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"Don't Dream It's Over"

There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost

But you'll never see the end of the road

While you're traveling with me

- Crowded House

Joyce drove through the darkening night, wishing she knew how to pray, desperately wanting to get there and find Hopper and end at least this part of her ever-growing nightmare. She didn't think she could face what might be happening to Will without Hopper at her side. She loved Bob, she did, but … he didn't make her feel safe, not the way Hopper did.

"There's nothing," Mike said anxiously, watching out the side windows. "There's nothing here."

"Are we close?" Joyce demanded of Bob, who was squinting as best he could in the darkness at the map he was holding.

"We're in the vicinity."

"What's that mean, 'vicinity'?"

"It means we're, we're close! I mean, I don't know, it's not precise."

"But we did all that work!"

"I told you, the scale ratio is not exactly one to one, now we need to—"

"Turn right." It was Will's voice, coming suddenly from the back seat after he had been silent the whole way here.

Joyce looked at him over her shoulder. "What?"

"I saw him."

She turned back to look through the windshield. "Where?"

"Not here; in my now-memories."

"In your what?" Bob asked.

Joyce hated that they had a term for this thing being stuck in her son's brain, but for the moment she would use it to find Hopper.

"Turn right!" Will said again, determined this time.

So Joyce turned right, the wheels skidding on the packed dirt of the road before they caught on the softer dirt of the field. They burst through a pumpkin patch sign, hay bales and everything, all of them screaming as the car went a little out of control, but she didn't stop. Not until she was practically on the bumper of Hop's police vehicle.

She looked around at everyone else in the car. "Are you okay?" They seemed to be.

Mike glanced at Will. "Super spy."

Bob was fixed on the car. "What's Jim doing here? Joyce?"

But Joyce couldn't stop to explain. Hopper was here, she was sure of it. Now they just had to get to him. "Boys, I need you to stay here," she told them as she got out of the car.

Behind her, she heard Will. "No, Mom, Mom, it's not safe!"

"That's why I need you to stay here," she told him. "Stay here!"

Bob got out on the other side. Joyce slammed her door and then went out into the field, yelling for Hopper. There was a crater in the field, with an abandoned shovel lying along the edge of it. She went down into it, with Bob's anxious "Hey, be careful" following her.

In the center of the hole, she saw them. Slimy and disgusting, just like she'd seen in the Upside Down. They looked like— "Vines," she whispered. She pointed at the shovel. "Give me that."

Taking it from Bob, she chopped down into the vine things viciously, and they both recoiled as something splattered up at them. Angry now, she took out all her fears and frustrations on the vines, hacking away at them with the edge of the shovel until they receded from the edge of a hole in the ground. Hopper must have made it, she thought, which meant he was down there somewhere.

Tossing the shovel away, she looked up at Bob. "I need you to help me get down there."

"Joyce. What are you talking about?" He was freaking out. If she had been less afraid for Hopper, she would have felt sorry for Bob, stuck in the middle of this situation that he could never have imagined and couldn't possibly understand. But she was terrified that they were already too late, and she didn't have time to catch Bob up or reassure him.

"Bob!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "Now!"

Against his better judgement, he lowered her in. Standing in the tunnel, she looked around, trying to get her bearings. God, there was so much of it. It went off in both directions as far as she could see. How would she ever find Hopper down here? She yelled for him, again and again, as Bob dropped through the hole behind her.

He was even more stunned than she was. "Joyce, what is going on? Where are we?"

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"Tunnels!" he said, as though everything had suddenly become clear to him. "Is this Will's map?"

Joyce dug his flashlight out of his coat pocket and started shining it down the tunnels. "Hopper!"

"Are we in Will's map?" Bob asked again.

Still yelling for Hopper, Joyce pushed past him without answering—time enough for that later—and started down the tunnel.

"We're inside Will's map," Bob marveled, following her through as she flashed the light around and called for Hopper again and again. "How do you know all this?" he asked her.

She came to a place where two tunnels forked. Which one? How to know? Remembering how much of her house the map of these tunnels had covered, she thought she could be down here for days looking for Hopper and never know where she had already been.

Then the light shone on something white, something that didn't belong down here in the midst of the dirt and the vines. A piece of a cigarette. "Bob!" she shouted. "Over here!" She showed it to him. "See? It's his. He's got to be this way. Come on."

Bob didn't answer, and Joyce couldn't stop to explain or answer questions. She hurried down the tunnel, her eyes on the ground, looking for more clues, still calling Hop's name.

At last they came into a room that was different than anything else they'd seen—bigger, and covered in bones, not in vines. The flashlight settled on Hopper's hat, abandoned next to a flashlight in the middle of the floor. He was here. Oh, God, was he still alive? Had she come too late, after all this?

Joyce trained the flashlight across the floor, and nearly missed him, he was so covered in vines. Only a hand and the white sleeve of his undershirt showed.

"Oh!" She and Bob went down on their hands and knees, pulling the vines off Hopper. They were wrapped around his neck, choking him … but at least they weren't down his throat, she thought, trying not to remember what Will had looked like in that horrible decaying library.

They got the vines far enough away that Hopper woke up. "Knife!" he gasped.

"Knife!" Joyce hunted for it across the floor.

Bob pointed the flashlight, the light catching on the metal blade. "It's over there."

Picking it up, Joyce started hacking through the vines, which screeched as she cut them. She cut Hopper's left hand free and gave him the knife and let him take his own revenge on the things that had almost killed him, yanking at them even as he cut through them.

At last they got him free and on his feet. Joyce was nearly in tears, so relieved to see him alive and in one piece. She put her hands on his shoulder and cupped his face, trying to reassure herself that he was really okay. "Hopper!"

His arms came around her, too. "Joyce." He held her shoulders, and for a moment there was nothing else, just the two of them, just their relief at seeing each other again.

But only for a moment. Hopper looked around. "Hey, Bob."

"Hi, Jim."

The vines were still moving, practically under Joyce's feet, and she screamed, holding on to Hopper for safety, this time, turning—

And she saw a person standing there, in a full suit like the ones they had worn into the Upside Down, and screamed.

The person gestured for them to go, and they went past, Hopper stopping only to retrieve his hat. Behind them, they could hear the flames begin as the man in the suit began burning the vines. They screamed as they burned.

It was over, Joyce thought as she ran through the tunnels. It was over, and Hopper was safe, and it would be okay.

And then she climbed through the hole and realized that the screaming she was hearing wasn't coming from the vines—it was coming from her son, who was convulsing in the middle of a field of rotten pumpkins. Nothing was over—it had only just begun.