Stare.

🔆Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab

TW (trigger warning) This chapter contains animal abuse and child death.

I pulled myself out of the gate. The Upside Down was nothing I had imagined it to be. I pushed my wet hair out of my face and stood up looking around the wasteland. The lake that we were in, was now drained of water and vines laid on the ground. Lighting struck around me and a bright red colour appeared in the sky.

Weird bats flew through the air around me. Searching for any weapon around me, Eddie's boat caught my eye and the paddles that lay next to it. 

I ran towards it, grabbing one of the paddles. When I turned back around, I saw Nancy, Eddie and Robin standing near the gate and threw the other paddle to Nancy. 

"Over there!" I heard Robin say, she pointed to a spot in the distance. I turned around to find where she had been pointing to and realised that Steve was on the ground being strangled by the weird bats that had been flying in the air around me. 

I quickly sprinted over to him. Hitting one of the bats with the paddle. "Hey there." I said to Steve, before hitting another bat that was clawing at his chest. Robin ran to the bat that was still strangling Steve and stomped on its tentacles that were wrapped around his neck.

I started hitting it with the handle end of the paddle. One of the bats had attached itself to my back, I moved away from Steve trying to get it off of my back. Robin grabbed it off of my back and threw it onto the ground.

I walked towards it and hit it with the handle of the paddle a few times, before I turned around to Steve. He was standing back up, throwing one of the bats into the ground until he ripped one of its wings off and threw it behind him. He started panting and spit out a bunch of blood from his mouth. 

I ran over to him. "Steve, oh my god." "Jesus H. Christ!" Eddie yelled. "Are you okay?" I asked him. Steve turned around to face me, looking down at his chest. I looked down at his chest as well and saw all the wounds and blood that he had. 

"Well, they took about a pound of flesh. But other than that, yeah, never better." He said looking back at me. I sighed and put my arms around his neck and pulled him in. "Ow, ow." I let go and moved back. "Sorry." I whispered looking at him. "It's okay, come here." He said to me, holding out his arms to me. 

I grabbed onto him, putting my head on his chest. I moved back to look at his face. He stared down at me. Our faces began moving closer to each other. "Uh, do you guys think these bats have, like, rabies?" I heard Robin say. 

I stopped myself getting closer to Steve and looked away, sighing. "What?" I asked her. I let go of Steve and he did the same. We stayed next to each other. "It's just that rabies are, like, my number one greatest fear." She said to me standing up. "And I think we should probably get you to a doctor really soon because once symptoms set in, it's too late. You're already, like, dead." I looked over at Steve, who shared the same look as me. 

In the distance more bats were in the sky above us and they were also flying towards us. Eddie, Robin and Nancy all ran over to Steve and I, looking up at the bats. The bats then landed in front of us, at the gate. 

"All right. There's not that many." Steve whispered. The bats turned to us and let out a screech. "We can take 'em." Steve continued. "Right?" Loud screaming came from above us. We all looked up at the sky again, and now even more bats were flying straight towards us. 

"You were staying?" Robin said to him. I turned my head around to the woods that were behind us, and Nancy did the same.  "The woods." She said. "Come on." I followed after her and the others did too, running into the woods. As we ran, I carefully manoeuvred over the thick vines that lay on the ground surrounding us. The woods looked even worse and more decaying than the lake.