Chapter 12
Lucas swung the minivan around and jumped over the little cement median into the oncoming lane. Ignoring the horns from the traffic, he did a quick U-turn and headed back toward the heart of Chicago.
"What did you see?" Dustin demanded, almost climbing out of his seat to get a better look at El.
"Hopper," El said quickly. She flicked her head toward the radio again, cutting off the static.
"Where?" Joyce asked, almost as ready to jump out of her seat as Dustin. "What's happened?"
Mike shifted the baby into one arm so that he could take El's hand. Fresh out of her vision, she was breathing fast. Her face was sweaty. Her eyes darted around the interior of the van like it was filled with enemies. A single drop of blood ran from her nose.
He could tell she was searching for a way to quickly summarize all that she'd seen.
"Hopper's in trouble?" He asked her. She nodded. Her hair had fallen into her eyes when she'd thrown the jacket off her face, making her look even more distressed. He brushed the hair back and tried to read her face.
"Where is he?" Mike asked, trying to calmly get the important details.
"There," El said, nodding toward the radio. "At the bridge."
"The DuSable Bridge," Lucas picked up. "Where the fire is?"
El nodded, swallowing hard and trying to slow her breathing.
"So Smith was right about another firestarter," Lucas said as he swerved around a car that wasn't going fast enough. "The agents tried to engage with him, and he's lighting downtown Chicago on fire."
"This is bad," Dustin said.
"But what's Hopper doing there?" Lucas continued?
Mike looked to El. She shook her head.
"No idea," Mike translated for Lucas. "But it doesn't matter. We have to go get him."
"Wait," El said, grabbing Mike's wrist hard. Her eyes went even wider as she stared into Mike's. "What about Allie? We can't bring her there."
"I'll go," Joyce said. "The rest of you can keep the baby safe. I'll bring Hopper back."
"No way we're letting you go alone," Lucas said, jumping onto the curb to get around another slow car.
"Yeah, it could be Armageddon down there," Dustin agreed. "You'll need backup."
"I'll come," El told Joyce in a quiet voice.
Mike squeezed her hand a little harder. "Are you sure?"
She nodded. "Hopper needs me. He could be hurt. I'll go. You keep Allie safe."
"How are we going to do this?" Lucas called to the back of the van over Mike and El's quiet exchange.
"Let Joyce take the minivan," Dustin offered. "I can get us another one."
"I'll go, too, mom," Will spoke up. "I know a way to get you there faster."
Mike remained silent. He wasn't sure if he was squeezing El or the baby harder, but he didn't want to let either of them go.
"Are you sure about this?" He asked her one last time.
She nodded, wiping away the blood from her nose.
Will gazed out the minivan's window as the rest of his friends hurried down the Chicago sidewalk in search of another car to steal. Lucas and Dustin almost seemed to take up flanking positions on either side of Mike and the baby, as if danger might swoop down on them at any second. Will felt so bad for Mike, and wished he could do more to help his friend, but Hopper was in even more immediate danger, and Will couldn't leave him to fend for himself. Sure, Hopper was the most capable guy he'd ever known, but Will knew better than most people that there were some forces no human could go up against alone.
Joyce threw the minivan into gear and started pulling away. Will watched his friends disappear into the distance for a few more heartbeats. At the very least, he knew Lucas and Dustin would give everything they had for Mike and the baby. That made Will feel a little better about leaving them on their own, but only a little. He may not have been any kind of great warrior, but if anything bad happened to his friends while he was gone, he'd have a hard time living with himself. Still, he felt the same about Hopper.
Pulling himself back to the task at hand, Will reached from the minivan's middle row to tap his mom on the shoulder.
"Mom, can you pull over? I don't know if I can do this while the van's moving," he told her. From her new place in the seat next to Joyce, El turned all the way around to look at Will. Everything on her face told him how she felt about what they were doing. Will understood how much worse it was for her to leave Mike and the baby behind.
"Are you sure you can do this?" El asked him. Will felt a half smile come to his face. He shouldn't have been surprised that she already knew what he had in mind.
"You want me to pull over?" Joyce asked, glancing in the rear view mirror at Will.
"It'll take us forever to get across town like this," Will told her, waving his hand at the slow cars all around them. "I can get us there faster."
Joyce didn't pull over, but stopped right in the middle of the street. She put the van in park and stared into the mirror, waiting for Will. He suddenly felt nervous. He'd never told his mom about his the episode he'd had as a kid, that he still had every once in a while. He took a deep breath, searching for the words he needed to spill a decade old secret to the very person he should have told before anyone else. He glanced over at El for support, and she put a comforting hand on his and nodded for him to go ahead.
"Mom, I have to tell you..." he began.
Joyce abandoned the rear view mirror and turned around to look at him.
"Are you taking us to... that place?"
Will couldn't stop himself from jerking back in his seat. He stared at his mom with wide eyes.
"You KNOW?" He said incredulously.
She nodded.
El smiled gently at Will. "She always knows when you aren't telling the truth," El told him. Will glanced down at the floor, feeling a little guilty.
"How long have you known?" He asked.
"I think we should hurry," El interrupted him, still gently, but firmly. Will watched as her eyes flicked upward. She looked as if she were listening to something only she could hear. Then she looked back at Will and nodded. "We should hurry," She repeated.
"Okay," Will said, trying to psych himself up for the task. He'd never moved anything as big as a van before. While he prepared himself, Joyce glanced over nervously at El.
"Is it safe?" She asked.
El noded in answer to her, but without much conviction.
Will closed his eyes, held his breath, tried to focus, and squeezed with his mind. A second later, he felt the familiar cold and damp of the Upside Down penetrate the air around him.
He opened his eyes and looked out the van's window. The sun was gone. So were all the cars that had been crowding the road. He was still on the same road, but it was nearly empty now. The pavement was cracked, as if it hadn't been repaired in decades. Grey mold grew over much of the surface, and slimy vines were draped lazily across it. There were a few cars, which looked old and abandoned, some of them also overgrown with vines, but otherwise the road was empty.
"No one to slow us down," Will told his mom.
Joyce put the van back into drive, scowling around at the sinister vines and the floating particles in the air. She'd been to the Upside Down once in her life, and it hadn't left her with any happy memories. She stomped on the gas, and will felt himself thrown back in his seat at she tore off down the empty Chicago road, the van bouncing and jostling each time she ran over a vine.
Sam was awakened by a searing pain in his leg. He cried out and tried to jerk away from the source of the pain before he brain caught up to where he was and what was happening around him. All at once, the smell of smoke and the roar of flames, punctuated by gunfire, reminded Sam that he was still in the war zone. Somewhere not far away, their Arsonist from Sacramento was blowing up the DuSable bridge and everything around it, piece by piece.
Sam tried to jerk his leg away from the pain again, and realized it was trapped under pieces of metal debris that might have once been a car. The metal was almost red hot as well as sharp, and must have knocked him flat against the pavement, though he didn't remember the actual moment of being knocked out.
He tried to grab and lift the pile of burning scrap metal, but recoiled instantly. It was too hot to touch. Instead, he kicked it hard with his left boot, again and again until he was able to jerk his right foot free. He scrambled up off the ground and tested his full weight on the injured leg. It could have been worse, he decided.
With a sudden, unhappy, jolt, he realized that Hopper must have been even more badly hurt, otherwise he would have pulled Sam from the burning scrap metal himself. His eyes began to dart frantically around the immediate area, searching for any sign of his friend. There were a dozen nearby piles of burning scrap metal that had once been cars. Hopper could have been anywhere. Sam took a step in one direct, then another, unsure of where to start. He called Hopper's name, but didn't know if he could be heard over the chaos. Even as he searched, Sam flinched and ducked instinctively when another car was blown sky high by the Arsonist, who was stalking his way down the bridge some distance away, casually throwing jets of fire here and there.
Through the spattering of gravel and metal that rained back down from the incinerated car, Sam heard a ragged voice calling his name.
He whirled around, searching for the voice. His heart leaped as he saw a familiar blue flannel sleeve sticking out from under a pile of twisted metal. Hopper's arm waved as he called Sam's name again, louder this time. Same dashed toward him, bits of scrap metal shifting and slipping under his feet as he went.
"Hold on Hop, I'll get you out," Sam said as he approached. Hop grunted a response and tried to push from his prone position. The metal shifted, but not enough. Sam grabbed what might have once been a rear bumper with both hands and tried to lift. The metal was hot, but it didn't burn him. He gritted his teeth and strained, but it wasn't enough to lift most of a car.
"Push! Help me out here," he yelled over the background noise.
"I'm pushing!" Hopper yelled back. Sam relaxed his grip on the metal, breathing hard. He looked around wildly for something he could use as a pry bar, but nothing jumped out at him. The sound of another explosion nearby urged him to hurry. He shifted his grip on the metal again, bent his knees, and tried to lift.
"Push!" He growled at Hopper again. Sam strained until it felt like his back muscles were going to pop, but he wasn't strong enough to lift the wreck. A second later, his muscles gave out and he sagged back down to lean on the metal he'd been trying to lift.
"Hurry Sam," Hopper called from under the pile.
"Hang on!" Sam yelled back, his shoulders heaving as he breathed. He realized that the fire was probably beginning to eat up some of the oxygen in the air. He braced himself for another try, taking several huge, hurried breaths.
"Find something to-" Hopper begain.
The sound of screeching tires almost right on top of him made Sam jump. He threw himself out of the way before a minivan, which could NOT have been there a second ago, almost ran him over. He jumped back to his feet as the van skidded to a stop only a few feet from where he'd been standing. The doors flew open and three people piled out. Sam opened his mouth to speak, but his breath caught in his chest.
His adrenaline-filled brain was slow to process what he was seeing.
Even before her shoes hit rubble-strewn pavement, the young woman from the van was reaching a hand out toward Hopper. Acting all on its own, the pile of metal lifted off him and hung suspended in the air.
Clearly not as surprised as Sam was, Hopper scrambled out from under the scrap metal and ran toward the newcomers. The three of them threw themselves on him in a hurried hug and then dragged him toward the van. Sam continued to stare until his brain finally caught up, and he realized that this wasn't any harder to believe than a man who could create fire in his empty hands.
Sam jumped as the young woman released her invisible grip and the pile of scrap metal came crashing back to the ground. Hopper turned and urgently waved him over. Feeling an unexpected smile forming on his face, Sam walked over to join his new rescuers.
Mike watched Lucas glance in the rear view mirror again. He'd been doing that ever since Dustin had stolen them another car and they'd gotten back on the road heading South. Logically, Mike knew it was unlikely that any cops, or even agents in their black sedans, were likely to be following them, but he couldn't help himself from checking the mirrors every few seconds, either. He also couldn't help himself from nervously fiddling with the radio. He shifted Allie in his hands again so he could reach over and adjust the volume again. Whatever was going on down town, it sounded like complete chaos. The frantic newsmen on the radio had no clue what was going on, but Mike could tell it wasn't good.
Lucas looked away from the mirrors again and glanced at Mike's hand on the radio knob.
"It sounds pretty bad..." Lucas said.
Mike nodded. "Lucas, can you... could you..."
"You want me to go back and check on them," Lucas offered, reading Mike's mind.
"Yes," Mike nodded emphatically, glad that his friend had offered the words instead of him. "They're running right into trouble."
"They need some backup," Lucas agreed.
"Dustin and I will be fine," Mike blurted out, trying to convince himself. He looked into the back seat at Dustin, who was nodding his head in agreement. "The farther we get from that mess, the safer we are," Mike added to Lucas. "They'll need all the help they can get."
"Got it," Lucas said. "Are you sure you two will be alright?"
"I'm sure," Mike said, checking with Dustin one more time. "We'll be fine. Just... just go and make sure they're okay back there."
"Okay," Lucas said as he pulled onto the side of the road. "You two stick to the plan. Don't do anything crazy and come back for me. Get Allie out of the city. We'll meet back up when this is over."
"I'll make sure he doesn't do anything stupid," Dustin said, replacing Lucas behind the steering wheel. "I'm in charge of the mission now."
"Do you want this?" Lucas asked, standing back from their stolen car as Dustin settled himself in.
Dustin turned away from adjusting the mirror to see Lucas offering him one of the pistols he'd stolen from the agents. Dustin hesitated then snatched it up.
"You sure you can use that?" Lucas asked him.
"No need," Dustin said, grinning. "With me driving, they'll never catch us."
"Right," Lucas said, smiling back. He looked past Dustin at Mike and reached for the other pistol. "You, too?" He asked.
"I'll have my hands full," Mike told him, bouncing Allie up and down just a little. "Besides, Dustin's right. They'll never catch us."
"Okay John McClane," Lucas said. "Be safe, you two. I'll check on the others."
"Be careful," Mike couldn't help saying.
"Don't worry about me," Lucas told him. "I wouldn't worry about the others, either. I'm sure they're alright."
"Yeah," Dustin added. "I almost feel bad for those other psychics, once they run into El for the first time."
"Get out of here," Lucas said, slapping a hand on the car door and stepping away. Dustin gave him a two fingered salute and pulled back into the flow of traffic heading South, away from downtown. Mike watched Lucas shrink in the rear view mirror, hoping he'd see his friend again soon.