Author's Note: After more than a year, this story is back. I ran into a whole bunch of things this past year where I had no time to work on this, but it never left the back of my mind. I'm planning to finish this story out in the next couple of weeks (15 chapters, if my outline is correct), and then I've already started a second story (unrelated to this one, based on Season 2). So sorry for the long delay, and I hope you haven't forgotten what happened in the earlier chapters. Thanks so much for the comments!
Chapter 11
"I say we let them kill each other," Dustin said loudly. "That Smith guy has no idea what he's getting into. Maybe those scary psychics will take care of all the agents, and we won't have to worry about them anymore."
The seven of them, now including Joyce, headed down an industrial Chicago sidewalk, that abandoned warehouse now several blocks behind them.
"Then what if the psychics come looking for Allie?" Lucas countered.
"That's just what Smith told us," Dustin argued. "He was probably lying to get us to go along with him."
"He's a solid guy," Lucas grumbled.
"If you say so," Dustin said dismissively. "Still doesn't mean we can trust everything he says. We probably know more about psychics and stuff than him or anyone else from the government. We grew up with a real life superhero. So, whatever Smith says, we don't know for sure if Allie is in danger from anyone BUT the agents."
"So what do you think our best game plan is?" Mike asked him.
"I still say we leave the agents and the psychics alone for now. Let them blow each other up if they want to. When it's all over, if there's anyone left who wants to get their filthy hands on little Allie, we deal with them then. I mean, we all support El while SHE deals with them. If we're really lucky, it won't even come to that."
"Either way, I don't think we should stay in Chicago," Lucas offered. "If we aren't going to go take a side in the fight, then we don't need to be here when the fireworks go off."
"Isn't there something we should do about that?" Will asked. "A lot of people in the city could get hurt."
"I tried to tell him," Dustin said. "Smith didn't want to listen to me. He thinks he knows everything. If the agents want to have a Batman vs Superman fight right here and knock down half the city, it's not our job to save them from themselves. Our priority is keeping Allie safe."
"We need to get mobile again," Mike interrupted. "Whatever our plan is, we can't get very far on foot. Do you think Will's car is still at his house, or you think the agents took it away?" He turned back to look at Joyce. "What about your car?"
"It got hit pretty hard," she told him. "I don't know if it still runs."
"We wouldn't all fit in Will's car, anyway," Dustin reminded him. "No, we need something bigger. How about that?" The others followed his finger as he pointed at a red minivan nestled among the other cars in the employee parking lot of some plastics factory or other. "I don't see any security guards or cameras. We can slip in, grab the van, and be on our way in five minutes."
"You want to steal someone's car?" Will asked in surprise.
"This is an emergency, Will," Dustin told him. "The needs of the seven outweigh the needs of the one. When this is all over, we can bring it back."
"You think the owner just left his keys under the seat for us to take?" Lucas scoffed.
"Nope," Dustin said proudly. He pulled the creased and dog eared book out of his pocket and held it up in front of Lucas' face. "1001 tips and tricks for spies!" The book was folded open to a page where Dustin had scrawled a few notes in the margins. "Page 92: how to hotwire a car."
"You can't learn that from a book," Lucas said.
"Tell that to Carl Sagan. I learned about the Cosmos from a book," Dustin replied. He turned to look at Mike. "What do you say?"
Mike considered for a moment. "You really think you can do it?"
"Positive," Dustin said.
Twenty minutes later, Dustin cheered as he touched two wires together and the minivan started up.
"We have ignition," he said proudly. "Get in everybody. There's plenty of room."
Hopper threw himself to the pavement as a burst of fire tore through the air over head. What had once been a peaceful city block of downtown Chicago suddenly reminded him of nothing less than Vietnam. The cops and SWAT and National Guard were firing away with pistol and automatic weapons and whatever else they had. In response, someone was shooting jets of bright orange flame at them, taking out squad cars one or two at a time, burning alive whatever cops or soldiers were unlucky enough to be caught in the blast radius.
He shielded his eyes from the bright light as another jet of flame impacted the front bumper of another squad car, lifting the thing onto its rear wheels before it fell heavily back to the ground, now a burning mass of metal and rubber. Several cops ran or crawled away from the wreck, on fire themselves, thrashing and waving their arms.
Hopper pressed his belly against the pavement, but couldn't resist craning his neck to see, as best he could, the lone man who was causing all the destruction.
"Hop, that's-"
"I know," Hopper said to Sam.
"That's our Arsonist," Sam yelled over the sound of gunfire and roaring flames.
"I know!" Hopper repeated.
"What's he doing here?" Sam demanded.
"I don't know," Hopper said, struggling to be heard over the sound of the war zone.
"How did he get out of jail?" Sam continued.
"I don't KNOW," Hopper snapped. Pressing himself even harder against the pavement as another explosion went off nearby, he turned and looked over his shoulder at where his truck was parked. He flinched instinctively at the sound of two more explosions not very far away, one right after the other.
"I think we can make it, Sam," Hopper yelled to his friend. He judged the distance to the truck and took note of any burning debris that lay in their path. "Just keep your head low and move fast. Then we'll-"
A stray jet of fire tore through the air and blasted his truck skyward. Hopper buried his face against the ground and braced himself as a rain of gravel and broken glass sprinkled over his back. A few of the red hot pieces landed on his bare neck. He swore and brushed them off.
"This way," Sam yelled, tugging on Hopper's arm. "Nothing's burning over there. I think we can make it."
"My truck!" Hopper growled to himself as he army crawled along side Sam, trying to put distance between themselves as the mad firestarter.
Mike watched from the very back seat of the van as Lucas drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel while they headed South, away from downtown Chicago. The traffic was a hundred times worse than it ever was in Hawkins, but it wasn't at all unusual for the big city. Mike wished the other drivers would clear an open path for him and his friends to get out of the city, but they obviously didn't know there was, or was about to be, a nuclear bomb dropped in their midst. It was actually lucky the people didn't know, Mike thought to himself, because if they all tried to evacuate the city at once, the roads would would become parking lots and they'd never make it out.
Lucas had the radio turned low so that they could keep tabs on what was going on. Mike's heart sank as he heard a new reporter's voice cut into the usual drone about traffic and weather.
"...Breaking news of a fire downtown at the DuSable bridge..."
"Lucas, turn it up," Mike called up to him.
"Wait," El interrupted. "I need to see." Mike glanced over to see her flick her head toward the front of the van. All on its own, the radio changed to another station, then to another, and then another before El found an empty channel that was pure static. She flicked her head again, and the volume knob clicked all the way up. The static was so loud it drowned out the sound of passing cars outside.
Dustin turned all the way around in the front passenger seat to look at El. Will and Joyce, in the van's middle row of seats, did the same. Even Lucas stared into the rear view mirror, watching to see what El would do.
She handed Allie over to Mike. The baby squirmed a little, but she didn't seem to be getting upset. Mike held her while El pulled off her jacket and hung it over her face. She took off her seatbelt and turned sideways in the seat so she could lay down. With her head in Mike's lap, her face covered by the jacket, and the radio static covering most of the sound from outside, Mike tried to sit very still and let El work her magic.
The flood of distant noises quickly faded away to nothing, and El opened her eyes to find herself back inside the void. It was quiet. Everything was black, except for what she wanted to see. She turned around in place, searching. Shallow water splashed each time she took a step.
She'd been focusing on the face of Smith, the agent Smith who had chased her and her baby and her friends all the way from Hawkins to this place. She wasn't fond of Smith, but she held the image of his face in her mind as she searched. It didn't take long.
She found him nearby. He appeared to her in the void, not very far away. Shallow water splashed her feet as she moved closer. He was crouched low, a pistol in one hand, a radio in the other. That was how he appeared to her, with no surroundings, a lone figure standing in the blackness. But El had spent years honing her talents. At first, she had needed to use her Remote Viewing, because it had been the only way to see Mike when she was hiding from the Bad Men. Once that danger had passed, it had been useful to see things in the world that she couldn't actually go and see herself. All these years later, she could see far more than Papa and the other scientists at the lab had been able to get out of her.
El expanded her vision so that she could see a little of Smith's surroundings. He was shouting into the radio while he used a crumbling cement barrier as cover from something. As she watched, he peered over the broken hunk of cement, fired a few shots at some invisible enemy, and then ducked back under cover. El pulled back her vision a little further so that she could see more.
Fire. There was fire all around Smith. Several police cars, destroyed, burned out hulks of cars, were strewn around him. There were other men, too, using whatever they could find for cover as they fired their guns at that unseen enemy. There still other men, lying still and dead on the ground.
She pulled back even farther. Now El could see a lone man, walking calmly along a bridge over the Chicago river. Each time he pointed his hand toward the police and other armed men who had set up a barricade at one end of the bridge, he threw a jet of flame their way. El's heart beat faster as she watched the firestarter blast cars into the air and shatter concrete barriers with a casual wave of his hand. Some people scattered and fled from his attacks. Some were tossed through the air like dolls. Some caught fire themselves and ran away in chaotic convulsions. El's eyes began to fill up with tears as she imagined, though she tried not to, her tiny baby growing up to be possessed of this kind of power.
Something caught her attention, and she zoomed in for a closer look.
Where El's heart beat had been accelerating before, it suddenly stopped. Impossibly, she recognized Hopper's face in the crowd of people. She couldn't imagine what he was doing there, but her eyes told her it was true. On the edge of the war zone on the bridge, Hopper kept low as he tried to get away. She watched for another few seconds, frozen with tension and desperately wishing she could do something from so far away.
Another blast of flame impacted against a police car too close to Hopper. The flaming metal was thrown into the air, along with a pile of cement and steel rebar from the ground. El watched in horror as several thousand pounds of rubble crashed back to earth. She screamed for Hopper to hear her, to look out, to move, but her voice only echoed in the empty void. She couldn't see Hopper anymore under the pile of rubble. She cried out again, dropping to her knees in the shallow water of the void, reaching out helplessly with her hands, as if she could do something.
She cried out again and found her connection broken.
She was back in the van, her jacket draped over her face, her head in Mike's lap.
El sat up, clawing at the jacket and throwing it off of her.
"Lucas, turn around!" She yelled. "We need to go back!"