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"As Long as You Follow"

I've been wandering

Gone away too far

But the road was rough

To get back where you are

- Fleetwood Mac

Something told Hopper not to go straight to the Wheelers', and he blessed that old second sense. It had gotten him out of a lot of tight places, in the army and as a cop, and now. A line of long black cars, governmental cars, was parked in front of the Wheelers' house, and there were men carrying boxes of items out of the house.

"What's going on?" Nancy asked as Hopper eased the car into park.

"I don't know." He got out, taking the binoculars Joyce handed him with only an instant of surprise that Jonathan had been carrying binoculars and that Joyce knew he would want them. As he studied the men moving like ants in and out of her house, Nancy got out from the back seat and stood at his elbow.

"I have to go home."

"No, you can't."

"My mom! My dad, are there."

"They're gonna be okay," he reassured her absently, taking a step toward the line of black cars as he thought things over rapidly. Mike had to be with the bald girl. There was no other explanation. She had been the one held in that room, she had escaped, and they were looking for her, hunting her down, because she was valuable. Their experiment. So, the boys go out, against his express instructions, hunting for Will, and they find the girl, running from Benny's. They bring her home, they hide her, they protect her.

Nancy went around him, marching down the street.

"Hey." He caught her by the arm. "Hey. Hey hey hey!"

"No! Let go!"

"Hey. Listen to me, listen. The last thing in the world we need is them knowing you're mixed up in all this."

"Mike is over there!"

"They haven't found him," Hopper told her. "Not yet, at least." He pointed at a chopper in the sky.

A chopper over Hawkins. That would get some press.

Nancy stared at it in shock. "For Mike?!"

"Come on, get in the car." He dragged her with him as he went back. Once they were all inside with the door closed, he leaned on the seat, looking at the two kids in the back. "Look, we need to find them before they do. You have any idea where he might have gone?"

"No, I don't!" Nancy proclaimed loudly.

This was no time for sibling fights. "I need you to think."

"I don't know! We haven't talked a lot, I mean, lately."

"Is there any place that your parents don't know about that he might go?" Joyce asked. She was racking her brains, too, but Will liked to have some secrets, and she trusted him—and she was too tired half the time to keep tabs on everywhere he went. That was going to have to change once he was home again, she promised herself.

"I-I-I don't know," Nancy stammered, clearly too distressed and too scared to stop and think logically.

"I might," Jonathan said suddenly. He had been sitting and thinking calmly while the rest of them were panicking, the way he so often did. Joyce was proud of him and despaired of him and his solitude at the same time.

"What?" Hopper asked.

"Well, I don't know where he is, but … I think I know how to ask him. We have to go to my house."

Joyce and Hopper looked at each other. "You think they'll go there if they don't find her at Mike's?"

"I think we better get there before they think of it." He put the car in gear and resisted the urge to floor it, not wanting to attract the attention of the men in the black cars.

The house was blissfully deserted for the moment, and none of them wasted any time piling out of the car. Nancy stopped in the living room, staring at the lights and the destruction, but there was no time to answer her questions. Later, maybe.

Jonathan led them into Will's room, skirting the lights and hunting through the desk drawers. Joyce had caught on by now to what he was thinking of, and she got down on her knees, hunting under the bed. It was there, the reassuring piece of black plastic. "I got it!"

Nancy sank down on the bed while Jonathan showed her how to use the walkie-talkie. Sitting on the bed next to Nancy, Joyce noticed how they looked at each other and then hastily away as their fingers touched in the process, and wondered what was going on there, but this was hardly the time. Jonathan withdrew across the room.

Nancy spoke into the walkie-talkie cautiously. "Mike? Are you there? Mike?" Then she took her finger off the button. "Do you think they're listening?"

Hopper frowned. He did think Hawkins Lab was listening, but this was the best plan they had. "We're assuming Mike will have his receiver with him. We'll have to hope they haven't finished looking for clues at your house and thought about tracking the kids down this way."

Nancy nodded. She pressed the button. "Mike? It's me, Nancy." She waited a second and spoke again. "Mike, are you there? It's Nancy. Mike, we need you to answer. This is an emergency, Mike." There was an edge in her voice now. "Do you copy? Mike, do you copy?" She looked at Joyce. "What will we do if he doesn't answer?"

"We'll think of something. Just try him again. They're—they're probably scared, just give him some time."

"We need you to answer!" Nancy repeated into the walkie-talkie. "We need to know that you're there, Mike."

Hopper snatched the walkie-talkie out of her hands. "Listen, kid, this is the Chief. If you're there, pick up. We know you're in trouble and we know about the girl. We can protect you, we can help you, but you gotta pick up. Are you there, do you copy? Over!"

Nothing. Static. He put the useless thing down on a shelf. "Anybody got any other ideas?"

Then it crackled to life, the kid's voice coming through, thin and scared. "Yes. I copy. It's Mike. I'm here. We're here."

Hopper picked the walkie-talkie up again, speaking slowly and clearly. "Look, kid, we need to be able to get to you. We can help, I promise."

"How do I know no one's listening?"

Smart kid. "You don't. Neither do I. They're distracted right now, we might have some time, but we gotta move, okay, kid?"

"Okay. We're at the old junkyard. You know where that is?"

"The old junkyard?" They'd have been run out of the newer one, but the old one was abandoned. He knew that, but Hawkins Lab or whoever those guys were, they might not. "Yeah. Hang tight, kid, I'm coming to get you. Do not go anywhere, no matter what, copy?"

There was a pause while Mike tried to decide if this was a trap, and then, "Copy."

Hopper looked around the room. "You all stay here. I'll be back."

Immediately all three started to argue with him, and he quelled them with one of his patented cop looks. "That car going to hold all of you and four kids? No? Then I'm going and you're waiting here."

it seemed to take forever to get there, the car moving sluggishly under him. Probably it was fine, but it seemed all wrong, used as he was to his bigger, more powerful car. And when he got to the junkyard, the suits in the black cars had gotten there first. Damn it! Those kids had to be terrified, certain that he had betrayed them.

On the other hand, it felt pretty good to beat up a bunch of guys in suits who were terrorizing children in his town. He waded in, no fancy moves or ruses, just fists and faces and the satisfying thud of men dropping out of his way. The kids were clearly holed up in the abandoned school bus, and he took the stairs as soon as the last suit guy was on the ground. There they were. The Three Musketeers, and their D'Artagnan, a bald little girl in a dirty pink dress.

"All right, let's go." When none of them moved, he shouted it again. "Let's go!" This time, when he hurried down the stairs toward the car, four scared and tired kids hurried after him.