. Banner.” Linda looked unhappy. “But if, as you seem to imply, something unusual took place . . . I certainly would have heard a scuffle or a fight.”
Banner said, “Rick was obviously upset over the death of Dr. Stern. Now, was there anything else he seemed worried about? Had he tangled with anyone in town, somebody who might be angry with him?”
“No, not that I . . . except . . .”
Banner took hold of her arm. “What?”
“Oh, it’s only that Rick had a pretty nasty bump on his head when he came down to breakfast yesterday.”
“You mean he’d been in a fight or an accident?”
“Rick explained it away by saying he’d fallen in his room, tripped in the dark or some such thing,” Linda said. “At the time, though, I thought it looked more as if something had hit him. I didn’t want to pry, so I accepted his explanation.”
“Have you noticed anyone hanging around?”
“No, nobody unusual. This is a small town . . . and a peaceable one, Mr. Banner.”
“Didn’t turn out that way for Dr. Stern.”
“We still don’t know for sure what killed him. It may turn out to be some side effect of his research.”
“A funny side effect that would dump him in the middle of the forest,” commented Banner, “and then later carry him away and hide him somewhere else.”
Linda turned partially away from him. “I get the impression you think I’m not telling the truth,” she said, “that I’m hiding something.”
“Are you?”
“Mr. Banner,” she said, facing him with her eyes narrowed and angry, “I liked Rick, and I’m sorry he left in such a hurry. The most logical explanation seems that he decided to move on. From what he told me, he was a footloose person, a wanderer.”
Banner asked, “Can you tell me where Dr. Stern lived?”
“Yes, but I don’t imagine you’ll find Rick there.”
“I’d like to see the house, maybe talk to his neighbors.”
Linda gave him the address and instructions on how to reach the house. “You may run into Mrs. Snell, his part-time housekeeper. But I doubt she’ll tell you anything.”
Moving to the screen door, Banner said, “In case Rick shows up here, ask him to wait for me.”
“Of course, although he must be miles from here by now.”
Banner didn’t think so. He didn’t say that to the girl, though. He merely said, “Thanks for your help, Miss Connelly.”
Sixteen
He found a back window he could open. Shielded by shrubbery, Banner climbed into Dr. Stern’s silent house. There was no sign of any housekeeper about, and the nearest neighbor had a pole fence which prevented him from witnessing Banner’s housebreaking.
The hallway he landed in smelled of dust and chemicals. After carefully closing the window behind him, Banner stood still and glanced around. Through an open door on his left he saw the corner of a desk and a section of book-lined wall.
“His study; might as well start there.”
In the middle drawer of the old wooden desk, which Banner pried open with a souvenir paper-cutter from a long-ago World’s Fair, he discovered a thick notebook bound in imitation black leather. The word Journal was printed across the cover in faded gold.
Settling into the doctor’s chair, Banner skimmed through the book. “What the hell!” he exclaimed after a moment. He went back to an earlier section and read more carefully.
. . . clear idea as to what it is [Stern had written]. I am, however, absolutely certain that there is something alive in that crater. I am, at the moment, utterly unable to explain how life can exist in such circumstances, since the gamma radiation coming from the crater is very high . . .
. . . townspeople, beyond a doubt, are involved in this somehow. During my last exploration of the crater itself, I found unmistakable evidence of digging . . .
. . . he cannot control me as he does the others. True, his thoughts reach me and his commands resound in my head, but I am able to resist. I am relatively certain I am one of the few people, perhaps the only one in this town, who can fight off his will. What is frightening to contemplate is my certainty that he knows I cannot be made his slave. Thus, whatever his scheme, I must of necessity be dangerous to him . . .
. . . get near there. That much control over me he has. The intense pain he is able to transmit to me is preventing me from approaching too close to the crater any longer. I can only assume that the digging has continued, that whatever it is which is trapped in the earth is near to being released . . .
. . . can’t I warn someone? If even part of what I suspect is true, this creature must be destroyed. Power such as it possesses must not be allowed to emerge into our world. Yet I find I am unable to lift up the phone and call for help from the outside. I can’t discuss this with anyone, not even Linda Connelly, whom I trust. I have many political and moral differences with General Thaddeus Ross, yet I would gladly summon him now. If only I could! That thing in the crater forbids it. Although he cannot, as yet, control me completely, he is able to keep me from warning the world outside. This little town is his domain; he rules it ruthlessly. Someday soon he’ll be free, and then the whole world may become his kingdom. He allows me to record my thoughts in this journal, a futile gesture, at best . . .
. . . pain is almost continual. I have struggled against it, but I fear I am weakening. He wants me out there, out at the crater again. I am afraid to go, knowing it may well mean the end of my life. The pain will ease if I go; he has promised me that. If only I could do some . . .
Banner closed the book on its unfinished sentence. He rested back in the chair for a few seconds.
So that was what had happened to Rudy Stern. Some thing, a creature with a powerful intelligence, dwelled in the crater. It was using the people of the town to free it, and Stern had found out. Somehow Stern had been able, just as Banner had last night, to fight off the mental commands that entity projected.
“He fought them off only up to a point,” Banner said aloud. “Then he must have given in . . . and now he’s dead.”
Tapping his fingers on the journal cover, Banner frowned. It looked as though Rick Jones had found out what was going on in the crater, too—or at least some of the story. And had the creature summoned him to his death?
Banner stood up suddenly, glancing toward the open door of the study. “Oh, are you the housekeeper?” he inquired of the gaunt woman who stood in the doorway. “I’m a friend of Dr. Stern’s, and when I found his door open, I . . .”
Her eyes never blinked. They stayed wide and staring. Her mouth hung open. She moved her hand from behind her back. He saw the butcher knife she held.
What was it that guy used to say on the old TV show Rick had watched that summer he was bunking in Greenwich Village? Don’t even remember his name, old movie actor or something.
“What a revolting development this is!”
Yeah, that was it.
It sure applied to this situation.
Rick had awakened about a half-hour ago to find himself bound and gagged—bound and gagged and dumped on a mud floor in somebody’s musty basement.
There was one window. One—count ’em—one. A small little thing, narrow and dusty, allowing only a very small pinch of sunlight in. And that sunlight was soon swallowed by the mildewed darkness down here.
At Rick’s back rose boxes packed with discarded old clothes. Farther away, an ancient red wagon was jammed with broken dolls and
toys. Beyond that sat an immense pile of old Sunday funny papers, their faded images celebrating the antics of such forgotten heroes as Barney Google and King of the Royal Mounted.
“Wait a minute,” Rick said to himself. “There’s something you missed.”
Yeah, it sure looked like a toolchest. Only part of it was showing from behind the bundle of brittle comic sections. A tool box ought, by rights, to contain tools—sharp implements you could use to cut your ropes.
The problem was to get there from here. Well, that was the basic problem in life, getting from here to there. Usually, though, you didn’t have the added handicap of having your hands tied behind your back with lots of old clothes line, your feet bound with wire, and your mouth stuffed with an old dust cloth.
“Even so, I’ll have to get to that box of tools.”
He felt somewhat like a private eye as he began to wiggle across the gritty floor on his back. He’d been knocked out twice now by the good people of Crater Falls. That was about his limit. One more time and he was really going to get angry.
Rick was fairly sure that he was in the boardinghouse basement. Whatever it was that had killed Dr. Stern and was controlling most of the people wanted Rick out of the way for a while. For some reason that thing couldn’t get directly at him, couldn’t even get hold of his mind.
“Well, he acted a bit too late this time around,” Rick said and elbowed along, moving slowly closer to his goal, “because I did get at least part of a message through to General Ross.”
He was fairly certain Ross would take action. Hell, that’s what the general lived for—action.
Rick had a feeling, too—maybe it was only wishful thinking—that Bruce Banner was nearby, that Banner would somehow help him.
Or maybe, God help him, the Hulk.
Seventeen
Banner said, “You’d better not try—”
“You must die!” Mrs. Snell ran at him, knife slashing at the air.
“To be honest, I’d rather not.” Ducking, he gave the desk a shove. It went skidding across the floor, shedding its stone paperweight, a bunch of letters, sheets of manuscript, and a bottle of deep blue ink.
Thumk!
The desk stopped the charging woman, knocking her backward.
Banner moved. Diving across the desk, he grabbed the stunned woman’s wrist and shook the knife from it.
As the weapon hit the floor, she tried to twist out of his grasp. “You must die! You must die!” She scratched at his face, her fingernails raking across his skin.
“Madam, I’m usually a gentle guy, but . . .” Banner delivered a punch to her knobby chin.
Her jaw shut with a clattering click. She sagged, then spilled down to the floor.
“The creature in the Crater has got to be responsible for this,” decided Banner, scowling down at the unconscious assassin. “Obviously he’s got the ability to project his thoughts over a distance, to gain control over people and make them do exactly what he wishes. Now he knows I’m poking around in his—”
“You must die!”
Another one. A young man in his early twenties, wearing a post office clerk’s uniform. He hefted a greasy wrench in his left hand, and there was a look of madness in his eyes.
More noise came from behind the young man, a scuffling. Then more of them came pushing into the room—a half-dozen in the first wave. There were men, women, young, old, armed with sticks, clubs, shovels—any weapon which had been handy when the creature had sent out his urgent commands.
“You must die!”
“Wake up!” suggested Banner, backing away from this small horde of newly minted zombies. “Wake up, you idiots! He’s got you hypnotized!”
No effect.
“You will die! Die!”
All of them chanted in unison, shuffling toward him, reciting the name of their master again and again.
A plump woman in a flowered housedress pushed through the others. There were nearly twenty of them crowding into the small office now. “Kill him! Kill him!” she screamed, her mouth twisted. She carried a metal-base table lamp and was swinging it like an axe. “Kill him!”
“Wake up, all of you!” yelled Banner. “Can’t you see what he’s making you do? Don’t you realize you’re making me . . . Mad!”
Blood began to pulse in Banner’s temples, pounding like thunder in a canyon. Banner threw his hands to his head, doubling over from the pain. His shirt pulled tight against his hunched back, then split clean up the middle. His sleeves swiftly followed suit. The green glowing figure clawed at the tatters, tearing them away.
Then his powerful, broad chest gleaming in the lamplight, the figure stood erect.
He showed them his enormous green fists, shook them defiantly. The Hulk growled at them, as if daring them to draw near.
“Kill him!” The housewife swung her lamp at his green head.
Smack!
It hit against the Hulk’s wide emerald chest, snapped in half, and did absolutely no harm whatsoever.
“Little insects!” taunted the green giant. “Little, puny humans!”
Grunting, amused, he grabbed up the fat woman. He tossed her right into the others, bowling several of them off their feet.
“Hulk will smash you all!” He pivoted, picked up the desk, and threw it into the gaggle of attackers who were still upright. They fell, tangling with each other.
“Stupid insects!” He thumped to the window, then kicked out all the glass with one powerful foot. “Hulk is tired of playing!” He leaped outside.
More of them waited out there.
Ping! Ping!
Some of those out here were more dangerous. A big, wide-shouldered man across the street was firing at him with a rifle. It was Sheriff Anmar.
But the pitiful little bullets didn’t bother the Hulk’s thick green hide.
There were a couple of dozen more zombies surrounding Dr. Stern’s house, all primitively armed, except for the sheriff, all crying out for the Hulk’s death.
There was a roaring sound, the crowd scattered, and an auto jumped onto the sidewalk. It tore through the picket fence and came barreling across the lawn straight for the Hulk.
“Toys can’t hurt Hulk!” The man-brute lowered his massive head and ran to meet the rocketing car.
Kablam!
The entire front of the car split open. Its radiator began gushing steamy water. The windshield fractured and the fat man at the wheel slapped back and forth between the headrest and the shattered glass.
“Not smart!” The Hulk, snorting, picked up the ruined car, and shook it until the fat man came falling out like the last potato chip in the can. Then he flipped the car toward the watching zombies.
Smap!
The carcass of the automobile smacked down in the street, shedding pieces, but not landing on anyone.
The sight of what had happened to the car didn’t bother the rest of them. Or perhaps they weren’t supposed to be bothered. They had been ordered to destroy this intruder, and nothing else mattered.
“Hulk is tired of you!” He charged at them, slapping them aside with his mighty green palms.
He ran on, like some immense crazed football player running for a touchdown with such force and intensity that nothing could halt him.
A few more tried, but all of them got battered from his path.
“Creature tried to hurt Hulk!” the running giant roared. “Now Hulk will hurt him!”
Eighteen
“There’s your blasted plane, parked over there.”
“So I noticed.”
General Thunderbolt Ross was so angry that he was driving his own Jeep, which had come rolling out of their just-arrived transport plane moments earlier.
“Lucky for you Banner didn’t fly it into the side of a mountain.” The Jeep went squealing away from the landing field.
“He’s a competent pilot,” replied Quartermain, who was sharing the fast-moving vehicle with the unhappy Gamma Base general.
“A competent half
wit!” Head hunched in, forehead ribbed with wrinkles, Ross concentrated on gunning the Jeep along the old highway which led to Crater Falls. “He dopes you, masquerades as you, swipes a damned aircraft, fools my whole halfwitted security staff into thinking he’s you out for a midnight jaunt. Phooey! That’s what comes of putting the guy on his honor.”
“Banner’s fond of the Jones boy,” said Quartermain, yawning. “Can’t really blame him for wanting to—”
“What the heck are you yawning for? Didn’t you get enough sleep last night, courtesy of Banner?”
“Must be an aftereffect of the tranquilizers he slipped me, old chap.”
“Some swell agent you are, letting that milksop put one over on you.” The Jeep bumped and swayed and Ross tromped down heavier on the gas pedal. “A great beauty sleep you had, too. Come staggering into my room at dawn to say, ‘What, ho, old bean, I do believe that bally Banner laddie has done a bunk.’ Phooey!”
“See here, old man, I don’t babble like a baboon even when I’ve been drugged. You are misquoting—”
“Misquote my Aunt Tillie!”
After a few silent and bumpy moments, Quartermain ventured to say, “Look on the bright side, old man. You were planning to come to Crater Falls, anyway. So this little excursion isn’t exactly—”
“Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t,” responded the general. “But it gripes my fanny to let Banner get one up on us.”
“We may learn something valuable in yon small town.”
They had reached the edge of Crater Falls, which presented a picture of calm and quietude on this sunny morning.
“I’ve already learned something. The next time I get hold of Banner, I’m going to hogtie him and keep him in a cage.”
“General, your notions of penology border on the barbarous.”
Ross slammed on the brake pedal, yanked a wadded-up map out of his shirt, and unfurled it. “Find me Chestnut Street on this blasted map.”
“Courtesy of Leiber’s Garage?” remarked the SHIELD agent as he took the map and noticed the name stamped on its front. “What sort of ordinance chart is—”