Eleven stared darkly at Old Fred's frightened face, watching as the old man struggled futilely to break free of her hold. "I'm going to let you down, but if you try to attack us again, you'll regret it," Eleven's voice was low, threatening as she held him up higher. Mike stepped closer, hoping to calm his girlfriend down, but Will held him back.
"Do you understand?" Eleven's voice was colder than ice as she glared menacingly at the old man, her eyes promising great pain.
It definitely worked because Fred gulped, and nodded desperately.
Slowly, Eleven lowered the old man to the ground, and he tottered about on his jelly-like legs. For a moment, Will and Mike both thought that he would bolt in panic, but when Eleven raised her hand, he went still.
"Why did you shoot at us?" She asked.
"I…I thought you were trespassers," Fred muttered.
Will could tell he had been drinking, very heavily. "Trespassers?" He repeated. "Who the hell would want to trespass here? There's nobody for miles."
"That's what you think, boy," Fred growled, giving them a knowing look that said he wasn't joking. "Where's the other two?"
"They're back at the van. It broke an axle, but they're both okay," Mike replied.
Fred choked, and Mike realised he was actually laughing. "Like hell they are. There's something you should know. Back in '59, this place was brand spanking new. There was a new town 'ere. Hundreds of us used to live out here, all of us looking forward to a new future as we set up shop; we thought we had the world at our fingertips. Me and my wife Martha, we had a gorgeous little baby girl. So pretty we couldn't believe it. We had another kid on the way."
El frowned. She had noticed the way he reminisced about his daughter, and how delighted and yet sad he was to remember her, and she realised something awful had happened to the girl, and despite the way he'd attacked them, she felt some pity for him. But she was worried; when Fred mentioned his second child, he looked distinctly unhappy, as if the memory horrified him more.
Fred went on, "During that time, the whole town was receiving shots. 'cause you see, the military had rolled in and said there was some kind of outbreak, and a bunch of scientists from the Department of Energy, of all things," Fred shook his head in reminiscence, not seeing the looks of dawning horror and fear on the faces of the kids with him, "came and they started arranging compulsory check-ups and injections. Me and my wife, we received a dose each before and after Martha announced her pregnancy."
"The Department of Energy?" Mike whispered.
"What the hell were they doing here?" Will asked.
Urgently El stopped him, "Excuse me, Fred, but you said the Department of Energy was here?" She asked, her gaze making it clear she wanted good answers.
Fred blinked in surprise at the interruption. "Yeah, why?" But then he peered closely into her face, and he saw the burning fear and hatred for it. "Y'you know 'em?"
"I should," Eleven sighed. "I was raised by them."
"Raised?"
"More like kidnapped. My mother was experimented on herself, by a scientist called Martin Brenner. Do you know him?" Eleven asked.
Fred blew out his cheeks slowly in thought as he visibly racked his brains to remember, but he shook his head. "No, I don't think so," he said slowly, "what happened with you? Did he give you those weird powers of yours?"
"In a way. But he kept me in a lab until one of the other test subjects killed the others, aside from me," Eleven replied, hoping to not do into too much detail of what happened between herself, One, and Brenner, to say nothing about the Gate. "But what did the Department of Energy want with you? I don't think there was an outbreak, was there?"
"No, but there were violent deaths. They told us it was a more virulent form of cholera, but when things became weirder, we realised the story was full of bull," Fred growled.
"When did you start to realise something was wrong?"
"The Department of Energy hung around the town for months after their first injections, and they made sure to arrange appointments for us. They refused to change them, and they claimed each injection was to make our immune systems build up a stronger defence. But it wasn't until some of the pregnant women began giving birth, that we realised something went wrong. Martha was one of them," A stricken look came over Fred's face, "this…this thing she gave me….something happened….this thing….he was so big…," Fred began sobbing, "he came out sideways, almost tore my poor wife to bits."
"My god," Mike whispered while Will and El both stared at him in horror.
Fred wiped his eyes and struggled to gather up his composure. "He weighed 20 pounds, and he was as hairy as a monkey. When he was 10 years old, he was as big as I was."
"How is that possible? What did the Department of Energy do?" Will asked, adding on the second question. He was convinced they had done something to this man and to the other people of the former town.
"I dunno what they injected our wives with, but my wife and I, we were not the only ones whose kids had turned out weird. Ever since the Department of Energy came, nothing was the same ever again."
"Every baby born was like my son, in so many ways," Fred replied with a haunted look on his face.
"Did the Department of Energy leave at all?" Mike asked, but they guessed the answer.
"No. They stayed, and as they did, we got used to seeing 'em every day. But as the years passed, accidents were happening all the time," Fred stressed the word accidents like he didn't believe them one bit. "Dogs winding up torn apart; cats ripped in half; compound fractures to the other kids who were older, younger, it made no difference. I even found chickens with their heads bitten off! And it wasn't just my kid. All of them were feral. No, not feral….wild."
Fred looked away for a moment, composing himself. Eleven watched him silently. "Go on," she said softly.
The old man flinched a little, remembering they were there. "Y'know how Darwin said we were descended from monkeys, apes?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I never really believed it, though much of it…until those years," Fred shook his head in wondering horror. "All 'em kids - boys and girls - they were saved, vicious. They terrorised the town. They were extremely strong, they had teeth sharper than daggers. And some of 'em could climb trees effortlessly. Many of 'em looked deformed. I dunno what it was that had changed them, but they were like us in so many ways, yet they weren't; they could reason like humans, they could read, write and count, but they were violent. Sometimes we debated if they were what we had been before we became human. Maybe savage monkeys are what inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Jekyll and Hyde. We confronted the scientists in the Department of Energy," Fred went on with his story, "we stormed the lab, we demanded answers."
"Did you get them?"
"Eventually. There wasn't an outbreak; the few signs of proof they'd shown had been staged, which gave them the excuses they needed to run their experiments."
"What was it all for?" That was all Eleven wanted to know.
"They said they wanted to test some of their theories, and they also wanted to see if they could create a strain of superhuman that was savage and feral but still possessed human reasoning. It doesn't make much sense, does it, but then again they were vague about what they wanted. And then it happened," Fred's expression turned downcast, grim.
"What, what happened?" Mike demanded irritably.
"Mike!" El chided him, making him shamefaced.
"Nah, it's okay. I was out one day, getting supplies, and when I got back, the house was burnt to the ground. I found him tearing his sister to pieces!" Fred was pacing around, sobbing all the time. "By then, I'd had enough. I hit him with a tyre iron, and gouged a huge scar in his face." Violently, he mimed the move for emphasis. "By then, everyone had enough of the kids. We drove 'em out of the town, some were even killed."
"Jesus!" Will muttered.
"Where did you drive them?" Eleven asked.
"We drove 'em out into the desert, but then they came back a whole while later. They came back, worse than before. They had shaken off everything that made them human, still. And they tore us to bits. They killed their own families, and very few of us managed to get out."
Something about that didn't make much sense to Mike, and a quick glance at Will's bemused face told him his old friend had seen it as well. But El had picked up on something else.
"Are they still out there?"
Fred nodded grimly, and Will and Mike, despite their concerns, felt a cold shiver pass through them both. "Yeah," he replied darkly. "They're still alive. They formed little clans, and tribes. They're scattered through the valley. Some of 'em have killed off each other, 'cause of competition, but they're out there."
"How do they survive?"
"They kill and eat people," Fred said. "When they killed everyone in the town, we found some of them had been stringing up the bodies, like sides of beef!"
"And you know about this, all along?!" Will burst out.
"Shush, keep it down!" Fred hissed urgently. "They sometimes come 'ere!"
As far as Will was concerned the fear he had for Jonathan's safety outweighed what happened to this bastard. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"Kids, I've been trying to warn dozens of people for years not to go, but every time I get a visit from them, especially Jupiter, my son, I get beat up bad. They only kept me alive to keep people coming through here."
A thought occurred to Mike. "When we came through, we heard military jets. Do the military know about this place?"
"Yes!" A dark look of fury and disgust came over Fred's face. "The Air Force and the National Guard keep this place under guard, they keep the clans under control, too. But theory won't go out and kill 'em. And all the time, the clans are free to kill people. Jupiter's killed everyone you could think of; men, women, kids. I did my best to warn 'em not to go, but they either did as I told 'em, or they ignored me. And before you ask, some of 'em didn't believe me."
"But you were planning on leaving them, leave here?" El pointed out.
"There's nothing here anymore," Fred reasoned. "I wanted to get as far from here as I could."
"Do you think you would have succeeded?" Mike asked.
"I don't see why not, I was even thinking of takin' Ruby with me," Fred said.
"Ruby?"
"My granddaughter. Some of their kids turn out normal compared to them. They're hated by the rest of the clans. Treated like slaves, even though they're stronger than average kids. Ruby is terrified of the rest of the family, and she wants out. She came 'ere, just while you were here, dressed to the nines, begging me to get out of here, but one of her brothers found her and dragged her back. At the same time, he burnt down my truck," Fred said mournfully as he recounted how his last bid for hope, for freedom had been stolen from him.
Mike sighed, turning to Eleven. "El, I know you were thinking of teleporting us back to Hawkins tomorrow morning, but I think you should do it now," he said gently.
Eleven bit her lip. She had been planning to be bright and fresh in the morning, but now she knew they couldn't. It just wasn't safe, but at the same time, she wondered if Owens knew anything about the Department of Energy's latest mess up here.
"You can come with us," she decided.
Fred blinked owlishly back at her. "What?" He asked in confusion.
Eleven smiled. "You'll see. We can take you far from here. And Ruby, and anyone else who you say is normal. Do you know how to get in touch with her?"
Fred stared at her in confusion still, unable to comprehend what she was talking about, but before he could even open his mouth, a terrible roar sounded from outside, and out of the shadows in the windows a huge shape burst through the window, tearing through the glass and surrounding frame as if they were nothing.
Fred screamed in terror as the huge shape grabbed hold of him. The form, roughly the same shape of a man, was too wreathed in shadow for the three teenagers to properly see, but they were huge, their skin was so dark it was dirty, but then they saw the hairs.
Eleven screamed herself, but then she reacted quickly. She flung out her hands, mentally commanding the two people to separate. Fred cried in shock, and the shadow just roared as he was thrown out. Blood trickling down from her nostrils, Eleven quickly opened a hole into the Upside Down, and she dragged them all out.
"Quick! Grab the rope!" She called before they escaped from the shed. Eleven had barely managed to close the gate when the feral monster came back inside.
