Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

You’re losing it, thought Bruce, and he slammed the blinds closed. You are a rational man, a man of science, and if there’s some freak out there casing your house, you confront him on it or call the police, but you don’t start concocting demented notions of psychic vampires. He took several deep breaths to cleanse his mind and his soul, and then peered out through the blinds once more, separating the metal slats with his left hand while, with his right, he reached for the telephone in order to call the police.

The mists were swirling and undulating outside as if they were themselves sentient, and in the fog, walking away, he caught a glimpse of the man once more, surrounded by three dogs of varying sizes. For half a heartbeat, Bruce thought one of them might have been that poodle he’d seen back at the lab. Or it could just have been a small dog. Whatever it was, an instant later it, along with the other two dogs and their master, had been swallowed up by the fog and were gone.

A man walking his dogs.

Bruce Krenzler, doctor, scientist, brilliant theoretician, had allowed himself to be spooked out by a bad dream and a guy taking his mutts for an early morning walk.

He wondered what in the world Betty would have thought of such a thing . . . and that turned his thoughts to Betty and to Talbot, which irked him.

So Bruce climbed back into bed, curled up with the utter conviction that attempting to get any sleep tonight was a complete waste of time . . . and promptly fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The dog walker unlocked a padlock on the gate of a chain-link fence in front of the small weedy yard of a run-down row house. The dogs ran in ahead of him, snapping and growling in low, unpleasant tones. Then they turned and looked at him expectantly, with an air that seemed to indicate they’d just as soon devour him as anything else if they weren’t sated. But he was prepared; he knew his babies all too well. He reached into his coat and pulled out strips and chunks of meat and old vegetables from a bag that had been sealed to prevent the dogs from smelling its contents, and tossed the food to them. They snapped it up immediately, fighting with each other over the scraps that fell to the ground unclaimed. As the three canines—a mastiff, a pit bull, and a poodle with rotting teeth—busied themselves, the dog walker unlocked the padlock and entered the ramshackle house that sat like a pustule upon the face of the neighborhood. It also happened to have once belonged to Benny Goodman; it was amazing how quickly a home could go downhill.

The interior was illuminated by light from a single bulb hanging from a bare wire in the ceiling. To call the interior furnishings decor would have been an insult to the French language. There had been other furniture there before, but the dog walker had gotten rid of it all. It had borne a passing resemblance to furnishings from another time in his life, and he had no desire to be reminded of it. All that remained was a sagging, stained mattress in one corner, and on the opposite side of the room a long worn table, with stacks of papers, books, journals, and a small work area. The dog walker removed his overcoat and tossed it on a pile of clothing off to one side that included his janitor’s uniform, then went to the workstation and shoved a pile of material to one side. This revealed a gleaming, superthin notebook computer.

David Banner opened the screen, pressed a button, and sat down. The light from the screen illuminated his face, causing him to resemble a grinning Halloween jack-o’-lantern. On the wall behind the computer screen was a bulletin board filled with images and clippings: various scenes from Bruce Banner’s career, as well as yearbook and graduation photos.

Banner sat there for a moment, pensive, taut as piano wire, looking as if he wanted to explode out of his skin with the urgency of his many pent-up desires. Then he raised a hand and touched one of the photos.

“Bruce,” he said softly, “my Bruce.”

He pulled open a drawer and removed from it a small container in which a hair had been soaking in a specially designed solution. Banner held it up, his eyes narrowing as he studied it, and then grinned approvingly with a smile that would have chilled any onlooker. He placed the container down, twisted off the top, and then used a pair of tweezers to deftly remove the hair from the solution. It would have been an impressive display for anyone watching, who would likely have assumed from appearances that the old man with the graying hair and the wild-eyed look was a burned-out alcoholic who couldn’t keep his hand steady if his next drink depended upon it.

Not in this case, though. There was no hesitation to his movements as, with practiced confidence, he placed the hair onto a glass plate and chopped it into tiny pieces with a razor.

He then pulled out a small test tube from a nearby rack. The tube was filled partway with a milky substance, and he dropped several pieces of the hair into it, saving the rest for possible future use.

He allowed them to soak for a few moments, then put the test tube inside a device that he called a DNA splitter. It had taken him ages to develop it from assorted parts he’d been able to scrounge, but its crude and humble roots didn’t limit his confidence that it would work. He checked the connections to his computer to make certain it was plugged into the correct data port, and then turned on the splitter. The apparatus hummed and vibrated. A wire ran to the superthin notebook computer.

The night was still save for