The Ultimates: Against All Enemies (15 page)

"Hobbes," Grant admonished. "Go lie down." Hobbes did, but he didn't stay lying down for long. Bouncing to his feet again, he came over and sat next to Steve, tail swishing like a dust mop across the wood floor at the edge of the dining room rug. His head was a foot higher than the dinner table.

"He's decided you're the weak link, Steve," Grant said. "Don't feed him, or you're going to have to take him home."

"I don't think he'd like it," Steve said. "He'd hardly be able to turn around in my living room." Bucky coughed, and everyone fell silent. When someone as sick as Bucky sounded sick, even for a moment, it seemed that everyone else stopped existing until they figured out whether Bucky was going to keel over dead. This time he didn't, though. When he was done coughing, he said, "What I was going to say is, how come you don't get a bigger place, Steve? God knows you could afford it."

"What, so I can have a giant dog? Nah. I like living where I grew up. Reminds me of where I came from and where I am now, both at the same time. Everything's kind of... " Steve trailed off, then shrugged. "I like it where I am."

Hobbes woofed, as politely as a dog of his size and ebullience was able. "Go lie down," Grant ordered him again, and again Hobbes did. This time he left them alone long enough that they got back into conversation, mostly about Grant's work—he was a midlevel executive with a mutual fund specializing in sustainable industries—and Bucky's recent hospital spell. Bucky was in surprisingly good humor for a man measuring his life expectancy in weeks; he was one of those people who refuse to let knowledge of their coming death interfere with their enjoyment of what life they have remaining. "Hell," he said a few times during the course of the meal, "I'm gonna die, but that's no excuse to get everyone else all depressed."

He'd just said it for the third time when Hobbes jumped up and turned quickly around twice, snuffling at the floor, before sitting down and gnawing at one of his hind legs. "I told you he needs a bath, Grant," Sharon said.

Hobbes yelped and stood up again. Steve looked back over at him.

"What the hell's gotten into your dog?" Bucky wanted to know. He was peering at Hobbes from his seat all the way at the other end of the table.

Grant got up and went over to Hobbes, who was now chewing on one of his front paws. "Hey, buddy," he said. "What the matter, fella?" He put his hand on Hobbes's head... and Hobbes growled.

"Whoa," Grant said, pulling his hand back. "What's that all about?" He squatted down next to Hobbes and reached for Hobbes's paw. At that moment Steve saw, coming out from the heating vent in the corner where Hobbes had been curled up, a line of big black ants.

"Grant," he said, standing up and pushing his chair back, "take a step back, there, okay?" Grant looked up. "What are you talking about? Something's really bugging him."

"Grant," Steve said again. Hobbes growled.

"Easy, buddy," Grant said, and Hobbes looked up at Steve. Should have known, Steve thought. If they can take the form of a person, why not a dog?

At that moment, Hobbes lunged and seized Grant's throat in his jaws. Sharon screamed and jumped out of her chair, knocking over her wine glass. Grant got both of his hands into the ruff around Hobbes's neck and tried to push him off Steve was already reaching for the dog—no, the Chitauri masquerading as a dog—and Hobbes gave Grant a single hard shake. A warning. Grant gurgled and stopped trying to push Hobbes away.

Steve stood where he was. "You got bigger problems than me, bucko," he said. "How many more ants are going to come through that grate? I hear those bullet ants have a sting like a gunshot wound. How many can you take?"

Hobbes growled, and kept its eyes locked on Steve. He hadn't been lying about the ants. A thick column of them flowed up through the vent and disappeared into the dog's thick fur. Won't be long, Steve thought.

"Ants?" Bucky said. "Steve, what did you say about ants?"

"Long story, Bucky," Steve said. Hobbes let out a long moan and started to tremble. He was drooling on Grant's neck, thick saliva running down into the collar of Grant's shirt. One of his eyes twitched shut, and when it opened again, Steve was looking into the slit pupil of a Chitauri. Grant gasped, and blood threaded the saliva on his neck. Then the Chitauri began to transform in earnest. Hobbes threw himself up onto his hind legs, with a crack of rearranging joints, and great swathes of his skin and fur peeled away to reveal scales. Grant scrabbled backward on the floor away from this sudden monster, and Steve threw himself at it. There was pandemonium in the dining room as Sharon ran to help Grant get up off the floor and Gail pulled Bucky's wheelchair away from the table and backed up with it into the kitchen. The Chitauri, which in mid-transformation looked kind of like a grizzly bear given an infusion of dinosaur DNA, roared as it grappled with Steve, and its jaws snapped near his ear. "Not a spitter like your friend was yesterday," Steve said, then grunted as it raked claws down his left side. They wrestled into the corner, slamming hard into the wainscoted wall. The impact knocked pictures to the floor all over the room. Steve was landing good hard shots on it, but the Chitauri was giving as good as it got—and as an added complication, dots of intense agony started to appear up and down Steve's arms and legs as the bullet ants, overwhelmed by being thrown around and crushed in the fight, started stinging everything they could get a stinger on. Most of those stings hit the Chitauri, which was losing progressively more of the dog shape, but enough of them got Steve for him to feel like he was skinny-dipping in a pool of acid.

"You brought some unwanted guests," Steve grunted as the two combatants crashed through the side table holding the serving dishes with the rest of the night's dinner. Now he was covered in gravy and mashed potatoes as well as cuts, bruises and ant bites. "Enough already," he said. "Nobody starts a food fight and brings bugs to Bucky's house. You're going to have to go." Jaws agape, the Chitauri slipped out of Steve's hold and bit down on his shoulder. The pain made Steve forget all about the ants. When the alien reared back for another bite, Steve caught one of its jaws in each hand. "Didn't you ever see
King Kong?
he said. "That big mouth is what gets you lizards in trouble."

He pulled hard. Something cracked. He pulled again, and felt the flesh in his bitten shoulder tear, which made him angrier. The Chitauri's tail, suddenly regrown, snapped out of nowhere and pounded him on the side of the head, but Steve kept his grip. One, two,
heave
... and he felt something give in the alien's skull, its lower jaw breaking loose and twisting as Steve shoved it back into the Chitauri's throat. Its tail lashed furiously, and its claws left deep bloody furrows in Steve's forearms, but it was already getting weaker, and when he gave the broken jawbone another shove into its neck he felt something give way again and it went limp in his hands.

"Jesus, Steve," Grant said after a long silence. "That was my dog."

"That hasn't been your dog for a long time, Grant," Steve said. He let the dead Chitauri fall to the floor.

"I'm sorry."

"But what is it?" Sharon asked.

Steve looked at her. "An enemy. That's all I can tell you. It's not the only one out there. They must have used Hobbes as a way to get close to me." He looked back down at the dead Chitauri, which was swarming with ants. Doctor Pym, he thought, we're going to need to have a talk.

"It has ants all over it," Grant said in the oddly childlike voice of someone slipping into shock.

"I know it does. They'll go away in a minute," Steve said. "Do you two mind going in the other room? I need to make a phone call."

"Okay," Sharon said. She helped Grant to his feet and the two of them went into the kitchen. Steve got his cell phone out and was about to call General Fury when Gail came back in from the kitchen.

"Steve," she said. He caught a slight tremor in her I voice, and saw that she was struggling to keep her com-S posure. "I think we need to get Bucky to a doctor."

Steve snapped his phone shut. "Okay, call an ambulance right now. I need to go outside for one second, 1 but I'll be right back."

He burst out onto Bucky's front stoop and looked up and down the street. Pym's headset didn't have much range, he knew that; it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where the good doctor was. Tomorrow morning was scheduled street sweeping in this part of Brooklyn, and the opposite side of the street was empty except for a single old Chevy Monte Carlo near the corner to the right. Just around the corner from it was a police car. The near side of the street was bumper to bumper except for the standard gap around the block's fire hydrant.

Steve took a closer look at the Monte Carlo. Someone was leaning up against the window. Then that someone took a step back and leveled a gun at whoever was in the car, and Steve was tearing across the street shouting at the top of his lungs for Hank to get down.

23

Got 'em, Hank thought.

He'd run ant survey missions around all of his teammates... well, former teammates... and come up empty every time. Either the intensity of ambient odors in New York was overwhelming the ants' ability to isolate the Chitauri signature, or the aliens were being more clever than they usually were about disguising their presence.

Or they were following him and making sure that if he was around, they kept their distance. Hank preferred not to think about that possibility, since it led in too many negative directions. If they were watching him, that meant they were figuring out how he was controlling the ants—although they might well already know that from whatever reports they'd received from Greg. Also, if keeping tabs on Hank Pym was one of the Chitauri's ongoing tasks, then he wasn't going to be able to swoop in and rescue anyone with his millions of myrmidons, and Hank wasn't about to lie to himself A big part of the reason for his commitment to this project was the prospect of being accepted back into the team. If there was any possibility of that, any possibility at all, he was willing to walk around with a target on his back for a while.

And now he'd struck gold. Steve Rogers might think I'm a gutless punk, Hank thought, but he can't deny that I just saved the lives of his friend and the shriveled old version of the woman he loved. Eventually that dog would have taken his true form and invited some friends over for a little Bucky and Gail buffet (although in Bucky's case, being eaten by a Chitauri would probably be an easier way to go than slowly being consumed by cancer). Now, because of Hank, they were safe, and Captain America would have to look him in the eye and say thanks.

He sent the recall command to the ants. On the minicameras he had rigged to a few of them, he could tell that they were wasting their stings on a dead alien, and he could also tell that no one had been killed. They owe me, Hank thought. I screwed up, but they owe me, and they had no right to cut me off like that.

The fact that Janet wouldn't speak to him was less of a bother. She'd gone through those times before, and she'd probably go through them again. She always came back sooner or later. They were meant for each other.

Any minute now, Fury would show up, Hank was thinking. One more cleanup, one more Chitauri in ajar somewhere in the Triskelion. It was getting repetitious, almost to the point where Hank had entertained the notion that the Chitauri were leading them along. Maybe they were sacrificing one of their number every so often to see how SHIELD reacted, or to cement the impression that they were using particular tactics... while planning something else? Something completely different? If so, what? Full-scale assault hadn't worked out for them last time.

There was a sharp tap on his car window. Hank pulled off the headset and looked. It was a cop. He rolled down the window.

"What the hell is that on your head?" the cop asked.

"It's... well, it's kind of hard to explain."

"Ah," the cop said. "Would you be able to explain better if you stepped out of the car?"

"I don't think that's necessary, officer," Hank said. "It's not against the law to sit in your car."

"No, Dr. Pym, it isn't," the cop said. "But under the circumstances, it isn't smart, either." Taking a step back from the car, the cop drew his gun. Hank heard a shout from across the street—someone calling his name?— and then the world lit up in flashes from the muzzle of the gun.

There was someone buzzing around his ear, a tiny man who kept saying Hank, Hank, get down, get down. And another little man, a fly with a man's voice, saying,
Doctor Pym, we need you to return
to
your normal size
.

Return to your normal size.

This is my normal size, he wanted to say. I'm bigger than you, bigger than your judgments, my work is bigger than yours. My other size is like Janet when she's small, giant ambitions and giant personality and giant problems crushed and squeezed down into a size that disguises their true size. This is me, this is me. I have discovered my true size.

He tried to get up, and heard the groan and squeal of deforming metal. Something stabbed him under the armpit, and he was having trouble getting a breath.

Return to your normal size.

No, you fool, he thought. Then I will be small and the wounds will be huge. Then my body will be small and my pain will be huge. Then I will no longer be bigger than Janet, who is tiny tiny tiny and so full of anger that maybe I deserve.

These tiny people, with their bullets and their judgments, no bigger than ants. The ants stung, and it hurt like bullets. Janet, he said. Janet. I drove all night to prove this. I knew it. I knew it. And they knew I knew it, and their bullets sting like ants.

Doctor Pym. This is Nick Fury. If you can hear me, blink twice
.

So this is what it takes to get Nick to talk to me again, Hank thought. He blinked. But after the second time, he couldn't open his eyes again.

Get down, get down...

Snafu after snafu after snafu
, thought Nick Fury. I got a dog who was a Chitauri, and four civilians who saw it lose coherence. I got a cop who was a Chitauri, and a whole goddamn precinct and department bureaucracy who didn't see it lose coherence but who aren't very goddamn happy about SHIELD stepping in and making the body disappear. Granted, two of those four civilians knew about Steve, so they weren't too surprised to find out that there are other boogeymen under the bed. And Bucky wasn't long for the world anyway, so no security problem there. But Grant and Sharon, they were already demanding to know everything about everything, to the point that Nick was beginning to consider sending them on a little vacation until they could reach some kind of understanding about the wisdom of filing lawsuits against the government because their dog was absorbed by an alien infiltrator. I got one team member in a state of emotional flux because his best and oldest friend suffered some kind of cardiac event when the Chitauri started to lose coherence.