"Steve said you need to hurry!" Erica ran into Eddie's room to yell at them.
"Does he think I'm taking my time?" Lyn screams while she flips through the cassette tape.
"We're trying but we can't find anything." Max defends them.
"Seriously, what is all this shit?" Robin held up a bunch of tapes while looking at Eddie.
"What are you even looking for?" He watched them tear his room apart.
"Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles? Music. We need music." She held up a tape.
"This is music." He grabs the Iron Maiden tape from her.
"I got it." Lyn ran out of the room with a cassette and Eddie's boom box. Everyone looked at each other before running after her. She put the tape in and put it on full blast.
'Should I Stay or Should I Go' by the Clash played. "This is Will's favorite song." Lucas recognized it.
"Wrong person, Lyn. You just gave Vecna his last kill." Dustin screams at the side of her face.
Lyn grabbed his face and squeezed his cheek. "It's Will's favorite because it's Jonathan's. The way that you thought of Will when you heard this, she will think of Jon." She threw his face back.
Dustin stumbled as he rubbed his cheeks. "Vecna's making you more violent."
"No, that's your obnoxiousness." She looks up to watch Nancy still form.
Nancy opens her eyes as she gasps for air. Her lung burned as if she had been underwater for too long. Her legs gave out but Steve was able to catch her before she hit the ground. "The song works." Dustin stared up in amazement.
"No, he let me go." She cried.
Dustin threw his sister a smug look. Eddie shoved him to the ground. "What is up with all the shoving?" He slammed his hands on the ground.
"Because you're being a dick and we're all going through enough right now." He glares down at him. Everyone nods in agreement.
After getting Steve and Nancy out of the Upside Down, they moved to Max's trailer to get away from the crime scene. Nancy told them how Henry showed her his life after his family's death. He ended up in the same lab as Eleven, where he was experimented on. He was patient zero. She was telling them about the vision he gave her. "He showed me things that haven't happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldier. And this giant creature with a gaping mouth and this creature wasn't alone. There were so many monsters. An army and they were coming into Hawkins, into our neighborhoods, our home. Then he showed me my mom, Holly Mike, and they were… they were all…" Nancy cried, not being able to go on. Lyn got up to sit on the arm of the recliner she was on to rub her back.
"Okay but, he's just trying to scare you, Nancy. I mean it's not real." Steve thought he was making her feel better.
"Not yet…. But there was something else. He showed me four gates spread across Hawkins. These gates looked like the ones in Eddie's trailer. And this wasn't the Upside Down Hawkins, it was our Hawkins. Our home." She tried to hold back the tears so she could get it out.
"Four chimes. Vecna's clock always chimes four times. Four exactly." Max was leaning against the wall.
"Shit, that's true." Lyn was impressed with Max for noticing that. In her dreams, she was too busy trying to run from the fear to notice the chimes.
"I heard them too." Nancy nods.
"He's been telling us his plan from the beginning." Max crossed her arms. Lyn cursed that cocky bastard. He was taunting them by laying out his plan, knowing that it was going to be almost impossible to beat him.
"Four kills, four gates." Lucas looks at the two possible kills in the room. "End of the world."
"If that's true. He's only one kill away." Dustin felt a crushing weight on his shoulder.
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ." Eddie rubs his face.
"Try them again. Try them again." Steve wouldn't feel safe unless they had Eleven.
Max grabs the phone off the wall to dial. She hung up the phone after it didn't go through. "Get anything?" Dustin asked.
"Obviously not, or she would have had a conversation with someone." Lyn didn't mean to lash out but she was stressed.
"Sorry…" Dustin put his hands up.
"It rang a few times then went to the busy signal," Max told them.
"Is Joyce working all day?" Lyn sighs.
"Maybe you punch it in wrong, try again." Steve points at the phone.
"I didn't punch it in wrong." She dials that number so much that she could use muscle memory to do it.
"Well, I don't know." He shrugged.
"Fine. I'll try again." Max dial the number.
"I think she knows how to dial a phone." Dustin agreed that it was probably Joyce working.
"I'm just saying she could have typed it wrong." Steve thought it could have been an honest mistake.
"Same shit." She hangs up the phone.
"How is that possible?" Lucas looks at Dustin.
"I told you Joyce has a telemarketer job, always on the phone. Mike doesn't stop whining about it." Dustin told them how the chances were slim.
"Yeah, but the phone has been busy for three days. It's not Joyce. No way. Something is wrong." Max shook her head.
"She's right. It can't be a coincidence. It can't be." Nancy nods.
"Do you think something is wrong with them or is he cutting us off from contacting her?" Lyn bounced her legs.
"I don't know but whatever is happening in Lenora is connected to all this. I'm sure of it. Vecna can't hurt them. Not if he's dead." Nancy got up to look out the window. "We have to get back to the Upside Down."
Eddie and Steve protested. "Can we think this through?" Steve stood up.
"What is there to think through?" Nancy didn't see another option.
"We barely made it out of there." He couldn't believe she was considering this.
"We weren't prepared." She argued. "But this time we will be. We'll get weapons and protection. We'll go through the gate, find his lair, and kill him."
"Or he'll kill us." Steve pointed out the other outcome of her plan. "The only reason you survived is that he wanted you too."
"What are our options? We can go in and fight him or wait here for him to get his last kill and try to survive the apocalypse. Either way the chances of us dying are high, so we might as well go out like heroes. Now let's think about Vecna… One… Henry." Lyn stopped when she realized that he made many names.
"One." Dustin and Lucas voted.
"Vecna." Erica thought they should keep their original name.
"Henry." Nancy likes to call him that to remember he was a human.
"Whatever we're calling him. The new thing we learned is he's a number like Eleven. Only a sick male child-murdering version of her with bad skin. But my point is, he's super powerful. He could turn us inside out with the snap of his fingers. This isn't going to be a fair fight." Robin stood up.
"Then we don't fight fair. You're right. He's like Eleven but that gives us the upper hand. We know El's strengths and weaknesses." Dustin peps up as he gets an idea.
"Weakness?" Erica never saw El weak.
"When El remotely travels, she goes into this trance-like state. I bet the same is true for Vecna." Dustin explains to everyone in the room that never seen her do it.
"His physical body would be vulnerable. It's like beating a sleeping person." Lyn nods.
"It would explain what he's doing in the attic." Lucas pointed up.
"Exactly." Dustin nods. "When he attacks his next victim I'll bet his body is up in the attic defenseless."
"Defenseless? What about his army of bats?" Steve pointed at his neck.
"True, we have to get past them. Distract them somehow." Dustin nods.
"And, how do we do that exactly?" Eddie went to stand up.
"For a distraction, we could bring the boombox and blast it loud with some bloody bandages on it." Lyn gave an idea. "I think I need a change anyways." She looks down at the bloody fabric.
"Yes!" Dustin jumped up and down. "Once they're gone he won't stand a chance. It'll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin."
"This is all great in theory but there is no pattern to Vecna's killings. Not one that I can decipher. We don't know when he's going to attack next. We don't know how he's going to attack next." Robin pointed out the biggest flaw in his plan. Dustin sighs in defeat knowing she was right.
"Yeah, we do. I can still feel him here." Lyn tapped her brain. "He showed me Patrick's broken body falling into the water."
"I can still feel him too," Max spoke up. "I'm still marked, cursed. I can ditch Kate and draw his focus back to me."
"Max, you can't. He'll kill you." Lucas had to hold back tears.
"Yeah, Max you don't have to. I'll do it." Lyn didn't want her to be at risk.
"You burned him. You figured him out. You have been without a cassette for how long and he hasn't come back for you. He's a predator. He's not going to go after a strong buck when there's a weak fawn to pick off." Max crossed her arms. "I survived and I can do it again. I'll just have to hold him off long enough so you can get into the attic. Then you can chop his head off. Stab him in the heart. Blow him up with some explosives Dustin cooks up. I honestly don't care how you put this asshole in his grave. Just whatever it is… whatever you do… try not to miss."
"We'll both do it and whoever he tries to take will do what we can to hold him off." Lyn was hoping it would be her.
"If we're going to do this then we are going to need weapons." Eddie got up to grab a phone book. He opened it to the yellow pages before dropping it on the table. "Check this out, The War Zone." He pointed at an ad. They gather around the table to look at a man dressed like Rambo. "I've been there once. It's huge. They got everything you need for, well, killing things."
"You think fake Rambo has enough guns there? Is that a grenade? How is any of this legal?" Robin was uncomfortable that anyone could go to a store and get a weapon made for war.
"Well, lucky for us it is, so…" He didn't see why she was choosing now to take a stance on gun control. "This place is just far enough from Hawkins that as long as we steer clear of the main roads we oughta be able to avoid cops and angry hicks."
"If we're trying to avoid angry hicks maybe we shouldn't go to a store called the War Zone." Erica scoffs.
"Normally, I'd agree but we need weapons. It's worth the risk." Nancy stood up straight.
"I think so too." Lucas agrees.
"I don't see how you can kill him without it." Lyn agreed that it was necessary.
"But, is it worth the time? It'll take all day to bike there and back." Dustin pointed out.
"Who said anything about biking?" Eddie smiled.
"You got some car we don't know about?" Steve asked.
"It's not exactly a car, Steve." He stood up to smile and tilt his head. He got in his personal space. Steve tried to back up discreetly. "It's not exactly mine, but it will do…Hey red, you got a ski mask or a bandanna or something." He turned to the girl who lived there.
She thought for a second before perking up to go into her room. She came back with a Michael Myers mask and a change of clothes. "Will this work?"
"It will have to." Eddie grabbed it.
"This is for you. It's my mother's." She hands it to Lee.
Lee grabs the jeans and black t-shirt to go change in Max's room. Steve went with her. He had a first aid kit to change the bandage. "The clothes are snug." Steve wondered if they were digging into the bandage he just redid.
"It's fine." She grabs the roll to change his bandage. The clothes were a bit uncomfortable but not impossible to move in so she couldn't complain. Especially since she would hopefully just be fighting in her mind.
"It's gross that we're keeping these." He carried the bloody bandage out when they were done.
Eddie wearing the Myers mask was leading the group across the trailer park. They hide behind a trailer before moving to hide behind another. Lyn felt like she was in an episode of Scooby-Doo. She knew they were at their final destination when they ran past a couple watching tv in front of a mobile home. Eddie leads the group to the back and opens a window to jump through to land on the couch. "That was suffocated." He pulled off the mask that was too small for him. He got up when Steve jumped through. He locked the door while Steve pulled everyone in.
Eddie went to the driver seat to pull out the wires and cut through the ones he needed to. "Where'd you learn to do that?" Steve looks over his shoulder.
"Well, when other dads were teaching their kids how to fish or play ball, my old man was teaching me how to hot-wire. I swore to myself I wouldn't end up like him but now I'm wanted for murder and soon grand theft auto. So, I'm living up to the Munson name." Eddie was getting the job done in record time.
"Eddie, I'm not sure I love the idea of you driving." Robin had seen how he drove his van.
"Yeah, Eddie, you'll get us pulled over for sure. If not for the way you drive because someone will recognize you through this big windshield." Lyn leaned on the passenger seat.
"Oh, I'm just starting this sucker, Harrington's got her. Don't you, big boy?" He leans in to kiss Steve's cheek putting him in a state of shock. He flicks the wire to get the mobile home revved up and alert the owners.
"Hey, open this door." The lady pounds on the door while the man slams on the side window.
"Shit, go." Steve pushed Eddie out of the driving seat to sit down. Lyn took the passenger seat. "It's just a car. Everyone hangs on to something." He tried to not freak out about driving the large vehicle.
"Drive, Steve, Drive," Dustin screamed. He took off making the couple throw themselves to the side to avoid getting hit. "They look pissed." He looks out the back window.
"It's not every day you lose your house and car in one fell swoop." Robin held on to the couch.
"Hold on! Hold on!" He pushed it to go as fast as it could. "Lyn put on your seat belt." He glanced over to see her without it on. "I mean go on, you're the only one who can have that safety." He ran over some trash cans to take a turn onto the road.
"Sorry, dad." She put it on.
"You're driving quite well." Lyn thought he looked comfortable behind the wheel.
"I've pictured driving one of these just in a different situation." He smiles.
"I know we were going to rent one of these and drive to the capital." She remembers his plans for spring break.
"No, I mean I had this dream growing up that I would have a big family. I was an only child and making friends isn't always easy so I thought I'd give my kids built-in friends. I hate the silence at home. I wanted a house full of noise." His smile grew as he talked about his dream.
"How many kids do you want?" She asked.
"Like five or six." He shrugged.
"Six, that's a long time to be pregnant." She didn't know if she could do that.
"I'm not saying we have to have them one after another. That way we could have three girls and three boys… I figure every summer all us Harrigtons would climb into something like this and see the country: the rocks, the grand canyon, yellow town, go to Disneyland." He knew the last one would entice her.
She smiles at how excited he looks at the idea but frowns when she imagines it. "Being responsible for six kids at Disneyland would be hell."
"Your mom would come with us and maybe uncle Dustin." Steve knew her mom would be the best grandma ever.
"Could I listen to books on tape or something for like a few hours of the road trip?" She needs breaks from that chaos.
"Of course, but something tells me you're already used to handling kids close in age." He nods back to the teens sitting in the RV.
"True." She smiles at them, having a moment of peace. "Alright, six." She nods. "You're going to be given me a lot of back and foot rubs."
"To get six kids I'm going to be rubbing more than that." He winks.
"Steve." She giggles at getting flustered at a time like this.
They pulled up to The War Zone's crowded parking lot. Eddie, Lyn, Lucas, and Dustin stayed in the van while the rest went inside. Lucas and Dustin were sitting on the couch in the back while Eddie was sitting at the dining table. Lyn got up to sit beside him. "I'm sorry." He turned to look at her confused. "I'm sorry for how I ended things between them."
He let out a small laugh. "It's fine. It's not like you could have said, 'Eddie, I don't want to talk about the horror novels when I am living it. I have had a monster with a flower mouth try to eat me. I need to read my cliche romance novels to keep sane.' I would have thrown you in the mental hospital myself."
"Still I could have lied or done something to let you down gently. I was so cruel, making it like you didn't exist. Like you didn't help me through a hard time in my life. Having to transition from daughter to caretaker, from sister to mother figure was difficult and you were there to listen to my rants and take my mind off of it. You let me be a teenager for a few moments every day." She would hate to die and not have him know how much he meant to her. For him to remember her as the cruel girl who broke his heart.
He let her cry on his shoulder. "It's alright. Besides, I don't think I'm cut out for any of this. Honestly, hating you made the heartache easier." He knew there wasn't a lie she could have said that would have cushioned his heart from breaking.
Lyn wiped her eyes as she lifted her head. "I hope we can be friends again." She knew she could be asking him too much.
"We already are." He forces a smile that pains him a little at being just friends. It was worth it when it brought a large smile to her face.
"They are taking too long." Dustin paced the floor of the mobile home. He was muttering how this was a waste of time.
The door swung open and the group ran in. Steve jumped into the driving seat. "What happened?" Lucas asked since they seem to be in a panic.
"Your old friends are here." Erica sat next to him.
"Go! Go! Go!" Dustin jumped around.
"I am, so sit the hell down." Steve pushed on the gas.
Lyn was with Steve and Robin making Molotov cocktails. "It doesn't make sense." Steve held the bottle while Lyn poured the ingredients in.
"What doesn't make sense?" Robin asked.
"That was Dan Shelter. He graduated like two years ago." He told her.
"What does Dan Shelter matter?" Lyn asked.
"He was kissing Robin's girl at the war zone." He explains.
"She is not my girl and so what if he graduated two years ago." Robin sighed.
"So, he is in college and he's visiting for spring break. Fast Time was returned about a week ago. Unless she got some horn dog brother we don't know about which is possible or she's into Judge Reinhold?" Steve knew she had to be into girls.
"Steve, I don't care. I don't understand why you do either with everything that's going on. Honestly, it feels like the perfect time for that little pull of the rug because in the face of the world ending the stakes of my love life feels spectacularly low." She didn't want to talk about this.
"Your face seems to care." He saw how she ran off when they kissed.
She looks to his girlfriend for help. "I find it kind of comforting to talk about it. It makes me feel like this is all temporary, something we'll get through."
"What's your take?" Steve asked her.
"I think you're overlooking the possibility of her being into both sexes." She put the finished bottle to the side.
"Huh?" He tilts his head.
"Bisexuality, it's a thing." A few characters were that in her romance novels. "Besides there is no way that Dan is faithful to her. He's a band geek who had a major glow-up. I would bet all my money that he may be taken at Hawkins but he's single at Purdue."
"That is true. I don't know any couple where one went to an out-of-state college and the other stayed here that are still together." Steve nods.
"Guys, I appreciate you wanting me to have a happy ending but that is not going to happen every time. I'm not talking about romance here." Robin couldn't participate in these theories. "I have this terrible feeling that it might not work out for us this time."
"But, what other option do we have?" Lyn looks out at everyone. Dustin and Eddie were playing around. Lucas and Erica were practicing using their spears. Nancy and Max were laughing while doing some target practice.
"That's the scary part of it. If we don't stop him, no one will." Robin hummed.
"Well, here's to saving the world again." Lyn put up a bottle.
"Here's to killing Vecna." Steve put up a bottle.
"To never have to deal with this again." Robin clinks their bottles together.
The mobile home was filled with a tense silence as it went down the road. Everyone hyped themselves up to do their part in killing Vecna. Lyn was listening to Tina Turner on the cassette player she found in the trailer.
Lyn got up at their first stop. Erica, Lucas, and Max got off. Steve grabbed her arm before she could go. "Don't do anything crazy." Steve had never been separated from her when dealing with the Upside Down.
"You have nothing to worry about. This time self-sacrifice would mean the end of the world." She teased.
"Rosalyn." He hated feeling like this might be the last time he sees her.
"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" She smiles while pulling out of his hold to hop off the vehicle.