The day could be more dramatic than it is now if there was a storm. My parents quarreled a lot and had lots of problems, but never knew them as upset as today when they told me to pack my things. We were supposed to leave town in a matter of hours. At first, they didn't want to tell me what was going on. Finally, after asking a million questions, my mother looked me straight in the eye and said that something awful happened in my father's company, and we can't stay here at the moment. The seriousness in her voice sent a shiver down my spine, even tho she said unimaginable things. I got to the Byers house minutes before dusk. It was getting dark already, and I knew I should get home quickly, but I couldn't leave Hawkins without getting some things done. Nor could I leave Nancy without any answers. I couldn't find her. The Wheleers' house was closed, their car out of the way. It was as if they might have known about the spreading virus, too, but the fact that Nancy had left anyone nothing – no message, no letter, was unlike her. I slammed the door of my BMW and approached the hole where Jonathan lived. A foul, musty smell hit me instantly, and I flinched at the thought that Nancy might be inside, but I had to try. I knocked on the gnarled old wood.

Someone moved inside.

"Hello?" I called, but all I heard was a soft, aggressive tapping. I walked to the side of the porch to look in through the window and saw… It was hard to describe what I saw. William Byers, blue and swollen, stared at me and pounded his fists on the glass. Some mucus was leaking from his nostrils, and he had no front teeth, which I could tell from the fact that he opened his mouth to make a terrifying sound. He was staring at me strangely. It fueled me with such great anxiety that I took a few steps back, almost tripping over the laundry basket.

Just as I wanted to run as fast as I could to tell my father what I had seen, the door burst open with a loud bang.

"Steve?!" Nancy's voice woke me from the trance I fell into at the sight of the boy bluish with illness. I shook my head like it would help me awake.

"Nancy!" I got closer to her and wanted to say something else, but she clearly wouldn't listen to me.

"Steve, you have to get out of here. Now."

"Nancy, I swear to you, I didn't come here to fight. I came to apologize and… I was looking for you, I couldn't find you anywhere, your family too-"

"STEVE, YOU HAVE TO GO-" She basically screamed at me.

I looked at her more closely and saw scratches on her face and a bandaged hand. No, I couldn't leave her there. 'She might hate me for it later, but I wont't leave her here' - that's what I thought. 'I won't leave her in danger with someone who didn't take their sick brother to the hospital.' The noises William made as he tapped the windowpane were just… I couldn't even find the words. I pushed her away from a fragment of the door and burst in, into the rotting room where Jonathan Byers, tearfully, was putting bullets inside a gun. I paused, carefully analyzing the situation. The door to William's room was blocked by a closet. Nancy kept tugging on my sleeve. Unsuccessfully. She didn't have the strength to yank me properly.

"What the hell is going on here?!" My throat felt dry immediately.

"Steve, get out," they replied together, but I had already made up my mind not to leave Nancy's turn.

"Only if you come with me," I said, looking at her. For a moment our eyes met, and I saw a lot of fear in them, but also determination. A determination that terrified me because why did I see it in it? What was she so eager to do that her eyes sparkled like this?

"What are you guys planning to do?!" No one answered me.

Did Byers want to shoot his brother? Even if he tried, he probably would have missed it right away, his hands shaking as if he were doing it on purpose. He hasn't been able to put the bullet inside since I walked into his house. The scene looked terrible and pathetic at the same time. It felt like a few more seconds and Byers would suffocate from tears. I felt a strange, cold feeling and finally pulled myself together enough to snatch the weapon from his hand. He didn't even try to fight me. He just, completely scared, began to sob louder and louder, staggering on the couch. I covered my mouth with my sleeve. It was too much. Seeing him like this when he curled woefully on a rough, rotten-smelling blanket.

"JONATHAN, THIS IS NOT YOUR BROTHER," Nancy screamed again, "we have to do this."

"Do what?!" Again, no answer.

Byers started to say something to her, but only a panicked sob escaped his throat. He wiped his face on the dirty cloth he was lying on, I had to turn my face to the side and then… then I saw blood. At first, I didn't notice it because the Byers' house was so dirty and demolished that it was hard to focus on the details of this mess. But there was more and more of this blood. Since they refused to give me answers, I had to find them myself. Nancy had stopped tugging on my sleeve for a while, so I just walked over to the second, locked door and opened it. And after a while I regretted it very much. What I saw there will stay with me forever. In the center of the rug, in her bedroom, I saw Joyce Byers. Dead. Or, rather, the remains of Joyce Byers because her body had been massacred. Something had partially eaten her up. Some animal tore her belly to shreds, pulled her intestines out, bit them and spat them. It chilled the blood in my veins. I didn't know whether to scream or ask more questions or cry. Maybe I should join Jonathan on that goddamn couch? My first thought after realizing I needed to do something was simple – to call the police. And I even took a step back when suddenly something hit me.

Two front teeth lay beside Mrs Byers' scarred, dead hand.

And then I felt bad, so bad that I had to clutch at the closet that had blocked the entrance to William's room. I couldn't stand it. I puked on the floor.

"What- … what the fuck?!"

"Steve, I told you, go away. It's not fucking safe. Please. Please just go away." Nancy was so furious, but I just couldn't understand why, since my presence definitely wasn't the problem here.

"Oh shut up," I screamed, "how the fuck do you want me to leave now?! After I saw… this…?! Tell me what the hell happened here, AND I am calling the fucking police right now."

Nancy stared at me blankly.

"They…" Jonathan finally said something, "the- they are not answering."

He was trying to stand up. It was still tragic.

I had no intention of listening to this goddamn freak. I slammed the door, refusing to see his mother's corpse, and went over to their phone. There was silence between us. And they were right, the police did not answer. I started to wonder who else we could call, but then Nancy, who in the meantime leaned against the wall and stared at me exhausted, asked:

"Why is it suddenly so quiet?"

She was right. The sound William made hitting the glass was no longer here. I swallowed hard. We didn't do anything for a few seconds, and then we all dived for something. Nancy grabbed the gun that I put back on the closet, Jonathan leapt towards the baseball bat leaning against the coffee table, and I dialed the cops again. Silence. On the spur of the moment, I understood why Byers was staggering on that couch. And I didn't understand where Nancy had the power to stand on her feet after what she saw. The day I climbed up to her window and saw her with Jonathan on the bed… Has it started earlier? Were they able to make any decisions now because it didn't all start today, but lasted… from… from the day Barb went missing? I knew that whatever I said now, they would both ignore me as before. After what I saw, I stopped blaming them. I couldn't imagine the thoughts flowing through their heads right now. It was his family. The only family. I knew he still had a father, but everyone in Hawkins knew why Joyce and Lonnie broke up and what the Byers went through before their father finally left. The boy clenching his fingers on something that he could protect himself from his brother, trying to stop crying, immediately ceased to seem pathetic. He began to overwhelm me with the fact that he still had the willpower to do anything.

Another wave of silence was interrupted by the sound coming from the bedroom I had just closed. The one with Joyce's mutilated body. It was fucking weird, so I wanted to push the doorknob, but then both Jonathan and Nancy rushed towards me.

"BLOCK IT WITH A TABLE," said Jonathan, pushing a piece of furniture towards us. He completely ignored my vomit, just slid the table over it with all his strength, smearing it across the floor.

"Oh God, oh God, oh my God," Nancy whispered, pulling me aside, "don't do this, don't open it, it's the same… it was the same with Will."

I helped him. His hands were still trembling, he was scared more than me.

"Let's just drive away", I said, moving the damn table myself. They only stared at me. "Like, let's drive away, get some help." It seemed to be the only choice he had. What else could they do here? Shoot William Byers with a gun? Like now? Realization that they actually tried to do this was just crazy.

"Steve," Nancy said softly, "no one is coming. Hopper is dead. His body is behind the house. We… I think it's all our fault."

What she said should probably shock me. I should be scared, I should get away from here, but for some reason it all felt so far away all of a sudden. Like I'm watching a movie. It was definitely not my life. It couldn't be my life. My life didn't look like that. I was here to apologize to Jonathan before leaving Hawkins. I was here searching for Nancy, to tell her that I am sorry, and I think she and her family should leave too. I was here to make everything alright.

"IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT NANCE-" Jonathan started, but he stopped as soon as she started crying. I pulled her closer, hugged her, and she leaned for this comfort, even after our dramatic fight. She seemed tired. Tired of being strong. I knew that I couldn't force them to tell me about everything now. We all had to be in a safe place. Away from it all. It's hard for me to admit it, but I mainly meant Nancy – I wanted her to be safe, she seemed to be close to me then, closer to the rat outcast that Jonathan was, but even when I had such a vivid dislike for him, I couldn't then leave him there. With two living dead. Because they were dead, weren't they? No one could survive what happened to Joyce, but someone was just hitting their fists on the other side of the barricaded door and shouting. Joyce screamed like a hungry animal. When I think back to that moment, the main thing I remember is fear. I've never been so afraid of anything as I was then. But this moment taught me that fear, while theoretically something bad, something we all want to avoid, could make a person strong. Fear was a superpower. Fear allowed me to put my arms around someone even when my own legs felt like cotton wool. Fear helped me grab both of them by the hand and pull them towards my BMW. And although I was constantly troubled by thoughts – did he really want to go with me, did he really want to leave his family, some rational side also told me: this is not his family, the boy he saw in the window was no longer his brother. And if Jonathan doesn't see it yet, I have to help him get out of that stinky house by force. I saw his mother's insides splashed all over the room. It was impossible that she was still alive, yet she was still moving. We had to find someone to help Byers with this. His parents must have known something. The accident at my father's company must have had something to do with it. So I'll just take them home. I'll get them out of here before Hopper gets up off the ground and follows us.

I let go of their hands for a moment. Took the bat out of his hand and left first.

"Steve-"

I leaned around the corner and saw William pushing his whole body against the glass, licking it and hissing. His clothes were bloody, and his face became more and more swollen. It was so disgusting that I wanted to throw up again, but luckily there was absolutely nothing left in my stomach. I had to hurry. A little longer and the window won't last.

"Jon," I said, swallowing, "close your eyes."

And he just did it. I guess he didn't want to believe it all anymore. He trusted us. We both grabbed him and led him to the car.

I didn't blame them for not saying anything. Nancy sat in the front, clutching my hand, but she was staring at the road. Jonathan just sat there. His eyes were open, but it looked like he wasn't staring anywhere, as if the only thing in front of his eyes was nothingness.

"To all residents, [crackle] degree of danger [crackle] remain calm [crackle] close the door and don't leave the house, wait for help [crackle] the virus spreads at an alarming rate [crackles] dead people come back to life, they are aggressive [crackle] attack in a wild frenzy [crackle] feed on meat [crackle] if you hear it [crackle] God help us."

I've had enough. I turned the radio off.

We drove in silence for a few seconds, and finally Nancy said:

"Hopper followed us damn fast. So fast, you wouldn't believe someone of his size could run that fast. I screamed at the top of my throat that I would shoot him, and then I shot him, and he kept running. With his arms broken."

While listening to her, I looked in the mirror. Byers didn't even flinch.

"Sixteen times. He shot him sixteen times. He fired the last six shots in the head while he was still. Just to make sure he would never get up."

My fingers tightened on her palm.

"What happened to your hand?"

"Hopper bit me. Hopper has fucking bit me."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"God, this is bullshit. It doesn't feel real at all."

I knew what she meant. It couldn't be real life. I felt as if I was watching it all from the side, as if I was dreaming. And I was really hoping it would all turn out to be a goddamn dream. That tomorrow I will wake up in my bed, my parents will not be home as always, I will go to school and apologize to them for everything that happened last week, we will make up and everything will be normal. But I wasn't so crazy yet that I couldn't tell dream from waking.

And I was sure I wasn't sleeping.