Bruce Banner has a recurring nightmare
of the day the gamma bomb exploded and thinks of the “walking
ghost” phase, when he feels healthy though he is already as good as
dead. He awakens on a bus and feels the Hulk inside telling him to
get off at a certain small town. Bruce has a meal at an all-night
diner and spots a newspaper headline describing a series of
mysterious deaths. He asks about this at a bar and an old guy gives
his theory that it is a chain of grief: as people die and are buried,
their mourners come down with the same mysterious malady, creating an
endless chain of grief. The first victim was popular high school
football star Del Frye whose father is a scientist, working with
radiation....
Bruce visits Del Frye's grave and
senses a lethal amount of gamma radiation emanating from the site. He
calls the EPA for an emergency response team but they don't believe
him—until he gives his name. On their way into town Hulk had
spotted a green glow from a mountain cave. As the sun goes down,
Bruce climbs to that cave and discovers a number of dead bodies—and
he is confronted by Dr Frye, emaciated and glowing green. Frye tries
to kill Bruce to keep his whereabouts secret but Bruce becomes the
Hulk and forces Frye to reveal what happened. After the death of his
wife, Frye had a crisis of faith, seeing nothing beyond the grave. So
he started work on a means of prolonging life, based on Bruce
Banner's work with gamma radiation. He injected himself with the
formula and felt much better almost immediately. He then injected his
son, who collapsed to the floor and died within seconds. Frye burned
the formula and soon was exhibiting the same symptoms in a walking
ghost phase but more slowly, likely because he had built up a small
immunity during his researches. Hulk points out the irony: Frye
wanted to conquer death and now he is death: everyone who visited
Del's grave walked away with a fatal dose of radiation; when those
people died, the mourners at their gravesides were infected, in an
endless chain of grief. Hulk doles out his punishment, tearing off
Frye's arms and legs and dropping him in a deep pit for eternity....
When the EPA emergency team opens a
grave, they find the corpse still alive and glowing a deadly
green....