Steve

The duffle bag was already practically full, but he managed to squeeze in another pair of jeans before zipping it shut. Outside, sirens were still wailing and an abrupt squeal announced his graduation party's last guest was tearing out of the cul de sac. Plastic cups rolled across the lawn in the breeze and half-eaten meals littered the tables as a testament to the sudden desertion. In another room, Steve's mom was gathering toiletries into a pink overnight bag. In an adjacent town, his dad was at the office, too busy to even attend his son's graduation.

The kitchen radio, volume cranked to reach the entire house, looped through the evacuation terms again: All residents of Hawkins, Indiana are to evacuate the city limits by midnight. A radiation leak in the area has been confirmed and contamination crews are assessing the situation. Residents are reminded to stay calm and obey traffic laws while exiting the city…

The rest of the broadcast was drowned out by a low-flying helicopter sweeping overhead. Steve propped himself against the window frame, watching paper plates float in the pool below. The helicopter passed and the broadcast's static message filled the house again, advising which highways were choked with traffic. It ended with a hollow voice reminding residents to be on the lookout for a growing number of missing people.

The phone started ringing and Steve heard his mother rush downstairs. "Oh, that could be your dad," she called out. The voice on the radio was offering a register of each missing person's description: …Joseph Thompson, brown eyes, brown hair, last seen wearing –

The radio clicked off and Mrs. Harrington picked up the phone. "Hello?" A pause. "Oh, hi Karen, I'm kind of in the middle of –huh? No, everyone left as soon as –" Another pause. "Yes, she was, but I assumed she went home. Hang on… Steve!"

He picked up the phone on his dresser and called downstairs, "I've got it, hang up!"

The click of the receiver echoed through his handset. From the hallway he heard the front door open and the rustle of bags being shoved outside.

"Mrs. Wheeler?"

"Steve, is Nancy still there?"

"What? No… No she left a while ago."

"When? How long ago?"

Steve pressed his fingers into his temple and massaged little circles, trying to remember details from the chaos that erupted an hour before, when the news first hit. Some guests immediately fled, speeding home to gather their families. Some waited to use the phone, pinning down the locations of loved ones to collect them and evacuate. But try as he might, he couldn't bring to mind Nancy in that flood of panic. "I'm really not sure, Mrs. Wheeler. I'm sorry," he reported.

He heard her voice distantly state, "She's not there, Ted." Then a click and the dial tone.

Steve hung up and frowned. A car door shut in the driveway. For a moment he thought his dad had shown up, but the scraping sound of a suitcase being dragged across the entryway reminded him that his mom was just packing the back seat. He pressed his hand against the window; the glass was cold against his palm and made a brittle clink beneath his class ring. Staring at the tree line, he furrowed his eyebrows and chewed his lip. Why couldn't he remember when Nancy left? For that matter, why couldn't he even recall her leaving at all? The whole party was just a kaleidoscope of faces and nostalgic stories before everything exploded into a flurry of panic. He couldn't even pinpoint a single memory of Nancy at the party.

He'd been staring, unfocused, at the same patch of grass for a full two minutes before a flicker of movement in the trees brought him back to attention. A person was shuffling around in the forest, just inside the shadows. Steve placed his other hand against the window and pressed his face to the glass, squinting through the trees. The person paused, turned for an instant into the daylight and Steve's stomach dropped.

"Mom," he called out. He didn't move. Hands still glued to the window, eyes wide and disbelieving. It couldn't be. It couldn't be…

"Steve?" his mom's voice rang from downstairs.

The figure turned into the daylight again, taking a step out of the woods and confirmed Steve's terrifying suspicion. The creature – the one that climbed out of Jonathan Byer's ceiling, that melted in a fire in front of his eyes last winter – it was standing in his backyard. Steve's heart lurched. He opened his mouth to scream a warning to his mom, but his voice was caught in his throat and he was frozen to the window.

The Demogorgon turned back to the woods and Steve saw, lodged in its spine, just below the creature's bulbous head was the top of a baseball bat. Spikes driven into the bat had lodged into the monster's ashy flesh. As it crept back into the shadows, undisturbed by the injury, Steve wrenched himself from the window and screamed down to his mom, each word loaded with urgency, "Mom, get in the car! Go now!" He'd scooped up the duffle bag and was tearing down the stairs, three at a time.

"Steve—" she began, standing in the doorway.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, he forced her out the door. "Go!" he yelled again. "Start the car. I'll be right out."

"But your dad—"

"Fuck Dad!" he roared over her protest. "This is serious!"

By the time he reached the last step in the basement, he heard the BMW's engine come to life. His hands were shaking, but still he managed to fit the key in and jiggle it just right so the lock popped and, with a rusty sigh, the metal cupboard opened. On the bottom shelf were thirteen boxes of ammunition. On the top—his dad's Beretta. Steve blindly grabbed handfuls of clothes from the duffle bag, dropping them to the floor, and with two quick movements, swept the contents of the cupboard into the bag. Before flying back upstairs, he added a can of lighter fluid and a hunting knife to the pile and zipped the bag shut.