Chapter Text
The side door of the Surfer Boy Pizza van rattles open, clunking heavily into place at the end of its hasty slide. Will's fingers are clenched around the handle, yet tremble, like they had—exactly like they had when he was staring at the entrance of the backyard shed on November 6th, 1983. He had gripped the Byers' firearm in the same unknowing terror that's possessing him now, as he stands aside to urge the others into the vehicle.
Eleven arrives first, and she accepts the helping hand he offers, shaky as it is. Will offers the same to Nancy as he watches Hopper climb into the passenger seat beyond her, Jonathan slide-crashing into the driver side door to get it open and join him.
"Not cool, man," Argyle says, squinting in the window at Hopper, who looks back at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He stares at Argyle like he's part of a puzzle in a Highlights magazine, where you have two identical pictures but there's glaring differences between them for you to find. You circle them with a red pen and say ah-ha, this does not belong here.
Hopper is ready to circle Argyle with the brightest red pen he can find, taking in the Hawaiian print overshirt and his placid, snubbed expression. He doesn't look like the standard Hawkins doomsday fare.
"I called shotgun hours ago," Argyle informs him, like he's realizing that Hopper wasn't here for that and must have missed the memo.
"Let's worry about the seating chart later," Joyce says earnestly, bustling Argyle into the back with Will's assistance.
The van's engine sputters to life as Joyce hikes a foot up onto the carpeted floor, the released parking brake rocking her into a wobble. Will leans in to assist when his mother overcorrects off the back of Hopper’s seat, but she lands in El's instinctively lifted arms, unharmed. Joyce mutters her gratitude and complains about telling the boys to clean up back here, kicking at an old pizza box.
They’ve been living in the car for a full week, though. They deserve some slack for its disorderly state.
A hand presses firm against the center of Will's back and he jumps out of his skin. His sweaty hold slips off the door handle.
"Go," Mike says tightly, only pushing when Will tries to back up a step and let him in first. He allows himself to be herded instead of fighting it, even though his nerves fizzle at not being the last one in.
The van jerks again as Jonathan changes gears, but Will has already grabbed the rear window frame for support. He’s used to Argyle's flexible ideas about his passengers being seated and prepared for the van to move. It's a good thing Will’s stable—the moment Mike's back foot is off the forest floor, Jonathan has the vehicle in motion. The van is already taking the slight curve in the dirt road at drifting speed when Mike tries to sling the door shut. Will's quick hand in the back of Mike's collar saves them the delay of stopping to scoop him back up, likely with a broken nose from a bad landing.
No longer toppling out, Mike is able to secure the exit. He turns back, barely phased by the near miss.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Will says. He has a hard time letting go of the teal pullover, forcing his cramped fingers to uncurl so Mike can safely sit down. Will waits for Mike to tuck himself against the back of the passenger seat (wincing as his head hits the bead macramé hanging from the headrest), then pushes up on his toes to peek out the long side window, making sure they didn't leave anyone. He counts them too, just to double check. There are seven, excluding himself.
It has to be seven.
Will chases the stray thought, but it leads to nowhere.
“El, you got any idea what’s happening right now?” Hopper asks, holding the handle over the door as they drive too fast down the slightly overrun service road. The broken branches and fallen leaves are no surprise, nature reclaiming the path that was left unused for almost a full year. Awareness of the issue doesn’t make it a pleasant ride.
“No,” she says, barely loud enough to be heard as the van bounces and they topple against each other like dominos.
Nancy whispers a nervous apology when her shoe comes down on his pinky, the pain already forgiven. Will regains his balance and shifts his feet, trying to get a steadier crouch position that doesn't leave his hands vulnerable. Getting injuries on top of the world ending is the last thing they need.
“Henry is angry,” El explains. “He wants Hawkins to become like his world.”
“This is what I saw,” Nancy tells them, face gray.
Will would say she was only speaking to herself if her voice wasn’t pitched just loud enough to overhear. Nancy wipes a sleeve across her forehead, smudging the sheen of sweat on her skin from their mad dash to a vehicle that could get them into town, to the center of the problem.
“When Vecna was in my head, showing me the future, this was it. All the destruction. The rift opening and the storm. There were monsters in the streets, coming out of the Upside Down.”
A flash of white-hot panic splinters into Will, in time with his throbbing hand. The Mind Flayer got Nancy too, he realizes, seeing El’s unsurprised face. No one had mentioned that before now, like it could have slipped their minds that someone else escaped possession. Even now, everyone looks ready to gloss over it to address the more immediate issues. Will doesn’t forget so easily.
“What kind of monsters?” Hopper asks, low, like he already knows the answer.
“All of them,” Nancy confirms. “And there was one I’d never seen before. It was huge, like—like bigger than a house. Its mouth…”
She stops, unable to go on. There’s a weighted silence as they struggle to accept the reality. Their worst fears are being brought to life. As much as they tried to deny, as far as they tried to run, none of it really worked out. The end came to meet them. The Upside Down is taking over Hawkins, and it's not shy about it this time.
If Nancy was possessed, Will hopes she’s not seeing any traces of now-memories like he did. He would hate to experience the Flayer’s promised world finally being created from an inside perspective.
Will sneaks a glance at Mike to find him staring back already, throat bobbing. He remembers what Will told him in the cabin, a frightening foresight into their present situation.
He’s going to take everything. Everyone.
"Alright, here’s the plan.” Hopper speaks fluidly, words running together. His mind runs fast under pressure—unlike Will, whose thoughts seem to have slowed to the pace of a dying car that manages a painful crawl before the full dead stop. “We’re going to drop the kids off somewhere safe, and then we’re going into town to figure out what happens next. Where are the others?”
“Lucas should still be at the hospital with Erica and Max,” Jonathan says. He’s leaning up against his own arms over the wheel, turning on the headlights to try seeing through the clouded air that has started to define their surroundings. “Dustin was headed to the refugee center when we saw him.”
“With Robin and Steve,” Nancy adds.
“That’s all downtown,” Hopper mutters unhappily. “We need somewhere better. More guarded.”
“Are you kidding?” Mike says, practically hissing. “Look outside right now, you think anywhere’s safe?”
“Yeah, I saw,” Hopper retorts, putting them back at each other's throats. Will had thought their hug looked promising—all it takes is a bit of stress to undo their newborn truce. “You’re kidding yourself if you think I’m letting any of you get deeper into this disaster than we already are.”
“I am not running away again,” El says firmly.
“Not you, kid.” Hopper turns in his seat to look at her until she stops bristling like a cat, his face frustrated but decided. “You’re sticking with us.”
“That’s bullshit!” Mike snaps.
“That’s life. Did you get superpowers while I was away? Huh?” Hopper raises his eyebrows at Mike’s sulking silence. “Didn't think so. We’re getting you somewhere safe, with Will and…that one,” Hopper says, reminded of the unidentified teenager squeezed in beside Joyce on the floor.
“Argyle, man. What was it like, beyond the pale?” he asks, wildly amazed at Hopper’s apparent resurrection.
Hopper narrows his eyes. The blissful look on Argyle’s face in this chaos stirs his suspicion, and Will remembers he wasn’t the Sheriff for nothing.
“Maybe Mike’s right,” Will says, getting a sharp look from his mom. He focuses on holding Hopper’s attention. “I mean, One is coming for us all, no matter where we are. Can we really afford to sit this one out?”
Hopper doesn’t like that logic. He chews on the inside of his cheek, wordlessly consulting Joyce for some clue as to how he should respond. They don’t ask about the pseudonym, so Will figures they must have been briefed on the elaborate identity of Henry Creel while returning from Alaska. His mother looks ready to shoot the idea down, which—though Will would never say it out loud—is complete bullshit. Will is terrified, he can’t deny that, but aren’t they all? If they’re going to do this, they’re ultimately safer together. That’s how this goes.
“Oh God,” Nancy says, startling them all with her unexplained horror as wide eyes lock on Mike. “My mom—my family, I saw them. We have to check on them, now.”
A curse from Jonathan is all the warning they get before they’re sliding forward in a sudden stop, the van’s brakes squealing in protest. They knock heads and knees and elbows, a harmonized groan filling the backseat.
“Jonathan,” Joyce growls, lifting her head from an impact scuff in the dingy carpet. Her hair hangs wildly around her face, and she blows her bangs back with a hard upward huff.
“Government lady’s back,” Jonathan explains.
Hopper is already climbing out to meet her by the hoods that nearly collided, saved by a break in the fog. They attempt to get a glimpse of the new arrival, Joyce crawling between Will and Mike to reach the bay door and slide out.
“Stinson,” Will recalls, pulling his head back under cover when an ash mote falls before his nose.
Hawkins is overrun biologically, if not physically subjugated yet. The forest trail has become gray and sick with decay, coated in the dreary tint that plagues the Upside Down. An unpleasant chill sweeps into the van, the muggy air of their frantic exhales mingling with the sudden drop in temperature. It feels like the cold before it snows, the cold of sundown—when you know you only have colder to go and there are still hours until the promise of morning.
Will wraps a hand around his own knee, squeezing tight at the resurgence of old memories. Three years suddenly feels like no time at all.
The rubbered toe of a shoe taps his ankle, and he looks up from the Chucks to find Mike watching him again. It almost makes Will laugh—a nervous chuckle would have certainly come out if he let the impulse slip. His own gaze falls to rest on the carpeted floor between them before that sound can escape. There’d be no good way to explain it. Will’s not used to having even an ounce of Mike’s attention anymore, and he’s not sure what to do, now that he seems to have earned it back.
Hopper returns with long steps and sole-minded focus. His shoes kick up the fine dust on the ground, and Will takes thinner breaths.
“El, you’re with us.” Hopper makes room as she approaches the door, helping her out and putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder when he gets antsy to follow. He ducks to look into the shadows of the back, speaking past them to address Nancy. “Take your brother home. Get your parents to evacuate with these three, then rendezvous at the high school. Be fast and grab any weapons you can find on the way.”
“Uh, I’m not really supposed to leave the van unattended while it’s being driven,” Argyle says. “That’s a no-go in the Surfer Boy Pizza employee handbook.”
Hopper stalls out and stares again, this time at Jonathan in the driver seat. Will’s brother shrugs.
“These two,” Hopper corrects. Will gets him to pause by gripping the edge of the door before it can be pulled shut. “What.”
“You’re taking my entire family with you,” he says. Scared or not scared, plan or no plan, Will doesn’t care. “If they’re going, I’m going.”
Hopper’s deep breath is interrupted by a subtle earthquake. In crunch time like this, they don’t have the strength to get into a real argument, but Hopper is ready to try anyway.
Their stare down isn’t hostile, but it is intense. Will doesn’t flinch, internally patting himself on the back when Hopper looks away first. He glances over to El and Joyce, accepting that Will would probably go rogue if they tried to force him where he didn’t want to go—namely, away from Hawkins.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Hopper demands, stepping aside so Will can jump out. He turns back to find Mike looking at Nancy, conflicted. Their family is the only one that might be in immediate danger, after all. If he wants to check on them now, it would only make sense.
Will’s not thinking about good sense right now. He’s thinking that he really doesn’t want Mike out of his sight, despite being unable to endure his presence. No one said being a moody teenager was easy.
“Go,” Nancy says decidedly. “I’ll get them out.”
After another heartbeat, Mike nods, getting only a grunt of irritation from Hopper before the door is sliding shut again. Joyce’s face puckers when she sees Will and Mike joining El, but there’s nothing left to say. With the overpacked car, his mom makes herself fit in the center of the front bench, Hopper climbing in after her to close the door.
“Duck,” Stinson warns, looking over their heads to drive in reverse, heading the way she came with the van mirroring her exit.
“Thanks for coming back,” Hopper says, getting a curt nod.
“Eleven’s the best and only chance we’ve got left.”
Good to know the CIA hasn’t gotten sentimental, Will thinks tiredly. He could have guessed, if they had Brenner alive and operating as usual in some desert bunker. The things Will saw him do, the memories Henry let him see when they shared a brain—
Will didn’t have nightmares about that stuff. He blocked it up so tightly that even his subconscious couldn’t draw inspiration from there.
When they reach the end of the road, their car aims left while the van turns right, guided by Nancy to get around the split earth dividing Hawkins that limits travel by the usual roads. In the backseat of Stinson’s sedan, all three of them turn, looking out the dirty rear windshield. Nancy and Argyle do the same as the groups go their separate ways. Argyle lifts a hand to wave, and El returns it until the van disappears into the thickening fog.
Will faces the front when even the taillights are gone, assuring himself that Jonathan will be reuniting with them soon. Safe and sound with good news, definitely.
The adults attempt to come up with their next move through indistinct whispers. Feeling off balance and stuck on high alert, Will finds his eyes darting to the first sign of movement. On his right, Mike and Eleven are sliding their hands together in the space between their brushing knees, fingers intertwined like a familiar melody. Throat drying to a painful extent, Will angles himself toward the window on his other side, reminded of their obvious plight when the view isn’t much better there.
He keeps looking out anyway, watching the ever-growing storm.
*|---|*|---|*|---|*
The coiled phone cord snaps back into shape as Richie untangles his finger from the line. He lets his hand fall against the arm of the couch, watching a rerun of MTV’s Spring Break coverage with oscillating interest and boredom that’s completely out of his control.
“You aim on sitting there all day, boyo?” His father stands in the hall, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief and a raised eyebrow.
“You aim on wearing that tie out of the house?” Richie asks. It’s a horrendous orange monstrosity with repeating stripes of garish yellow in an altogether nauseating assemblage. Richie could get away with donning a shirt in the same style, but his father is supposed to be a business professional.
Went slips on his glasses, glancing down at the accessory before checking the hall. “I keep a spare in the car.”
“I’m telling Mom,” Richie says, eyes flitting back to the television. It’s the second-to-last day of break and he intends to use it to the fullest by not moving for as long as possible. Dentists don’t get district-mandated vacations, so his dad must be heading into the office.
“I’m cutting your allowance,” Went replies, an empty threat.
“What is that, anyway—tartan? You’re a Scotsman’s wet dream.”
“Don’t be crass,” his father warns, well aware that Maggie is somewhere in the house, likely to appear when it will backfire on them the most. “It’s a diamond pattern, so it’s technically argyle.”
Jonathan’s friend, his brain politely reminds.
Richie frowns at the vividly flashing screen. I don’t know any Jonathans.
His brain doesn’t respond to that information, absorbing Starship’s performance of Somebody to Love with the glazed attention of the perpetual couch potato. He puzzles over the thought until the phone rings, his hand darting out to pick up the handset and bring it to his ear without braining himself in the process.
“You’re on the air, live with Trashmouth Tozier. Anything you’d like to say to America?”
“Is that how you answer the phone? Really?”
“Take it up with my writers,” Richie says, nodding at his dad as he dips out of sight, headed for the front door. There’s a tense silence before Eddie’s voice returns.
“So?”
“So what.”
“Did you forget anything? We haven’t talked all week.”
“We haven’t?” Richie asks, realizing a beat too late that a joke is the last thing Eddie needs right now—though that always seems to be the case. If Eddie did need his jokes, then Richie would know there was an emergency of insane proportions. “No, I know the deal. I think everything else is good too. No spottiness in the memory banks.”
“You remembered I was going to call before the phone rang?”
Remembered? I’ve been sitting beside the phone for three hours.
“Perfectly. I told you, this noggin never forgets.”
There’s a small hum, his friend uncertain about being comforted by the boldly incorrect statement.
Richie’s been pretty miserable these last few days. He can hardly believe that Eddie chose this week—the week when Richie would have the most time to sit around and talk—to run one of Mike’s little memory experiments. Not even a fair test, considering that Mike has already moved out of Derry and Eddie is soon to follow, but they had bullied Richie into it. They wanted to make sure his returned memories weren’t temporary.
“Did you do anything over break?”
“Did you?” Richie counters.
“I packed, mostly. We’re getting a trailer for the drive to New York, so it’s just sitting in boxes right now, cluttering my room.”
“That doesn’t count. It has to be a fun activity.”
“Cleaning is fun,” Eddie mutters.
Another silence settles as Richie thinks about New York. It’s certainly not as far as Maine, but it’s still on the other side of the country. Just as a temperature check, he asked his mom when she thought they might move next, hoping to lay the groundwork for a place on the East Coast. She had laughed, like the very thought of moving was comedic.
“I was talking to Mike a few days ago, before he left," Eddie says. He's far, far too casual about it, which is how Richie knows he's going to be in deep shit here shortly. "About you.”
“Do tell, Eds,” Richie says, delighted even while his stomach flips.
“Nothing serious,” Eddie says. The eyeroll is implied. “Just that it was nice, seeing you again. Bill too. We missed you.”
Richie smiles, chin tucked to his chest. “No kidding.”
“It’s been three weeks, as of today. Not talking was dumb.”
“Very dumb,” Richie says. “Whose idea was that again?”
“You agreed to it.”
“Oh, hold on, I’ll be right back.”
“What is it?”
“I gotta go kick my own ass." Richie lofts his voice into a passing Estevez. "Two hits—me hitting me and me hitting the floor.”
“I knew you watched that fucking movie,” Eddie says, trying not to laugh.
Richie listens closely, hearing the sigh that follows when Eddie’s not really sick of his dumbass friend but wants to pretend he's on his last nerve. It’s a wistful sound, ever since Richie got back to California. When the laughing stops, they both remember they’re alone, no friends to set them off again and keep the fun going. Richie does his best to forget how much of their conversation feels like flirting these days.
“So after I talked to Mike, I started thinking about your visit,” Eddie says, in the same forced way that makes Richie’s Geiger counter for trouble start to crackle in his gut. He doesn’t like that tone. It’s a serious voice, coming with a serious problem. “Which was good, despite all the clown stuff. When I wasn’t thinking about how we almost died, I was thinking about how I wanted to talk to you, but realized I couldn’t because of this phone deal, which was frustrating. I’m talking to you now though.”
“You are,” Richie confirms, his throat ribbiting like a frog choking on its own tongue.
“Yeah, so I thought I could just say what I’ve been thinking, and then we could talk about it. About us.”
“Yeah, you know what? I have some thoughts on that too.”
There’s a surprised silence. “You do?”
“About us—you know, the Losers. I was wondering when we were going to get around to finding any of the others. I’d love to see Stan again. You remember Stan?”
“I never forgot him, Rich.”
“Oh, right,” Richie says, sweating bullets as he winces at the ceiling, letting his mouth run on this emergency tangent. “So Stan would be great, but I’ve been wondering about Bev, really. I was always such a shithead to her in particular, and I’m worried she might resent me when we find her. Like maybe we’ve all changed and we’re not the same people anymore, but she holds this grudge against some asshole she knew in middle school.”
Richie keeps talking, because that’s what this conversation parachute is for.
No human being is dense enough to be unaware of what's happening here. Eddie, God help him, has been prowling around the elephant in the room for the last three weeks, trying to trap it in a corner and get some answers. He doesn't seem to realize that Richie’s been avoiding this beast his whole life, so he’s sitting on top of the damn elephant and still insisting it doesn’t exist. Denial is a powerful thing.
“They don’t hate you,” Eddie assures, cutting off Richie’s theoretical apology. “None of us do.”
“What about when I spilled soda on your limited edition Wolverine comic book?”
“No.”
“What about when I kicked you too hard in the hammock and your mom saw the bruise on your arm and made you stay inside on the Fourth of July?”
“...No.”
“What about when you finally got the money for a Super Deluxe cone from the ice cream parlor and I made you do the hustle with me while you were holding it and the whole thing fell to the ground before you even took a bite?”
“Then I really hated you," Eddie seethes, temper boiling over. "It was five dollars, Richie. I saved for it all summer. You know, you still owe me for that because—”
Richie exhales in relief, eyes closing as Eddie assaults his ears with the scolding of a lifetime. He doesn’t like bringing that one up, just because it does get Eddie so riled, but they needed out of that line of thought. These are more than desperate times calling for Hail Mary measures.
But really, Richie did this to himself. Ever since he grabbed Eddie’s hand like he had earned the right and basically offered his heart up for the slaughter, he’s been bobbing and weaving to avoid Eddie’s interest in a longer explanation. Eddie gets on the phone and says Uh Hey, What The Fuck Was That in increasingly impatient and unsubtle ways, which forces Richie to say Wait, What’s That, Over Your Shoulder? No, Your Other Shoulder until they’re both ready to hang up from exhaustion.
Richie just had to open his big mouth and ruin everything. He doesn’t know what possessed him to say what he said to Eddie that afternoon. It was too honest. Too straightforward. Too unmistakably a sign that Eddie could crush Richie's heart with that one tempting hand.
Now Richie’s stuck talking in circles to make sure Eddie doesn’t have a good reason to run away. He’s been absent from Richie’s life enough as it is.
“Richie, could you go down to—oh, you’re on the phone,” his mother says, turning right back around with a hand raised in apology. He hops up from the couch, smelling freedom.
“What was that, mom? An errand?” Leaning into a Lassie bit, Richie gives it the same urgency as Timmy’s in the well?!
Eddie’s rant pauses, hearing Richie’s pointed response to an unheard question. Maggie peers at him, head cocked in confusion.
“I need milk for dinner and your father won’t be back on time. I thought you might be bored, but—”
“I’ll get right on that. Where’d I leave my keys, gosh darn it?” Richie pauses appropriately, watching his mother shake her head and walk away, not willing to indulge his inexplicable behavior. “Oh, Eddie, listen—”
“You have to go,” Eddie says.
Looks like Richie isn’t Hollywood’s undiscovered gem after all.
“You know how it is, with the parent requests. Pretty sure they only got me a car to make me their gofer.”
“Right.”
Richie pops his lips in the dense silence. “I’ll, uh. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles. “Whatever.”
“Say hi to your mom for me,” Richie says, slamming the phone back into the cradle so the whispered curse that follows isn’t overheard. Then he picks it up and slams it down again. A warning call of his name from the other room stops him from doing it a third time, fist closing violently around the plastic shell instead.
Trashmouth retreats back to square one in crisis. Shocker.
Richie does have to go hunting for his keys, thinking to himself the whole time that he wishes he had one godforsaken person to talk to about this. Mike and Bill are off limits for obvious reasons, and Eddie? Hilarious. That’s why he needs the other Losers.
Bev would roll her eyes but hear him out, and she knew how to keep a secret with the best of them. Stan would point out the obvious, telling Richie that he needs to talk to Eddie, but he’d listen too. Hell, Richie would even take Ben at this point, just as someone that knows what it means to pine from afar.
Outside of the Losers might be even better, but this isn’t a problem you can trust to the average acquaintance. If only he’d made one—even one real friend in California, then maybe his life wouldn’t be so hard. Someone to pass notes with during class. Someone to sit in the passenger seat on boring car rides. Someone to save Richie from the utter torment of keeping his own busy brain company.
But no. Richie’s alone out here, in the wild, wild west, as he has been since the day they moved to Lenora Hills.
Alone with his thoughts and fears. Alone with himself.
Richie digs around in the glovebox at the stop sign on the corner, uneasy about the dulled sounds of sitting inside an empty car. He pulls out the first tape his hand lands on, checking the label to see the number 11 written with a quick hand. He stares at it for a beat, trying to remember what’s on the tracklist, then chucks it in the passenger seat, frowning as he searches for another. The bad habit of labeling his work in obscure and unexplanatory ways for future Richies to interpret is really starting to become a burden to his listening audience (i.e. himself).
Why would he make a mixtape about some random prime number in the first place?
*|---|*|---|*|---|*
Between the fleeing refugees and endless relief supply crates, there's zero chance of getting the car into the parking lot of the high school. Stinson opts to pull over toward the closest sidewalk instead, forcing them to climb out while the engine is idling. Will moves fastest, but that's just the jumpiness he can't seem to kick. It feels like he's been hooked up to a full live wire - rather than paced shocks, he's bearing this undercurrent of wrong in his veins that only grows once they're out of the car. He tries to take his mind off the feeling, scanning the bustling crowd for any sign of their friends.
Once they’re all back together, the fear will settle. Together, right?
“I need to make some calls,” Stinson says, standing between the door and the open driver seat. Her hand doesn't fidget on the roof of the car, but it looks like it would have, once upon a time. Before a nervous response like that was trained out of her. "You’ll be alright here?”
“We got it covered,” Hopper says, despite their clear lack of control over the situation. He’s staring up at the lightning that refuses to strike, zapping around within the clouds and emitting sporadic flashes of light that cast the world in washed-out tableaus.
Stinson wishes them good luck and leaves without fuss. Will hopes she's going to find them backup, getting the predictable sense that they'll need it soon.
“Do you see them?” Eleven asks Mike, who’s climbed onto an abandoned stack of wooden pallets.
Mike squints harder, shaking his head.
Trying to look around the people being herded onto buses by the disorderly soldiers, Will finds a few of the civilians—the younger ones—staring their way. He first thinks that they’re drawn by Eleven, people seeing a girl in a buzzcut and wondering about the story there. Except their gazes are falling higher than that, and there’s some recognition behind their eyes. These are kids that go to school with Mike, and something about seeing him now is getting their attention more than the average classmate would.
“Get down,” Will says, reaching for Mike’s pant leg near his ankle and tugging as he sees discreetly pointed hands among the whisperers. “Mike.”
His friend pulls his gaze from the crowd, brow drawn tight in confusion. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Will admits. Hopper notices the same pattern and shifts to stand in front of El, in case the staring spreads and dots start to connect. Will doesn’t bother telling him that the Chief of Police they buried last summer is going to be more alarming than a girl that might have stolen Eggos from Big Buy once. “I don’t think it’s good.”
“MIKE!”
Will braces at the sharp call, but it’s only Dustin limping his way toward them. He’s waving his arms in wide arcs over his head. He shifts to pointed fingers once he can tell they're watching, gesturing firmly at the ground, and Mike finally listens, dropping down to land on both feet.
“That’s one,” Hopper says. Will can't tell if he's upset or pleased at the development. “Where are the others?”
“Helping move people out, I think,” Dustin replies, trying to avoid breathing in the air. He waves back at a school bus idling by the front doors. When Will looks closer, he can make Steve out beside the line, corralling people and attempting to organize the chaotic exodus. “Mike, you have to be careful.”
“About what?”
“It’s the Hellfire Club,” Dustin says in a hush. “People think we’re involved in all this.”
“What?”
“Technically we are,” Will says.
“No, like, they think we did this. That we summoned Satan to consume Hawkins or some shit.”
“That’s ridiculous! It’s just a name,” Mike protests, getting a fervent gesture from Dustin to lower his voice.
“I’m warning you not to draw any more attention to us,” he says. “They hate the freaky nerds enough as it is, and everyone has been on a hair trigger since the earthquake."
Will glances at El and Hopper. It’s going to be impossible to fly under the radar with these two in tow, whether or not the club association makes people suspicious.
Thankfully, most of the crowd seems more invested in their own continued survival than a ragtag group of misfits. Their attention moves on, especially once the rumbling starts. Concrete tries to give way beneath their feet, cracks in the asphalt sending up a chorus of shrill screams before it quiets into shouted orders from the people in charge and the low murmur of frightened souls being led out at a painfully slow pace. All the packed vehicles are heading away from the center of town, where the smoke swirling up continues to feed into the eye of the storm.
“This way,” Hopper decides, putting distance between them and the main road.
Will blindly walks back to keep up with one eye on the spectacle. It feels like it’s…calling him. A distant call, but definitely there from time to time. If he focuses too hard, the sensation fades.
One month after his imprisonment in the Upside Down, Will felt this same way, like he was destined to a fate out of his control. He would be in his bed, drawing or just trying to sleep, and he’d hear a quiet noise in another room. A creak. A whisper. A sign of life. Will would go perfectly still, even his heartbeat dimming so his ears could listen harder, straining for some unattainable relief.
Recognizing Jonathan’s muttered curse or their mom’s non-slip shoes on the carpet did nothing to reassure him—because on the inside, Will knew what he didn’t dare let himself actively think: there would be no warning when the demogorgon came to take him away again. It wouldn’t have to make a sound.
A sharp gasp warns Will a beat too late, and he stumbles right back into someone’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” he rushes to provide, the word out before he can even turn. Will catches the thin, flapping arm of a blonde girl about his height, saving her from a delayed topple. She stabilizes, looking at him with unnerved eyes, like he shouldn't have been able to bump into her. Like she's not present enough to be knocked down. “Are you okay?”
The girl doesn’t answer. Will pulls his hand away, realizing a beat too late that they’re standing really close. She looks him over, gaze lingering on his face.
“Sorry,” he repeats, voice rasping with discomfort.
An older version of the girl swoops in from nowhere, collecting her daughter without sparing Will a glance. He watches them scurry toward one of the departing buses, the girl’s head turning back to stare at Will in return. She lifts her free arm in a slight wave of parting, and Will returns the gesture, stuck on the twinge inside his chest. It doesn’t sting the same as the sensation coming from the storm, but it’s ringed with a hint of recognition.
“Hey.”
Will jumps, lowering the hand to find Mike staring after the girl with a line between his eyebrows. He turns the look on Will, who does his best not to react.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Mike goes full frown. “She wasn’t bothering you?”
“No,” Will says, confused by the question. “She didn’t say anything.”
“Hello, people, let’s focus up,” Dustin says from a few feet away, beckoning for them to enter the half-formed huddle. “We can discuss Will flirting with Jennifer Hayes when the world isn’t in imminent danger.”
Will follows Mike over in flustered obedience, but his eyes drift back to the crowd, finding no trace of Jennifer where he saw her last. He shakes off the coincidence.
(but what are the odds of that, really?)
The group’s formation leaves their backs exposed, and Will pushes away the urge to keep looking over his shoulder. The only fears they should be worried about right now are the rational ones.
"What do you want to do here, El?”
“It's the gate.” Her intense eyes check on the shadowy shapes within the darkness that’s filling Hawkins with the slowness of inevitability. There’s no need to rush when victory is certain. “If we close it, Henry cannot reach us. He cannot hurt anyone.”
“Sounds like the usual then,” Hopper says, a nod returned. “A machine didn’t make this and you have your powers, so I’m guessing you’re the solution here.”
“Do you need another salt bath?” Mike asks.
“Another?”
Will holds off his mother’s question with a light hand on her arm. They don’t have time to get into all of that.
“I have to be awake,” El says. “Being close to the center of the gate would help, but it is dangerous.”
“We need weapons,” Hopper agrees, scanning the parking lot like the soldiers could have mislaid firearms in their haste, or there might be a conveniently extensive arsenal lying in the back of an open truck. “Anything that makes fire, preferably.”
They all get to looking, this time for artillery, too distracted by their own search to notice the patrol car that stops at the edge of the crowd. Two men in uniforms step out to stand behind their doors, surveying the crowd.
“This is total pandemonium,” Callahan says, frowning as a woman carrying a baby hurries past, trying to quell the child’s wailing while securing a diaper bag over her shoulder. “What exactly do you expect we can do here?”
“Anything is better than nothing,” Chief Powell replies, swinging the door shut and taking stock of the situation.
This has been the major refugee center since the earthquake, and now they’re being forced to evacuate again. Buses are filling up fast. Some people are taking their chances on foot via sidewalks heading away from downtown, hoping to get anywhere that isn’t here.
Powell doesn’t bother checking the sky again, knowing what he’ll find. The ash is still falling, and with the way thunder rumbles through the air and the ground with equal force, he gets the feeling this can only get worse with time. It’s unfortunate, considering that the hospitals throughout Roane County are already filled to the brim.
“Orders, Chief?”
“Have the hospital put more staff on standby for new arrivals. Traffic on Larrabee and the North highway is going to get worse before it gets better, so have dispatch direct emergency personnel through Mulberry and Cherry as opposed to the main roads. Do we still have a point of contact with the Army force in town?”
“They’re slow to respond, but they get the message.”
“Ask if they know the hazard level of the debris coming down,” Powell says, dusting off his sleeves. He searches the crowd for signs of anyone collapsing from inhalation poisoning, but the sheer volume of people makes it hard to tell if they’re being affected by the pollution or prior injuries from the original disaster. “This isn’t ash from the fires in town, so tell them not to bother feeding us that line.”
Callahan starts relaying requests into the radio affixed to his shoulder, voice fading as Powell sees a broad-shouldered figure across the lot, hat pulled low on their head. His stomach drops out.
Mechanically, Powell circles to the front of the car to get a better look at the man’s face, seeing buzzed hair at the nape and thin beard growth along the sturdy jaw. He’s slim where he should be stocky, and he’s standing a bit crooked, but neither of those are distracting enough to conceal the obvious. The plaid frame shifts. Powell sees Joyce Byers looking out of sorts, her frazzled eyes staring up at the man with complete faith. It’s the surest signifier there could be—her attitude and her presence in Hawkins.
The facts had come to him slowly, but the conclusion hits Powell all at once.
“Hey, Flo wants to know who to send on that call from the Wheeler residence. She said it sounded pretty urgent. Something about a weird animal trying to get into the house?”
“Jim,” Powell breathes.
“Uh, Chief, he’s—he died,” Callahan says, cautiously approaching from behind, like Powell is speaking nonsense. Which is fair—he can hardly believe his own eyes, but he's trying. “Ring any bells? Mall fire, town hero. You spoke at his funeral.”
The half-identified impossibility finally turns his head, lifting the end of his billed cap to stare up at the sky as thunder rolls again. A ghost grimaces at the unnatural weather, and Powell takes his first deep breath since they first got Wayne Munson's call about finding a body in his trailer.
“Then who the hell is that?”
Hopper faces El again, expression lined by stress. “It’s not looking good, but I think we got some time. You four stick together and go that way, Joyce and I will go this way. Grab any weapon you can find that isn’t already in someone’s hands. Lighters, if you find any lying around. Keep guns aimed at the ground. Not your foot, the ground.”
“Splitting up?” El asks, eyes dark.
There’s a tragic moment traded between them before Hopper responds, words lost as Will feels a cold shudder run up his back.
It’s the end, the chills whisper, sweeping around his ears. So close now.
Will helplessly lifts his hand to his neck, wishing he could press the reflex out of existence. It feels like he’s seen a pencil rolling off a table, moving too fast to catch as it teeters on the precipice. He can only watch the weight tip over the edge, tumbling down, down, down—
“Will?”
He zones in, seeing that he’s gotten the group’s full attention. Eleven in particular is watching him closely, eyes focused on his braced hand.
“He's tired of waiting," Will says. His present company shifts in discomfort at the blunt information coming straight from Will, who has been forced into becoming Henry's mouthpiece once again. They have that oh-so-familiar look of being afraid for him. "Something’s coming. I think it's really bad.”
“What is it?” Mike presses.
His question is answered by a piercing inhuman shriek that rises to a crescendo and is capped by echoes of itself. Once one person freezes out of instinct, the rest follow a panicked herd mentality.
All activity in the parking lot becomes perfectly paused.
Out of the smoky mist obscuring the library, four shapes resolve, growing larger as they break through the edges of the storm, rising up from the center pillar. Two massive wings beat from each rippling, bony back, the flex of leathery webbing audible from over a mile away. The beasts fly outward, heading along the rifts with unsettling silence. Two legs are tucked along the vast gray bodies, the end of their scaled tails tipped with a crimson, dual-edged pike.
“Wyverns,” Dustin whispers, mouth hanging open.
One of the military helicopters drops in from around a column of smoke, attempting to course correct when the closest creature comes into view, but it’s too late. The reptilian head turns and the body follows.
With a brief dip, the wyvern is beneath the machine. It tucks its backside upward in the air and plants its talons in the undercarriage, the chopper's landing skids snapping off and spiraling to the ground, autumn maple seeds of early spring. The mouth opens (huge, yawning, primed) and carnivorous teeth tear through the sloped metal front like it’s as tender as flesh, the neck jerking back to rend the helicopter in two.
A fiery explosion follows. The wyvern rights itself, abandoning the back half of the machine to the same descent path as the skids. Its surviving rotors squeal and leak smoke that blends up into the emissions from a nearby house fire.
Victorious, the creature spits out what remains of the scorching engine. A guttural screech shakes the sky, and the screams from below amplify the sound as fight or flight kicks in. People flee in every direction.
“Into the school.” Hopper makes the distracted command as he takes in the new horrors bearing down on them. He blinks back to life, grabbing at the others and tugging them behind him as the wyvern resumes its course, advancing through town. “Inside, now!”
An unshakable hold on Will’s arm pulls him in that direction, Joyce using her other hand to keep Dustin ahead of her, which is slow going with his bad ankle. Will feels bile rise to his tongue as the totaled machine smashes into its point of landing. An explosive boom reaches them in due time, and seems to go on forever. Bodies push and press around Will on all sides as everyone runs for cover, realizing that the last two days of terror were only the beginning—a prelude to the doom that’s finally arrived.
Hawkins is falling.