The Trooper - Iron Maiden
Beck jogged down the block, scanning for Eddie's van and brushing away tears.
How could he DO this to her?!
When she finally spotted the van, she ran over and after seeing it was undamaged she jumped in and pulled away with a squeal of tires. Her knuckles were clenched so hard on the steering wheel that they were white, and she bit her lip hard to try to make herself stop crying.
Beck had woken up to the sound of her phone ringing so she had gotten out of bed as quietly as possible and grabbed the receiver. Unbelievably it had been Max calling her with Dustin yelling in the background.
"Have you seen the news yet?" Max asked her after shutting up Dustin.
"No…" Beck breathed, moving to the small TV and switching off the volume before turning it on. She flipped to local news and her skin went cold. Eddie's trailer was behind police tape and the headline was that a teen girl had been found dead.
He had been right. It wasn't just some sort of bad trip. Chrissy had come to his trailer and had not left.
"You there, Beck?"
"Max… What do you know?"
There was a long moment where Max and Dustin were whispering to one another and then Max filled her in on what she had seen the night before: Chrissy and Eddie going in, then Eddie screaming, running out, and driving off.
"Beck," she continued, "He was scared. Really scared."
"And he didn't kill Chrissy!" Dustin shouted into the phone causing Beck to wince and pull back.
"Where's Wayne?" she asked.
"He's the one who… found her. I saw her body when the cops got there."
"Jesus… I'm so sorry Max."
"Listen, I wanted you to know before you saw it on the news. We need to find him, so if you hear anything can you let us know?"
Beck's eyes flicked down the hall where Eddie seemed to still be sleeping.
"If you keep me in the loop with what you know," she said, trying not to sound like she was hiding anything.
Max promised they would and Beck hung up, moving to watch Eddie. He had gotten hot in the night and was now sprawled out shirtless. He always looked far younger when he was sleeping and she felt her heart clench as she focused on the tattoo on his forearm that she had drawn him.
Beck had no idea what was going on, but she would protect him at all costs. She decided to take a shower since she was still gross from work and she now she kicked herself for that choice.
When she had gotten out of the shower, he was gone. He had left her his van keys and a note saying he loved her and needed to lay low somewhere else so she wouldn't get caught up in all of this. She had no idea where he was now and she was so angry and so scared she could hardly think.
Beck pulled up to the police cordon at the trailer park and when the cop told her she couldn't enter she burst into tears. She hadn't meant to but it was already too much and it was only noon.
"Wayne's my uncle and I used to live here," she finally managed to say. "Please…"
The cop was already uncomfortable from her crying so he quickly allowed her through, watching to make sure she pulled up to where Wayne was sitting on the picnic table by the trailer.
Beck was out and jogging over to him before she clocked there was someone else there. When he saw her, Wayne had also jumped up and when he reached her, he grabbed her a hug so tight she almost lost her breath.
"You're okay," he breathed. "Thank god you're okay."
"I'm so sorry, Wayne," she said as they parted.
"Do you know where Eddie is? Is he okay?"
"He's okay," she whispered, keeping her eyes on the girl behind him, "but I don't know where he is anymore."
Tears threatened to spill again and she dug her nails hard into her palms.
The girl moved toward them and Beck narrowed her eyes at the notebook she was holding.
"You're Eddie's girlfriend, right?"
"What's it to you?" Beck snapped, immediately suspicious.
"I'm Nancy Wheeler. I was just talking to Wayne about Eddie."
Wayne avoided Beck's eyes as she shot him a betrayed look and then moved in closer to Nancy.
"I know what it looks like but he didn't do this. He is so gentle and … he couldn't kill like that," Beck said, only realizing the mistake in what she had said after Nancy's eyes lit up.
"You know how Chrissy was killed then? That's not public information."
Wayne stepped in, trying to diffuse the tension. "She wanted to write about Eddie's side, to tell his story."
Now Beck smelled blood in the water. She and Nancy were similar height but Nancy looked like a skeleton and Beck had more weight to throw around so she pushed up against the smaller woman.
"Why?"
"What?" Nancy asked, taking a step back.
"Why are you trying to help? This girl dies in Eddie's home and you show up insisting there's another side to this. What do you know that the cops don't know? That I don't know?"
That seemed to resolve something for Nancy. "Can I talk to you privately?"
Beck nodded and Wayne went back to smoking on the picnic table while they walked over to the van.
"You've seen him since this happened," Nancy said with no doubt as she gestured at the trailer. "What did he tell you?"
Beck crossed her arms, not trusting herself to say anything.
Nancy sighed heavily. "Listen, I don't know what he said but… things happen in Hawkins that shouldn't be possible. Chrissy's death sounds like… maybe it's one of those things."
Beck felt the blood leave her face and Nancy gripped her arm as she leaned hard against the van. Nothing about this made any sense but there was no way this type-A queen bee had been able to corroborate a supernatural murder story with her boyfriend. Which meant maybe he had been telling the truth.
"Beck? You okay?"
"I don't know where he is," she whispered and the two of them locked eyes. "Is he safe?"
"I don't know," Nancy admitted, looking incredibly apologetic.
Beck sucked in a few deep breaths before pushing back to her feet. She held out her hand and Nancy handed over her notepad and pen. Beck scribbled down her phone number saying, "If you hear anything, please tell me."
"Return the favor?" Nancy asked. "Ted Wheeler in the phonebook."
Beck nodded and watched Nancy jog of looking concerned as she rejoined Wayne on the picnic table, leaning into his open arms as she sat beside him.
As night fell, Eddie was crouched in Rick's boat house, bored and scared and twitchy as hell.
He had heard Beck on the phone with Max while he was struggling to wake up from the Xanax. What had brought him to full wakefulness was hearing Beck ask Max what she knew and then hearing her tell Max she was sorry.
The news was out. Everyone would know soon enough that he was the prime suspect for Chrissy's death and Beck would be the most obvious target of suspicion. Or worse.
He remembered a year and a half ago when he had tried to avoid her, at that point only trying to protect her from getting dirt thrown in her face. For a moment, he wondered if it would not have been better for him to have succeeded in pulling back from her.
He listened to Beck watch him, trying to look asleep, and when she was in the shower, he quickly dressed and wrote her a note, leaving his keys on the table. He leaned his forehead and palms against the bathroom door, wishing desperately he could give her a proper goodbye. And then he was gone.
There was a car that was always parked on the street and literally never moved in her neighborhood so he dusted off a skill set he resented, hotwiring the car and heading out toward Lover's Lake. He wasn't stupid enough to drive a stolen car straight to where he was hiding so he left it on a nature path two miles away and walked there, hoping it was early enough that no one would notice him.
Rick was in jail and Eddie knew the house would be empty so he ate for the first time in almost a full day while scoping out a place to hide. The boat house had the most cover and the easiest points of escape so he fell asleep there, curled up in a corner and using his jacket as a pillow.
When he woke it was dark out and the sound of car doors shutting had the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. People were here and there was the sound of someone knocking hard on the front door and ringing the doorbell.
Eddie had been forced at a young age to learn how to protect himself at any cost and that instinct surged back to the surface. He grabbed a bottle he had broken when he had arrived and dove under the boat tarp, arranging it over him as best as he could.
A few minutes later, lights flicked over the tarp and footsteps neared him, causing his heart to race and thud so loudly he almost couldn't hear over it. Eddie tightened his grip on the bottleneck and waited.
He could hear a girl's voice he didn't recognize and then an older guy that seemed familiar but was not a friend. And then someone was jabbing something into the boat and insisting that he might be in there.
His focus narrowed to the guy jabbing the boat and he waited, moving into a crouch. If Eddie couldn't win this, he would certainly take a motherfucker with him.
He jumped as the jabbing stopped and saw the guy, grabbed him, and drove him hard back into a wall, pointing the glass shard at his throat.
Other people were screaming but no one moved and no one touched him which was the goal.
Someone repeatedly yelling his name did break through the haze though and he looked over to see… Dustin. Dustin was with a band girl and… Steve Harrington.
He gripped harder, knowing there was not a single good reason Steve would have come looking for him as Dustin yelled they were there to help him. Steve dropped the oar and the sound made him push the bottle up into the soft skin below his chin.
"What are you doing here?" Eddie asked, keeping his eyes trained on the asshole he had pinned.
Max stepped out from behind the older girl and that caught his attention.
"Eddie!" she pleaded. "I talked to Beck this morning! We are helping her look for you! That's why we're here."
"We're on your side!" Dustin insisted, and shaking, terrified of being wrong about this, Eddie let Steve go.
The jock collapsed and Eddie moved off, the adrenaline leaving him feeling sick and panicky. He slid down the wall and Dustin and Max joined him, Dustin trying to take the bottle and Max slapping Dustin's hands away.
"Eddie, what happened?" Max asked, kneeling beside him.
"You won't believe me," he managed, trying hard not to cry.
"Try us," she said, and he stared over at her.
He had nothing much to lose, so he started to tell them what had happened when he had brought Chrissy to his trailer. When he finished, they just stared at him. Dustin's mouth was even hanging open which was in no way reassuring.
"You all think I'm crazy right?" he asked, feeling stupid and scared.
"No, we don't think you're crazy at all," Dustin said and that made him angry.
"Don't bullshit me, man!" he shouted, hearing how hysterical he sounded and hiding his face in his hands. "I know how crazy this sounds.
"You don't sound crazy. We believe you," Robin reassured.
"Beck didn't believe me," he moaned. "Why would you?"
Max rested her hand gently on his forearm. "She doesn't know what we know. She hasn't seen the things in Hawkins that we have."
"Listen," Dustin said, "what I have to tell you might be a little hard to take."
And then he proceeded to tell Eddie that Hawkins was cursed and that there was another world that would sometimes bleed into Hawkins and that if these things were back, they needed to know. They asked if he had seen dark particles but he definitely had not. But then… then it was clear that Chrissy had been under something's control, that something had cursed her.
"Where is Beck?" he asked, beginning to panic for an entirely different reason.
"We don't know," Max admitted. "We were busy looking for you."
"If there's a dark wizard sucking the eyes out of people, she could be next!" he shouted, jumping to his feet and pulling at his hair. "I need to find her!"
"Eddie, you can't leave here!" Robin insisted, not quailing under the look he gave her.
"Then you're going to find her," he growled. "Because if anything happens to her…"
He didn't need to fill in a threat. They had all watched him almost cut Steve's throat less than an hour before.
"We'll find her," Max reassured. "Is there anything you need?"
After Eddie explained he would need food since Rick didn't have much in the house, Dustin gave him a walkie talkie that he promised would work at any distance they were from him in Hawkins. And then they were gone and Eddie was left to process.
It was a relief that he was not insane but the idea that something could just enter Beck's mind and crush her body like a cheap doll made him more scared than he had already been. He had left to protect her but now no one even knew where she was and she could be in more danger than ever.
Beck returned home when the police made her leave so they could set Wayne up in a hotel. They had given her shit about having Eddie's van at first but Wayne had vouched that the two of them traded it off regularly and she gave them the address of the neighbor's house he always parked the van in front of. They called the neighbor and she angrily verified it had been there all evening and morning until Beck had driven off alone so the cops let Beck leave with it.
It was dark but as Beck drove closer to the house, she could see the family she rented from standing in the driveway. Dark words were scrawled across the garage door and as she pulled up, Beck saw that they said "Satan's Whore."
Her skin prickled and she ran up to them, apologizing since the words could only be aimed at her.
"It's not your fault," Jean reassured her, "but it's probably best if you find somewhere else for a few days. I'm not sure how… how far people might go if they know where you are."
Beck looked around and noticed that several neighbors were outside, leaning on cars or grouped up on the sidewalk and staring at her. She nodded weakly and thanked Jean before jumping back into the van and driving away.
She hoped that a public show of going somewhere else would protect them, but since she did not go back inside to get anything, she did not hear Max and Robin trying to call her.