Chapter 14

Jack Smith was slowly dragged awake by the splitting pain in his head, and also his left shoulder, and also one of his ribs, and also his left knee. He opened his eyes, but the bright light hit him with almost as much force as his headache, so he closed them again. Keeping his eyes squeezed against the painful light, he tried to move the injured parts of his body. They hurt.

Rather than continuing to agrivate his wounds, Smith put his one good hand over his eyes and slowly tried to open them again. As they adjusted to the light, he lifted his head, which only made him hurt worse, and slowly looked around the room.

He was in a hospital bed. His head sagged back onto the pillow with a resigned sigh as his brain processed what must have happened. So he hadn't died in that unnatural fire on the bridge. From what he remembered of that battle, though, it couldn't have gone well after he'd been taken out. He counted himself very lucky to be alive.

Feeling that he might have regained enough strength to try again, Smith lifted his head from the pillow and tried to get a look out the door. He couldn't see much. There were nurses moving around in the hallway. He tried to call "nurse!" but his dry throat only made a rough approximation of the word. It turned out to be good enough to attract attention, though, because one of them came rushing in to check on him.

"Phone," he tried to say, ignoring her questions about how he was feeling. She started to adjust his monitoring equipment, and he reached up with his good hand to catch her sleeve.

"I need a phone, right now," he managed to squeeze out. She must have either realized the urgency in his voice, or just thought he was crazy and didn't want to upset him further, so she brought him a phone. Smith dialed a special 20 digit number with shaking fingers. He had no idea what had been going on out there while he'd been unconscious.

The phone rang twice before he heard the voice of Director Carver answer.

"What's happening out there?" Smith asked, trying to get his voice working like normal.

"Smith, you're awake," Carver remarked. "Tough kid. You were pretty banged up when we found you."

"How long have I been out?" Smith asked.

"Not long," Carver told him. "A few hours."

"The bridge?"

"A mess," Carver growled. "Complete disaster. I don't even know how many men we lost yet."

"The Russian?" Smith asked. "And the firestarter?"

"We've temporarily lost contact," Carver told him. "That won't last long. I'm about to surround and lock down the whole city. Every bridge, every street, we'll find them."

Smith started to speak, about to say that the two psychics were dangerous, but that seemed unnecessary.

"Don't worry about it, you just stay put and recover, kid," Carver continued. "I'll take it from here."

"But, sir!"

"You're on the bench, Smith. You've done your part, done it well. But I need you to sit out the rest of this one."

"What about the Wheeler family?" Smith asked.

"We'll get them, too," Carver said. "Don't worry. I've got a whole army moving in. Plans that Uncle Sam drew up in case the Russians ever invaded from the North. We'll have enough boots on the ground to take down an A-Rab dictator. We've got it covered. None of them are getting out of Chicago."

Lucas picked his way over the chunks of asphalt and concrete that littered Kinzie st as he made his way closer to the bridge. It looked like a war zone. Half of it had collapsed into the river. A whole fleet of fire trucks and ambulances were parked in and around the wreckage. The men and women were digging through the rubble, trying to find survivors.

His stomach knotted up as he thought about what must have happened. Maybe El had gotten in over her head. He stopped walking and surveyed the terrain. He took in the damage and tried to estimate which direction most of it had come from. There was a lot of damage. El could have been standing anywhere when the fighting had taken place, and in a battle between two giants, he couldn't be sure which of them had smashed which buildings.

One massive pile of rebar, marble, and concrete looked, more than the rest, like a bomb had been dropped there. He hurried over to it, ignoring any of the nearby search and rescue men, who were too busy to pay any attention to him anyway.

There might be nothing for him to find, Lucas hoped. El might have walked away from the fight, alive and well. Or...

The big pile of rubble looked even worse up close. Some great slabs of concrete had fallen on each other like a deck of jagged and misshapen cards, leaving holes and gaps easily big enough for a man to climb through.

"El," he called, still aware that she might not be anywhere in the area. He climbed over one of concrete slabs and peered into the darkness beneath it. "El!" He said, louder this time.

He heard something. Even over the chaotic sounds of the search and rescue, he heard a small voice.

Lucas scrambled forward on his hands and knees, poking his head and shoulders deeper into a hole in the rubble.

"El!" he called again. There was no answer this time, but he was sure of what he'd heard. Bracing his back against one slab of cement, he used both legs to push against another and make the hole wider. He scrambled down through the hole, cutting his hands on sharp bits of metal and rock and he climbed.

"El!" he called again. It was dark down inside. The pile of debris blocked out most of the noise and light from outside. He clicked on a flashlight and cast the beam around the little cave. It turned out not to be so little. It was almost like a perfectly round bubble inside the pile of wreckage.

His stomach jumped as the flashlight beam swept over a shape on the floor.

It was her! Lucas scrambled over the dark and jagged surface to get to El, who lay on her back, spread out like a rag doll. He dropped to his knees at her side, ready to check to a pulse.

But there was no need. She was breathing. He let out a tense breath.

She was bruised and cut, and her eyes were closed, but she was alive. Lucas glanced up at the ceiling of the little cave and smiled. So she'd been able to carve out a little shelter for herself even as a whole building had dropped on her head. Pretty cool.

He tried to slide a hand gently under her head, wondering if she might be too hurt for him to move her.

Her eyes fluttered.

"Hey, El, don't try to move," he said quietly. "How much does it hurt? Can you feel your legs?"

Her eyes snapped open wide and she sat straight up.

"Mike? Allie?!"

"They're ok," Lucas said, trying to keep her from moving too fast. "They're on their way out of the city. Let's focus on you. Is anything broken?"

She seemed to listen to him and moved more cautiously, lifting one arm, then the other, then one leg at a time. When she was done, she answered his question with a head shake, which made her wince in pain.

"Ok, take it slow," Lucas told her. "Do you remember what happened before you were knocked out?"

El pressed her hands over her eyes for a moment, maybe trying to remember, maybe trying to help the pain in her head.

"I fought him," El said. "Too strong."

"The firestarter?" Lucas asked, his voice tense.

"No. The Russian."

"Do you know where he went?" He asked.

"No..."

"Well we should get out of here, if you feel like you can move," Lucas said. "We can meet up with Mike and the others once we're outside the city. How do you feel?"

"I can move," she said.

"Ok, don't go too fast. You might be hurt and not know it. Hold on to me. I'll help you climb out."

The Monster gazed blankly into the river, watching bits of debris float with the current. He wasn't far downstream from the bridge. He hadn't expected that small woman to collapse half the bridge out from under his feet and send him tumbling into the cold water, but it had only been an inconvenience. He certainly wasn't hurt. He wondered if she was dead. He'd certainly hit her pretty hard with his last assault. He considered going back to see that she was dead. He also considered waiting. It might be easier to try to connect with her mind and destroy her from a distance, like he had with the man who called himself Walter. Yes, that might be simpler. She certainly couldn't collapse a bridge and plunge him into a river again if he chose to finish her that way. Still, she might be dead already.

He also considered going to look for his firestarter. The man must surely still be alive and under the Monster's thrall, but without a strong psychic hand to guide his mind, he might simply wander around the city starting fires at random. Those who were in his psychic thrall could be unpredictable when they weren't supervised, the monster had learned.

But something else nagged at the back of his mind. Instead of going to look for either of the other two psychics, the Monster continued to gaze at the slowly running water. It was almost mesmerizing in its endless cycle. He remembered a river near the secret lab where he'd been transformed into the thing he was now. That one had flowed a little faster than this one.

Suddenly he could put his finger on it. He got that nagging feeling sometimes. It was one of his waking dreams trying to drift up into his conscious mind. He had no control over what he would see. The dreams showed him what they wanted, and were sometimes infuriating in their vagueness, or unnecessarily specific. He continued to gaze into the water, letting the dream come. The light in his one eye dimmed.

Suddenly he was somewhere else. He knew that his body was right back where he'd left it at the side of the river, but all of his senses were somewhere else.

He was staring at the baby. It was so close he wanted to reach out a psychic hand and pluck it from out of the arms that held it. The baby was upset. He could hear it crying. Clearly the Monster knew this was a vision from some time in the future. But how long? A few hours? A few days? And where was he?

As he looked around, trying to get a better view of his surroundings, everything changed. He felt a swirl of wind and a quick flop of his stomach, as if he'd flipped head over heals, and then he was somewhere else again. It was dark, wherever he was now. The buildings around him looked old and decayed, and tiny particles floated through the air. Then, just as suddenly, he was on fire.

Heat and pain like he'd never felt before washed over him in great waves. He could feel the flesh and scales melting right off his bones. For the first instant, he could see nothing but the blinding orange storm of light, but then the fire melted his eyes, and he was plunged into darkness. Each nerve in his body sent shockwaves of pain shooting through him as they were seared away. He opened his mouth to roar, to scream, but the sound was lost in the midst of the raging flames.

The monster physically staggered back a few steps as the dream ended. We was back by the river, and there was no fire.

Cold fear washed over him for the first time in as long as he could remember. He had never known pain like that, not even in his transformations years ago. Even though the flames were gone, the memory of that excruciating pain was fresh in his mind, as was the certainty that he would not survive that burning.

He was going to die.

Even though the flames had been only a dream, he had come to understand very well that his dreams could show him possible futures. He was afraid.

He couldn't remember being afraid before. He'd never encountered another being with the power to destroy him. It was all so new.

His fee started moving before he'd even made up his mind. His first instinct was to go find the baby and destroy it before this possible future could ever come true. But he was too afraid.

If he ever got close to the little girl, that might be the very moment that he'd just witnessed. He had no idea when or where the terrible burning was going to happen. No. He would have to send others. Others who didn't matter to him.

That would be easy. There were thousands of men with guns moving through the city. Men with weak minds that he could easily dominate. He would take some of them as his own, and send them to destroy this terrifying little girl. It would be easy.

"So Mike and El's baby can control fire, too?" Hopper remarked to the quiet van as it cruised through the Upside Down.

"Yeah, I guess so," Joyce told him. "It seems pretty serious, too. Like she might go off at any second."

"What are the odds," Hopper asked in Sam's general direction. "We've been chasing a firestarter all around town for days, and now this."

"I don't think it's a coincidence," Will told him. "Dustin thinks they're connected, because of their powers."

"And then there's another guy, you're telling me?" Hopper asked Will. "Another one with ability's like El?"

"Maybe like El," Will said. "He's from a Russian lab. We don't really know what he can do, but he's bad."

Hopper sat in thoughtful silence for a minute. "Can El... have you ever seen her... mind control or something? Can she make people do things?"

"I don't think so," Will said, frowning.

"But you don't know about this Russian one, either?" Hopper thought out loud. Then he leaned toward Sam again. "I wonder if that's what happened to our Franc. I wonder if he's being controlled."

"Doubt it," Sam grunted. "Guy's a criminal, Hop."

"I don't think so," Hopper replied. "I talked to him. I looked him in the eyes. He was at the end of his road. He was done. And besides, why here? Why Chicago?"

"They told us the Russian might be able to track baby Allie from a distance," Will offered helpfully. "That could be why they came here, cause she was here."

"See, it's that Russian," Hopper said to Sam.

"If you say so," Sam told Hopper.

"I have to get back there," Hopper said, to no one in particular. "I have to talk to him again."

"You can't!" Joyce said.

"Why?" Will asked at the same time.

"I don't think our Franc is really doing this, at least not for himself," Hopper said. "I talked him down once. I think I can do it again."

"We got away safe once," Joyce protested. "I don't want you to go back there."

"But I might be able to keep this from blowing up even more," Hopper told her. "They told you this is all because of Mike and El's baby? You want them to have to keep running? I might be able to stop all of this." He turned back to Sam again.

"Sam, stop the van."

Without much hesitation at all, the other man took his foot off the gas pedal. The van began to coast to a stop amid the tentacles and spores of the Upside Down.

"I need you to promise you'll get them out of the city safe."

"You got it, Hop," Sam said solemnly.

"Hopper!" Joyce argued.

He turned to look at Will next. The younger man's eyes were wide with concern. "Will, I have to go try and change his mind. I need you to take me back to the real world now. For Mike and El, I have to go try." Will nodded.

Joyce protested again and Hopper turned back to face her. "I need you to trust me, Joyce. I promise, I'll come back. I just need you to trust me. I have to do this."

Mike drummed his fingers nervously on dashboard and shifted Allie in his other arm. He looked over at Dustin for the millionth time. The traffic was creeping along because everyone was trying to get out of Chicago at once. The four lane highway was packed with cars five wide. They would sit at an infuriating stand still for a few seconds. Then the cars up ahead would clear just enough, and the row of cars behind them would slam on the gas like races horses let out of their pens, only to have to slam on the brakes a few feet later. After several more seconds of stand still, they would do it all over again. Mike's nerves were stretched to the maximum, as were probably all the other drivers on the road.

His eyes drifted across to the other side of the highway, separated from them by a four foot cement barrier. It was completely deserted. Everyone was trying to get out of Chicago, and no one was trying to get back in. That wasn't entirely true. About half an hour ago, Mike had seen a convoy of Army jeeps come racing up the otherwise deserted highway into the city. That only made him want to get out of the city even sooner. His eyes lingered longingly on that open stretch of road that was so close by. He imagined Dustin driving through a gap in the cement barrier and cruising back to Hawkins at 90 miles an hour. It only seemed fair, since he and Allie had more reasons to escape the city than all those other cars. It would never work, though. His eyes drifted to the rear view mirror, back to the pair of police cars who were stuck in the same traffic as Mike and Dustin, just a few rows further back. He didn't want to attract any attention to them and their stolen van, so they'd continue to flow, or rather creep, along with the bumper to bumper traffic. Mike continued to drum his fingers on the dashboard.

"I'm sure they're fine," Dustin said into the silence.

"I know," Mike said quickly, as if he hadn't been worrying about the others who were still inside the city.

They were silent again for a long time.

"Wish we had El to just... push all these cars off to one side," Dustin said, maybe trying to lighten the mood.

Mike glanced in the mirror at the police cars again. They were as inactive as ever, crawling along with the rest of the traffic.

Allie burbled and squirmed in his arms.

"What was Hopper doing here, anyway?" Dustin asked, not for the first time in the near silent van ride.

"He must have been looking for us," Mike said sadly. "I can't think of any other reason. Joyce didn't even know he was here."

"Maybe the agents got him already," Dustin suggested. "Maybe after we all left Hawkins, the agents rounded up people for questioning, people who might know where we'd gone."

Mike shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably and stared down at his shoes. He really hoped he hadn't dragged more people into trouble along with his family.

"Uh... Mike, we've got trouble," Dustin said. The tone in his voice shook Mike out of his fog. His eyes flicked back to the mirror.

Those two police cars had started to move, trying to thread their way slowly out of the traffic, heading in their direction.

"They can't have spotted us," Dustin said. "We didn't do anything to give ourselves away."

"I don't know how they found us," Mike said, his heartbeat racing. "We're trapped."

Behind them, the police turned on their lights, and the traffic began to slowly, slowly, clear a path, letting the two cars through.

"What do we do?!" Dustin asked, starting to bounce up and down in his seat with pent up energy.

Mike's eyes flew back and forth between the cops and Dustin. Fear and indecision ran around and around in his mind. He squeezed Allie to his chest.

Suddenly his eyes stopped on Dustin. He thought about everything that they'd been through since fleeing from Hawkins. He thought about all the close calls with the agents and the cops. For the first time, when he looked back on those things, he wasn't afraid. He and his friends had made it this far. Something told him they would make it the rest of the way, somehow.

"We can't let them catch us," Mike said, staring hard at Dustin, all of the indecision gone now. Dustin looked back at him, verging on panicked and afraid. Mike didn't blink. "I know I can count on you. Get us out of here."

A lightswitch flipped in Dustin's eyes. Mike saw the panic dissapear to be replaced by resolve. Dustin turned to look straight ahead at the sea of cars in front of them.

His hands squeezed the steering wheel.

"Hold on to something," Dustin said.

He bumped the car right in front of them, then slammed on the gas. Their van's tires squealed as they bulldozed the little Toyota out of their way. Dustin spun the wheel wildly to the left and shot through a gap in the cement barrier. He jumped into the empty oncoming lanes and tore off, picking up speed as he went. The two police cars gave chase.

The van's engine whined. Mike gripped the dash board with white knuckles and craned his neck to get a better look at the cops behind them. Allie squirmed in his arms.

It had taken the cops a few seconds longer to get out of the tangle of traffic than Dustin had, but once they did, the two squad cars made up for lost time, their lights flashing menacingly as they caught up. Dustin never let off the gas pedal, topping the van off at somewhere over 110 miles an hour. They raced past an exit ramp, and another pair of police cars came flying down the ramp to join in the chase.

"Are these regular cops, or do they work for the agents?" Dustin asked.

"Doesn't matter," Mike said.

"We'll never outrun them on the open road. Not in a van," Dustin announced. "We need to find a way to lose them. Hang on."

At the next exit ramp, which was facing the wrong way for them, Dustin jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes. Mike braced himself against the dashboard so he wouldn't crush Allie as he was thrown to one side of the van, then the other. Somehow, Dustin came out of their tail spin facing the right way, and sent the van climbing the ramp to escape the highway even as the faster police cars shot right past them, doing their best to stop and turn around.

"Faster! Go! Go!" Mike yelled.

"That's the Mike Wheeler I know and love!" Dustin said, beaming.