"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
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Chapter Seventy-Three: Upside Down and Right-Side Up
(The Massacre At Hawkins Lab, Pt. 4)
***
Alistair gripped Dustin's shoulders in a death-grip, gritting his teeth every time the bike went over a bump. He hadn't sat behind one of his friends on a bike in three years, since he'd received his own bike, and the time clearly showed. But he still kept a merciless grip on Dustin's shoulders as their little group biked to the trailer park as quickly as they could, to rescue the seven trapped on the other side.
As their bikes left the suburbs and raced down a street that wasn't the usual path between the Wheeler house and the trailer park in an obvious way to cut time and get there as fast as possible, they passed a park that, when Alistair looked, saw was the same park that had the rusting playground next to the Creel house... and on the other side was the Creel house.
Alistair looked at it, suspicions confirmed. His gut twisted at seeing the decrepit house, knowing Vecna lurked in its mirror version in the Upside Down, in the attic where he'd tormented and killed Chrissy, Fred and Patrick, where he'd tortured him and Max and nearly killed them.
More than anything, Alistair wished they could storm the Upside Down and kill Vecna and break this curse, but he knew that there was still so much they didn't know about Vecna—that if they didn't have a proper plan, Vecna might not bother with a curse to kill them all.
They had to focus on getting Rowan, Steve, Eddie, Nancy, Robin, Valerie and Leo out of the Upside Down first, and hope Dustin was correct in there being a gate at every murder site.
Finally, after biking for miles, they arrived at the trailer park. They made a beeline for the Munson trailer, Hugin flying after them like he had been since they'd biked away from the Wheeler house, too close to them that it was risking someone seeing his missing eye and exposed rib cage, but neither Alistair or Hugin cared—all Alistair cared about was getting his sister and everyone else out of the Upside Down.
When they finally arrived, Max, Lucas, Erica and Dustin stopped their bikes before hopping off, Alistair and Cami following Dustin's and Max's lead. None of them bothered to properly park the bikes, letting them fall to the ground in a tangle of metal and wheels as they raced up the stairs, Hugin alighting on Alistair's shoulder, claws digging in. To Alistair's relief, Wayne's truck was nowhere in sight—probably working at the plant like he did almost every night.
Or maybe the government had gotten involved and had him move if they suspected a gate would form in the trailer. Both seemed likely.
Whatever the reason, Alistair was relieved Wayne was gone and wasn't coming back anytime soon—they didn't have the time to explain to him about the gate to another dimension in his trailer, the seven people trapped on the other side including Eddie and Rowan, or about Hugin.
