Hulk-demic

Chapter 7 "breached"

As Rick and Sully sealed Bruce in with the green monster, General Ross was having his few remaining men reinforce the passage from the bunker to the garage. The exterior doors were compromised when hulks killed the two men with flamethrowers and now at least two of the monsters were in there. Bruce had told the general that he wasn't quite sure of the intelligence of these beasts but not to underestimate them. It was more like they were enraged and not thinking straight then actually of bestial IQ.

Still, Ross was relieved when instead of barreling directly into the rest of the bunker they took to destroying what little remained in the garage. It gave him a moment to react. He ordered his men to pile boxes and furniture against the interior door. A few men were posted there with machine guns. Ross had one soldier escort Betty down to the lab for her relative safety. Then he and the man they had just rescued, a corporeal named Reynolds, returned to the bunker.

Ross took up his binoculars to survey but said curtly, "I know you've been through a lot in the last few hours, but there is no time to waste Corporeal. Tell me directly, did you get the atomic ordnance?" As he asked this, Ross was watching several more of the things move around in close proximity to the bunker. The explosion seemed a lifetime ago but was less than 90 seconds earlier—yet the noise, the commotion, the stench, seemed to conjure the devils from thin air.

"We did, General," the man was shaking, his voice cracking, "but it didn't go well..." He began to explain.

Betty and her escort reached the laboratory suite two levels below to discover Bruce locked in the cell. Her only thought was to save him, the other soldier had to restrain her. She shouted, almost shrieked, "WHY???" gasping, she stuttered, "—wh-why...is he in there? Let him out!"

Rick watched one of the monitor. He turned and gently took her arm, speaking softly, "We don't know why he's in there, he let himself in when he was alone."

Sully piped in, "I'm sorry, ma'am, there is no way we can open that now, we can't risk that thing getting out."

"But—" tears flowed freely down her face.

"I don't know why he went in there, Ms. Ross," Rick said softly, "but we have to trust him. He must have thought he had to." They stared at the monitor, watching. Neither the hulk nor Bruce moved, though Bruce continued to mumble to himself.

You're human like I am. I am not your enemy. Tell me, where does it hurt? What makes you so angry? I want to help you.

Bruce no longer saw the prison cell, the concrete slabs, the frosty walls, the darkness of the tiny room, nor even the massive danger standing no more than two feet away. Before meeting the General, he had had a university post, teaching physics and studying gamma rays. Every afternoon he would sit in the faculty lounge, drink tea, and meditate on the day's research. He would run thought experiments like Einstein. He would try to imagine how gamma rays behaved despite not being able to see them. His mind was a more powerful microscope than any in existence. He imagined worlds.

Now, this is the world he imagined. The faculty lounge, in front of him stood the hulk. In some other world this creature was his prisoner. He had examined it, studied, perhaps at times tortured it. He had most certainly created it. Now, they existed in another time and place. This was Bruce's reality. In that reality, it was also the hulk's reality.

My name is Bruce but you already know that. How do we look to you, help me understand. Must we all be smashed? Are there none you would spare? Are we...

In the week or more that creature had been under observation, no one had heard it speak, or even believed it was capable of speech. Except Bruce, when he knew he heard it say his name, perhaps in a dream. But it spoke here, in this reality. Its voice was rough and guttural. It used simple words, with few syllables. And it spoke in a very familiar-sounding voice, Bruce's. It spoke,

Puny humans. You fight, you try to kill hulks. I. Kill. You. First.

Tell me your name. Do you remember your name?

My name is fear. My name is death. My name is Bruce Banner.

It took Corporeal Reynolds less than five minutes to share all the details with the General. As he spoke, Ross never brought his binoculars down nor did he ever stop watching the menacing hulks prowling around the bunker. The wrecking of the garage continued, noisy as hell, but the protected hall remained unbreached.

Finally Ross turned. "You and me are going down to the lab. I'm afraid there's no more time." And there wasn't either, because a mighty fist slammed into the concrete slats not five feet from the Ross's head. Both men turned to see a hulk there, smashing at the concrete with both it's fists. Before this moment, General Ross would never have imagined that the concrete in the bunker was vulnerable to attack by these monsters. Now seeing it happen, he didn't think the exterior wall would last five minutes.

In the hall he told the men watching over the garage that the bunker was also compromised. "Men, we have the bomb we just need time to ready it. Give us time, I beg you." He saluted and marched off for the lab with Reynolds.

As an Army Air Corps officer in World War II, he had fought battles throughout the Pacific. He knew that in war sometimes men died. Hell, they knew it too. He also knew, that sometimes for the sake of overall victory, you had to lie to your troops. And so, he had lied. They did not yet have the atomic device they needed.

Back in the lab, Betty finally noticed, "Is the compressor off? That means the prison is warming up?"

Rick looked sad, "Yeah, I think Dr. Banner wanted to wake the monster up so he could talk to it."

Now further distraught, Betty decisively marched over to the spy hole, intent on speaking to Bruce. "I wouldn't do that, Ms. Ross.  You might agitate the prisoner!   I'm afraid we'll just have to let it play out the way Dr. Banner wants. Trust him Ms. Ross."

In the faculty lounge of his mind, Bruce and the creature's tête-à-tête was interrupted. It was the sound of Bruce's father's voice. Drunk, as it often was during Bruce's childhood. Angry, dangerous. Why now! This psychic interruption was more than just an annoyance, it was emasculating. Just when Bruce needed all of his wits about him, he was being returned to his childhood. One of hiding from belts and beatings. One of being 6-years-old, huddled under the kitchen sink while hearing the damage being done to his mother. His father was an actual decorated war hero, had liberated concentration camps in Germany, had two purple hearts, and Bruce would always love the idea of his father as a hero. But the father he grew up with in Dayton, Ohio was drunk and abusive, and had not been a hero.

Smash, yes Smash. It makes sense. I feel the anger. You feel the anger. The door opens, the tables turn. Six-year-old Bruce thinks, I. Will. Kill. You.

In the lab now gathered General Ross and his daughter, Rick, and three of the soldiers. Each side had debriefed the other. Ross asked Rick point blank, "If you had to, could you finish the new Gamma Radiation Bomb without Banner?" Rick glumly sad yes. All the rest of the needed components were laid out on tables in the lab, except the atomic device. Ross told them how that all turned out.

The men had reached the base and gotten the small bomb –itself no bigger than a toaster – out of its secure location without any trouble. But on the way back, hulks started noticing them. Their jeep was over-run about a mile from base, in the desert. Reynolds made it back on foot but the rest of the men had perished. And the bomb remained with the wreckage of the jeep. "So if you can get it to the jeep, how long would it take you to finish it?"

Rick thought, then said, "With Bruce, five to ten minutes. If I have to do it, if I even could do it, one to two hours." Rick's voice actually squeaked when he spoke next, "General Ross, we can't do it without Dr. Banner. Out in the open that long we'd all be killed before we could finish."

"Those things are in here boy, right now! One way or another we're all going to be killed today."

Betty finally shouted, "Daddy, we have to try and save Bruce. We have to!"

He smiled, "I have a plan to do just that."