"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 Eighty-Seven: From Bad To Worse
(The Piggyback, Pt. 7)
***
The Upside Down was ripping itself apart.
It was shaking around Alistair, the entire hell-dimension convulsing like a creature in its death-throes. The sudden, dimension-wide earthquake snapped Alistair out of the grief pushing him down and it did the same to his sister as she let go of Eddie to grab him and Dustin, to shield them with her body, before she somehow grabbed Eddie again, an iron grip on his shirt as she and Dustin pulled him close to them, to not let the Upside Down take his body as it had taken his life. Alistair held onto Rowan with a death-grip and braced himself through the quake, teeth grinding together so hard they might break. Dustin was doing the same, clinging onto Rowan with one hand while the other held onto Eddie just as tightly, Rowan holding onto Eddie as they braced through the quake as Alistair felt an invisible force hold him tightly, his sister's telekinesis, holding onto him and Dustin, as the Upside Down shuddered and convulsed like it was tearing apart at the seams, like it was going to fall apart at any second, and Alistair thought what if that was because they killed Vecna, what if the Upside Down was breaking down around him because he was dead, that it was all finally over.
But then Alistair saw the red explode from where the Munson trailer was.
Alistair's eyes widened, a horrified gasp caught in his throat as glowing red ripped through the Upside Down, carving a fiery line through it, longer and longer until it vanished beyond their sight, to connect somewhere else. And only when the end of that crawling, bloody line disappeared did Alistair realise with growing horror that was a gate. That gate was what Nancy had seen in her visions, growing beyond the confines of the Munson trailer both here and in the real world, larger than any gate should be, as large as Dustin had predicted Vecna might need to take over the world, ripping down the barrier keeping their worlds separate quickly and ruthlessly.
Which meant the other gates had to be doing the same. Which meant...
They lost. They hadn't won, like Alistair had believed—had hoped—they had. Vecna had. He'd won, and the world was destroyed instead of being saved. Hawkins—his hometown, the town he'd fought for, that he'd gave his blood and sweat and teen years and innocence for, that was his home—was being destroyed, torn in four ways by the gates.
They'd lost.
That meant Max... did Vecna find her after he killed Alistair? Did she... was she...?
No, she had to be okay. Alistair couldn't have lost Max on the same night as losing Eddie, he couldn't lose both his siblings in all but blood, there had to be another reason, Max had to be okay, she had to be okay!
But Alistair could barely think about his denial—no, not denial, Max had to be okay, she had to be—when somewhere in the Upside Down, the four gates connected.
