WARNING: Please do not read unless you've read Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End completely. Link:
https://strangerthings.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003462393
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Florence was staring through the window of the police department building. It had finally happened. A chemical leak, rotten pumpkins, a mall fire and a series of serial kills later, Hawkins was being destroyed. She had always been suspicious… In fact, one day, she had very nearly thought she had cracked what was behind all these mysterious deaths and incidents in the last few years. But because of a few It doesn’t make sense-es, Flo had given up. Now she watched as grotesque monsters whose mouths opened up like flowers emerged from the “lava”. Behind her, Officer Callahan and Chief Powell were calling for backup. How much more backup…, she thought. The entire United States military can come… but nothing will ever save this town…
In a small base in the middle of Nevada, Lt. Col. Jack Sullivan sat on a stool in front of a chained up Dr. Sam Owens.
“Well, Doc, we’re off. We don’t need you to tell us her location anymore… with all that’s going on in that pathetic little hamlet of yours and Martin’s, we can tell where she is. So um… your use has expired.”
Owens just exhaled; he knew this was inevitable.
“You know, Sam, I would let you go. But see, the thing is… you’ve already broken my trust… more than a few times. And on top of that, you’re an enemy of the Pentagon.”
“Jack… please.”
“No, Sam. It’s done. Just be thankful that you won’t have to go through the same pain as your agent did,” Sullivan replied.
“What do you mean? What… What agent? You didn’t do anything to Ellen, right?”
“We didn’t need to. Wallace is dead.”
“NO! What did he do to you, you bastard?!”
“Nothing. Just a minor misdemeanor. His use had expired too. So… you’re gonna just be a tiny misdemeanor too, aren’t you? A misdemeanor nobody will care about. You couldn’t serve our country. You let a foreign government, an enemy government invade Hawkins. You have no one except for your wife and your son. Even that girl you risked everything for… she just left you. You have no worth left, Doc.”
Owens looked at Sullivan. “Maybe I do. Maybe… maybe I do… through you.”
“Ha! Through me?”
“Look. You want answers, right?”
“Right. But not that much. Maybe if I want I’ll just track down Stinson and pry everything out of her.”
“But that would be too late. Listen to me. You don’t know everything. Trust me. Remember in ‘84? The hundreds of scientists and guards found dead? Well… the Department of Energy and the CIA, we… we covered it up as a poisonous gas leak. But interdimensional creatures killed them. Creatures from the same dimension as One. And Barbara Holland? 1983, at the Harrington house? Remember how you spent months investigating her death, and you knew. You knew that it wasn’t a chemical leak like that conspiracy theorist Bauman said. Well, you were right. Because he knew… he knew that he couldn’t just bring it all out. People wouldn’t believe it.” Owens paused. “Give me some time. I’ll tell you everything. And then, maybe, you could, instead of making things worse, actually help Hawkins. What do you say, Jack?”
“Okay… so… well we still have a lot of planning to do,” admitted Nancy.
“Well I’ve got it covered,” firmly said Dustin.
Everyone looked at him. “I thought you were going with the chief?” asked Steve.
“Nah, I’d rather be with you,” Dustin said with a smile. “Nance, you, Mrs. Byers, Mr. Bauman, Robin and Steve get to the Big Buy. Get as many firy things as possible. Lucas, Erica, Jonathan and I will get Will a Walkman and also, we do need to check on our parents. Umm… So, I guess we’ll just go to the Wheelers’, you guys have a Walkman, right? And then, while we’re waiting for El to get back and you’re burning as many monsters as possible, we fill the Wheeler and Sinclair parents, Susan and my mom in on what’s happened all these years.”
Everyone thought about the plan for a minute, and then, Steve broke the silence. “Wait… wait, wait, wait, wait… So I’m not the babysitter… again! YES!”
“For now, Steve. For now,” said Dustin, attempting to calm him.
“Well, I, no offense, think that your half-baked plan will get us killed in two minutes at the most.” Murray intervened.
“Oh come on now, you can handle a few monsters.”
“A few? A FEW, HUH?! As far as we know, the entire dimension is going to be pouring out. Basically, if all the tigers and lions of the world were in the same place, except if they were bullet-resistant and their faces could open up to reveal millions of sharp teeth!”
“Okay, fine, that’s fair. Well… so… then you, Robin, Mrs. Byers, Steve and Nance just stay with Max, and we’ll handle the parents and The Clash. Anything else?”
No one said anything. “Good. Let’s go. Oh… shoot. We need a driver… Steve…?”
“No. No no no no no no no. NOOOO. NO! Mrs. Byers? Mr. Bauman?!” shouted Steve.
“Sorry, buddy. But it’ll give you even more parenting skills!” Robin said, trying to ease Steve’s agony, but just making the situation worse.
“You know what, I can drive. Been a long time since I’ve seen Karen,” offered Joyce.
“And I’ll tag along too cuz, heh, I hate children, but at least there’ll be an adult to help me control them, unlike if I stay with these imbecile teenagers; no offense, Nancy,” said Murray.
About fifteen minutes later, Joyce drove Steve’s car into Forest Hills Trailer Park. But it was nothing like they remembered. It was covered in vines, and there was smoke everywhere. It basically looked like the Upside Down. Dead bodies were scattered everywhere. Dustin and Lucas recognized the couple from whom they had stolen a trailer. Blood flowed from their mouths, and the meat on their legs and arms had been picked clean off.
“Jesus, what happened here?” asked Lucas.
“Demogorgons. And Demodogs,” said Will.
“Oh no… I hope Susan’s safe…”
“Okay, you guys stay here, I’ll get Susan. Murray, come,” ordered Joyce.
“Careful mom, there might still be monsters in the trailers,” cautioned Jonathan.
Joyce and Murray walked through the trailer park until they reached the Mayfield trailer. They couldn’t help but stand a few seconds and look at the humongous gate which originated from the Munson trailer just in front of them.
Murray was taken aback. “So this is what a gate looks like?”
“Yeah… I mean, the Russian gate was like one fortieth of this. This gate runs through Hawkins to meet the other three gates. But what really worries me is that there are no people… I guess everyone’s just worried about the monsters and went to the town center to help fight them off, or… Anyways…”
Joyce and Murray strolled into the Mayfield trailer.
“Alright, let’s split up,” suggested Joyce.
Within just thirty seconds of searching, Murray called out hoarsely, “Joyce…”
Joyce rushed to Max’s bedroom, where Murray was standing.
She gasped. “Oh god. Oh no…”
Lying on Max’s bed was Susan Hargrove’s corpse. She had been mauled by some creature. Insects were crawling on her corpse and flying around. She had a terrified and confused look on her face. In her hand was a letter; a letter her daughter wrote to her. The envelope laid on the floor beside the bed.
Meanwhile, in Steve’s car, Dustin was questioning Will and Jonathan about their detour to the Bingham house.
“What was her room like?”
“Um… like a bedroom…?” answered Will.
“I know that. I mean, anything out of the ordinary?”
“No…?”
“What about her brothers and sisters?”
“Yeah, they were a bit extraordinary. There was one with a plunger bow and arrow, a director, an actress, two were cooks, and one of them hooked up with Jonathan’s friend Argyle.”
“Wow, I didn’t know she had that many.”
“Will, look, mom’s coming,” said Jonathan. “Where’s Susan?”
Joyce shook her head, and Will, Jonathan and Dustin sank back in their seats, disheartened.
“And there’s more,” Murray continued. “Her TV still works. According to the news, those creatures attacked the prison. Broke the walls and everything. And oh yeah, Larry Kline’s out. Hopefully he’s dead already, but I won’t be surprised if he takes refuge with the Soviets again. Besides, after our adventure, the KGB is sure to be looking for us. And it’s only a matter of time until they find us, especially if Kline helps them, so I don’t think that the Wheeler house is the best place to go right now. In fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t let your parents in on everything just yet, so that they’re not endangered.”
It took a while for everything to sink in.
“If the commies come back to Hawkins, they’re not only gonna be looking for you, Mrs. Byers and Chief Hopper. I’m sure they’ll be looking for Steve, Robin, Erica and me too,” said Dustin.
“Precisely. Which is why we need to get you all someplace safe. And I have a place in mind.”
After a couple more minutes driving through a forested area with bumpy roads, the group arrived at a place all too familiar to Joyce and Will. It was a place from where all their problems were rooted. A place which, before it had been shut down two years prior, was home to eighteen test subjects. One of whom went on to become a superhero, one a monster, and one a shadowy vengeful antihero. The rest, dead.
They had come to Hawkins National Laboratory. Just like the last time she had come here, Joyce remembered Bob.
If he hadn’t stopped. If he had just kept going. But no; it wasn’t his fault. It was my fault. I stood there, just… stared, and didn’t do anything. I didn’t tell him to keep running, and I didn’t help him. It’s my fault…
“Mom?” Joyce came back to her senses with Jonathan’s voice.
“Yeah, sorry. Just…”
“... remembering?”
“Yeah…”
“Oh my gosh, I forgot we brought the supercoms!” remembered Dustin. He took his one out of his pocket and pulled the antenna. “Robin, do you copy? Over.”
“Yeah, I copy. Where are you? Did you get Susan? Over.” Dustin paused for a few seconds. “No… I’ll explain it later. We’re at the lab. Over.”
“The lab? What for? Over.”
“Murray says we can’t risk telling our parents everything. Because Russians. And we need to be someplace safe and abandoned and stuff. Although I don’t know how safe this graveyard is. Over.”
“Russians?! Again?! Over.”
“Yeah, because of Kline I guess. I think. I don’t really know. Anyways, Max is okay, right? Over.”
“Yeah. Over.”
“Okay, talk to you later. Over and out.” Dustin stuffed the walkie-talkie back into his pocket. “What is the plan anyways? We just stay here?”
“Yeah. We wait, we wait for Jim here. Once Jim and El and everyone else comes back, we meet them at the hospital again so that she can close the gate,” explained Murray.
“So we’re just supposed to sit here, while these monsters rampage our town?” Dustin pondered for a while. Then, after two whole minutes, he spoke. “I got it.”
“Got what?” asked Will.
“The same way Mr. Bauman and the chief killed the Russian Demogorgon and the Demodogs in Kamchatka. We get flamethrowers and stuff, we burn a couple Demodogs, and then hopefully, all the other monsters will be in equal pain because of the hive mind. And everyone in the town kills all the other monsters with swords and pitchforks or whatever while they’re all vulnerable.”
“And you just expect that everyone will believe you?” asked Jonathan.
“We get Powell and Callahan to have the entire town at Town Hall. We get onstage, we explain as much as we can in as little time as we can. The townspeople have nothing better to do. They’re seeing the things we’ve been seeing all these years now. There’s no reason for them to disbelieve anything we say now. They’ll believe us if we tell them that La-Z-Boys have emotions.”
“But… just because they’re lazy doesn’t mean they’re not human,” Jonathan said.
“Jonathan… you realize I’m talking about furniture?”
“What?”
Hopper parked Karen’s car in front of the Hawkins PD. He stepped out of it, exhaling, and walked to the door. As soon as he walked in, he saw Callahan and Powell discussing something.
“CHIEF?!” The two were flabbergasted, as they should have been.
“Hi Phil. Calvin.”
“How—what—where—how…” Officer Callahan stuttered, utterly confused, while Powell just sat there in shock.
“I’ll explain it all later, don’t worry. Say, you know where Flo is?”
“Th–the–there…” Callahan said, pointing to the right.
“Thanks, Phil.” Hopper walked to where Flo was sitting. He smiled upon seeing the lady who was like a mother to him.
“Hop… you came back…” Flo said. She stood up and walked towards him. Then she hugged him and started crying.
“You came back… you big oaf! It’s a miracle… I knew it… I knew you weren’t gone… Jim Hopper doesn’t disappear…”
“I missed you too, Flo.”
“Well, let me guess. I’ve got to save my questions for later because you’re in the middle of a mission and you need your truck back.”
“Ya know Flo, sometimes I wonder why you’re not a private investigator.”
Ten minutes later, Hopper, El, Mike and Lucas were en route to Chicago.
“So, El, where does Kali live?” asked Lucas.
“A warehouse. I’ll show you the directions once we get into Chicago.”
“And you’re sure her gang of hoodlums won’t kill us?” asked Mike.
“No. She has them under control.”
“Under control? Does she use her powers on them or something?”
“When necessary.”
“So she’ll use them on us!”
“No. You’re my friends, and she won’t hurt you.”
“So she hurts her gang?”
“Mike, stop. No. She does not hurt anyone without reason.”
“Doesn’t sound like she even has a sense of reason to me.”
“Were you the one who met her? Were you one of us who Papa tortured in that lab for so many years? No. She went through that, just like me. And I cannot blame her. Papa made his men hurt her. Like he had made them hurt Henry. And I attacked Papa. She just wants revenge. Tell me, did you not want revenge for Bob?”
Mike went silent. Eleven anxiously awaited her reunion with her sister. A sister who, unbeknownst to her, had changed.
“You’re making the right decision, Jack,” reassured Dr. Owens, as he, Lt. Col. Sullivan and four of Sullivan’s men descended from a helicopter onto a helipad in Hawkins, while a cavalcade of military vehicles drove through Indiana.
“Just you remember, Sam, should anything seem fishy in the slightest, I won’t hesitate to kill you, then track down the lab rat and kill her like her Papa before her.”
A couple miles away, hundreds of particles swirled into the Wheeler house.
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Well I feel like that was even worse than the first chapter. And sorry, there was a slight change of plans which resulted in Karen, Ted, Claudia, Sue and Charles not being included in chapter 2 but they will appear eventually! Hope you still liked it but any suggestions and/or corrections are always welcome and encouraged :)
