WILDFIRE ↝ E. MUNSON [1]

[24]

"Nancy!" Steve and Cameron continued to try and bring the girl back from the trance Vecna held her under while the rest of their friends watched from the gate above, momentarily paralyzed at the scene in front of them.

Steve held tight to Nancy's shoulders, still shaking her in an attempt to get her attention while Cam watched Nancy with a panicked yet determined expression, waving a hand in front of her face. However, Nancy stood still, staring off into the space in front of them, though she couldn't see the two friends staring back at her.

"Shit," Dustin muttered, as Lily's mind flashed to Max sitting in the cemetery, the same whited out look in her eyes as the expression Nancy currently wore, and the tactics they had used to save her that afternoon.

"Music," Lily spoke up, backing away from the gate as she rushed towards Eddie's room, the others not far behind her. "What's her favorite song? And Munson, where's your Walkman?"

"Fuck if I know," Eddie muttered in a frustrated tone as he began to sift through the items cluttered across the top of his dresser in search of the device. "I haven't been here in a week."

"I've got mine," Max assured them, hurriedly pulling open any drawers she could find in search of any loose cassette tapes floating around Eddie's room. "Something tells me she's not much of a Kate Bush fan, though, and that's all I've got on me."

Lily crouched down at the foot of Eddie's now-mattress-less bed, peering below for the bin of tapes he usually kept underneath the bed and pulling it out. She overturned the bin, dumping its contents on the box spring as she took a seat, rummaging through the pile for anything that might help save Nancy. However, all she could manage to find was old Corroded Coffin recordings and a large assortment of heavy metal, and while she didn't know Nancy quite as well as the others did, it didn't seem to suit her style.

"Eddie, do you have anything else?" Lily asked. "Anything of Wayne's or Cam's that might help her?"

"There might be a few out by Wayne's stereo, but most of it's in here." Eddie said, rushing out to the living room to where their uncle kept his tapes, though as Wayne had the biggest impact on Eddie and Cameron's upbringing, Lily wasn't too confident in his taste being much different than theirs.

"Not much in here either!" Madison called from where she and Debbie were searching through Cam's things.

"God, what is all this?" Dustin asked as he and Lucas searched the counter where Eddie kept his amps, the boys also seeming to come up short with anything useful. "I've never heard of any of these people."

"Steve says you need to hurry!" Erica called, running into Eddie's room where the rest of them were still ransacking any drawers they could find.

"Yeah, no shit!" Dustin yelled back.

"We're trying, we can't find anything!" Max exclaimed.

"Seriously, what is all this shit?" Robin asked, picking up a handful of the tapes Lily had strewn across the bed.

"What are you even looking for?" Eddie asked, emerging back into the room with a tray full of new tapes and dropping them next to Lily, where she instantly began to search through them.

While Wayne's taste wasn't exactly like his niece and nephew's, Lily sighed in frustration as she tossed them aside after a single glance at the artwork decorating the top of each tape, or the words hastily scrawled across the side. While the music worked perfectly for headbanging during the drives Eddie used to give Cam, Lily, and Max to school, or the oldies music that would play through the stereo when Wayne would get home from work in the morning and wake the kids up when Lily would stay the night with Cam at the trailer, it didn't seem like any of the tapes would do Nancy any good in escaping from Vecna.