Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

the beast’s jaws crunched together just above her. She closed her eyes, partly to avoid getting broken glass in them, but also because she couldn’t stand to see that horrific face crunching into hers.

She braced herself, hoping against hope that it would be quick.

It wasn’t.

She froze that way for a few seconds, then looked up. The dog’s head had gone limp; its jaws were hanging open. Its final attack had been, indeed, its final attack, as it succumbed to the damage the giant had inflicted upon it. Its body began to sizzle and melt as the other one’s had, and Betty scrambled backward, getting her legs clear. She wasn’t sure if the goo would have any toxic effect upon her, but she wasn’t inclined to take the chance.

From across the clearing, she heard more snarling and howling, and it was impossible for her to discern what was coming from the animal and what from the giant. The dog was most certainly not human, but it was still hard for her to believe that the giant ever had been.

The sounds escalated as the ferocity of the struggle increased, until there was a high-pitched whimper that could only have come from the throat of the dog. Betty tried to see past the shattered glass, but was reluctant to touch the dead dog in order to get it out of the way. Through the blood and gore she saw the outline of the giant, holding the third dog at arm’s length, and it seemed impossible but somehow the giant appeared larger than he had before. Yes . . . yes, it was true, for his fist was large enough to encircle the entirety of the beast’s throat, where it hadn’t been before. And suddenly the fist squeezed and the dog’s whimper became a high-pitched squeal of alarm, followed by a pulpy bursting of flesh and bone.

Had Betty been processing information in anything resembling a normal fashion, she would have felt sick to her stomach. As it was, she was so much into the realm of mental overload that she was starting to think that nothing could ever shock her again.

. . . Dead dead smashed no more dog done Betty safe Betty Betty . . .

. . . Safe . . .

. . . Done tired so tired but . . .

. . . but . . . but . . . Betty . . . is . . .

. . . is safe . . . Betty is . . . safe . . .

“Betty . . . is safe. . . .”

He spoke the words, and didn’t fully comprehend what they meant. The urgency, the need had been so deeply within him that it had lost all context or sense.

His mind still in a fog, he was stumbling forward and fell to the riverbank, catching himself with his powerful arms before he could tumble headfirst toward the water. He stared blankly at his reflection, his thoughts fighting through the white noise of his consciousness, and there was an image in the water, and the water was wavering, except . . . it wasn’t. The water was still save for the rippling being caused by raindrops. It was his face that was wavering, except it wasn’t his face because it was large and green and distorted, except it was, because every man knows in his heart the face of darkness and rage that he carries within him; he simply chooses to ignore it.

But there it was, staring back at him, except it was shrinking and shifting and undulating and turning into a face of weakness and bewilderment, and the sight of that face both angered him and filled him with a greater relief than he had ever known. The green tint to his skin mottled and then dissolved away into his normal flesh tone.

And a voice sounded within his head, and it was his own voice and it was another, guttural voice. But, for one, brief moment, both voices had exactly the same concern:

Betty . . .

The rain splattered against what remained of the windshield, causing the blood to smear and run. Some of it was beginning to wash away, enabling Betty to see a little better. A little, but not much.

She thought the giant was staggering toward the water, and she was worried that he had been mortally wounded. But he was no longer clutching at his throat where the skin had been torn away. That injury alone should have been enough to kill him, but instead, remarkably, it seemed as if the blood flow had been halted, as if the rip had just . . . just healed itself up somehow.

. . . healed . . . gamma radiation . . .

Oh, my God.

Oh. My God.

Even as she watched the giant sink to his knees, the truth of what she had just witnessed, the insane reality that her world had become, made itself known to her. Even as she watched the skin ripple and shift and retract in on itself, defying all the known laws of physics, as the behemoth’s mass just melted away like butter in a skillet, she denied it while accepting it.

My God, what have we unleashed? she thought with a combination of revulsion and fascination.

The world stopped as the man staggered to his feet, swaying in the rain, as if it had washed away the form of the monster to leave only the man. A baptism, reestablishing his humanity. And when he turned to face her, when Betty saw the face she knew she would see, the delicate line separating fantasy from reality blurred and twisted and then broke apart. Dancing through her head was the child’s song about rowing a boat, purely because of its refrain, “Life is but a dream.”

He staggered toward her like a drunken man, and when he got to the side of the car, he pulled on the door that had been crushed in