Chapter 5

Okay, so, the good news was that no-one was eaten when trying to take out Dart in the Henderson cellar. The bad news was that Dart had left behind him a pile of soggy skin and then burrowed his way out through their brick wall. So they had essentially set loose an interdimensional creature of unknown size in Hawkins.

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god," Jamie panted as she paced across their living room floor. Their mom was out, thank God, probably at the Sinclairs making posters about Mews. She had been home sometime during the day - she'd left a note and some microwave meals. Hopefully, she would have some wine at the Sinclairs and decide to spend the night - it wouldn't be the first time. Outside, Saturday night had settled over Hawkins, a true fall night with fog and no moonlight. Cozy, if it hadn't been for the fact that a dog-sized monster roamed the woods that surrounded their small town.

"Jamie! What did I tell you?" Dustin barked from his position by the kitchen's table, where he had the full map of Hawkins and its surrounding areas spread out. "No - hysterics!"

She turned on him, happy for an outlet to her frustrations. "I have been having nightmares for a year now, of the thing that attacked me, that killed Barb, that took Will. And I've dealt, you know, as best I could because they were just nightmares. Not real. El killed that thing, it was gone, couldn't hurt me." Her brother at least had the decency to look mildly ashamed, he was probably guessing where this was going. "AND THEN my idiot brother decides to bring a Demogorgon-tadpole into this very house! My safe space!" She pointed at her chest with shaky fingers. "Just, you know, making my worst nightmare a reality. No big deal! So, I'm sorry, I AM ALLOWED A LITTLE HYSTERICS!"

Panting, she stared at them with wild eyes. Her hair stood up at all ends from when she'd torn at it. Dustin and Steve said nothing - her brother looked irritatingly calm, while Steve Harrington just looked like he would pay a lot of money to be somewhere else right now. Dustin waited until she had taken a few breaths.

"Better?"

"Yes!"

"I didn't know it was a demogorgon," Dustin said to Steve, making Jamie scream into her hands. "It was just this tiny thing with two legs and a tail..."

"I know, buddy."

"It liked nougat! How was I supposed to know that something from the Upside Down would like nougat."

"Yeah, yeah, you're totally right."

"You're doing it again!" Jamie wailed, almost balling up her fists and stomping her feet like a five-year-old. "You're trying to piss me off to make me forget I'm scared and it's working, you piece of shit!" With a huff, she stalked over to the kitchen phone and yanked the receiver off.

Dustin half-rose in his chair. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to reach Hopper again!"

The PD was closed, she only got a voicemail telling her to dial 9-1-1 in case of emergencies. She tried his home-number, but no answer. Byers, nothing. Wheelers, busy-signal. She groaned and leaned her head against the wall. In the end she just had to face it. No-one was coming to their rescue.

Knowing she was being watched by her little brother and Steve Harrington of all people, she slumped down on a kitchen chair and nodded towards the map. "Okay, what's your plan, dipshit?"

It was a stupid plan, Jamie thought, when she and Steve went to the butcher's the next morning to buy bucketloads of cubed beef. Steve had said something about hosting a BBQ, which might have made sense if it hadn't been November. The butcher was more concerned with getting paid than the authenticity of their story, and in that matter, Steve came in handy.

Jamie watched how Steve's biceps bulged when he lifted the bucket, it was at least 50lbs, and she noticed his confused expression when she managed to lift the second bucket all by herself. She should've probably told Dustin about this, but it would just take his focus away from the important things, like trying to stop his murder-pet from eating a pre-schooler or something. Their small team could only take so much distraction. Jamie was still mystified by seeing Steve Harrington first thing in the morning.

He hadn't looked any different, hair still so tall it almost graced the ceiling at their house, but there was something in his expression when he came shuffling out into the kitchen that morning. They had all spent the night in beds not their own. By general consensus, Jamie took their mom's bed, Dustin in turn took hers, leaving Steve to wrinkle his nose about sleeping in Dustin's bed, even if they'd changed the sheets. None of them had probably gotten much sleep, but it was better than nothing since they were forced to wait for daylight anyway. So, that's how she ended up seeing Steve at his probably most vulnerable, right after he had woken up.

It hadn't been bad. Just weird. The more she thought of it, the more uncertain she became on how she actually felt about it. Even in the car, she realized it was easier to hold a conversation with Billy Hargrove than with Steve, even though she and Steve technically had been friends for at least a year. That was through Nancy though and she had never even spent time with the guy outside of Nancy's presence.

With the monster on the loose, small-talking about the weather just didn't seem appropriate. Thus, the car-rides were quiet as the grave. At least until Dustin got in. Jamie stuck out her tongue when he was the one who had to clamber into the backseat and he responded by flipping her the bird. She grinned. That was the first thing she'd taught him when he was a toddler. Their older cousins, who had taught her, had nearly pissed themselves laughing at baby Dusty stumbling around in his diapers, giving everyone the middle finger.

"Jesus Christ, what've you got in that thing?" Steve asked after Dustin had put his overstuffed backpack down with an audible thump.

"Supplies," he said simply, sounding like he was trying to say 'surprise' with a lisp. Dustin looked at Jamie. "I got dad's travel tool-kit, his Ameriflame, gloves, some nails and screws, petrol and-" he reached into the backpack and came back with some Oreos. "-snacks."

Jamie nodded and tried to breathe evenly as the landscape zoomed past. They had almost half a cow in the trunk of Steve's car, but no weapons other than the petrol and the spiked baseball-bat Jonathan had made last year when they first fought the Demogorgon. That whole night was a blur. She remembered sketching up the plans for the trap, huddling in Jonathan's bedroom, waiting for the yo-yo to move. She shuddered.

"You okay over there?" Steve's voice pulled her back and she blinked to bring him into focus. Steve shifted his attention between the road and her, not like Billy who would stare at her for seconds at a time, taking the road as it came. Steve 'The Hair' Harrington had a worried furrow in his brow. "You know, no-one would blame you if you wanted to sit this one out."

Like magnets, they both looked down at Jamie's denim-covered left leg. She had the urge to cover it even more, pulling her sweatshirt down over her knee and hiding it under there. Steve looked pale. At least she'd been passed out when they finally got her back from the demogorgon. She had only seen pictures of it, how it looked like when they got to the hospital, nothing but a mess of muscles and blood. It was easy to detach herself from pictures, but Steve had seen it when the leg was a part of her, a pulsating living thing, spurting blood and protruding bones when they tried to move her.

Dustin cleared his throat from the backseat, Jamie and Steve jolted awake and Steve fixated on driving instead of old memories. Jamie absent-mindedly rubbed her knee, where the worst of the scarring started and continued downwards.

"I won't sit at home while sending you guys out to do the dangerous part," Jamie said to answer Steve's question from before. If it had been Hopper, or some of those government-soldiers, sure, she'd let them go alone. But her baby brother and the school's basketball captain? No. "Besides, the only way I'll ever sleep again is if I see that thing burn."

Despite the bravado, she agreed to walk a bit ahead of the guys when they spread out the trail of meat. That way she never risked to fall behind the others and they could have eyes on her at all times if the thing came rushing out of the trees. They hoped it wouldn't, not in daylight, going of Dustin's intel that it preferred the dark and cold. The first yards were quiet and tense, but as they moved down the railroad track, they relaxed a bit more. Birds were chirping, a fresh breeze in the air, it was just a beautiful November-day in the woods. If it hadn't been for the rubber gloves and the pieces of meat they were scattering around, it had all the makings of a Sunday-hike.

Jamie carried the backpack, a hefty thirty pounds worth of supplies, while the boys carried two smaller buckets of meat. She was maybe twenty yards ahead, well out of earshot, had her hearing been normal. Since her hearing was not normal lately, she was forced to listen into what she supposed Steve thought was a confidential conversation. It started innocently enough, even if it irked her that the main reason Dustin had even kept that ugly slug was to impress that girl Max, who she only knew by voice.

"It's not about the hair, man," said Steve in his attempt to explain courting to his young protege. "The key with girls is just- just acting like you don't care."

Jamie rolled her eyes. Of all the stupid advice in the world to give a teenage-boy. What Dustin said next made her skin crawl though.

"You act like you care around Jamie," he pointed out and Jamie's fingers squeezed on the strap of the backpack in lieu of Dustin's throat.

Steve sounded confused. "Why would I act like I don't care about Jamie?"

"Only because she's had a crush on you since 6th grade."

Oooooh, that little shit! She was gonna kill him. He knew she could hear them! Now, if she turned around and yelled at him, Steve would know she'd heard them too and then there would be more explanations and- ugh.

"What, Jamie? Jamie Henderson, your sister?" It was hard to tell if it was shock or panic in Steve's voice. "Former President of the Physics and Engineering-club and the Middle School Champion at Slug Spitting Jamie Henderson? Are you sure?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm sure. I read her diary all the time before she stopped writing in it. She used to write her name like J-"

"HEY, DIPSHITS!" Jamie shouted and glared daggers at Dustin, even with the steady rise of a blush up her neck. The two guys guiltily looked up from where they had stopped, rooted to the ground. "You can't both be monster-bait, come on, let's go already."

At least Dustin took the hint that the consequences outweighed whatever he hoped to gain from revealing that to Steve. God, her diary, that seemed like a different life. She hadn't even known Steve then, just had this vague idea of him from watching him interact with others at their school. With Nancy, he had seemed like the perfect boyfriend though, but she wasn't Nancy Wheeler. She was Jamie Henderson. She cursed like a sailor, voted blue (or at least would have if she was old enough), never wore skirts and didn't know how to drive. And Steve liked Nancy and to be fair, who could blame him? Nancy was awesome! She was smart, knew how to shoot a gun, stood up for her friends and wasn't afraid of anything.

She probably should have been more embarrassed at Dustin spilling her well-kept secret to the person in question. The way that the conversation between Dustin and Steve went however kind of put a damper on the mortification of being outed like that. Especially when Steve mentioned sexual electricity and then revealed the secret to his hair. Farrah Fawcett-spray. Okay then.

Having lead a trail, they ended up at the old junkyard. She and Steve tipped the remaining pieces of meat into a large heap. It had started to smell kind of sweet, like if you left meat out on the counter for too long, and at least the flies were ecstatic at their contribution to the junkyard ecosystem.

"Not craving a burger anytime soon, I'll tell you that," Steve said and wiped his nose with the back of his rubber gloved hand. He laughed, a bit strained and Jamie quirked her eyebrow at him. She was spared having to answer, as a voice called out:

"I said medium-well!"

Lucas' familiar short afro of hair popped up from behind an old piece of junk. He was accompanied by a redheaded girl wearing a green adidas-hoodie and jeans.

"Who's that?" Steve asked, obviously referring to the girl, but Dustin only glowered at the newcomers. Jamie's eyebrows rose. Ah. Mad Max. Without a word, Dustin pulled Lucas to a secluded spot and Jamie had to concentrate to not hear the irate discussion between the two boys. The girl looked confused, as she'd ridden here with Lucas and obviously knew Dustin, but was suddenly left alone with two high-schoolers.

"Uh, hi?" she said with an unsure smile. Even as a redhead, she was tanner than most people in Hawkins. Made sense, considering she was from California too. She and Billy looked nothing alike, that's for sure, apart from the tanned skin.

"Hey," Steve said with both hands at his waist. He looked in the direction Dustin and Lucas had went, gave Jamie a questioning glance, before he shrugged. "All right, let's get to work."

"I'm Jamie," Jamie said to ease the younger girl's nerves somewhat. Max took her proffered hand. "I'm guessing you're Max?"

"Yeah," Max answered, but now looking a little disturbed at this random girl knowing her name. "Have we met?"

"I'm Dustin's sister." Jamie indicated for Max to grab the other end of some steel-plates and help carry them to the old school-bus. "The other knucklehead is Steve Harrington, even if he's too much of a douche to introduce himself."

"Wait, so you're Jamie Henderson?" Max was struggling under the weight of the steel, taking awkward steps backwards. "Coma Girl?"

Dick move, but Jamie let go off her end of the boiler plates. Max lost her grip and the edge of the scraped down her shins, just barely avoiding cutting through her jeans. With a pointed look, Jamie bent and hefted the plates up by herself. "Yeah. Coma Girl."

Max had turned bright red, to match her orange hair, but said nothing. She busied herself by helping Steve carry more and more material over to the bus. Jamie focused on her job. The bus had been there since she was in Middle School, most of the windows smashed and the folding doors were completely unhinged through years of abuse. She rooted through Dustin's backpack, a hazardous adventure on its own, and produced the Ameriflame-kit, protective gloves, and the vintage welding helmet from the early 1960s. She placed the helmet over her unruly curls, and set up the Ameriflame-kit, a lightweight portable welding-kit from her dad's time as a part-time mechanic.

"You know how to weld?" Steve stood fixated above her, in the middle of barricading one of the windows.

Jamie turned the knob on the gas, producing a bright hot point at the end of the stick. "I'm the former President of the Physics and Engineering Club," she said, mirroring his words back to him. She flipped the mask down. "Of course I know how to weld."

It didn't mean she was good at it though. Louie was the Master Welder in the club, Connor had a knack for wiring, Frankie did the dimensioning and Jamie did the best soldering. She'd never learned to keep her hand steady at the awkward angles that welding required, but was a master when she could sit in a fixed position like when she soldered motherboards and circuits. The awkward plastic handle of the Ameriflame only made it harder, but she wasn't trying to make it tight, only solid. Where the steel was too thick to weld with the kit, she got out her rivet gun and essentially stapled the plates together.

The door was busted, but it was nothing she couldn't fix with a little bit of grease and a screwdriver. It was an old bus, so working the door was done by mechanical means only and she got the handle to work in no time. She tested the speed, wondering if it would be fast enough if a baby Demogorgon came bounding towards them. She applied more grease, watching it bubble and settle into the decade-old hinges.

Max was on the roof of the bus above her, shoving plates down to cover the windshield. Her orange hair glinted like fire in the sunlight as she popped her head out from the roof. "What's the Physics and Engineering Club?"

"Huh?"Jamie wiped away the sweat stinging in her eyes and squinted at the other girl.

"You said you were the former President of the Physics and Engineering Club. What kinda club is that?"

"Oh, uh, it's a high-school thing," Jamie said, still a bit miffed about the Coma Girl thing from before. "Extracurricular activity-stuff. We basically build stuff. There's some math involved too, but it's mostly just trying and failing."

"Is it like the AV-club?" There was something bitter in her voice as she asked. Jamie shook her head.

"Nah, AV is more about working a HAM-radio, maybe even fixing some parts. In PhysEng we build stuff from scratch." She packed up the Ameriflame, it was out of gas anyway. "Every year we compete in the HSEC: High School Engineering Championship. It's a different theme each year."

Max wrinkled her nose. "What'd you mean 'theme'?"

"Well, it's like, uh...'kitchen appliance' or 'able to fly' or 'useful for people in wheelchairs'. It's just so that they don't end up with a hundred different fighter robots each year," Jamie explained, listing some of the categories that had come around the last years. It was kitchen appliance this year, which was why she and the guys were building that self-cleaning toaster. Not that she had done much of the building now that she thought of it. Again, it was like remembering a dream, the period between now and when she woke up from that coma.

"Cool," said Max and it was obvious that she meant it. She leaned forwards on her knees. "Back in San Diego, me and my best friend Nate spent last summer building a working catapult to throw water balloons at the water towers. We got it throwing like a hundred yards, for real."

A hundred yards was nothing. The last catapult Jamie had built with the guys had been confiscated by the police for basically being a threat to society, at least the society that was 500 yards away from where they had tested it on the field. She didn't mention this to Max. Quashing a fellow female tinkerer's dream was not her style.

"Sounds like the PhysEng-club's gonna be right up your ally," she said and handed Max the next boiler plate that was going over the windshield. Olive branch. "God knows clubs like that needs more girls. Or, you know, the world needs more girl scientists in general. Like, did you know that when seatbelts first came, it reduced the amount of men killed in traffic by like this huge percentage, but it actually increased the number of women being killed? Only because those stupid men hadn't thought of that women are generally smaller than the average male and wears seatbelts differently because of obvious physical differences."

"No way. For real?"

"Yeah! Or that it took them like ten years before they realized why no women ever used bulletproof vests, because they didn't make them fit anyone who had more than a AA-cup!" Jamie had found a willing audience in Max, and continued listing the slights against women in modern-day science. "Even this stupid screwdriver! When I work at home, I have to use a kid's screwdriver, because the goddamn handle is only designed for men, who generally have larger hands!"

"That's so messed up!"

"I know," Jamie agreed loudly, using the rivet gun to pop nails into the steel plate. "You skate, right? I bet you twenty bucks you've never found a helmet that fits over your hair or lets you have it in a ponytail."

Max thought for a second before her mouth dropped open in disgust.

"Uh-huh. Because the world is designed by men for men." Jamie popped more nails into the plates, fixing them to the bus' exterior. "That's why we got to stick together, us girls. All girls, those who like pink and wear plaited skirts to school and those who never wear make-up and listen to Metallica in their basement."

This was her mother's words, a hard-working woman who had had to fight her way from secretary to accountant. They had always made sense to Jamie, even if she sometimes struggled to practice what she preached. Badass women weren't badass because they were better than other girls. Badass women were just badass, regardless of any other person.

Steve appeared with some heavy steel beams in his arms. His bangs hung limp in his forehead. "Are you girls done gossiping yet? We only got thirty minutes of daylight left!"

Jamie scowled and popped another nail into the bus. Max made a rude gesture at Steve's back. He was right in one thing, they were losing daylight fast. By the time twilight rolled around, none of them dared to stay outside the safe confines of the jacked-out bus. Lucas, with his trustworthy binoculars, had climbed up on the roof to keep watch. The rest sat sprawled out in what was left of the old seats.

"So you really fought one of these things before?" Max asked Steve, who just nodded, baseball bat between his feet. "And you're, like, totally, 100% sure it wasn't a bear?"

Dustin swore in disgust, while Steve just glanced at Jamie's leg where she sat with it pulled up her chin. "Uh, yeah, we're sure it wasn't a bear."

Max followed Steve's eyes and turned to Jamie. "No way! That was what bit you?"

"Like we already told you!" Dustin was too agitated to sit still and paced around. "Why are you here if you don't even believe us? Just go home."

"Sheesh," Max said while Jamie frowned at her brother. Jamie practically felt Max' eyes return to her though, to her legs. "You got a scar? Can I see it?"

"No!" snapped Jamie and Dustin in synch.

"Why not? I saw a guy who was attacked by a shark once-"

"This isn't a shark-bite," Dustin said with bitterness in every syllable. "Or a bear. Or a coyote or a raccoon. It was a Demogorgon, okay? Now just shut up."

"Someone's cranky," Max said and not even her stone-faced expression could hide the hurt. She climbed up the ladder but not before giving Dustin a final pitying glance, like only thirteen year old girls could. "Past your bedtime or something?"

Jamie sighed and tried to ignore both on-going conversations that she could hear everything in. Instead, she tried to listen outside, to anything that would indicate Dart had picked up the trail. Sniffing, chewing, snarling - any sound at all. It was impossible to tune out the other people in or on top of the bus. Dustin tried to get contact with Chief Hopper through the SuperComm, speaking in a hushed whisper, while Max told a heartbreaking story about her step-brother who was angry all the time now. Step-brother. That explained the vast difference in appearance between the two. Max was a child from a broken home too, except she was half a country away from her father. Jamie and Dustin's dad was still in Indiana, working as a senior engineer for a large firm in Chicago where her Grandma lived too. She and Dustin was supposed to go there for Thanksgiving.

She supposed she would be angry too, if she had been forced to relocate from a large West Coast-city to Hawkins, Indiana. Not that Billy Hargrove had seemed angry to her, just on edge all the time, waiting for the ball to drop. Now that she thought of it, every time she'd encountered him, he'd helped her in some way. That was not the same experience for all the other kids at school though. Maybe he just didn't find her interesting enough to rile up, like he did with Steve.

Oh boy, she was not looking forward to Dustin's heartbreak when he realized Max was into Lucas. Not sure if it was something in their tone of voice or just something in the air, but there was definitely a sort of chemistry between the pair up on the bus-top roof. Jamie glanced at the blowtorch that hung limply from her hand where it rested on her knees. That was a different kind of chemistry. Hopefully the plan worked - Steve played incessantly with the Zippo-lighter - and she never had to light the blowtorch.

"Ten o'clock! Ten o'clock!"

Time to find out. Jamie clambered up from her seat to peer out into the night. It looked like a ghost's playground, with fog laying thick and heavy between the old car-frames. It seemed to dampen all the sounds and she squinted to pick up on any movement. Ten o'clock? There was nothing at-

"I see him," Dustin said airily and then Jamie did too. It was no longer a baby Demogorgon, more like a teenage Demogorgon. Not fully grown, but still the size of a large dog, the head swaying this way and that as it picked up the scent from the pile of meat. It was going for it though, just standing there, waiting.

"He's not taking the bait," Steve whispered. His fingers flexed on the spiked bat. "Why is he not taking the bait?"

"Maybe he's not hungry?" Dustin asked and they all swallowed, contemplating what he must have eaten to sate his hunger.

Steve took a sharp breath, like he'd made up his mind. "Maybe he's sick of cow?"

"Steve? Steve, what are you doing?" Jamie hissed at him as he gave the lighter to her brother and went to the door. No way was he going out there. No way. Her heart stopped when he put his foot on the handle to the door.

"Steve?" Dustin asked thinly, but Steve just nodded.

"Just get ready."

The door opened with barely a sound and out he went. Jamie tripped on her way to the handle to close the door again. Her heart was beating all the way up in her ears, blocking out the sound of Steve chiding the small Demogorgon. She heard the gravel under Steve's shoes, he was taking slow and careful steps further away from the safety of the bus. His breath was even and deep, unlike hers that barely reached her lungs before it jolted out of her nose.

Lucas called down from his rooftop position. "What's he doing?"

"Expanding the menu. Jamie?"

"I'm ready," she said in a thin voice she hardly recognized. She stood by the door, ready to wrench it open if - when! - when Steve made his retreat. Their plan was to light Dart on fire from within the bus. He had to make Dart step into the line of fire, and then he had to get back here.

Simple plan. Easy-peasy.

"Steve, watch out!" Lucas called.

"A little busy here!"

"Three o'clock! Three o'clock!"

Jamie and Dustin pressed their noses up to the small lookout-hole. Her breath caught in her throat. She could count one, two, three-

"He's surrounded!" she whispered and Dustin flew to the bus-door and yanked it open.

"STEVE! ABORT! ABORT!"

The world flipped and chaos ruled. Steve came rushing in with one of the things close on his heel. Jamie grabbed Steve by his sleeve and yanked him inside. She pushed the button on the blowtorch down and the creature screeched in the face of the fire, giving Dustin time to close the doors. Lucas and Max slid down the ladder.

"They can't get in, right?"

Jamie screamed when the door rattled on its hinges. They had rigged the bus for one baby Demogorgon, not a whole pack! Steve clambered over Jamie with another sheet of metal, brandishing it with his feet to solidify the door. The entire bus shook and they all screamed.

Steve lost grip on the metal sheet and a long clawed arm swiped through the flimsy material. Jamie brandished the blowtorch, squeezing the button down like her life depended on it all the while screaming like a madwoman. The flame hit flesh and the smell of burnt rubber permeated the bus. The arm retracted and Steve lifted her off the floor and threw her to the side. Another demogorgon crashed through the door, but got caught right in its still-closed head with a bat full of nails.

Dustin screamed into the SuperComm: "Is anyone there? Mike? Will? God! Anyone! Shit! We're at the old junkyard, and we are going to die!"

"Steve, WATCH OUT!" Jamie hollered just in time for Steve to turn around and swipe the bat at another creature. They were everywhere! They clambered on the roof, tried to break through the windows, pounding at the bus to get an opening, to get to them! Instinctively, Jamie threw herself atop of Dustin when one of the metal sheets gave out and the monster got one arm in again. Blowtorch up, the creature shrieked and withdrew. Up front, Steve was busy bashing one of the thing's heads in. The pitiful squealing would haunt Jamie's dreams for a long time.

Steve pushed Max out of the way when another one found the opening in the roof. Bat ready, feet placed, he issued a challenge. "You want some? Come get this!"

Jamie held her breath. She just waited for a flowerbulb-head to come swooping down and swallow Steve whole. It never came. The creature screeched, and she couldn't believe it when she heard it scramble off the roof. In fact they all went.

"Maybe it's a trick," she whispered in a hoarse voice. Her fingers were locked around the blowtorch, ready to squeeze at even the hint of sound. They all nodded in a silent vow to keep quiet. She and Steve nodded to each other. They would go up front, being the elder teenagers of the group.

Jamie hardly dared to breathe as she followed Steve to the front of the bus, one quiet step after another. She hadn't even noticed that they were holding hands, squeezing each other tightly, before Steve gently released his grip and placed her hand on his arm instead. He needed two hands for the bat. She only needed one for the blowtorch. Another nod. Her fingers curled into the expensive fabric of his jacket. She wasn't sure if he allowed her to hold onto him for her sake or for his. Either way, it was reassuring.

Steve pushed the door open, not bothering with the handle. The mechanism Jamie had fixed earlier had been torn loose when the creatures tried to get in. It was silent as the grave outside. Not a euphemism she particularly enjoyed right then. The door banged when Steve got out and Jamie had to squeeze her bladder to avoid pissing her pants.

Steve's bicep flexed and twisted each time he readjusted his grip on the bat. She peered over his shoulder - it looked clear. They both froze as they heard some growling, but saw the edges of some tails disappear into the night on the other side of the junkyard. The creatures left. They were alone.

"Oh Jesus Christ," Jamie groaned and leaned her head on the back of Steve's shoulder, not releasing his arm. For several seconds inside, she had been sure they would die, torn apart by the same kind of teeth that had tried to kill her a year ago. Steve mumbled something, and turned to hug her with one arm so her face was trapped in the crook of his neck.

"What happened?" Lucas asked, being the first one out of the bus after Jamie. Jamie and Steve released each other at the same time, neither of them meeting the other's eyes, and Jamie swallowed Dustin in a hug the second he stepped off the bus.

"Steve scared them off?" Dustin suggested to Lucas, his voice muffled from being held inside Jamie's wild curls.

"No." Steve sounded confident, even if his eyes darted around the junkyard, scanning for threats. "No way. They're going somewhere."

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