Bruce Banner finds Chrissie Cutler weeping over the skeleton
of her old friend Manny Joslin, a pistol by his side suggesting suicide. Bruce
wonders if the bad guys could have killed him and faked a suicide but Chrissie
doesn’t know. Chrissie tells Bruce that Wright-Armstrong was doing human
experimentation, contracted to the government to create a superior soldier.
When she knew him, Manny was wired to stay awake for days on end but his mind
was deteriorating. As they place Manny’s bones in a footlocker and bury it,
Chrissie tells of an escape from the facility and now she wants to locate all
of her friends and take them to a sanctuary where they will be safe.
“Nightmerica” is what Manny called the facility where they were experimented
on….
In Paducah, Kentucky, Chrissie buys the reluctant Bruce some
new clothing at a mall. Bruce hides from security and he and Chrissie have
their pictures taken together in a photo booth, splitting the strip of four pix
in half and each one taking two. The next morning when they go out, Chrissie
sees Stealth flying through the air, one of the nasty mutates from Nightmerica,
now working for the bad guys to track them down. They abandon their car and
take a bus to the next point on the trip; Chrissie uses a PDA-type device
created by her friend Intergalactic, who is helping her on her mission, to
locate her friends. In Effingham, IL, they pick up a new rental car and head to
a shuttered tourist trap called “The Eighth Wonder.” Bruce breaks in and a pile
of rocks placed over the door falls on him, triggering a transformation into
the Hulk. Seeing it was only a booby trap, Bruce represses the change and
returns to normal. They find Chrissie’s next friend, Deadbird, who resembles a
humanoid crow; she reassures him about her intentions and introduces him to
Bruce as they move on. They rent a recreational vehicle in Lerna, IL, where
Deadbird can hide from view. Chrissie confesses that she has fallen in love
with Bruce but he brushes her off as it would just be something else for Hulk
to wreck. DB explains how he is suffering energy dissipation and he has no
access to the device which can recharge him and keep his body intact—and
suggests the device can cure Bruce of being the Hulk. In St. Louis, MO, they
purchase a wheelchair for their next friend and Chrissie asks Bruce not to
flinch when he sees Stu. And then they arrive in St. Louis’ scary inner city….