Hulk Peter David (best motivational novels txt) 📖

I’ve managed to culture some of your very own DNA, Bruce, and the results, while unstable, are powerful,” said David Banner.

“What about my DNA?” demanded Bruce.

His father ignored the question. “Let’s just wait and see what Betty makes of the results!”

“No!” shouted Bruce. “You’re crazy! I won’t let you! You—!” But then he looked at the small readout on the phone and saw that there was no longer a connection. His father had hung up.

Utterly frantic, Bruce ran to the front door, pulled it open, and found Glen Talbot standing there, a smile on his face.

“Inside, asshole. I want to talk to you,” said Talbot.

David Banner whistled a late 1950s pop tune called “Betty My Angel” as he removed the headset and went into the yard. Everything was moving so perfectly, falling into place so ideally, that it was one of those moments where he couldn’t help but think that there was some higher purpose to all that had happened to him, some higher power that was moving in most mysterious ways. It was odd; he’d never thought of himself as a particularly devout man, or even a believer. But with all that was occurring and falling his way, perhaps—perhaps there was something to this God thing after all.

Well, why not? Man was, after all, supposed to have been created in God’s image. That being the case, man should be as deft and adept at creating as that which had brought him into existence. And certainly David Banner had been holding up his end in that regard.

As he walked out into the yard, he was greeted with growling so vicious that it bordered on the obscene. Three feral voices snarled low and deep, sounding more like huge semis with busted mufflers than anything alive. He continued to whistle “Betty My Angel” even as he contemplated Betty becoming a genuine angel. It gave him a satisfied feeling. Let her be God’s problem instead of his.

He held up Betty’s scarf. Since she’d left it, he’d been careful to keep it isolated in a plastic bag so it wouldn’t get any other scents mixed in with it. Now he waved the scarf, teased the dogs with it, kept it just out of their reach even as the waving caused them to go into berserk fits of barking.

When he’d gotten them sufficiently worked up, he let fly the scarf. Huge teeth powered by great, green muzzles tore into it as flecks of jade spittle flew from their maws.

“Now, fetch!” said David Banner, and they understood what he wanted, for they had been well trained to start with, and the processes he’d inflicted on them had only made them more intelligent—not to mention more ferocious. “Fetch and let nothing stand in your way!”

The sun had not yet quite set, but the full moon was already visible high above the horizon. The dogs, like gigantic gamma-irradiated wolves, leaned back on their haunches and bayed at it.

If Glen Talbot had heard the chorus of canine ululation, he might well have joined in.

Everything that he’d done—the planning, the maneuvering, the precise and far-reaching Godlike manipulation—everything from striving to put Bruce and Betty together, to arranging for Bruce’s nutball father to be kicked loose from the hospital so that the screws could be jammed in ever more tightly, everything was coming together precisely, like cogs in a great machine. In his mind’s eye, Talbot could see Bruce Banner being mashed between those cogs, and in so suffering, unleashing tremendous untapped energy.

Talbot couldn’t, of course, have anticipated the accident that sent the nanomeds and gamma radiation coursing through Banner’s bloodstream. But that was the true beauty of a really great plan: When something unexpected occurred, it played perfectly into the overall scheme without causing the plan to miss a beat.

So now, when faced with the frantic scientist, it was all Talbot could do not to laugh in Banner’s face and tell this brilliant researcher—who unquestionably thought that he was so much brighter, so much more intelligent than Talbot—that he, Banner, was just a pawn in a vast chess game. With Talbot moving all the pieces.

“Talbot, listen! It’s my father. We don’t have much time. I think he’s going after Betty,” Bruce said, the words spilling over one another.

Talbot stepped inside, kicked the door closed behind him, and approached Banner. He made sure to display a proper amount of ire, throwing a total non sequitur at Bruce to keep him off balance. “So, you think you can go behind my back, get Ross to cut me out?”

Banner blinked, an owl caught in the wash of a spotlight. “What are you talking about?” said Banner. “I’m trying to tell you, we need to get help—”

With a swift maneuver. Talbot kicked Banner’s legs out from under him. Banner dropped on his back to the floor and Talbot pressed a shoe into his face. “You pathetic freak,” he said tightly, his jaw twitching with an anger that came all too naturally. “Tomorrow, after I convince Ross, you’ll be carted off to spend the rest of your life in some tiny, solitary hellhole. And I’ll take over your work. But in the meantime,” and his voice became more and more intense, “you’re going to tell me what the hell happened to your lab. You didn’t happen to steal anything important from it last night, did you?”

Talbot’s heel was crushing Bruce’s mouth. Even Talbot had to admit to himself that he was impressed by Bruce’s tenacity, because all he could talk about was the woman. “I swear to you, believe me, Betty is going to be killed.”

Unsure of whether he believed Banner or not, but certain that he didn’t especially give a damn, Talbot pushed down harder. “If I can state the obvious, it’s your health I’d be worried about right now.”

Bruce desperately grabbed Talbot’s leg with both hands, grunted, struggled, but couldn’t overcome Talbot’s strength and skill as Talbot ground his shoe into Bruce’s face. He did so with a cold calculation that