Chapter 11: Copy That
"You're going to go out to the field just to talk to Suzie?" Will asks in disbelief.
The usual group of friends are hanging out on Mike's lawn after Mrs. Wheeler insists, they go outside and enjoy the nice weather while it was still there. The woman had then taken Holly to run errands and locked the house, preventing them from getting back in. Will had wanted to play D and D, but everyone else just wanted to sit around and do nothing, considering how long the school week had dragged, it felt like too much mental strain to perform the strategy board game.
Max had come over to the house after spending some time at the arcade. She laid a blanket out and seemed to be trying to tan, even though she was more likely to gain freckles than anything else. She also had a portable radio playing as she lay stretched out in her sunglasses. Eleven also sits on a nearby blanket, mindlessly looking through some of the magazines Max had brought. She wasn't paying attention to what was in them and was watching her boyfriend. Mike had his bike parked on the edge of the grass and was attempting to fix a leaky tire and repair his bike chain that seemed to always become tangled, even after he had straightened it. He could sense that El was messing with it because she seemed to be hiding a smile and her bleeding nose behind a copy of Vogue. Will had brought a book with him, at his mother's insistence that he broaden his horizons a bit, even though he was looking through the pile of comics that Lucas had brought. The curly-haired boy of the group is packing his backpack to help strengthen the signal of his radio tower, Cerebro.
"Saturdays are the only days she has off. Sundays are sacred in Mormon culture," Dustin insists.
"Is that even true?" Max asks, doubting that Dustin had any type of grasp on the religion his girlfriend's family followed.
"I don't really know, but it doesn't matter, I've waited all week to talk to her and I'm not going to waste another minute if you guys aren't actually going to do anything."
"You going to tell her that you purred at another girl?" Will asks, deciding to start teasing him.
"I only do that when I find a girl attractive, it doesn't mean I'm in love with her!" Dustin snaps.
"Yeah, well she didn't find it attractive, so stick with Suzie," Max says, turning over onto her stomach on the blanket.
"You going to sing to her again?" Lucas smirks, following Will's lead about teasing their friend.
Immediately, Dustin starts swearing at them.
"F* you!" he says angrily, finally zipping up his backpack, wanting to escape before this escalated any further.
Lucas and Max smirk before bursting into the theme song from The Never Ending Story, the tune they'd all heard over the walkie-talkies in the summer when the group was attempting to stop the Russians under Starcourt Mall and they needed Planck's Constant from the girl Dustin now called his girlfriend. He had serenaded the song to her, much to the delight of his friends.
"Rhymes that keep their secrets
Will unfold behind the clouds
And there upon a rainbow..." Max continues in a rather harmonious voice, trying not to laugh the entire time.
"I regret doing that in front of any of you," Dustin hisses, angrily, flashing the bird at his friends in deep annoyance.
"It's not like you had much of a choice at the time," Mike says, being sympathetic to Dustin's plight of humiliation, considering he himself had sung to El/Jane several times since they'd started dating and they weren't always his proudest moments, despite trying to be romantic.
"It's a nice song... and movie," Eleven says quietly, pleased that her boyfriend had shown her the film during the summer.
However, the teasing continues:
"In your hand
The birth of a new day..."
"And with that, I make my escape. Warning, this is the kind of thing that will end our friendship" the curly-haired teen says, getting on his bike and pedalling away as fast as he can. He mutters to himself as he leaves the cul-de-sac. "You show your secret talent once and you end up paying for it the rest of your life... I wish Mom hadn't made me go to that choir program."
...
The wind picks up a bit as Dustin begins walking his bike up the hill towards where Cerebro is stationed. The long grass whipped around slightly in the late summer air. The makeshift radio tower shone in the sunlight. It was by far the best thing he ever created and was so happy to be able to communicate with his girlfriend. Plus, the H.A.M. radio had also managed to help save the day over the summer.
Once he reaches the device, he drops his bike and begins to start tweaking and making modifications to it so he'll be able to get a stronger signal. Finally, he turns the dial to the correct station and picks up the mic and presses on the button.
"Suzie, do you copy?" he says. His mind flashes back to the beginning of the summer where he had tried desperately to prove to his friends that she was real and spent a very long night in the hills alone until he picked up on a top-secret Russian frequency; that led to a lot of problems culminating on the Fourth of July celebration. He shudders slightly, before pressing the talk button again to contact his girlfriend.
"Suzie-poo, don't make me sing to you," he teases.
"Dusty Bun?!" an excited girl squeals from the other end of the line. "Is that really you?"
"It's me Suzie-poo, I've missed you."
"I missed you too Dusty, it feels like an eternity since we last spoke."
"I know, I wish I could just stay out here all day and talk to you... hear the sound of your voice..."
"You are the sweetest," she coos into the microphone.
"No, you are," he smiles, sitting down in the long grass to have a nice conversation with a girl he missed a lot.
"So has anything interesting happened since we last spoke?" she asks.
"Not too much, some new kids moved into the town they were part of the Derry Evacuation Project. Something about their water supply being contaminated or something."
There's no response on the other end of the radio. Nothing but static. Immediately, Dustin is up and checking to see if something happened with the equipment, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong.
"Suzie?"
"D-Derry, Maine?"
"Yeah, have you heard of it?"
"A lot of people have heard of Derry Dusty, it's... a very evil place..." Her voice is so chilling that Dustin can practically feel the goosebumps on his arms. He can sense the dread as she seems to speak about this place. "My Grandpa used to tell me that it's where Satan himself established his roots and he feeds off the sins of anyone who lives there. I even heard that it is cursed to be the Devil's shadow because of how many people go missing there, especially kids."
The curly-haired boy scratches the back of his neck and merely chews on the words spoken by this usually happy and positive girl. This was not something that came from some comic book or fantasy novel; the way she was talking sounded as if this was some sort of dark secret that she hated even wanting to talk about. The worry and ominous tone in her voice also scared him and he desperately wants to change the subject.
"Sounds like a real ghost story, why didn't you tell it at camp?"
"Because it's not a story Dusty... all those stories are real. Those kids are lucky to have been evacuated from there. I hope they like Hawkins and decide to stay there."
Dustin swallows again, not really sure how to respond. "C-Copy that... though I wish you would come to Hawkins and stay here."
"I do too," she says, the perkiness in her voice had returned. "I am working on convincing my parents to come on a road trip to visit. I don't want to wait until next summer to see you."
"Me neither, if I had the money, I'd hop on a bus and come to Utah. I'd go to the ends of the Earth for you Suzie."
"You're such a sweetie..." she squeals in delight, the darkness is seemingly forgotten from their earlier conversation.
The young teens in love talk for a long time until Suzie says she must go help her mother make dinner.
"I'll talk to you next week," he says.
"You promise?"
"Triple promise. And don't read the latest issue of Superman before Thursday, I don't get my allowance until then."
"I triple promise, over and out Dusty-Bun."
"Over and out Suzie-Poo."
Dustin puts the mic down and continues looking up at the sky, enjoying the late afternoon sun as it slowly begins to set near the trees. He has an enormous smile on his face and it's not going to leave any time soon. His mind fills with his memories from camp. The first time he and Suzie kissed behind her cabin and holding hands by the campfire while one of the counsellors strummed a guitar. He does want to see her again, not for it to be a summer fling.
Then, his mind clouds with the thoughts of what she'd told him about Derry. It sounded like the scariest place to live, and here he thought the Upside Down was bad. He tries to shake the darkness from his mind, but it stays there, no matter how hard he tries to think about other things.
At that moment, Cerebo suddenly springs to life again.
"Houston, we have a problem..."
This nearly scares Dustin out of his skin as he flips up and checks the control head. For some reason, it's on a different channel, and it has started picking up another transmission.
His heart pounds against his chest, not wanting to repeat what happened with the Russians.
Suddenly, the voice returns with a crackle of static.
"That's one small step of man..."
Had he picked up some kind of frequency used by NASA? Could Cerebo be that powerful? If it is, then he's a genius. He could actually talk to astronauts and...
"One giant leap for Georgie."
He feels some disappointment, but also some relief. The voice on the other end is way too young to be a NASA employee and was probably some truck driver's kid having fun with the H.A.M. radio. He goes to turn it off when he hears...
"Boldly go where no man has gone before... Captain, man the lifeboats!"
Amused, still curious, and glad that this unknown voice was in English, Dustin decides that it's safe to investigate further and picks up the mic.
"Hello?" Dustin says cautiously.
"Hello?"
"Who is this? I think you're on the wrong channel."
"Hi there, I'm Georgie, what's your name?"
No way in hell. Dustin thinks to himself. Is this the same Georgie that he'd met the other night near Mike's house? The kid from Derry? Speak of the devil it seemed.
"Georgie? How did you get on this radio frequency?"
"What does that word mean?"
"What I mean is how did you get a H.A.M. radio? This is highly technical equipment and the frequency must be really strong, considering it can reach all the way to Utah..." He begins to go on about highly technical language until he realizes that he's talking to a six-year-old who still believes that monsters live in his closet.
"There's this big radio in the basement of our new house. My daddy told me not to touch it, but I pressed one button and all these lights came on..."
"Did you touch any of the dials?"
"What are those?"
"The big circles, I think you got onto my channel."
"This is cool, I'm like a man in space or a captain on a boat!"
"Yeah, it is pretty cool, but I think you should hang up buddy, just so you don't get into trouble."
"Okay, bye!"
"Bye," the teen says before the line goes to static again.
Who else in this town has an H.A.M. radio? He thinks to himself. There aren't a lot of truckers around here, and who would want to have one in their basement, they can't get good signals down there...
He ponders this as the static continues to get louder and louder, and there are a few beeps heard. Dustin attempts to adjust the frequency a bit more. It's then he hears some weird carnival music begin to play. Almost like the one, he'd heard on the Russian tape, but it seems to be different... Softer and there's no Russian being spoken. Something then laughs aloud, almost like a clown doing a routine. There is more static before 5 words are heard that are unfortunately crystal clear to him.
"We all float down here..."
A/N: Hey everyone, thank you for all of the awesome reviews and support from everyone. So I've decided to clarify the timeline since Guest was a bit confused about what I featured.
So basically, the stuff with the Russians on the Fourth of July did happen, only the MindFlayer wasn't a part of it, Billy wasn't possessed, Hopper didn't go missing etc... yet. Starcourt did catch fire during the U.S. army attempted to raid the facility, but it was easily repaired which is why Steve and Robin still work at Scoops Ahoy. I've made it so the Russians opening the gate actually re-released the MindFlayer, which is now unknowingly lurking around and searching for allies to help it. We will see a lot more of this creature and what the presence of the kids in Derry could mean as the story continues. It also appears that Suzie knows a little bit about Derry too and the darkness that lurks there.