Right about then I imagined that Mister G, the owner of the Starlight and my previous employer, was shitting a solid gold brick.
It's not every day that your top enforcer and security guy takes off for greener pastures. Of course, I was just playing these saps so I could get the most out of it. Hell, it wouldn't take much to turn the tables again here, just a few more bills thrown my way.
Joe Fixit gets what's comin' to him, and I ain't letting anybody step in my way. I'm riding this train to the top and there isn't a man dumb enough to step in front of me, least of all these puny humans. Nobody in the entire state that can stand up to the guy who used to be called the Hulk.
Not that anyone knew that's who I used to be. As far as the world was concerned, the Hulk was dead. No reason for them to think otherwise. And if I was a dead, what did I have to lose?
The answer, even though I didn't believe it at the time, was everything.
THE HULK: VEGAS GRAY
Chapter Two
Written by D. Golightly
"Move it, Joe."
I tossed a glare at the guy Marcus Price had put in charge of the operation, a pudgy bastard by the name of Sammy the Tooth. I guessed the nickname came along with his obvious enjoyment of inhaling food. He didn't much care for the look I gave him but I didn't much care what he thought of me. Fat prick.
"I'll stand," I told him, crossing my huge arms over my barrel of a chest. So what if he was in charge? I didn't take kindly to authority unless there was something I could get out of it. If he wanted to shove his weight around by telling me where to sit he wasn't going to like having my weight thrown back at him.
He snorted in annoyance and turned back to the screen behind him. There was a huge projector screen pulled down behind him against the far wall of the warehouse we were in. Most of the place was empty except for a few crates of whatever illegal merchandise Price was shipping through. About a dozen guys sat around waiting for the Tooth to begin his explanation of the latest plan and all of them looked on edge. Probably cause of me. This was the first meeting I had shown up for since Price accepted my offer last week and hired me away from the Starlight.
Smart move on his part.
"Everyone listen up," Sammy said, making sure to enunciate the first word. "The boss sent down the next assignment. Tonight we're hitting an armored car that's delivering something real important. This ain't no cash box or small time shit. This is the real deal."
He pressed a button on the remote control he was toying with and images began flashing on the screen behind him. A map of the apparent route the car was going to take, a blueprint of the vehicle itself, pictures of men in bulletproof vests standing guard; tons of stuff. The guys shifted in their folding chairs. A few of them murmured about the gravity of the situation.
"I don't need to tell you that fucking this up is not an option," Sammy continued, clicking on a laser pointer and waving the red dot on the screen. "Around here, Griffin Boulevard, we make our move. We get in, we take what's inside, we get out. That's it. Simple."
"What are we grabbing?" one of the guys toward the front asked.
"Whatever is inside. Boss says this is something real high-priced that the Starlight is having brought in for an expo. 'Course, now that Big Foot over there ain't on their payroll no more the Boss thinks this will be an easy grab."
A few heads turned around to gawk at me. I'm used to it. I decided to let the Big Foot comment slide since it wouldn't do me any good to snap the Tooth's neck in front of the rest of the crew.
"Nothing's easy," I said.
Sammy snorted again. "Yeah, well, the boss says you'll be waiting here." The little red dot pinpointed a spot behind a couple of buildings just north of the intersection where he had told us the thing was going down. "It's our job to make sure the armored car is stopped here, at which point you run over and rip the thing to shreds. You pop the thing open, we grab whatever is inside, we haul ass out of there. Any questions?"
"I thought ripping off something like this was supposed to be all classy like in the movies," I said sarcastically. I knew it was a dumb thing to say but I wanted to get under Sammy's skin. "Where's the wires? The mirrors? The bait and switch?"
"Hey," Sammy shot back at me, "this ain't Ocean's fucking Eleven and you ain't no goddamn George Clooney. Do as you're told and keep your mouth shut."
I smiled and the sight of my giant grin obviously disturbed Sammy more then anything I could have said. His pupils dilated slightly and I could smell the fear coming off of him. Sammy was one of those guys that talked a big game but when he was staring down the Devil he would piss his pants every time.
Sometimes looking the way I do ain't all bad.
"You've reached Marlo Chandler. I can't come to the phone right now—"
I slammed the phone back into its cradle, cracking the outer plastic casing. The bitch had to be screening her calls, she just had to be. There was no way she had been out of reach all week and not returned my calls. To think, I had been willing to put her up in the best hotel. Penthouses, champagne, flowers, jewelry…you name it and I would have bought it. With the deal Marcus Price and I had shit like that was chump change.
But why wouldn't she answer her damn phone? It's not like I was going to flip and go crazy on her or something. My mental state was more solid than it ever had been, better even. Why was I so hung up on her?
Hell, this was Las Vegas. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone selling sex like it was candy. Hookers, streetwalkers, call girls, whores…they were all over the place and at competing prices.
I deserved better. If some dumb broad aerobic instructor didn't want anything to do with me, then fine. I can take a hint. Her loss.
The phone was back in my hands before I knew it, dialing up Marlo's number.
Vegas gets cold at night. There's no way around the winds that blow in from the surrounding desert. You can hold your coat as tight as you want, but in the end, you'll freeze your butt off if you stand at the back of an alley and wait for the signal.
Twenty minutes rolled by then another twenty. My wrists were too big for a wristwatch so I took a look at the pocket watch I carried around (made out of solid silver, of course). Way past time for this thing to go down.
Either something was wrong or I was being set up. Whichever way you looked at pissed me off. I was already being treated like a dumb gorilla and the longer I set out here the angrier I got. You may have heard; I'm not a fun guy when I'm upset. There's different versions of the monster inside me and all of them react differently to scenes like this, but there was always one constant: Hulk gets angry, Hulk smash.
I pictured letting my rage out on Sammy's pudgy little face when I heard tires screech to a halt at the end of the alley. Showtime.
I covered the fifty feet to the street in one jump and landed right beside the armored car, facing the stenciled logo of the transport company. Three of Price's goons wearing ski masks were to my left, each of them brandishing guns as big as my…I think you know where I'm going with this.
"Let's move, Joe," one of them said to me.
"Yeah, cops will be here any minute along with fire and rescue," another chimed in.
I leaned around the front of the armored car to see what they had done to stop it. A telephone poll had been knocked over and was draped across the slender road, completely obstructing any traffic that was trying to get by. It was late and we were far enough away from the major Vegas action that there weren't any cars already piled up, complete with irritated drivers honking their dinky little horns. Live wires were flapping in the street with sparks of electricity snapping in the air.
"Shit," I said. "Subtle, ain't ya?"
"The driver's been capped," the first guy said. "Rip the fucker open so we can get out of here."
I shook my head at the fact I was taking orders from these pipsqueaks but the thoughts of all the dough I was raking in for this job made it bearable. I cocked both my arms back and jabbed my fingers straight through the side of the car with twin thumps! The boys jumped back, started by my direct approach.
"This tin box can't…" I started to say but there was a sound coming from inside the armored car that shut me up. "What the hell?"
Something clanged from the inside again, louder this time. I looked to the boys who looked just as confused. "What did Price tell us was in here again?" I asked.
Before any of them could open their mouths I felt something slam against the tips of my fingers. I jerked one hand back, more surprised than hurt. It takes a lot to hurt me. Pissed off for a whole other reason now, I punched my fist back into the car and pulled back hard with my other hand. The metal tore apart like frilly tissue paper under the pressure I exerted.
The light was horrible and I couldn't make out anything on the inside. I leaned in to try and figure out what was going on, and that's when it hit me. Literally.
A solid steel wrecking ball cracked against my chin and knocked me off balance. I stumbled back a few steps, my teeth clenched tight enough to snap through an oak. My fedora fell off and rolled along the ground through a dirty puddle of God knows what. I instinctively ran the back of my hand against my chin even though there was nothing there; just a reflex when you take a hit like that.
"Ha!" scoffed someone from inside the armored car. "They told me I was going to be sluggin' it out with a big ugly-looking mother. Didn't figure it'd be Frankenstein's monster hisself."
A bald white guy stepped through the opening I had made, a long chain grasped in his hands at the end of which there was the wrecking ball that had nailed me. He was a little shorter than me but not by much. There was scruff on his face, maybe a couple days old. He was dressed in one of those undershirts that people like to call "beaters," with a pair of ragged, gray trousers covering the lower part of his body.
"So, you're going on display at the Starlight, huh?" I asked.
"Nah, that was just to get your ass out here. Name's Creel. You might want to think about changing your name to mud."
"Why's that?"
"Buddy, you're about to find out."
He was fast. He jumped the distance between us and flung his wrecking ball into the side of my face, sending me flying back into the alley I had been waiting in. Getting hit with a little thing like that isn't enough to do much to me, but he was packing some serious power behind it. I crashed into the back wall and slumped to the ground on one knee, ready to take the fight back to him.
"See, when I absorb the properties o' my ball here," he started to say as he lumbered toward me, swinging the ball and chain over his head, "I take on its strength and I'm damn near invulnerable. They told me you was strong. So far you just ugly."
I fell into a crouch and pushed off from the cement alley floor. He must not have expected me to fly at him from way back there because his face looked like someone had kicked his puppy. I stretched out my arm and caught him around the gut, knocking the wind out of him. He bent forward over my arm as my momentum kept us going.
The edges of the hole in the side of the torn armored car scraped into Creel's back as my jump slammed us into it. All my weight crushed down on him and I started pounding away on his face. Left, right, left, right…the guy could take a beating. Not once did he cry for help or for mercy.
"You sure took the wrong job," I told him. "Going up against me is like going up against—"
His first shot to my face spun my head to the side and his second one pushed me out of the car. His fists felt like sledgehammers wrapped in titanium wrapped in skin. Before I could sit up he was on me, driving his knuckles into my face just like I had done to him.
"You ain't nothing special," he said with a crooked little smile. "Hell, you ain't even enough to make me bleed. Thor would wipe his ass with you."
The thing, he was right and I knew it. One of my other incarnations might have had a better shot at this guy but Joe Fixit would have to be a little more clever. That was sort of my thing anyway.
I grabbed his wrist as his fist came down and squeezed, making sure to shove my fingers into his tendons and trigger his pressure point. I'm not as strong as my green side but I'll be damned if I can't snap this little pissant's wrist and make him wish he'd never been born.
Creel finally cried out and rolled back onto his knees, clawing at my fingers wrapped around his wrist. His eyes told me how much pain he was in which made me feel good. Must have hit a nerve.
Then these annoying little bugs started diving into us. I paused for a second, unsure of what was happening and I loosened my grip on Creel. Another wave of the little black things pelted us and I realized what was going on: Price's boys, who had been dumb enough to stick around through all this, were shooting at us. Both of us. The bugs were bullets being fired through their silenced submachine guns.
"Dumbasses," I muttered. I tried to tighten my grip on Creel but it was too late. He leveraged his wrist out and hurled himself at the morons. He bowled through them like they were duckpins and I know I heard more than one bone snap.
"Man, these little punks are like peanut brittle," Creel said with a sneer. "How do you work with wussies like these?"
Even though I could care less about Price's ignorant peons I still needed to take Creel down, and that would be easier if we were away from any possible casualties. I ran up behind him and put him in a full nelson, clasping my fingers together to make the hold stick. I felt his back muscles tense as he realized what I was about to do.
I smiled and said, "Say g'night, Gracie."
I kicked off the ground and shot up and over the city, bringing Creel along for the ride. We arced high and wide, the neon lights passing beneath us. He struggled but once I had my grip set there was no way he was going to break it. I had the bastard dead to rights a mile over Las Vegas. Even if he broke free the fall would still take the fight out of him.
This used to be how I got around. Even though I'm as big as a house I could still jump a few miles through the air. That goes to show how…strong…
"What's the matter?" Creel said. His voice was low and hard to hear over the wind whipping by us. On top of that I was having trouble thinking. I felt woozy and drunk.
"You know what else they call me? The Absorbin' Man. Know why? You're feeling it right now. You really are some kind of powerhouse, ain't ya? I'm tapping the reserves you got bundled away and holy shit do I like what I'm feeling. I take back what I said about Thor."
He wasn't making any sense and I couldn't pull it together enough to figure him out. The last thing I remember before blacking out was the wind cutting into my eyes, Creel's hands around my neck, and the desert floor rushing up to meet us.
CONTINUED IN CHAPTER THREE