Stranger Things: Beyond the Silver Rainbow

[44] (Jonathan)

Once Jonathan fell into the front passenger seat of the Sheriff's truck, everybody huddled around the open door: Mom, Will, Mike, Steve, even Nancy on one foot, held upright in Steve's arms. As suffocating as it was to be so surrounded, Jonathan didn't want to leave. This couldn't be as bad as wherever he was about to go.

When Hopper closed the door, parting the small group only temporarily, Jonathan thought of a coffin lid, then a guillotine. Any last words? "It's bigger than we thought," he said. "Be careful." But not too careful. Actually I take it back. Don't think about it at all. Forget anything ever happened.

Nancy's eyes were sleepy, her smile weak but conspiratorial. "So we fight back."

Jonathan slumped. Why did he bother talking? He would be better off eating staples. "We can't fight back," he muttered.

"Wanna bet?" Steve challenged. Totally unconvincing, and he looked like he knew it.

Jonathan's mother leaned into the dark cab to kiss him on the head and stayed there.

"He won't leave my sight," Hopper said. He reached over Jonathan's knees and started rolling up the window.

Mom whispered a tiny love you and ducked out, and then they were moving. Will waved in the rearview mirror and dwindled away.

"You must have put that little girl through hell, almost dying in front of her," was the first thing Hopper said, a few minutes into the drive. His tone was emotionless but intense, hot and cold at the same time. "Ever thought about what it might be like to watch somebody dying in front of you? Somebody innocent?"

The dashboard clock ticked over. 3:04. A shock of pine branches bleached white in the headlights and swept off to the side.

"You say that like she's not innocent."

"In her mind she isn't. You don't know what she's been through."

"I do, actually. She told me some stuff."

"Oh, she did? And so, what, you're her friend now?"

"Something like that, yah."

"Well... good."

3:05

The truck turned onto the highway. Jonathan closed his eyes for a while.

Get up! Get up! What is wrong with you?

He startled awake and almost laughed but couldn't quite remember why. Elle was on his mind again, a bright spot in a navy swamp. "I don't think pink is the best color for hiding out in a blue environment," he said. "Just saying."

"She's still wearing that crappy old coat?" Hopper pinched his temples and dragged his hand down his face. "I've left her three black ones by now. Is she building a fort out of them?"

3:08

"Where are you taking me?"

"Like I told you, a facility."

"What for?"

"A checkup for you and a―whatever that is," Hopper thumbed over his shoulder at the source of the rustling noises in the back seat, "for them."

Them.

"You work for them now?"

"Yes and no." Hopper scratched his head and tapped the side of his nose. "Think of it this way: I'm a double agent with a curse. The curse is, everybody knows I'm a double agent."

"I didn't know."

"They know and your mother knows. I tell them what I have to. I tell her what I can." The Chief pushed in the console's cigarette lighter to start it warming up. "They've got me drugged and bugged but I'm used to the drugs and I found all the bugs."

How drugged? Jonathan played with the door handle, watched the trees slide by in the dark and wondered whether he would survive a jump-and-roll at this speed. Because just now you sounded like a lunatic. And at that, the only thing he wanted was to get out of Hawkins. "We need to move away. All of us. Elle, and my family, and Nancy's family. We'll find somewhere else to live. Anywhere would be better than here. I can save up and once I get into college―"

Hopper laughed, an eerie tee-hee-hee. "You are going nowhere. Hell, I'm pushing the boundary right now. Anyone you know tells you about plans to skip town, you find an excuse to advise against it and if that doesn't work, you talk to me."

Jonathan slid down the seat until the seatbelt cut into his neck. He didn't have the energy to get really angry, and so his protest was a formality: "You can't do that."

"I'm not doing it. If it was up to me there'd be a full evacuation. Hawkins, Cartersville too even. But that's not how it is." The dashboard lighter popped out an inch, ready. The Chief took his time pulling a cigarette from his breast pocket and lighting it.

Jonathan coughed involuntarily at the first sight of smoke. Hopper glanced from the road to his cigarette, reached toward the ashtray to put it out, then jolted back at the last second. He took a long hands-free drag and cracked his window open instead. "They don't know how far this thing spreads," he explained quietly, smoke patting out with his syllables. "Whether it's contagious, whether it follows people. What they do know is that the doorway's in our backyard, and that makes us a threat by association. You ever heard of a soft quarantine?"

"No."

"Think quarantine plus gag order. Means nobody knows they're quarantined. Prevents mass panic."

Jonathan perked up at that word, panic. Had they figured it out too? "Why are they so worried about mass panic?"

Smoke curled out of the Chief's nostrils, dragonlike. He shot Jonathan a quizzical side-eye. "Because mass panic is bad?"

"R-right." Jonathan studied his hands. They looked like they belonged to someone else. "Right."

"Here's how Soft-Q works. You try to get out, they'll sabotage you a little but not so much you'll notice. SAT scores lost in the mail, stuff like that. If bad luck doesn't work, they find you. Carbon monoxide leak in your dorm room maybe, or they take you into custody so you can help them test the boundaries of the human mind."

Is that what they're doing to you? Jonathan thought, but he said: "They can't keep track of so many people."

"They're keeping closer track of some than others. Top of the list is anyone who's been in direct contact and anyone who's got a bad habit of asking too many questions. That means me, that means Byers, that means Wheeler and a few more. Plus all public services."

"How much of this does my mom know?"

"All of it."

And half an hour ago she  was going on about honesty?

"But she doesn't know about the kid in pink, and you'll help me keep it that way."

So, what, Hopper was going to leave Eleven to rot on the other side? Just because? While lecturing Jonathan about not understanding what it was like to be in her shoes? "Oh yah? Why should I keep it that way? Because you said so? You keep all the secrets and you make all the rules? My mom still talks about her." If there's no body, she's not dead. That is a FACT, Jonathan. "You want me to start lying?"

"Yeah, I am asking you to start lying, because if you don't, your mother'll try to go in and get her. And then either some of us or all of us are..." Hopper checked his mirrors and changed lanes without using his turn signal. "I would tell you more if I could. I wish I could but it could get more than just me killed. The problem you have with me goes all the way up the ladder, understand? There are a lot of eyes on this town, eyes that make stupid pointless rules like you wouldn't believe, and none of those eyes exist, which means they can do whatever the hell they want. You need to hide from them whenever you can and so does everyone else, especially that girl. We clear?"

Jonathan balled his mom's jacket up between his neck and his shoulder. A moment of anger had left him barely able to hold his head up. "Yeah."

The window was cool on the side of his head. He remembered switching his pillows out at his bedroom windowsill earlier that night, and dreamt he was back in the upside down, but this time he was alone. He had eaten Eleven. She was trapped in his belly and there was no one left to talk to about it.