Chapter Text
Bob Newby wakes up, with a gasp, clutching at his chest, desperately relieved to feel his heart thudding frantically under his fingers.
The pace of it slows, steadies, as he takes in the familiar dark of his apartment. The digital numbers on the face of his alarm clock cast a dim red glow over his rumpled sheets, his nightstand with the crossword puzzle book he’s just finished and the Carl Sagan book he’s just started, his slippers on the floor beside the bed. The early-morning sunlight is just starting to creep in around the curtains, somehow cold even with how pink it is. Everything is exactly as it should be, exactly as he remembers it from when he woke up yesterday morning – or, no, the morning before?
Except that he doesn’t remember going to bed.
No, what he remembers is –
Bob throws the covers off, in one sharp jerk, frantically patting himself down. He can still feel those teeth, tearing –
But there’s not so much as a scratch on him. And here he is. Home. Safe. In his own bed.
“Nightmare,” Bob breathes to himself, slumping forward to rest his elbows against his knees, rubbing a hand across his face and up into his hair. The sweat gathered along his spine is starting to go cold, and a little sticky, and it’s in no way pleasant. But it’s definitely better than bleeding out on the floor of the Hawkins National Lab while otherworldly monsters eat his guts, so – small mercies?
He gets up and shuffles across the bedroom, heading for the shower.
…
The radio news announcer says it’s Halloween.
It takes entirely too long for the feeling of déjà vu to start to set in. And by then, it’s already too late.
…
Bob Newby wakes up, with a gasp, clutching at his chest, desperately relieved to feel his heart thudding frantically under his fingers.
This time, he doesn’t immediately write the memory of those tearing teeth off as a simple nightmare. He pushes himself out of bed, favouring phantom injuries as he turns on the radio.
It’s Halloween. Again.
Something is going on here. Something…strange.
But, if the events Bob remembers from the past couple of days somehow really were real…he apparently already knows a couple of experts on strange.
…
“Something strange is going on.”
Jim cocks an eyebrow, like he’s trying to figure out how the joke’s supposed to be funny. He does an impressive job of acting nonchalant, leaning back in his deskchair like he’s perfectly at his ease, but Bob can still hear the faint note of wariness in it when he says, too casually, “So I’ve heard. If this’s got to do with sabotaged produce or Russian spy children -”
“No, nothing like that,” Bob says, wondering a little at that last part. Is that how they’d explained away the girl Joyce had mentioned at the lab? “I just – have you talked to Joyce lately?”
The wariness gets a little stronger. “That really what you came tearing in here like your ass was on fire to ask?”
“Well…no and yes?” Bob glances back over his shoulder, at the door heading out to the hall back to the bullpen. He’s still not sure coming to Jim was the best idea, but it’s the best one he’s got right now. He’d gone back and forth with himself on whether to tell Joyce, and decided – not right away. It’d just worry her, and since there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot either she or Bob can do about it at this point, it’d worry her for nothing. And technically, none of it’s actually happened yet. Hopefully, if Bob and Jim can figure out what’s going on before the - poop hits the fan again, she’ll never have to know all the gory details.
“No and yes? Which one is it?” Jim’s starting to push himself up from the desk before Bob has a chance to answer. “Is she okay? The kids?”
“No, no, everybody’s fine, for now, but -” Bob looks up to meet Jim’s eye. “Look, I know about the lab. About what happened last year.”
Jim shrugs, like it’s nothing, but his eyes have gotten sharp. Bob guesses he caught the for now. “Yeah. I figured Joyce woulda told you by now. It’s not exactly a secret around here. I mean, not every day the staties misidentify a body and a kid comes back from the officially dead -”
“No, I mean – what really happened last year.”
There’s a moment of pure silence. Jim’s expression doesn’t change, but it goes kind of…frozen.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, finally, way too casually to actually be casual.
“The monster,” Bob presses. “The other world.”
Any trace of good humour or amusement, real or faked, drains out of Jim’s face and voice so fast that it’s a little startling. Bob guesses he’s gotten a little too used to how Jim is around Joyce, all wrongfooted and stumblingly shy, full of bluster but so deliberately, carefully gentle. He’d forgotten Jim can be really intimidating when he wants to. “Look, I don’t know what you think you know, what she’s told you – which she should not have -”
“Joyce hasn’t said anything,” Bob interrupts. The least he can do here is defend her honour. “Nobody said anything.” He can’t help a chuckle. “At least, nobody’s said anything yet. Joyce told me around the same time as a pack of demon dogs came pouring out of a hole in reality and started eating people.”
Jim’s frown shifts, almost imperceptibly, from angry to confused to determined. “We got demon dogs now.” It sounds more resigned than surprised. Bob can practically see the wheels starting to turn in his head, how to keep everyone safe, what to do about this new threat –
“Not – not yet.”
Jim turns that frown on him again. “Explain.”
Bob tries to.
…
The facts, as Bob now understands them, are these:
- Monsters are real.
- They come from a world adjacent to his own, a world that’s like a dark mirror of his own, a world that’s always only a breath away but impossible to reach.
- Usually impossible to reach. Because last November, a kid with psychic powers who’d been locked up in the Department of Energy lab on the edge of town and experimented on like a lab rat her whole life suddenly snapped, tore open a hole into that other world, and then escaped.
- When Will Byers went missing, it was because a monster took him into that other world.
- The government covered it up.
- The hole into the world of monsters is still open.
“Yeah. I know. I was there,” Jim says.
“Obviously,” Bob sighs. “I’m not just gonna ask you to believe I’m reliving Halloween without some kind of proof. And I’d like to make sure I got it all straight. Joyce was – upset, when she explained it to me. That explanation didn’t exactly happen under the best of circumstances. And it’s a pretty complicated story.”
Jim gives him a hard look. But all he says is, “Don’t think there’s anything she missed. It all make sense to you?”
“In…an Outer Limits kind of way,” Bob admits. There is one question that’s still nagging at him, though. “What happened to the girl?”
Jim looks down at his hands, picks at his thumbnail. “Died. We think. The kids said after she disintegrated that monster, she was nowhere.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. After everything she went through?”
Jim shrugs, but he looks out at the hall instead of meeting Bob’s eyes. “That’s life.”
“Maybe it is, but it’s still not right. Poor kid.”
Jim doesn’t say anything to that, but his stare softens, a little.
“So this…time thing,” he says, changing the subject. “You say you’ve been around a couple times now, and you still got no idea what this is that’s after Will? Or why everything keeps…looping?”
“I don’t know why it’s happening,” Bob repeats, for the fourth or fifth time. “I’m still trying to figure it out. Maybe – if this ‘gate’ needed so much energy to open, maybe it’s kind of like a black hole? It messes with electromagnetic fields, maybe it can cause time anomalies as well?” He’s grasping at straws, and they both know it, but at least it sounds sort of smart.
Jim just nods. “You mention any of this to anybody else?”
“Not – not yet.” It’s Bob’s turn to fidget, to avoid Jim’s gaze. “I didn’t want – Joyce has enough on her plate. I thought, maybe, if we’re forewarned -”
“Then we could stop it before she ever has to know,” Jim agrees, settling a hand on his belt, just by where his gun’s holstered.
“You know this all sounds completely insane, right?” he adds, like it’s an afterthought, glancing back up at Bob.
Bob forces a chuckle. “Says the man who was involved in a government cover-up and saved a kid from an alternate dimension full of monsters.”
Jim’s eyebrows go up, and he gives his head a little sideways bob, like he hadn’t thought of it that way but has to concede the point.
“Still don’t know that I buy it,” he says, at last. “But if some weird shit really is going on, then I’ll find out. And take care of it.”
“You really shouldn’t go into those tunnels alone,” Bob reminds him, and Jim gives him a nod that’s just shy of an eyeroll, before grabbing his hat and starting toward the door.
“Yeah, yeah. Hear you got a hot date tonight, Newby. And if you stand Joyce up, I’m gonna have to kill you myself.”
He says it with such a perfect deadpan that Bob catches himself wondering, a little, whether Jim’s actually serious.
…
“Hopper stopped by this morning,” Joyce says, breaking off the kiss Bob swept her into as soon as she opened the door. She’s smiling, but there’s a shade of worry in it. “He said you went by the station this morning to see him? What were you two talking about?”
“Oh,” Bob says. He hadn’t thought to come up with a cover story. Had sort of figured that keeping Joyce out of it meant, well, keeping Joyce out of it. “Jim was just giving me the shovel talk.”
Joyce lets out a surprised snort of laughter.
“Seems a little late for that,” she says, crossing the room to sit back on the couch and patting the cushion beside her, the worry bleeding out of her smile. “We’ve been dating for months. Did he tell you about how he knows how to get rid of a body so it can’t be traced back to him?”
“Among other things,” Bob says, settling down next to Joyce and putting an arm around her shoulders. She curls into him like a contented cat, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I had no idea he was so creative when it comes to violence.”
Joyce hums, a little, in the back of her throat.
“Just let me know if he gives you any real trouble. All right?” she asks, looking up at Bob with those big beautiful eyes all full of concern and sincerity and just the slightest hint of mischief. “I’ll rap his knuckles.”
Bob leans down to press a kiss to her lips. The thrill, the joy, of being able to just – do this, just kiss her, still hasn’t worn off. He doesn’t know if it ever will.
“It’s all right,” he says, as they break apart. “I know his secret. That he’s really just a big teddy bear.”
Joyce laughs, and leans up to kiss Bob again, and then neither of them mentions Jim Hopper again for a long, long while.
…
It isn’t until the next day, when he gets a frantic phone call from Joyce about Will having a particularly bad episode and not being able to get ahold of Jim anywhere, that Bob knows something’s gone terribly wrong.
Jim’s truck is parked, abandoned, lights on, in the pumpkin patch where Will had led them the last two times Bob had had to live through Halloween. Right about where the hole in the ground had let Bob and Joyce down into the tunnels to find Jim.
Except that this time, the ground looks almost undisturbed. There’s no way into the tunnels.
At least, not anymore.
…
Everything goes bad very quickly, after that.
It all ends with Joyce clutching a demonically-screeching Will close to her, huddled in the back corner of the makeshift hospital room in the lab, while the sounds of gunfire and shrieks and inhuman growls bleed from the hallway through the locked door. The locked and, Bob knows from unfortunate personal experience, incredibly flimsy door.
He’s just thankful for whatever hurricane-producing butterfly wing flap had kept Will’s friend from being here with them, this time. He shouldn’t have to see this.
Behind him, Will’s screams are bleeding into laughter. The words spill out of him, nonsensical and hysterical, rising and rising to a fever pitch. “He’s coming! He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming -”
Bob steps forward, between Joyce and the door, just as it explodes, one of those flower-faced dog-things flying at him. The last thing he sees is a flash of teeth –
…
Bob Newby wakes up, with a gasp, clutching at his chest, desperately relieved to feel his heart thudding frantically under his fingers.
…
This time, he tells Joyce right away.
She listens with wide eyes, growing wider with every word, with the occasional alarmed interjection or worried repetition of her son’s name when Will’s mentioned. Unlike Jim, she doesn’t scoff or give Bob that flat, disbelieving look. But she does look nearly sick with worry.
Unlike Jim, she believes him. Immediately. Unquestioningly.
She trusts him.
“And you – you think all of that’s going to happen?” Joyce says, at last, when Bob runs out of words, looking at him with a kind of painfully hopeless hope. Like she really wants him to tell her it’s all just an unfunny practical joke, but she knows better than to think he will. “Again?”
“It has the last three times,” Bob says.
“Three!?”
Joyce keeps Will home from school the next day, despite his protests that he doesn’t feel sick. It doesn’t seem to help. Partway through the morning, Will’s eyes glaze, and he bolts from the house. Joyce and Bob find him in the woods, frozen in place, unresponsive, staring in apparent horror at the sky.
Whatever it is that’s after him, it’s caught up with him. Again.
…
Joyce Byers’ anger is a beautiful thing to watch. She can’t be much more than five feet tall, but she manages, somehow, to seem like she looms over the doctor at the lab in his white coat, elevated on wings of righteous fury. Like an avenging angel sent to stand guard over her children.
But nobody listens. And then it’s too late.
…
This time, Bob doesn’t even make it to noon on November first. He hasn’t said a word to anybody, this time, and it’s surprisingly difficult to act like he doesn’t know what’s coming. It crosses his mind to wonder if this is how Joyce feels, when she can’t settle, can’t stop looking back over her shoulder. Like everyone else is crazy for going merrily on with their lives when something so huge and apocalyptically bad is looming over them all, just waiting to come crashing down.
He’s driving Will to school, and they’re partway through a conversation about nightmares and monsters and standing up to your fears. Bob’s gently trying to probe for more information about whatever it is that’s gotten inside Will’s head when Will goes quiet all of a sudden. He does that sometimes, gets quiet and still and thoughtful, and Bob doesn’t think anything of it when he glances over at the kid.
Until he sees that Will’s eyes have gone black from corner to corner.
The next thing he knows, Bob’s waking up in his own bed, and it’s Halloween again.
…
This time, on a wild idea, he tries just torching those rotten tunnels himself. Suffocation by horrible slimy tentacle-vines, Bob decides, when he wakes up in his bed on Halloween morning, is his least favourite way to die so far.
…
This time, he tries just…letting it all play out the way it did the first time, but not stopping when he reaches the lobby. Joyce, it turns out, takes that one extra second to realise what’s happening, when he slams the doors behind him. Takes that one extra second, when he tries to rush her toward the exit, to turn and start to run. Lags just that little bit behind him.
Bob never, ever, ever wants to have to hear her scream like that again. But at least this time, he gets to die holding her hand.
…
Bob Newby wakes up with a gasp, over and over again, clutching at his chest, desperately relieved to feel his heart thudding frantically under his fingers.
He tries everything he can think of. He tells Jim and Joyce everything. He doesn’t tell them anything. He tries taking Joyce and her boys out of town for a few days. Tries keeping them all away from the lab. Tries going there as soon as possible. Tries with knowledge, with traps, with weapons, with anything and everything he can think of that might make things different.
Everything changes. But nothing changes. Something takes Will Byers over, and people die.
Bob dies.
Over. And over. And over. Again.
…
It doesn’t take Bob many loops to figure out that he has to tell Jim and Joyce both about what’s going on. It’s the only way he ever survives long enough to even make it to the lab. And three heads are better than one.
And, Bob’s realising, he doesn’t want to have to do this without either of them.
It does take Bob a couple of loops to work out that telling Jim first only sends him running off alone to try to fix everything himself, and gets him – and, eventually, all of them – killed. If Bob tells Joyce first, she wants to ask Jim for help, but they can’t get ahold of him all day Halloween. By the time they finally get in touch, the thing’s already got Will, and all of them get killed.
The only way around it is for Bob to get in to the police station early Halloween morning, ask Jim to take him out to Joyce’s, and tell them both at once. Thankfully, they both believe him about the loops once he tells them things about last November that he’s not supposed to know. From there, they can start thinking seriously about what to try to save Will – and themselves.
It’s like an enormous, complicated, high-stakes brainteaser. If you’ve got a boy, a monster dog, and a hivemind on one side of the river, and you have to get them all across to the other side without anyone getting eaten, and you can only carry two in your boat at a time…
It doesn’t help that Jim and Joyce have such wildly different ideas about how to handle this whole situation. Jim’s bound and determined to sort the whole thing out on his own, no matter how many times Bob tells him that approach only ever gets him killed. It takes Bob a couple of loops to figure out that warning Jim about his own death won’t stop him, but that he does listen and grudgingly cooperate when Bob lets him know that losing him means Joyce and Will dying as well.
Focused as he is on how it all fits into the puzzle of how to keep them all alive, it takes Bob a while to realise what that means. But when the implication hits him, it hits him like a thunderbolt.
Joyce, unfortunately, isn’t much better about not throwing herself headlong into danger without taking the time to think things through. But unlike Jim, she doesn’t turn down help. Actually, she grasps onto their outstretched hands like a drowning woman clutching at a life preserver. Bob can’t exactly blame her. She’s already got a lot on her plate. This? This is more than anybody should ever have to deal with, alone or otherwise.
Joyce kisses Bob when he tells her as much, and Bob tries not to notice how Jim avoids looking in their direction. How he clears his throat and reminds them both that the clock’s ticking.
Jim thinks they should take what they know down to the folks at the lab. Joyce isn’t convinced that’ll do any good. The doctors, she argues, still think it’s all in Will’s head. And the lab is where the monsters appear. Where Bob dies.
The doctors there hadn’t known what was going on or what to do for Will in any of the other loops, so Bob’s inclined to agree with Joyce. He also isn’t keen on walking back into that death trap, again. But from what he’s pieced together, it sounds like all of the monsters are coming from somewhere within the lab. And that means, like it or not, they’re going to have to face it eventually.
“Tell you what. If it all goes wrong and I do,” Bob offers, when Joyce snaps at him that of course she’s not going to let him just walk back in there to die, “then we can try your way next time.”
That gets a wry twist of a grin out of Jim. He hastily turns a laugh into a cough, though, when Joyce turns a disbelieving glare in his direction.
…
It’s very strange to meet someone you’re getting to know reasonably well for what, to them, is obviously the first time. Bob’s thankfully been spared the awkwardness of repeatedly introducing himself to Dr. Sam Owens in other loops. In between the soldiers storming the tunnels and the decontamination showers and Will being possessed and the lab being invaded by monsters, there hasn’t really been a lot of time for niceties.
But this time, Bob and Joyce and Jim are throwing themselves on the lab’s mercy and hoping they can figure it out better with more knowledge and more time. Which means they’re not being wheeled in in the middle of an emergency, with Will screaming like he’s being burned alive the entire time. Which means – introductions.
“Mom, Pop…” Owens says, looking over Joyce and Jim and stopping at Bob, raising an eyebrow as he holds out a hand. It’s even more awkward than Bob had anticipated. “And I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“We have,” Bob says, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake. “You just don’t remember. Bob Newby.”
“Bob Newby, huh. And where did I meet you, that I don’t remember?”
“Here,” Bob says. “Just – not yet.”
That arched eyebrow goes higher, and the doctor’s eyes skip up to Jim in a silent question. Jim, thankfully, just nods.
“The guy’s got one hell of a story. You’re gonna wanna hear it.”
…
Dr. Sam Owens, as it turns out, does want to hear Bob’s story.
So do his colleagues. A lot of his colleagues.
When the electrodes come out, Bob starts to get the feeling they may be focusing on the wrong thing.
“I don’t think you understand,” he appeals to Owens, as a needle scratches a jagged black line over a long scroll of graph-printed paper. Bob thinks it’s meant to be a record of his brainwaves. He wonders if there’s anything out of the ordinary about them, if they look any different than they would have before he started looping. He’s gotta admit, it’s interesting. But it’d be a whole lot more interesting if the clock wasn’t ticking. “The time loop isn’t the problem. The problem is that you, and I, and everybody in this room are going to die if we don’t do something to stop this thing from getting Will Byers.”
“Relax, would you, champ? I’ve got people taking care of it right now. And if it goes wrong – won’t you just get to go around again?” Owens asks. His tone is jovial and light, but the question’s pointed. “Starting at – 7:33 on the morning of October 31st. Right?”
Bob sighs. “Right.”
…
He’s not sure how much time passes. The room he’s in has no windows. The white tile under the cold blue fluorescents gives away nothing about whether it’s day or night. Neither do the steady stream of men in white coats with smiles that don’t quite reach their eyes.
The yelling’s a surprise.
At first, Bob thinks it’s started. That the monsters are here. He jumps to his feet, upsetting the blood draw that one of the scrub-clad techs is trying to do, and heads for the door. The handle rattles uselessly under his hand, but he can hear the voice on the other side more clearly.
It’s Joyce. But that’s not fear.
That’s anger.
“- like some, some lab rat while my son is in danger! What right do you even have to hold him? What are you doing to him in there? Why can’t we see him!?”
Something warm floods through Bob at the sound of her words. He’s seen that fury before, in the first few loops, when Will was sick and nobody had any answers or seemed to be trying particularly hard to find them. Bob hadn’t, though, expected Joyce to use it in defense of him.
And he really hadn’t expected the other voice.
Through the heavy door, Jim’s words are just a low, deceptively quiet rumble. Bob has to strain to make out the words. “I’d sure like to know the answer to that, too.” He doesn’t sound all that much angrier than he usually does, which, to be fair, is still angrier than most people’s baseline. But Bob’s been around this loop enough times to recognise the note of warning in his voice. “Is there a reason we can’t see him?”
Bob has to give it to Sam Owens; the man seems genuinely unflappable. “Your – friend – seems to have a lot of information about last November. The kind of information that I think everybody involved signed a thick stack of non-disclosures telling them not to blab about? And if we’re going to test if he really knows things about the future, then keeping him away from outside influences -”
Joyce cuts him off with a disbelieving laugh. “You think – you think we’re faking this? Why would we fake this? What could we - possibly have to gain from faking this?” The grim humour drains almost instantly out of her voice, leaving only the fury. “You’ve had Bob more than long enough to figure out if he’s faking. Let me see him. Now.”
“Joyce,” Dr. Owens says, in a tone that’s probably meant to be placating but comes off more patronizing. Anything else he might have said, though, is cut off by a bark from Jim.
“You heard her. You got no reason to keep him, and way bigger fish to fry. Let us in there.” Dr. Owens must not respond fast enough, because Jim’s voice rises to something that’s too flat to be a shout, but is definitely threatening to become one. “Now.”
Bob takes a few hasty steps back from the door, just in time to avoid getting hit when it slams open. After the argument he just heard, it shouldn’t actually come as a surprise to see Jim framed in the open door, one hand on the handle, the other on the pistol holstered at his hip. For some reason, it comes as a surprise anyway. Just the same way it does when Jim huffs a loud breath out and relaxes, almost infinitesimally, when he lays eyes on Bob, alive and unharmed.
“Joyce?” he calls back over his shoulder, and a split second later, Joyce is pushing past Jim into the room, patting Bob down from shoulders to waist while looking him up and down with untempered worry.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt? Did they – did they hurt you, what did they -”
“Joyce. Joyce,” Bob says, catching her fluttering hands in both of his. Her eyes snap up to catch his, wide and almost frantic, and he gives her hands a squeeze. “It’s okay. Everybody’s okay.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here while that’s still the case,” Jim says, casting a glance back over his shoulder down the hall. He turns back, gives Bob a look up and down, and his moustache twitches in a way Bob’s pretty sure is trying not to become a smile. “Good look for you, Newby.”
“You think?” Bob looks down at the hospital gown they’d given him. There’s a hole, he notices, starting in the toe of one of his socks. “I don’t know. It’s a little drafty. I wouldn’t say no to a pair of pants.”
“What did they do with your clothes?” Joyce asks, and then, around his shoulder, locks eyes with the tech who’d been trying to draw a sample of Bob’s blood, still hovering uncertainly in the corner. “What did you do with his clothes?”
…
The good news is that, even though they’ve whisked Bob’s clothes away to run a battery of pointless tests, his pants at least are still intact.
The bad news is everything else.
Bob’s been at the lab overnight, and most of the next day. Will’s at the school right now. He might be being overtaken by that – thing right now.
Joyce is furious. And not just on Bob’s behalf. She’d apparently asked Jonathan to pick Will up right after school, when she and Jim had decided they had to come back for Bob. To keep an eye on Will, make sure nothing happened to him. But instead, Jonathan is here, with his friend Nancy, who seems almost even angrier than Joyce. It’s not an easy feat, but she’s managing it.
Bob hasn’t seen much of Nancy Wheeler, in or out of the loops. But the impression he’d formed of her was that she was a sweet, smart, hard-working, soft-spoken girl. Maybe a little shy. In the greater scheme of things, Nancy turning out to be a firebrand is one of the less objectively surprising things Bob’s discovered since his first Halloween with Joyce. Somehow, it’s still one of the things he’s most surprised by.
He wonders, briefly, if this is what she and Jonathan really wanted a portable tape recorder that could fit inside her purse for.
Nancy’s exchanging biting words with Dr. Owens about justice for innocent American citizens versus the potentially disastrous consequences of word getting out about what’s hidden in the basement of the lab when the alarms start going off. The argument ends as abruptly as if someone flipped a switch.
“No,” Bob says, looking around the hall they’re standing in. “That can’t be right, this is way too soon -”
A burst of distant gunfire and the unmistakable screech of a monster dog tells him that this is not, in fact, too soon. A handful of short seconds later, all the lights stutter, then go out.
“ ‘Dealing with it’,” Jim mutters to himself, before turning to the doctor. “Hey. Doc. Lemme guess, you sent men to burn out those tunnels we told you about?”
Owens shoots him a hunted look. “Oh, sorry, did I misinterpret your incredibly specific instructions to ‘stop this thing before it kills everybody’?”
Jim’s already shaking his head. “You just pissed it off. We gotta get out of here.”
Getting out of there, unfortunately, is easier said than done. Just like it always is. Luckily, they don’t come face-to-face with one of those monsters right away. Unluckily, they don’t even make it to the end of the hall before they come face-to-face with the aftermath of one.
Joyce turns the corner and stops abruptly, taking a stumbling half-step back into Bob, who catches her arm to keep her from falling. Jonathan takes one look at the corpses splattered across the floor – and partway up the walls – and presses a hand over his mouth, looking wide-eyed and a little green around the gills. Nancy, on the other hand, looks over the carnage and sets her jaw, starting to stride forward with her eyes fixed determinedly on the door at the end of the hall.
Jim stops her, though, sticking an arm out in front of her while still scanning the hall with a wary, piercing gaze. “Hold it. We don’t know where whatever did this went.”
Their whole group moves a little more cautiously, after that.
Jim raids a couple of the more intact corpses for firearms, making an annoyed noise in the back of his throat whenever he realises a clip is spent or a muzzle mangled. In the end, in addition to his own pistol, they come up with a handgun and a machine gun. Jonathan turns even greener when Jim asks him if he can shoot, and Joyce just shakes her head. Bob should really know by now how to use one of the wretched things, but he’s only ever learned in life-or-death situations – usually this life-or-death situation – which means his knowledge is spotty at best, moth-eaten with panic. The stupid things just make him nervous.
Before he has to take one, though, Nancy volunteers, taking the handgun and inspecting it with a level of confidence Bob’s definitely never felt with a weapon in his hands. She seems satisfied with what she sees, adjusting her grip and raising the gun to almost eye level, trained down the hall in front of them.
“Everything’ll be locked down,” Bob hears himself saying. He knows a little too well how the story goes from here. It’s not fair that it can still leave him numb and lightheaded with sinking terror. “The exits, the fence. Failsafes. Somebody’s got to override the system if any of you are going to get out. And I’m the only one who knows anything about computers.”
He catches the look the doctor’s giving him, and shrugs. “I told you. I’ve done this before.”
It’s not really a surprise when Jim’s the first to agree on what needs to be done with unquestioning flat acceptance, even while Joyce is sputtering protests, trying to come up with another option. It is a surprise when he refuses to let Bob go alone.
“Get out of here,” he instructs a steely-eyed Nancy, handing over his pistol to join her salvaged handgun. He claps Jonathan on the shoulder, catching Joyce’s dark gaze with his own. “You hit the doors, you hit the fence, you don’t wait once they’re open. Get the hell out. We’ll catch up.”
Nancy hesitates for only a moment before nodding. It seems like Nancy Wheeler is just full of surprises today.
“I’m going with you,” Joyce says, firmly, marching straight up to Jim, who groans and presses his eyes shut as he holds out a hand for her to stop.
“Like hell you are. You are getting out of here, you’re getting somewhere safe -”
“No. No! You are not both going marching into some – some death trap and leaving me -”
“Joyce, no,” Bob puts in, catching her by the elbow and staring her down when she whirls, her eyes flashing fire. “Listen to Jim, please. You’ve got to get out of here. I can’t do this if I’m worrying about whether you’re safe.”
Joyce’s fury softens a little, at the edges. But all she says is, “Well – then how do you think I feel?”
“Can you all keep it down?” Dr. Owens interrupts, looking nervously around them. A second later, Bob hears what’s got him on edge. The rattling, clicking sound of the monster-dogs on the hunt is echoing down the hall toward them, growing closer by the second. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not lead them straight to us.”
Jim and Joyce both go quiet, but the sharp looks they exchange say loud and clear that the conversation is not over.
And sure enough, they pick it back up again as soon as their little group is safely shut in the room with the wall of monitors displaying the security camera feeds. Or, at least, Jim does. Bob’s half-expecting more shouting, so he’s surprised when Jim comes over all gentle instead.
“You need to get out of here,” he says, low and unexpectedly soft, bending down a little to look Joyce in the eye and putting a hand on her shoulder that seems to dampen her brittle fury so suddenly and thoroughly it’s almost unbelievable. “Jonathan needs you. Will’s going to need you, if we all make it through this. You have to be there for them.”
It’s maybe the only argument that could’ve gotten through to Joyce, right now. Bob’s impressed.
“Then – you should come with us, instead,” Joyce says, almost begs, and if Bob doesn’t miss his guess, she’s on the brink of tears. “Both of you, come with us, I’m sure we can, can break down the doors, or – or something -”
“Joyce. This is a government facility. No way we’re going to be able to break out of it.” Jim shoots first Joyce, then Bob, a rueful smile. “I said we should come here in the first place. I’m not just gonna let your new beau wander off alone straight into a monster’s mouth.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Bob lies, adding his support to Jim’s efforts. He’s grateful, now, that he’d spared the details of his string of previous deaths when he’d been explaining the situation to them both yesterday morning. “We’ll go, we’ll get everything opened up, and then we’ll come and meet you. Easy peasy.”
Judging by the sharp look Dr. Owens shoots him, Bob figures the man remembers enough of what was said in the white-tiled room to know Bob’s lying through his teeth. That he doesn’t expect to make it out, this time around.
Still, there’s always the chance that this time might be different.
“You should probably go with Joyce and the kids,” Bob offers to Jim, anyway, but Jim just shakes his head.
“We all get the best chance this way. I’ll cover you, make sure you get to this computer to do this override of yours. Not much point without that.”
There’s really no more time for arguing. And Bob’s pretty sure, now, that there’s not much point in it either.
Joyce looks like she’s going to keep arguing anyway. But Jonathan says, “Mom,” and puts a hand on her shoulder, and Joyce reaches up to rest her own hand over it, briefly closing her eyes.
“Fine,” she says, at last, opening her eyes again to fix first Jim, then Bob, with a glare. “But I’d better see you both outside. In one piece.”
Jim gives her a twist of a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and Bob thinks, somehow, even without the details of Bob’s previous deaths, he’s worked it out. It’s not exactly a feat of logic, at this point, but still. “Got it.”
Joyce’s glare wavers, then crumbles. She leans forward to throw her arms around Jim, and stays that way for a long moment, leaning into him and letting him support her weight as he brings his own arms around to cradle her. He’s careful at first, like he might break her, and then tucks her in against him with all his strength. He squeezes his eyes shut, turning his face down towards Joyce, into his collar, as she presses her face against his chest.
Jim absolutely knows they’re not likely to come back from this, and probably Joyce does too, and suddenly Bob can’t keep watching. There’s something just a little too intimate about it all.
Jonathan’s giving him a pitying look, when Bob turns away. Bob returns the look with as blandly innocent an expression as he can muster, trying to pretend like he doesn’t notice what’s going on right beside him. Which is some kind of joke. It’s impossible to miss. There should be mournful violins swelling in the background, or something.
Bob tries not to feel like he’s lost Joyce. Like maybe he never really had her in the first place.
He’s aware he’s only partly succeeding.
And then Joyce is fluttering at his shoulder, birdlike restless hands cupping his face, turning it towards her. Bob lets himself be led, lets her dark eyes transfix him, even knowing how those same eyes were looking at Jim only seconds before. For an instant he hates himself for that, hates Jim, hates her. And then he just feels – sad, about that, in a way he can’t quite name or explain. He doesn’t want to spend his last moments on Earth – even if they’re not going to be his last last moments on Earth – angry with the person he most wants to share those moments with.
But he does sort of wish they could just get this over with.
“We’ll be all right,” he lies, reassuringly, into the open worry on Joyce’s face, reaching up to cover her hands with his own and gently bring them down. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Joyce doesn’t look reassured. Or convinced. But she manages something approximating a smile, biting at her lower lip, despite the fear in her huge dark eyes. “Next time – we’re trying my way.”
“I did say so, didn’t I?” Bob’s never really had the problem of having too much pride. He surrenders what’s left of it to gather Joyce into a hug, shutting his eyes as he breathes in the scent of her hair, shampoo and stale cigarette smoke now as familiar and soothing as his morning coffee. Maybe it’s not really him that she wants, but – especially right now – he thinks he’s allowed to be a little selfish. To take what she’ll give him and be grateful for it. “You be safe, all right? Keep those kids safe. We’ll get you out of here.”
Joyce starts to pull back, and Bob lets her go. But she doesn’t go far, just enough to tip her head back, to cup his face in her hands again. To give him a long, searching look in the eye, and then, when words seem to fail her, shake her head the tiniest bit and then kiss him.
There’s not so much as a waver of hesitation in it. It’s hardly a chaste, dutiful peck on the lips, either. Joyce kisses Bob like she’d like to inhale him into her lungs and bring him with her out of the lab, safely tucked away. Like it really is the last time they’re ever going to see each other. Like, Bob thinks, a little unkindly, she’s got something to prove.
But when they finally break apart, he doesn’t see anything in those big eyes but honest, resigned fear.
“I’ll see you again,” Joyce says, not breaking eye contact, like if she says it with enough conviction maybe she can make it true. She lets her hand rest against his cheek for a moment while she studies his face like she’s trying to burn it into her memory. “I will see you again. This isn’t goodbye.”
It isn’t. Not for Bob, anyway. But he doesn’t say what he’s thinking, that he’ll see her again on Halloween. He just dredges up a wretched attempt at a smile of his own, and then forces himself to take a step back, disentangling them.
“You better go now, if you’re going,” Dr. Owens pipes up, startling Bob a little. He’d half-forgotten the man was there. “Sounds like the hallway’s clear. You’re not getting a better chance.”
Jim nods, and hefts the machine gun like it weighs nothing, settling it into his grip all easy and familiar and effortless. “Right. Newby?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m – coming.”
Jim swings the door open, letting the muzzle of the gun go through first. Bob follows his carefully measured steps out into the hall. The alarms are piercing in the eerie, dim silence.
The last Bob sees of Joyce, before he eases the door shut between them, is resignation settling over her face as she watches them go.
…
The lab under attack never stops being creepy.
And even knowing what’s coming, even knowing that when one of those dog-things springs out from some unexpected corner and rips him limb from limb, Bob’s just going to wake back up unharmed in his own bed, this walk never stops being terrifying.
He trails after Jim feeling a little like a duckling, doing his best to watch their backs as they go, uncomfortably aware that if something did come at them, there’d be nothing he could do about it. Thankfully, though, this time at least, he doesn’t have to. They have one scare at the bottom of the stairwell, where one of those monsters is hidden from the flashlight beam by the corpse it has its flower-face buried in. But Jim pumps it full of bullets as it pounces, and it drops, twitching, to the linoleum in a puddle of black ichor. There’s something viscerally, viciously satisfying in the sight.
Jim throws the breaker and then hovers while Bob taps through the series of commands and prompts to unlock each of the doors in turn, pacing and scanning the hulking shapes of the boiler and whatever other equipment is stored down here, with the machine gun held at the ready and a scowl on his face. Finally, Bob has to abandon his task to say something. “Would you please pick a spot and stand there? You’re making me nervous.”
“You’re not already nervous?” Jim cracks, with something Bob thinks is trying to become a smile. But he does stop pacing. “Jesus. Forgot. This must all be old hat for you by now.”
“Yeah. But you never really get used to it,” Bob says, turning back to the glowing black screen. Beside him, Jim gives a little huff that might almost be a laugh.
“Got that right.”
They’re both quiet, for a few minutes after that, the only sound in the room the rattle of Bob’s fingers over the keys.
“That’s the exit doors back online,” he says, coming to the end of the string of commands. “Joyce and the kids should start heading out.”
Jim nods. But he doesn’t immediately pass the information along. “You really don’t think we’re gonna get out of here alive. Do you.”
Bob looks at the computer screen to avoid having to look at Jim’s face. “Well, hope springs eternal.” He lets out a long breath, and decides he can afford to offer Jim a little of that hope. “I’ve never had you here with me before. And I’m sure you’re a much better shot than I am.”
Jim’s quiet, for a long moment. When he does speak, it’s into the walkie-talkie. “Newby says to start moving out. Exit doors are online.”
Bob takes that as his cue, and for a few minutes more, the only thing he thinks about is the screen and the keyboard in front of him, turning on sprinklers and setting off alarms to draw the monsters away from Joyce and the kids, based on the directions the doc relays via walkie-talkie. It’s like some kind of video game, trying to control the movement of a bunch of distant characters through a maze full of enemies without getting them killed. Just with impossibly real stakes.
Bob can’t keep the thought from forming in his head, though. “Why are you here? We both want to get Joyce and the kids out of here safe, I’m sure they could use your marksmanship more than I can.”
Jim shrugs, shoulders tight, the smallest possible gesture. “Told you. I know Nancy Wheeler can handle herself. And if you got eaten on the way down here, we’d all be fucked.”
They’re pretty well fucked anyway. And Bob doesn’t get much time alone with Jim like this, not late enough in a loop that he’s earned a little trust. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s knowing that, if and when they do loop, Jim won’t remember anything about this conversation. Or maybe it’s just a combination of masochism and morbid curiosity that makes Bob say it. “You’re in love with Joyce, aren’t you.”
Jim whirls to face him, wide-eyed, startled, like he’s just been goosed. He doesn’t say anything, at first, just stares.
When he finally does speak, it sounds strangled. “I’m not enough of a prick to let you get killed just so I’d have a shot at your girl, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Obviously you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here,” Bob points out. “I’m just – trying to figure it out. What I got myself into. What’s going on between you two.”
Jim cracks a humourless grin, at that. “Some puzzles I guess even the Brain can’t solve.”
He turns his back to Bob again, watching the door. Bob thinks the conversation’s over until Jim says, quietly, “You’re good for her. She deserves something, somebody like you in her life. Stable. Sane. Normal.”
“Not so much of any of those anymore, apparently,” Bob half-jokes, half to himself.
Jim goes on like he hasn’t heard. Maybe he hasn’t. “Joyce hasn’t had a lot of good things come her way. I don’t wanna fuck this one up for her.”
“She might want you to,” Bob offers.
Jim looks a little stunned. He doesn’t say anything else.
He doesn’t have time to, either. The strange screeching, rattling cries of the monsters rise from the stairwell, echoing eerily through the metal of the vents and pipes overhead. It sounds like a lot of them. And they’re coming down fast.
Jim doesn’t take his eyes or the machine gun off of the open doorway to the little room they’re in as he barks, “Give me good news, Newby!”
“All the doors are open,” Bob says, turning to look in his direction. “Think you can buy me one more minute to open the front gate for them, too?”
Jim’s face isn’t visible, his back still turned to Bob, but his voice is grim. “I can try.”