Marvel Novel Series 03 - The Incredible Hulk - Cry Of The Beast Read online

  THE INCREDIBLE HULK

  CRY OF THE BEAST

  FROM A SMALL AFRICAN NATION—The world’s greatest radiation specialist, Dr. Maxwell Wittenborn, defects! But the murderous madman who controls the country wants him back—at any cost!

  TO NEW YORK CITY—Professor Bruce Banner comes to the thriving metropolis seeking a cure for the radiation poisoning that seizes his body and uncontrollably transforms him into a half-human giant.

  PANDEMONIUM REIGNS—When Dr. Wittenborn is brutally beaten and kidnapped before Banner’s very eyes, there is no time to lose! The entire world may be at stake! Not to mention Banner’s last hope of escaping his horrifying fate—one that could turn him, at any moment, into the towering monster known as THE HULK!

  WATCH FOR THE HULK AND THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN IN “STALKER IN THE STARS” AND “MAYHEM IN MANHATTEN”

  THEN HIS BODY EXPLODED . . .

  The buttons on his shirt blew off as if shot from a gun. The shirt itself shattered into streamers of cloth, small bits leaping up into the air. His shoes tore off his feet as if dynamited and his doubleknit slacks rended like a peel ripped from a banana, its waistband just managing to stay intact.

  Dark silver-green eyes stared up from a coarse face deeply etched with lines of rage. The hair was a matted mop that looked like it was ripped out against its will from the inside of the huge skull. The arms, the legs, the torso, all of this new creature was almost five times the size of the young man who had rushed to a victim’s aid. And all the huge muscles, each strand of hair, and every inch of skin was a dark and deep green.

  THEY WERE EVIL.

  THEY HAD HURT HIM.

  THEY WOULD HAVE TO PAY!

  Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of

  GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

  1230 Avenue of the Americas,

  New York, N.Y. 10020

  Copyright © 1979 by Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Marvel Comics Group,

  575 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

  ISBN: 0-671-82085-0

  First Pocket Books printing April, 1979

  Cover Art by Bob Larkin.

  Printed in Canada

  To all those

  who are trying to do something glorious

  with the comic book form.

  Acknowledgments

  Stan Lee for creating the character and offering tempered counsel.

  Kenneth Johnson for adapting the character so well and supplying another way.

  Nick Corea for being part of that team and snoring at my plotline.

  Terry and Curt for smiling in disbelief.

  Howard Zimmerman for some good background.

  Dorothy O’Neil for the second of three typefaces.

  Vera Meyers for the third.

  And all those who listened to my gamma-related tirades.

  One

  At first he thought they were trying to kill the man. It was an assumption almost anyone would make given the hot New York night, the dark alley on Forty-fifth Street near First Avenue, the well dressed elderly black gentleman, and the two figures who were systematically pummeling him in the dank confines between the brick buildings.

  Even Bruce Banner, the reluctant witness, did not recognize it for what it was. He had been wandering the streets looking for an inexpensive, but relatively safe, place to sleep, when the two men in suits pulled the nattily dressed black off the sidewalk, burying their fists into his face and body. The second possibility that crossed Banner’s mind was that it was an all-too-common mugging, but even as he moved forward to help, he noticed that the attackers seemed uninterested in the contents of their victim’s pockets.

  It was either a thrill-beating or something far more insidious. Banner’s logistics were trundled off to the back of his mind as he ran across the street and into the mouth of the alley. His primary concern then was moving his duffel bag off his shoulder for possible offensive use and making as much noise as possible.

  “Police!” he shouted. “Somebody call the police!”

  At the sound of his voice, the duo’s arms stopped flailing and their heads snapped up. The look on their faces stopped Bruce dead. Instead of the intense bloodlust or slack drug-induced frenzy he expected, Banner saw nothing but cold, bright eyes and professional calmness. These men were not out for blood or money. What they were doing served a more specific purpose.

  Bruce quickly looked down at the black’s form. The learned-looking man had his nose crushed and blood was slowly coursing down his forehead and from his mouth across his chin, making a small puddle on the garbage-strewn ground of the alley. His dull eyes caught Banner’s and as one of his hands tried to reach the thick pair of broken glasses three feet in front of him, the other raised, palm up, in desperate supplication.

  “Please . . .” was all the man said.

  Then the alley was filled with a brilliant white light. The seedy tableau of an old man being pounded by cruel pros became a silhouette show. As the three shadows melded into one, Banner heard a stomach-shaking roar. Shielding his eyes, he realized the attackers were lifting the black man into a huge car which filled the entire width of the alley—an auto which even now was screaming its power to the night.

  As the men’s silhouettes disappeared, the six globes of light intensified until Bruce was completely blinded. The quiet night had turned into a sun-bright hell of violence and danger. The machine before him roared again, a door somewhere was slammed, and the headlights began to bear down on him with an awful speed.

  Confused, shocked, and unbelievably frightened, Banner turned and ran. He saw his shadow stretch out of the alley and spill into the street, but even before he had taken two stumbling steps, the shadow had shrank back between the blank walls until it was nonexistent. He heard the scream of the huge limo meld with his own as he spun back to face his death.

  It all happened so quickly. He had turned and seen a devilishly grinning sheet of metal fill his vision—as if the car were ten feet high. Then he felt the slap of a giant’s hand across his legs and the cushioned blow of a pillow as he was lifted up over the car. He flew in what seemed slow motion to him, and one part of his brain realized that he still clutched his large duffel bag before him. It had served as the car’s punching bag and had probably saved his life.

  Banner crashed to the ground, slid across the muddy dirt, and slammed into a line of garbage cans. Pain punched into his every limb as his bag flew away. Dazed and breathless, he opened his eyes and saw his own clothes floating down. The duffel had ripped open and was covering the area with a rain of shirts, pants, socks, and shoes. Then the pain and the environment dimmed. His vision clouded and all he could hear was the pounding of his own blood through his veins and the frenzied beating of his heart.

  He couldn’t think; he couldn’t feel; all he knew was the rage. They had beaten and kidnapped an old man; they had tried to kill him. They were evil. They would have to be stopped. They would have to pay.

  He only had time to whisper “No” once through clenched teeth before it happened. One minute he was a very small man in a dark and lonely alley, his own clothes strewn about his prone figure. Garbage thrown about in the wake of the speeding car settled around him. One pullover, its arms fluttering out, fell across his face.

  Then his body exploded.

  The buttons on hi
s shirt blew off as if shot from a gun. The shirt itself shattered into streamers of cloth, small bits leaping up into the air. His shoes tore off his feet as if dynamited and his doubleknit slacks rended like a peel ripped from a banana. The pullover across Banner’s face flew up like it was scared by what had just occurred. And the face beneath it was not that of any man on Earth.

  Gone were the boyish good looks, the sensitive brown eyes, the slim build, and the sandy brown hair. Dark silver-green eyes stared up from a coarse face deeply etched with lines of rage. The hair was a matted mop that looked like it had been ripped out of the huge skull against its will. The arms, the legs, the torso—all of this new creature was almost five times the size of the young man who had just rushed to a victim’s aid. And all the huge muscles, each strand of hair, and every inch of skin was a dark, deep shade of green . . .

  He awoke in anger, as always. Someone had tried to hurt him and he wanted to hurt them back. He growled bitterly and rose amidst the junk and mud, to his full eight feet. He saw the auto tear around the corner and out into the street, and he recognized it as the source of his pain. His first inclination was to run after it, but somehow he knew that with his size and bulk he would never catch up.

  But they had hurt him and they would have to answer for it. This Incredible Hulk didn’t actually think about what to do; he just did it. Between him and the speeding car was an office building. And if he couldn’t go around it or under it or over it, he would have to go through it.

  The legs tensed into two iron-hard bands. The fists became clenched boulders that rose to the level of his chest. The white teeth were bared in a ferocious grin. Then he was up in the air. A second-story window reflected his rising visage for a split second before he crashed through it. The razor-sharp shards of glass had as little effect on him as spun sugar, and he thundered across the room.

  The upraised fist connected with the opposite wall a second later. It did not fare much better than the window. Hunks of mortar bounced off him like pieces of cork. A solid oak desk and two plush chairs got in the way next, but not for long. They hit opposite sides of the room at near sonic speed with two swipes of his massive arms. The entire floor shook as he hit the next concrete barrier. It fell in, and the creature plowed into a room filled with tape recorders, video sceens, and copying machines—a mass-media paradise.

  But what concerned the creature most was the car, which he now saw coming down the street outside the room’s one small window. Without stopping he went for the opening, pounding one standing Xerox machine out of the way. It began spewing duplicates of his fistprint when it crashed into a table, and the Hulk blasted through the final obstacle. In a shower of sparks, the huge green man sailed out over the road, spreading water, debris, paper, glass, and recording tape in his wake.

  The ground literally shook as the eight-hundred-pound creature landed five feet in front of the limousine. Road crews clearing away the mess the next day would find enormous indentations in the asphalt which took on the astonishing configuration of two bare feet. The driver of the limo saw the monster that made the depressions for a split second before the metal hit the muscle. To him it was a dark statue, its skin glistening green in the muggy night, its hand open and outstretched. Then the car stopped.

  The creature’s arm gave slightly, but the car’s front end crumbled and the rear tires squealed as the entire back end rose up off the asphalt. A horrible screeching sound filled the deserted street, followed by two sickening thuds as the driver and his companion hit the front windshield. The auto bounced to the right slightly, its engine spewing liquid and smoke.

  The creature stared in wonder at what he had done. In something that approached shame and embarrassment, he looked quickly about to see if anyone was watching. But it was three A.M. in New York, and the street was deserted. The Hulk turned back to his handiwork and examined it for a moment until the rear door slowly opened. With a child’s curiosity, he moved forward to investigate. What he found managed to surprise even his muddled mind.

  Out from the opening rose the largest black man Bruce Banner had ever seen. His head looked like a dark basketball and was set on a beam of a neck. His facial features seemed tiny in comparison and were almost hidden by peaks of lard. A deep crimson uniform made his shoulders and torso resemble the trunk of a redwood tree while his mitt-like hands were encased in black leather. But the most surprising thing about him was that he was convulsed with laughter.

  The green man moved forward threateningly and growled, which only incited the black man into renewed bouts of mirth. He laughed to the skies, caught a look at the green grimacing face, then doubled over again, guffawing. The creature watched in consternation until he couldn’t help wondering what was the matter. He looked down at himself but couldn’t find anything amiss. His confusion caused the black fellow to wheeze hysterically and pound the top of his car with one large fist.

  By the time the man’s laughter had run dry, the green creature found himself smiling tentatively. “Oh, my,” the black man said in a rumbling bass tone. “That was magnificent.” He took a look into the front seat, where the two muggers lay unconscious, and giggled. “Magnificent,” he repeated, returning his gaze to the big green roadblock. “I need men like you, my brother,” he intoned. “Do you have a name?” The tiny eyes in the big black face searched the other’s for comprehension. “What can I call you?”

  The sounds confused the creature. His hands moved slowly about, silently transmitting his inability to understand, and his throat painfully moved to frame the word he knew best . . . the word that had been screamed at him throughout his tortured life . . . the word he could not even translate but that haunted him everywhere he found himself. His mouth opened and with rasping difficulty he said, “Hulk.”

  The black man nodded. “I will call you the Hulk, my friend,” he said. “And you can call me the General. The General. You may call me anytime, anywhere. Here.” The uniformed man took a small card from his jacket pocket and placed it in the Hulk’s big hand. “You can think about it, or will you join me now?”

  The Hulk stared at him, and the General mistook his silence for reticence. “Very well,” he said. “When you are ready, call.”

  With that, the black giant pulled open the warped front door and easily pushed the driver out of the way. Ignoring the crumpled condition of the car and the cracked windshield, he managed to start the engine and drive off.

  The Hulk walked slowly across the basement floor. He was angry and confused. He was angry because he had had to run twelve blocks before he found a place where he felt safe. He was confused by the friendly words of the big black man. The face had been smiling and the manner was concerned, but something had told him that the fellow wasn’t to be trusted.

  Something was wrong—something more than the car hurting him . . . something, something . . . he couldn’t remember. For a moment he saw a second black face, torn and bloody, desperate and pleading, but it was replaced by that of the laughing fat man, the one who had found his friends’ injuries so vastly amusing.

  The Hulk couldn’t make sense out of it. He was tired. He wanted to sleep. Sleep meant he wouldn’t have to live in a nightmare world where people screamed at him, ran from him, or tried to hurt him. The Hulk moved into a corner and hunched down, blinking. They had tried to hurt him and he hurt them back while the black man laughed. The thought scared the Hulk. He would go to sleep so he wouldn’t have to think. He would be safe, asleep, because the only thing he knew for sure was that waking meant rage and sleep meant peace.

  Two

  John Newel had known little peace in his life. First, when he had opened his own British-based business, he had been too ambitious. Then, when the trial and press had struck him down, he had been too proud. Next the government had taken the rest of his fortune in back taxes, and he had been bitter. When he had moved to America, he had been too poor. Now, in his sixty-eighth year, all he was was too old.

  Old John Newell had treated life li
ke garbage, and it had returned the favor. He had no loves, few friends who knew where he was, many acquaintances who appeared when he had enough change for a bottle, and a dank, dark, unheated cellar he called home.

  What he had plenty of was enemies. The cops who rousted him from his favorite park bench were his enemies. The streetwalkers who cackled insults as he passed were his enemies. The neighborhood parents who avoided him were his enemies. And the children—especially the children—were his enemies.

  Not the little ones, no, not the ones who were too small to know or care . . . but the smart, crafty ones—the teens—the ones who passed on the hate of their world directly to him, the ones who threw garbage at him, the ones who slapped at him as they sped by on their bikes, the ones who dropped lit matches on him as he slept. It was all a joke to them, a game of “beat the bum.”

  And that is what they finally did last night. Last night had been the worst. A bunch of them had come into the alley, all smiles, like they were going to the ballpark. They’d picked up garbage can tops and broken boards as they came. Then, with great relish, they had begun to bounce him all over the alley, banging their makeshift paddles on him as if he were an especially loathsome college frat initiate.

  He suffered a scalp cut, a chipped tooth, and countless bruises. When he woke up, it was near six o’clock in the morning, if the sun was any judge. Old John shook himself lightly to test the damage. In a second he decided that he had felt worse.

  “I’ll have to move from this damned city,” he told himself. “It’s getting too dangerous. The grandparents beat the parents, the parents beat the grandchildren, the grandchildren beat the children, the children beat the kids, and the kids beat me. Hee, hee.”

  Old John liked the way that sounded. He liked the way it sounded so much that he repeated it constantly while walking the five blocks down and the three across to his cellar. By the seventh block, he realized he felt dizzy and had been weaving back and forth across the sidewalk. He wasn’t even drunk. He needed some wine to stop feeling so bad, so hot, but there was no one on the street to panhandle from. Newell plucked at his tattered overcoat with unsure fingers and kept walking.