Jonathon narrowly avoided Robin as she ran in front, brakes locked up and tires sliding. She shouted something breathlessly and craned her head to look all around her at once.
"Wha…" Jonathon said.
He got out with the others quickly as she ran around to the side.
"We gotta go! It's right there! The thing from the mall! ITS BACK!"
Jonathon, Steve, and Will looked up into the twilight sky and saw a massive shape…it was eating something….someone…screaming, dying, bleeding…and worst of all, *crunching.*
He saw a red mohawk.
"Oh no," said Steve. "No no no! We gotta book man! Get in the car!"
"Forget my van! Stomp on it," Robin said.
As they roared away she admitted, "I think I peed a little."
…
"I think when it eats people, they become *part* of it," she said. "I bet I'll barf before we get back."
"Don't hurl your cookies in here," said Jonathon.
…
At the cabin, Nancy was standing on the porch waiting to see Jonathon drive back in his usual safe manner. Instead, she saw a flying car driven by a madman who looked like Jonathon. Robin was in the back, pale as Eleven in a bedsheet.
Eleven sat on her bed with her eyes closed, meditating. The pink radio played a song about believing in "magic" by Olivia Newton-John.
A shadow moved. She caught sight of things gathering far away. She felt the presence of an evil, and a chill ran down her spine. What is that *thing*?
She opened her eyes with a start. A phantasm lingered in her mind. It moved in the trees, it chased a car, it ate people, it had bitten her once. Oh no, it's that again…
She heard a heavy car slide loudly to a stop just outside in the gravel. The front door opened and footsteps crunched up through the door and into the cabin.
Will ran into El's room, a tremor in his voice.
"El! We just ran into another mall spider! It was in Carter when we picked up Robin. I think it's headed this way!"
On the kitchen table, Mike and Dustin poured over maps while listening to reports on police and military channels from the CB on the kitchen counter. The radio hissed and crackled.
"That fits," said Dustin. "We've got movement coming in our direction."
Robin stood in the doorway to El's room. "Jane, this one is bigger!"
Mike picked up the CB radio. "Hopper Bear! Hopper Bear! Code Red! We have an enemy spider approaching the cabin. Do you have an ETA?"
Dustin asked, "Hopper Bear?"
Mike said, "He's cool with it."
-/-/-/-/-/-/——-/—/-/——/-/———-
A distance away a scene of carnage embraced the eye, as Jim stepped over a twitching dead Demogorgon. His street-sweeper shotgun barrel smoked and he looked around him. Still alive. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sweat soaked sleeve. He scraped something like sticky tripe off his boot with a knife, and took a deep breath. Still alive!
After the base attack, the Hawkins Library soldiers huddled behind sand bags and throwing demo dogs bodies out of foxholes.
"Wave after wave kept the machine guns running nonstop," Hopper was saying to Officer Daniels on the phone. "Make sure you hold your line too."
"Chief," Daniels said, "gunfire all over town has the National Guard stretched thin."
"Hold the line, dammit," Jim said and hung up.
Jim wiped blood from his face. He reloaded his magnum shiny pistol. He called Powell on the radio.
"You okay, Cal?" He asked.
Calvin, in the steeple above, answered by the crackling radio, "Just peachy Chief."
Calvin, up in the tower, set down his auto-shotgun next to his Barrett M82 light 50 sniper rifle. Around him lay several 'bats and one 'dog. How the demo-dog climbed the tower he didn't know. And there was that flying thing…
Calvin said, "They stopped and changed direction into the woods."
Jim said, "The hive mind under their mad general calls the plays, maybe with telepathy…"
Calvin said, "he is just the devil."
Calvin took off his helmet and bulletproof vest. He looked around at the mess. He prayed.
-/-/-/-/—/-/———-/—/——-/-/—/-/—/-
Jim's voice came back, "Dusty G. We're dealing with a Demogorgon attack and those damn bats, can you hold out for fifteen minutes?!"
"Roger. Fifteen minutes. Over," said Dustin on the CB.
"Dusty G?" Steve asked.
"Griswold."
Steve laughed and picked up his bat from under the mounted buck deer head by the fireplace. It felt warm in his hands.
"Well, Rusty. Trouble picked the wrong address tonight", said Steve.
Nancy smashed a large cockroach with her shoe and picked up her shotgun from the brown bench in El's bedroom. On her white dresser was a box of shells she took as well, knocking down a photograph of her brother.
Jonathon went to the desk El used for homework and grabbed his 44 Desert Eagle and sawed off 12 gauge, one for each hand. He looked up at the mounted fish on the wall. He might break his wrist tonight, but at least he wouldn't be a dead fish on a wall.
"Where are Max and Lucas?" El asked.
Mike shrugged, "They are on a date. You can't always live in fear, you know."
Dustin said: "I can."
El closed her eyes. "They're safe," she announced. Mike opened the door, sword ready.
They all walked down the five steps from the porch to the leaf-covered ground, Mike and Steve leading. Then Jonathon checked around the side bump-out that housed the bathroom addition.
The crickets were chirping as they walked out into a quiet evening, with Venus glowing brightly in the west. El hustled forward.
"They are all around us. The closest ones are over there," El said, pointing across the field.
They gazed and pointed weapons. Soon moisture and cool air would be concocting ground fog. A full moon gave the fields and trees strong shadows but failed to reveal those shadows that moved underneath.
"There are many of them," El said.
The insects stopped chirping. They heard rustling leaves and twigs snapping, and then silence.
Steve, in his new leather pants, took some practice swings in the air. "Bring them on," he said.
"The military is sending troops and Hopper is coming, too," Dustin said. "So we hold on until…"
"—we are on our own," interrupted Mike, "If we need to retreat to the cabin the code word will be: Gondor. Got it? If I say Gondor we retreat."
"I'm not worried," said Steve.
"Dude!" said Dustin. "Are you high?"
"No. Just psyching up the team."
Dustin stood, legs spread apart, next to Eleven on one side, Mike holding a sword on the other. Steve, Nancy, Johnathon, and Will completed a circle to cover all directions but stayed near the steps to the porch.
"Remember, shotguns on the demo-bats!" said Dustin.
"Yes, professor," Will commented.
Then, emerging from the shadows and circling the cabin bayed and barked perhaps a hundred demo dogs. They stayed.
"Why'd they stop?" Dustin asked.
"They are waiting for something," said Mike. Dustin shivered.
"Reinforcements," said Steve.
Then a low vibration grew louder and louder. A tremor shook the ground and trees parted, and a horrifying creature made out of bodies of dead people and cattle emerged. It stood twenty feet tall, with tentacles that El remembered all too well. Its mouth could swallow a small car. It stretched out its long tentacles.
"Worried yet, Steve?", Dustin asked.
"Okay, maybe a little," he replied.
El's eyes furtively darted around with large eyes. She panted. Her fingers trembled. "I need…something to throw…at it…" El said to Dustin.
She saw fences and a few abandoned appliances.
Breathless, El asked, "Dustin…what do I do?"
The creatures sprinted toward them and kicked dirt behind them, gaining speed and closing the gap.
The grisly Spider Monster began its advance, thumping its feet on the ground and roaring through whatever vocal construction it had, but it sounded like a hundred screaming human voices in a cave. Mike thought he could see teeth chomping in the maw of the thing—human teeth, biting over and over. Thousands of them.
Dustin checked around, his intelligent eyes spotting a possibility. He pointed.
"Power lines," he said.
Panic jangled Eleven's nerves until Dustin's suggestion cleared her mind.
El nodded, closed her eyes, reached out with both hands, and closed them. She sensed the electricity. It was a big line, *medium* voltage—which she thought, in real terms meant enough current to fry a human until it resembled a blackened french fry.
The power line snapped at one end in an explosion of sparks that sprayed like a geyser into the sky. El's eyes glistened in the light.
The assault force of demo dogs and mind-flayer-controlled monsters ran under the power lines.
Out of darkness a large swarm of hissing demo bats dove at the kids from high up nearly straight down. Flapping wings beat the air.
"Got you!" shouted Dustin, his small wooden shield knocking one away. Then his bat spattered another shrieking 'bat, battering it until it was senseless.
Will and Nancy opened fire and splodged demo-bats.
Steve smacked four in a row, until a small one bit Steve on the arm. Dustin hit it with a sword, cutting its head off. Black demobat blood spurted in Dustin's face.
Tk1
Shotgun and pistol blasts flashed in the dark. Pulses of light illuminated the kids, grass, and cabin with each gun blast.
Steve batted down another one and shouted something about a 'home run.'
"What?" Dustin shouted.
The blasts of guns and screeching of 'bats dowsed most voices.
Demobats again bounced off their shields as they threw their bodies against them. Black blood sprayed the ground, their clothes, and the grass, as Jonathon obliterated and erased 'bats and demo dogs.
Another sneaky 'bat bit Jonathon on the leg, squealing happily to taste his blood, and Nancy aimed carefully before she shot it dead. It rolled into the dirt flapping and quivering.
"Good shot," Jonathon remarked.
Twenty dead 'bats lay around them as the team defended its ground, and Dustin shouted obscenities at the bats for having killed Eddie, his friend.
"You bastards!" He shouted. "I'll kill you all!"
Mike chopped up three more with his sword. Will shouted with glee when they turned away off into the sky, while Steve and Dustin hooted. The first attack was over, and they had won, but the rest were upon them.
"Eddie Munson says hello!" Dustin shouted. "And go to hell!"
Eleven, on the other hand, was beleaguered.
Her eyes darted left and right, up and down. Her arms outstretched, she felt power. Her fingers glowed faintly violet and blue, but she did not fear it now, instead choosing to embrace the sensation of tingling.
"Do you feel that?" Dustin shouted. "The air is electric!"
The live end of the power line she wrapped around the mind flayer's spider skillfully. Then…stabbed it in what seemed its "head." It quivered and shook, it smoked and squealed, but it was frozen in place.
"My God!" Dustin said. "I see…sparks!"
Then convulsions set in and it finally, died, melting to the ground like Jello on a hot plate. Power flowed like a river.
"They are on us!" Jonathon shouted, pointing at the demo dogs.
Mike and Dustin readied their swords again. Nancy and Will fired guns at the charging 'dogs, knocking them down. Steve positioned himself to look for the fastest, closest demo dog. Jonathon started firing at a pack that was sneaking up from behind them. Nancy reloaded, as one jumped for her face—and froze. It floated in front of Nancy's head.
Eleven then lifted her hands into the air…She struggled to hold them but after a few *pushes* they came together and lifted into the sky. Eleven reeled under the strain, swaying with blue light on her fingertips.
Up and up they went, so high they were almost out of sight in a background of stars, a hundred specks lit by a full moon. Some of the bats seemed frozen amongst the 'dogs as well. El struggled feverishly.
"Too…many," El said. She panted, hands up over her head.
El looked to her side and saw rusted green metal fence posts, strewn with barbed wire, and smiled.
The posts shot out of the ground, one by one like rockets. Floating up into the sky like javelins with barbed wire wrapped around them, she wrapped the struggling demo-dogs necks with barbed wire, everyone while they screeched and wailed. It took time and the Party watched her work. El carefully weaved and twisted the wire to get every single one in a barbed-wire noose. Her hands glowed faintly blue. She poured with sweat, a soft moan escaping her throat.
The demo bats attacked again, this time targeting Eleven. But fewer 'bats were alive and shotguns took apart their assault mid-dive. The few left reeled away, hissing with anger, and retreating into the darkness.
El took the power lines out of mind flayer carcass and up into the sky. Like a whip flung at another whip, the ends met and touched the bare end of a fence post floating in the air. A bright spark lit the grass around the Party like flashes from fireworks at a baseball field on the fourth of July. The barbed wire glowed red hot, tracing a line to the posts still in the ground. Current flowed through the circuit.
The demo dogs screamed and sparked while catching fire. They began to burn, writhing, angry.
The fence posts pulled tight and a hundred demo heads and a hundred demo-dog bodies fell from the sky like rain. The fire fell from the sky.
"Sweet mother of baby Jesus…" said Dustin. "El, I think we all could kiss you right now." Dustin gawked, holding his forehead. It struck him as strangely beautiful: like when a firework ignited too close. Or when the Millennium Falcon jumped to light speed in Star Wars. I am mesmerized, he thought.
El stared up at the spectacle with her limp arms at her sides, breathing hard.
With great effort she moved her feet, swaying on rubbery legs and feeling dizzy. She walked slowly over to observe Steve and Jonathon.
The Party gazed upon the flaming ruins of their enemies. El's wet eyes peered at the wounds of her friends and frowned.
Mike hugged El as she wobbled. Mike and Dustin walked her gradually back to the cabin.
They helped her sit on her bed. Mike checked the bandage on her arm.
Eleven gazed up at him, smiling.
The rest went to the kitchen. They sat down at the table, breathing hard and taking off their jackets.
Steve was sweating profusely. They bandaged their superficial wounds thanks to leather jackets, pants, and gloves.
"No way that just happened," Dustin said, "That was so wicked."
"Yeah. I'm sure I knocked one of them over the fence in left field," Steve commented.