Author's Note: Here we are. The culmination of a story outline that I wrote more than a year go (before Season 2 was even out). This is the second to last entry in the story. There will be an epilogue posted in a few days. I'll also leave a longer author's note there with my final thoughts. This story has been incredibly fulfilling to finish, and I really want to thank everybody who has stuck with it to the end.
Chapter 17
Dustin was already out of his seat as the van skidded to a stop, his hand already on the door latch. He threw it open and leaped out with an exhilarating sense of energy and purpose. He felt so alive! Through all the close calls and death-defying risks that the party had taken since fleeing Hawkins and coming to Chicago, Dustin had had his doubts that they would make it out alive. But here they were! Against all odds the party was whole and intact. If they could just get Hopper and then get out, he felt that everything would be alright.
He was in motion before his feet even hit the pavement. Hopper and some other guy had thrown themselves face first onto the pavement when Will had brought the van, still speeding at 60 miles an hour, out of the Upside Down. Dustin ran to them, fully intending to pick up hopper with one hand and drag him back into the van. Adrenaline was a beautiful thing, he reflected.
Hopper sprang back to his feet before Dustin reached him. "Look out!" he shouted, pointing wildly. Dustin slid to a stop and whirled around to look in the direction Hopper was pointing.
His stomach lurched.
A single figure stood at the far end of the street. For a few heartbeats, all the action went out of Dustin.
Lucas and Sam saw it, too. They jumped out of the van, Lucas with his rifle, and Sam with his pistol. Dustin didn't stand around to watched them. He turned back to Hopper and waved a hand toward the van. "Come on! Let's get out of here." Dustin winced at the crack of gunfire behind him. He hoped the monster was getting all it could handle.
"Come on," he yelled at Hopper again.
Something made Dustin stagger, as if a hurricane force wind had suddenly hit in the back. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see both Lucas and Sam go flying over his head.
With wide eyed horror Dustin's eyes followed them as they sailed through the air like rag dolls and plummeted back down to the street.
"Lucas!" Dustin yelled, racing after them. The adrenaline was back, and his heart was pounding harder than ever.
Hopper watched Sam and Lucas hit the pavement with bone breaking force. He started to run to them, but then a hand clamped around his ankle and tripped him up.
He spun around to see it had been Franc. The man was on his knees, jerking his head around violently. Hopper scrambled back up and grabbed Franc by the collar so he could look him in the face.
Franc's eyes bulged wide open and darted around in every direction. His teeth gritted together in an expression of pain. The man pressed his hands against his own temples.
"He's in my head!" Franc cried.
"You have to fight it!" Hopper shouted back, yanking hard on the collar to keep the other man's face close to his own. "You hear me?" He noticed blood starting to seep from Franc's nose and ears. "Look at me!" He insisted. Hopper couldn't tell if Frank's wild eyes saw anything, or if he was trapped inside his own head. He kept a strong grip on his collar anyway, forcing Franc to look at him. "Stay with me. You've got to fight it! We need you here!"
"I can't!" Franc yelled. Tiny drops of blood appeared at the corners of his eyes now, too.
Joyce's head swung around frantically as she looked from Hopper to Dustin, who was running toward where Lucas lay unmoving on the ground, to Will who jumped out of the van and ran after Dustin, to Mike in the back seat, who cradled El's head in his lap as she lay unconscious from overexertion, to the monster standing at the end of the street with a single arm raised menacingly. That horrible thing was tearing apart her friends and family one person at a time. She started moving even before her brain had decided what to do.
Joyce jumped over her seat and slid in behind the steering wheel. She yelled over her shoulder for Mike to hold on to El and the baby, then she threw the van into gear and slammed on the gas.
The engine roared, and they went barreling down the street toward the monster. Joyce's hands gripped the wheel until her knuckles turned white. She glared through knitted eyebrows at the monster. She pictured him crushed under the van's tires, or slammed into a bloody pulp against its front bumper.
Suddenly the van lurched, and Joyce's head was thrown back against the seat. Her stomach flipped as the van was lifted off the ground and went sailing through the air. She saw the blue sky and the gray pavement trade places through her windshield as the van rolled over and over in the air. She heard both Mike and the baby cry out in panic from the back seat.
El's eyes snapped wide open. It felt like she was pulling herself out of a deep, black hole, but something told her she had to come back.
For a few heartbeats, she had no idea where she was. The first things she felt were Mike and baby.
Mike and the baby.
Relief washed over her like a flood. She hadn't lost them.
But they weren't Ok. As two heartbeats dragged on to three, then four, then five, El became inescapably aware that things were very much wrong. She could sense Mike and Allie's fear in her mind. She could also feel all kinds of other things. Joyce. Hopper.
The monster.
She'd never forget that feeling as long as she lived. In her mind's eye, the monster felt like a whirlpool made out of her worst nightmares, swirling and sucking in everything around it.
El's stomach flipped. What was that feeling?
She sat up, lifting her head from Mike's lap.
Outside the van's windows, the world was spinning around her. She was falling.
The van was falling.
El suddenly realized where she was and what was happening. The van was falling. They were all about to die.
Hopper tore his eyes away from Frank, who was still struggling against his grip, blood now pouring from his eyes and ears.
The sound of the van's engine revving pulled Hopper's attention away. Not loosening his grip on Franc's collar, he craned his neck to watch the van tearing off down the road toward the monster. For a fleeting second, he had a hopeful vision of the monster plastered all over the pavement. Then, to his horror, Hopper watched as, with a small flick of his head, the monster sent the van flying end over end into the sky. Hopper's mouth dropped open as he watched most of the people he loved about to crash to their deaths.
Then, just as suddenly as it had been thrown into the air, the van stopped falling, as if it had reached the end of its leash.
"No!" El screamed out loud as the pavement raced up toward the falling van. She closed her eyes and threw everything she had at the approaching ground.
The van lurched to a stop. It hadn't been gentle. There hadn't been time for El to be gentle. She and Joyce and Mike were thrown out of their seats. But they were alive.
El panted for breath. The van was heavy.
She let it drop the last few feet. It hit the pavement with a jarring thud. Fresh blood began to pour from her nose.
She grabbed Mike's shoulder and checked to make sure he and Allie hadn't been hurt.
A new feeling burst its way into her mind.
Her trick with the van must have alerted the monster to her presence. She could feel his black claws scrambling at the edges of her consciousness, trying to find a way in. She slapped him away, but that only let him know exactly where to pry. With renewed effort, she felt the monster trying to force his way in. Pressure started to build up inside her skull. Hundreds of pounds of weight seemed to have dropped onto her shoulders.
El shook her head, which didn't help, and focused her eyes on Mike and the baby again.
"What is it?!" Mike asked her, clearly able to see that she wasn't alright.
She shook her head again, fighting the black presence that was descending over her like a blanket. Her eyes filled with tears as she took one last look at the two most important people in her world.
"I love you," El said. She glanced at the van's door, and it swung open for her. She lowered one foot to the pavement.
"Wait!" Mike shouted. The blood from El's nose was running over her lip. The pressuring in her head was almost unbearable. Each step she took was as hard as running a mile.
She looked back at them as her other foot touched the pavement.
"Don't go!" Mike yelled. Allie cried. El could barely see them through the tears streaming from her eyes.
"I love you," she said one last time, before she slid the door shut between them.
She turned to look at the monster. His face was inhuman and unreadable, but his aura was unmistakable. His presence felt like it was filling up more and more of her mind with each second, leaving less and less of her. She pushed back against it, but he was so strong.
"No more," El whispered to herself.
She reached out a hand toward the monster. He froze in place, pinned by her invisible grip. She felt his cry of anger inside her mind. It hurt her as much as it hurt him. She didn't release her grip.
He fought back. She felt like her head was going to explode. She felt like her body was made of stone and couldn't move.
She didn't let him go. Instead, she envisioned pulling him apart, one molecule at a time. The pain in her head increased. Her vision shrank to a tiny tunnel of visible light inside a world of black. She screamed and held the pressure against him, trying to dissolve the monster into a million pieces.
Hopper noticed the change in an instant. Franc stopped struggling. Hopper released his grip on the other man.
"Are you still with me, buddy? I need you right now," he said desperately. Franc's eyes had stopped darting wildly around. They seemed to be trying to focus on Hopper, or on anything at all.
Hopper turned to look toward the van again. While he'd been struggling with Franc, El must have gotten out. He saw her now, standing across from the monster. The two of them seemed chained to where they stood, each one reaching a single hand toward the other.
As he watched, a light breeze kicked up around them, swirling and stirring up dirt and old newspapers and discarded food wrappers from the city streets.
He looked back to Franc. The man's eyes seemed to have returned to normal. He was breathing heavily, like he'd just emerged from a fight.
"Talk to me," Hopper asked.
"I'm here," Franc reassured him.
"How's your head?"
"He's gone," Franc said shakily. "I don't know what happened."
"I think he's busy with someone else," Hopper said, nodding toward El.
Franc slowly and unsteadily got to his feet. Hopper continued to stare at the storm that was building around those two. That light breeze had, in the last few seconds, blown itself into a small tornado. Dirt and trash and bits of pavement and rubble were being torn from the ground and sent spiraling around El and the monster. Though it was hard to see through the storm, it looked to Hoppers eyes like... the monster was falling apart. Hopper couldn't think of other words to describe it. The monster's outline was becoming hazy. Little black fibers seemed to be breaking off of his body and swirling away into the wind.
A flash of light pulled Hoppers attention away.
Franc had taken a step away from him. Little candles of fire appeared at his finger tips.
"There's not much time," Franc said.
Hopper looked at the storm again. He had to squint against the whipping winds. The monster looked hazier than ever. But, now that he really looked, so did El. Even as the surprise registered in his mind, he saw her drop to her knees.
"You should get everyone out of here," Franc said. There was a new tone of resolve in his voice that almost scared Hopper. His hands were completely engulfed in flames. He locked eyes with Hopper one last time.
"Can you distract him long enough for me?" Hopper asked.
"I'm not going to distract him," Franc said flatly. Fire erupted from his back and shoulders, climbing high over his head. He nodded a goodbye, and turned to stalk toward the swirling tornado.
Will crouched next to Dustin over Lucas' unmoving form. Dustin was holding Lucas' head in his hands, trying to get some kind of response. A fresh feeling of dread swept over Will. He didn't want to think-
A strong wind pulled at his hair and clothes. Will glanced over his shoulder in mild surprise.
He stood up straight when he saw the scene laid out on a Chicago street before him. El and the monster were caught up in the center of a black, swirling cloud, with their van parked only a few feet away. Hopper was running toward the van. A slow-moving inferno was marching toward the storm. Will couldn't even make out the man at the center of the fire anymore as he bore down on El and the monster.
El.
She was already on her knees. Even as Will watched, his sense of dread building, she slumped over onto the ground. Her tornado of destruction gave no sign of slowing down, though. Something snapped in Will's mind. His feet were in motion before he was even aware of what he'd decided to do. He had to get to them. He ran for all he was worth toward the heart of the storm.
"Will!" Dustin yelled at his back. "Where are you going?!"
Mike strained to heave himself out of the van's seat again. But, again, it was no use. Even with her huge battle going on, she had enough left over to keep him pinned to his chair, inside the van where he would be safe.
He hated it. He strained with every muscle in his body to stand up and go to her, but he remained nailed in place.
Exhausted from the struggle, pausing to catch his breath, Mike stared out the van's window at the horrible scene outside. He had already watched El fall weakly to her knees. Now she dropped limply to the ground, as if her body had nothing left in it. If her body was gone, her mind certainly wasn't. The force pinning him to his chair didn't let up, and the swirling storm that seemed to be pulling the monster apart piece by piece didn't let up.
Tears soaking his face, Mike tore his eyes away from El and looked at Allie. She was balling at the top of her lungs. He had no doubt that she could feel, on some level, in some way, what was going on outside. He didn't understand the scope of her abilities, but he had no doubt about that. He hugged her tight against his shoulder.
He wished he had a way to help calm her, the way El always could. He lacked their special connection. But even if he had, Mike knew he wouldn't have been able to tell the baby that everything was going to be alright, because everything wasn't going to be alright. He squeezed Allie even tighter, distantly aware that if she blew up right now, he and Joyce and the van maybe El, too, would burn up in a few seconds. He looked out the window again at El's limp body, lying at the center of the storm. The whole scene was blurry through his tears.
With a jolt of surprise, he noticed something else through the swirling clouds around the van. A great raging inferno was stalking toward them, growing higher and brighter with each step.
Mike lifted Allie from his shoulder and held her in his lap, staring with wide, frightened eyes. He felt panic mixing with defeat and with resolve. His mind couldn't seem to settle on just one feeling. He stared into the baby's eyes.
She seemed to stare back.
A strange feeling washed over Mike. He suddenly felt... distant.
He was still aware that he had a body, but the details were very fuzzy. He was, however, aware of a whole collection of new things. He could feel a dark and terrible black hole not far away. That must have been how the monster felt, he thought distractedly. He was also aware of Allie. She glowed like a little warm sun in his hands. It wasn't so much the hands that were feeling her, though. It was his mind. He could feel that she was feeling things, too. She was aware of the black hole. She was aware of her mom, the center of her universe, fading from her consciousness. And fire.
There was fire.
Mike tried to tell her she would be alright. He felt like she heard him.
FIRE!
Will ran. Even though Hopper had a big head start on him, somehow his thin legs had gotten him there first. He jumped face first into the storm. Even as he did so, he felt the firestarter explode. Everything in his mind screamed at Will that he was too late. He reached out with his thoughts, grabbed the monster and the firestarter, and pulled.
The sky and pavement and buildings had only partially shifted into the dark shades of the Upside Down before Will had to throw and hand in front of his face against the flames.