Work Text
The world begins to end, and Bill isn't even home.
Of
course
, he isn't home, because that would be too easy, wouldn't it? He couldn't be sitting at home, safe and sound with his little brother, eating sandwiches or teaching him how to make paper boats.
No, the end of the world starts, and Bill is buying ice cream in Boston.
It was a normal enough day, at first. The atmosphere at his grandfather's house had been stifling, so Bill made his excuses and walked to the park, and when the ice cream truck rolled up he thought,
what the hell, you only live once
, and had joined the small line consisting of screaming children and a harried-looking mom.
It started when the mother’s phone rang. She answered it, and then said "Sally, it's for you!" and leaned down.
And that was when everything went to shit.
The mom's jaw went slack, and she dropped her phone. The expensive-looking iPhone shattered on the sidewalk, and she didn't even bat an eye.
"Ma'am?" The ice cream truck driver asked, the ice cream he had been in the middle of handing to her melting onto his fingers.
The woman reached out as if to take it from him, and then she lunges, her hands wrapping around his throat.
The children scattered, running back to the park while screaming. All had vanished in a matter of moments except for Sally, who remained staring at her mother with a blank expression.
"Who are you?" The preteen asked, her empty gaze sliding from her mother to Bill. "Who are you?" She repeated, fear growing in her eyes. "Who am
I
?"
Bill watched with horror as the girl started slamming the heel of her hand on her face, then turned on her heel and ran at the nearest pole and smashed her head onto it, blood pouring from her nose almost immediately.
Bill backed away as she did it over and over and over again, screaming "
Who are you? Who am I
?" Until she couldn't make a sound anymore.
The only thing Bill thought was,
I can't just let her strangle that man
, and he grabbed the mother around the waist and pulled her back. She whipped around and hissed, a horrible, grating sound Bill didn’t know a person could make. He let go on impulse, and she lashed out at him, her blood-covered nails barely missing his face. “
F-fuck
,” Bill exclaimed, and she ran.
The ice cream man made a gurgling sound and fell, his face hitting the metal tray in front of him. Bill should’ve helped him, but he ran instead.
In the park, teenagers who were watching their siblings just a few minutes ago now chased after them. As Bill stared, a child tripped, falling to the asphalt and skinning her knees. Her older sister was on her in a second, hand fisting in her bright yellow hair, and Bill looked away, but he still heard the crunch, and the bloodcurdling scream will forever haunt his dreams.
An elderly woman abruptly picked up one of the pigeons she had been feeding just a few minutes ago and bites off its head, feathers spewing from her mouth. A wave of nausea hit Bill, and he looked away, swallowing thickly.
On the street, cars crashed into each other. Bill watched as a boy, small and blond, jumped out of a taxi and into the traffic, straight into the path of a giant black truck. In a moment of pure instinct, Bill seized the back of his shirt and pulled him onto the sidewalk. The truck continued on, smashing over the car in front of it. The driver flew through the window and hit the asphalt.
"You saved me," the boy said, and Bill really looked at him. He had large, doe-like eyes, and he was dusted with freckles. He wore a bright red fanny pack, and Bill fought the sudden urge to burst into laughter. He didn't laugh at the sobering fact that he was covered in blood.
Bill let go of his shirt. "Are you uh-okay?" He asked with a vague gesture to his blood-spattered torso.
The boy looked down and immediately burst into tears.
"Oh," Bill said. He couldn't think of anything else to say. A car exploded. Someone screamed. To their right, someone seized a dog and tore into its stomach.
"Okay," Bill said, and then he picked the boy up and started running.
The boy shrieked and clung to Bill's neck like a lifeline. He turned his head and yelled into Bill's ear. "Where are you going?"
"My grandpa's," Bill responded.
"Do they have a phone?" He asked.
Bill stumbled and nearly fell. The boy shrieked again, and Bill set him down.
"Of c-course they do," Bill responded. He began to run again, and the boy managed to keep pace. "Everyone does."
The boy stopped. "Then I'm not going," he said.
"What?" Bill stopped, too, staring incredulously.
"It's the phones," the boy said. "My mom was on the phone when she- she-" he looked dangerously close to tears again, so Bill said "okay, okay," and pulled him into the nearest building, which happened to be the library.
"What duh-do you m-mean, it's the phones?" He asked.
"I mean, everyone who was on the phone is going nuts now." He looked at Bill with wide, insistent eyes, and Bill nodded slowly.
"Luh-like that woman and her k-kid," he said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. "Alright." Bill took his phone from his pocket and crushed it beneath his heel. "I'm Bill," he said, extending his hand.
"Eddie," the boy responded, shaking it, and that was the moment they became friends.
Eddie was sixteen, his favorite color was red, and he was in town visiting his overbearing aunts when his mom sunk her teeth into the back of their taxi driver's neck.
He started crying again as he said this, sitting on the nearest chair. He cried until he wheezed, and then he dug an inhaler from his fanny pack. Bill tried not to laugh, but he did, long and hard until he had to sit down.
"What?" Eddie demanded all fire.
"Nuh-nothing," Bill said, then, "how luh-long until that ruh-runs out?"
Eddie looked at the inhaler in his hand with a fresh bout of fear.
This only caused more maniacal laughter. "We're f-f-fucked," Bill said, and he wiped tears from his eyes.
Eddie began to laugh, too, and they laughed until their sides hurt and Eddie had to use his inhaler again. "You can say that again," he said, and then something fell over.
All the laughter immediately drained from the air, and Bill looked at Eddie in fear.
Eddie grabbed the encyclopedia lying on the table next to him. Bill drew his pocket knife. Together, they rose.
"Who's there?" Bill called, firm and stutter-free for the first time all day.
No response.
"You'd better come out," Eddie said, his voice trembling but strong. "We're armed!"
Again, silence.
The duo looked at each other and nodded, then each blocked the exit of the nearest aisle of books. Something moved. Bill stabbed blindly, and Eddie swung with his book, hitting something with a thud.
"Ow," an indignant voice said, and Bill opened his eyes.
A rather large boy frowned at Eddie, rubbing his soon-to-be bruised arm. He was non-threatening in every sense of the word, soft and round- and clutching a small paperback book with Edgar Allen Poe marked on the cover.
"The world's eh-ending and yuh-you're reading poetry?" Bill asked.
The boy looked down and dropped it. "I didn't even realize I was still holding it," he said.
His name was Ben, and he'd been meeting with the two other members of his school's book club.
"We rented the back room," he said. "Leo was just texting his mom when... well..." he looked down at his shoes, shaking his head. "I locked him in there while he was distracted with Erik." As if on cue, a loud thump sounded from the room behind them.
"Everyone's like that," Eddie said. "Anyone who was on their phone- they're just-" he drew a line across his throat, and Ben nodded. "It's like they aren't even human," he said.
"Mauh-maybe they're th-the most human they c-can buh-be," Bill said.
Looking at Bill with a sort of respect in his eyes, Ben crushed his phone.
They stayed inside for a little while longer. When they looked outside, there was a completely naked man straddling a teenage girl and bashing her face in with a large brick.
Eddie looked like he was going to cry again, and Ben threw up into a trashcan. Bill stared out of the window until someone flung themselves from the building across the street and landed on the street, skull shattering. Then he cried.
When his eyes were dry, he decided to look around for other people, but the library was deserted. It seemed everyone had left in the panic, apparently blind to the fact there would be more crazies outside than in.
All he found was a single librarian, her head twisted all the way around. Her face was frozen in a brittle grin, blood running from her nose, and then Bill threw up, too.
Eventually, the streets quieted, and they emerged.
Across the street was a Starbucks, windows smashed and door hanging open. The phone-crazies (as Eddie had called them) didn't seem interested in food, though, because the display case was fully stocked.
There was a barista draped across the counter, the only person in the building. Her eyes had been scratched out, and a single hand was still outstretched. Someone had bitten off her thumb.
Bill swallowed, and he tasted bile. "Wuh-we're going to h-have to juh-just sm-smash it open," he said. Ben nodded, and Eddie handed him the encyclopedia.
Swinging with all his might, Bill smashed the book down on the display, and the glass shattered, coating the food with shards and glittering dust.
They grabbed the sandwiches and brushed the glass off. At this point, they didn't really care.
They found an abandoned backpack and dumped the contents on the floor. "Th-they're not guh-gonna use it," Bill reasoned. Eddie's lips thinned, and he shoved the bag into Bill's arms.
They kept walking.
Boston was burning.
At first, it was noisy- sirens wailed, people screamed, and gunshots echoed. More than once, the sickening sound of someone hitting the ground would sound behind them, and Bill resolutely looked forward.
But eventually, as the day wore on, the sounds faded, until they were alone with the relative silence of burning buildings and the occasional squealing car alarm.
Someone ran by, carrying a phone book. His eyes were crooked in their sockets and he ran right through a puddle of blood, splashing Eddie as he went.
"Aw, shucks," Eddie said, "I'll have to get a new shirt." and then he laughed until he cried. Bill didn't know what to do, so he slung his arm around his shoulders and said nothing.
Eventually, Ben said, "my house is this way so we can stop for supplies if... y'know.." he stopped talking.
Bill knew. "Okay," he agreed. Eddie nodded.
An airplane careened above them, engine smoking. A wing hit the side of the hotel next to them and came off. The airplane spun out of control, hit the ground, and exploded in a deafening roar.
It took a half an hour for Bill's ears to stop ringing.
Ben lived in the nice part of town, the part where everything was new and had all the bells and whistles.
Bill could tell for two reasons: one, all of the houses were identical in all of their picket-fence, two-story glory. and two, everyone was dead.
Eddie hid his face in Bill's shoulder as they walked, and Bill tried to steer him clear of the carnage.
Ben, on the other hand, couldn't seem to look away.
There was a man face-down on the ground. His arm was missing, torn completely from the socket. Ben pointed at him and said, "he used to come over on Sundays," in a funny, detached sort of way. "His wife made cookies."
Eddie's grip tightened on Bill's arm, and Bill looked resolutely away.
Finally, they, made it to Ben's house. The front door was ajar, and Ben paled.
They walked in slowly, but nothing leaped at them from the shadows. Nobody attacked them.
Ben reached out and flipped a switch. The house remained dark. "Power's out," he said.
"Duh-do you h-have any fuh-fuh-flashlights?" Bill asked.
"In the garage, yeah," Ben said.
For a moment, nobody moved, and it was silent.
"I'll go get them,” he continued, and he shuffled deeper into the house with his arms outstretched.
Bill walked into the kitchen, and Eddie slowly detached from his arm. While he raided the fridge for dinner, Eddie found a large basin under the sink they managed to fill with water before the pipes stopped working.
Ben came back with a lantern and two small flashlights. He turned the lantern on and set it by the sink, the glow just enough to dimly illuminate the kitchen as the light outside grew steadily darker.
Bill pulled all of the perishables from the fridge- meat slices, milk, and a lot of vegetables- and stacked them on of the counter. "Bon appetit," he said with a wry smile. He closed the fridge door, and a small yellow paper slipped off and fluttered to the ground. He bent to pick it up, the fresh ink smudging against his fingers.
BEN
I'm so sorry. I'm going to hell. But based on the events of today, we're already there.
GO
. get out of Boston.
go
Get somewhere rural and hide.
GOD BLESS US ALL.
-Arlene
"buh-Ben?" Bill's voice was light. Pleasant, even. "I thuh-think you'll w-want to suh-see this."
"If it's moldy, it's probably still fine, just cut it off," Ben said, crossing the kitchen to Bill. His gaze landed on the paper, and he froze. He took it from Bill, and read it. "What is she sorry for?" He asked, voice trembling.
Bill didn't respond. When Ben punches a hole in the wall, he gives Eddie a sandwich.
They decide to spend the night. Eddie curls up on the couch and goes to sleep, and Ben sits on the floor, staring blankly at his mother's frantic handwriting.
Bill can't sleep. The second he closes his eyes, the panic sets in.
Georgie had a phone. A little flip phone, but one nonetheless, and he was always coming up with excuses to use it, always calling one friend or the other. But it was also clunky and useless and dead more often than not, and it was this knowledge that kept Bill from losing his mind.
But he still worried.
Even if Georgie hasn't gotten blasted, what then? Their mother, Sharon, spent more time on her phone than she did looking at her kids, and if she had gone crazy, then that would spell trouble for a defenseless ten-year-old.
Bill felt no regret for leaving Zack (in fact, a part of him hoped he had died)- but he hoped Sharon was alive and sane. For Georgie's sake.
After a few hours, he woke a bleary-eyed Eddie up to take watch and curled up on the couch, but sleep was a long time coming.
In the morning, they managed to get enough water to wash their hands and faces. Bill and Eddie raided Ben's closet and changed out of their bloodstained clothes. Eddie was stuck wearing shorts and a sweater that was three sizes too large. He cut a belt down to size and snapped it over the sweater to keep it from falling off, and rolled his sleeves up. Bill laughed until Eddie hit him.
Bill tried to wash his shirt, a dumb thing that said “my chemistry puns rarely get a reaction”, but the blood wouldn't come off, and looking at it make the panic swell and coil around his throat, so he just threw it away.
When he emerged from the bathroom, Ben was staring at the wall, his face pale. Eddie hovered behind him with a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Confused, Bill looked to Eddie, who silently gestured to the open coat closet.
A pretty woman- who must've been Ben's mom- had hung herself.
"Cuh-Christ," Bill muttered, and he pushed the door shut.
"My Dad's out back," Ben said, his voice terrifyingly empty. "She shot him, then hung herself in the closet." He looked at Bill and added, "and I can't find my cat." His voice wavered, as if on the edge of tears, but his eyes remained dry.
Bill didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything.
Eventually, Eddie left to scrounge the kitchen for breakfast. Ben kept staring at the wall, and Bill just stood there, rooted to the spot with nothing to say.
They have cereal for breakfast. There's no milk left. "She was going to buy more tomorrow," Ben said, and then he locked himself in the bathroom for half an hour.
At around nine in the morning, Eddie started to get fidgety. "Should we keep going north?" He asked. "I mean, we can't stay here..."
"I have a buh-brother," Bill said. "Wuh-we can g-go there. But he's in muh-Maine."
Ben and Eddie looked at each other for a moment. Eddie shrugged. "I mean, we don't have anything better to do," he said. It wasn't funny, but Bill laughed anyway.
Bill went into the kitchen to go through their bag while Ben and Eddie looked for anything useful. Bill had just finished sorting out the food that would stay good when he heard Eddie say "holy shit."
"Wuh-what is it?" Bill asked, rushing from the kitchen. Eddie stood at the window, curtains pulled back, and Ben was nowhere to be seen. "What?" Bill repeated, and Eddie turned to look at him.
"You have to see this," Eddie said, and he moved out of the way.
Bill took his place at the window.
"Holy shit," he said.
The yard was swarmed with crazies.
They shambled back and forth across the road and into yards, sometimes squabbling over random items off the street, but mostly heading west.
"They're leaving town," Bill said, and a chill ran down his spine. "They're leaving Boston."
"Are they smart enough to do that?" Eddie asked.
Bill shrugged, and together they watched the spectacle.
They couldn't leave until dark fell.
"I mean, they're still animals," Ben reasoned. "They need to sleep sometime."
Eddie, Bill, and Ben took turns sleeping throughout the day, and once night came, as predicted, the phone-crazies vanished, as if afraid of the dark.
Ben and Eddie carried flashlights, and Bill held the lamp. They were all keenly aware of the fact that they had no replacement batteries, and kept the lights off while they were on streets that had working street lamps.
Eventually, they ran into other people. Mostly stragglers, but a few people who had grouped together the way they were.
Most said they, too, were heading north.
"Maybe it's an America thing," one man said. "You know, terrorists. I'm hoping to get into Canada."
"You think they're going to let anyone cross the border?" Ben asked, skeptically.
"Probably not," the man said, shrugging, "but it never hurts to try, yeah?"
After a few hours, they ran into an older woman. She had steely gray hair and wore a pinstripe pantsuit that looked expensive. "Do you kids want any help?" She asked, but she had a weird look in her eyes, so Bill politely declined. When she followed them for another half an hour, he decked her in the face and ran, practically dragging Eddie with him. Ben quickly outran them both- turns out, he was on the track team at his school.
"Fastest kid around," He said and smiled something bitter. "How'd you think I outran Erik?"
The sky began to lighten, and they looked for someplace to stay. They were well out of town, now, and there weren't any houses around.
The sky began to lighten, and they looked for someplace to stay. They were well out of town, now, and there weren't any houses around.
When the sky got truly pink, Bill began to worry.
"What if we don't find anywhere?" Eddie asked. "What if the phone-crazies come back out and we're still out here and we've been walking all night and-" he began to hyperventilate, and he dug his inhaler out of the fanny pack he'd put on right over his sweater and puffed on it really hard.
"Wuh-we'll find somewhere," Bill said confidently, but he wasn't sure he even believed himself.
It was Ben who found it. "Look! There's a warehouse, just up there!" He pointed, and Bill started running. Eddie followed a half a second later.
They were almost at the door, when-
"
Rah
!" Bill grunted as something heavy hit his side, nearly toppling him over. He lashed out, pushing it back, and got a good look at it.
It- she- was a girl only a few years younger than him. She looked almost normal, except her shirt was torn and bloody, and her hands were caked in dried blood. "
Rah
," she said again, and shoved Bill's chest, hard. He fell, caught completely off guard. The lantern clattered from his hand, sliding across the road, and Bill's head hit the ground with an excruciating amount of pain.
"Bill!" Eddie cried, coming to a stop. Ben turned at the noise and started to run back to Bill.
The girl climbed over him and pulled a large knife from her waistband. "
Rah
!" She screeched, this time triumphantly, and swung it down towards his head. Bill flinched away, closing his eyes-
and she made a horrible screeching sound like something heavy collided with her head. She fell off of Bill, and he rolled away, looking up to see Ben, chest heaving, the now-broken lantern in his hands. The girl squawked, trying to push herself to her feet. Bill grabbed her discarded knife and stabbed it through her shoulder. She shrieked, an agonizing sound that reverberated through Bill's skull, and fell to the ground.
Bill slowly stood up, the world spinning. He tucked the knife in his waistband and touched the back of his head.
When his hands came back blood-free, he kept on walking. "c-c-c'mon," he said to Ben.
Ben dropped the lantern and followed. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fuh-fine," Bill said. "Luh-let's go."
Ben remained silent as they caught up to Eddie, who was hovering a few feet in front of the door with a worried look on his face. He and Ben exchanged a look, and he nodded.
"Here goes nothing," Eddie said, and he pushed open the doors to the warehouse. "Okay, so far so good..." he stepped inside the doors and abruptly vanished.
"Eh-eh-Eddie?" Bill rushed inside, Ben hot on his heels. The warehouse was almost completely empty- that is- except for the tall, lanky boy who was currently restraining Eddie. Eddie thrashed, but the boy was much taller than him and easily held him down. "
Eddie
!"
Something cold hit the back of Bill's neck, and he froze, every hair of his body on end. "I expect you know what will happen," a light, almost pleasant voice said. In Bill's peripheral vision, Ben nodded, raising his hands. He stepped back a few steps, and then another boy entered Bill's line of sight- this one nearly as short as Eddie but armed with what looked like a hastily-created shiv.
"Turn around. Slowly." Bill turned on his heel and made eye contact with the brightest pair of green eyes he'd seen in his entire life.
The girl blew a chunk of flaming red hair from her eyes and pushed the knife harshly against his throat. "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt," she said.
"Fuck," Eddie whispered.
Bill couldn't agree more. He opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly the world tilted, and the ground rushed up to meet him. The last thing he heard was a shouted "Bill!" before everything went black.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The first thought to cross Beverly's mind was so much for a relaxing vacation.
The second was holy shit, this is how the world ends.
It didn't make sense. It was Tuesday, October 1st, an otherwise ordinary day. Just the static space between Monday and Wednesday.
It was Tuesday, and Beverly's pocket knife was jammed into the eye socket of her once-benevolent sidewalk companion.
They fell to the ground with a thud, their blonde hair encircling their head like a halo.
Beverly threw up onto the sidewalk, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and ran.
The wind bit at her arms and legs, and suddenly her overalls seemed like a bad decision, exposing too much skin to... whatever those people had become.
She turned the corner and smacked into the chest of a middle-aged looking woman. She had gold hoops in her ears, and her glasses hung around her neck on a beaded string. She looked rather like the librarian at her high school. Beverly was halfway through an apology when she raised her hand, metal glinting, and swung it down towards Bev's head.
Shrieking, Beverly stumbled several steps back, throwing her arms up over her head.
A gunshot rang out, and she opened her eyes, slowly lowering her arms.
A police officer stood across the street, gun still raised. He quickly crossed the road, knelt down, and checked the librarian's pulse.
"You killed her," Bev said numbly.
"Not yet," he said, standing up. "Might want to close your eyes for this, darling."
Beverly kept her eyes trained on him.
Shrugging, he shot the woman in the head, splattering the sidewalk, his arm, and the tops of Bev's white sneakers with blood and bits of gray brain matter.
Bev's stomach lurched, and she was glad her stomach was already empty.
"It's shoot first, ask questions later," the police officer said grimly. He took off his sunglasses and looked at her with one brown eye and one bright blue. "You see those houses over there?" He asked, pointing down the street towards a small gated community. She nodded. "Good. Find one that's empty and hole up in there until this all blows over, okay?" When Bev nodded again, he put away his gun and drew a small white card from his pocket. "This is in case you need to talk to me. I wouldn't trust the phones, though. If you're looking for me, ask for Officer O'Neal."
"Beverly Marsh," Bev responded on instinct, extending her hand.
After a moment, he shook it. "Nice t'meet ya, Bev," He said with a wide, friendly grin. "Now get going. You won't be this lucky next time."
"Thank you," Beverly said, and then she kept on running.
Scaling the fence was easy enough. It was getting in one of the houses that proved difficult. Every door she stumbled upon was either stuck, locked, or guarded by the body of an unfortunate bystander.
Finally, she tried a door that opened- and she was greeted by the pointy end of a kitchen knife.
"Fuck," She exclaimed, stumbling backward, and she fell down the concrete steps leading up to the door and landed on her ass.
In the doorway loomed a gangly teen with dark, wild curls that hung over glasses with one cracked lens and tape wrapped around the bridge. "You're not one of them, are you?" He asked, voice trembling.
"... No?" Bev pushed herself to her feet, hands skinned from her fall raised in surrender. "I mean, I hope not." She looked down at herself, then back up at the boy, shrugging. "Haven't tried eating anyone yet."
After a long, suspicion-filled moment, the boy slowly turned to look inside. "Stan?" He called. "Someone's here."
"I can see that," Someone responded, and another boy crowded into the door frame, this one with equally curly but considerably lighter hair, and several inches shorter than the first. He looked on the verge of tears even as he glared at her. "What do you want?" He asked.
"Safety?" Bev glanced around the desolate neighborhood. "A cop told me to find somewhere to hide, so." She shrugged again. "Here I am."
After a beat, Blondie elbowed Glasses, and he put away the knife. "You're bleeding," Blondie said.
"No shit," Bev deadpanned, and he looked both amused and mildly offended. "Can I come in? There's safety in numbers, you know."
The pair exchanged a look, the sort of eye-talk only best friends and parents can do, and Beverly bit her lip nervously, lowering her hands.
"Okay," Glasses said finally. Blondie sighed, rolling his eyes, and Bev suddenly felt as if she had missed an entire conversation. "Mi casa es su casa. Come on in." They both moved out of the way, Glasses propping the door open with his foot as she crossed the threshold, trying not to look too relieved. "Thank you," she said as the door slammed shut behind her. "Can I have some band-aids?"
"Oh, shit, yeah," Glasses said, and she laughed.
Their names were Stan and Richie, and they were best friends.
Stan wrapped the bandage around her hand as he spoke. "Richie's really only here because of me," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the closed bathroom door. "He came up here to visit for a week, but I think that plan's a little fucked now." Beverly laughed, and he chuckled weakly. "We used to live in LA right next to each other, but my dad got this big job offer, so, here we are." He smiled, a brittle thing, while he smoothed the last of the bandage over her palm. "There."
He looked absolutely exhausted. Bev shot him a sympathetic smile. "Thank you," she said.
He shrugged. "No problem."
They sat in the comfortable silence of a newfound friendship for half a moment before Richie shattered it.
"Stanny dear! Can you come to help me with dinnah?" He shouted up from the kitchen with a shitty accent.
Stan rolled his eyes and pushed himself to his feet, offering his hand to Bev. She accepted it, and her knees cracked when she stood.
She looked to Stan, eyes wide, and they laugh before making their way down to help Richie.
Stan's house was, predictably, huge. Three stories (or so she was told- the door to the basement was locked), a huge living room that opened comfortably up into an equally huge kitchen/dining room, and a back porch and garden they absolutely did not use, but Bev was delighted to see Stan's small patch of pumpkins.
Stan's eyes lit up, and he rambled on about gardening and birds while boiling water, and he pelted Richie with noodles when he spotted him flapping his hand along with Stan's speech. After that, they just throw food at each other until Bev quietly finished the noodles, and some of the tension was gone, if only for a moment.
Stan made a kickass spaghetti, and Richie cackled and called him "spaghetti head" until Bev had to physically hold the two apart.
After "dinner"- it was really just a late lunch- the mood shattered.
It was Beverly's fault, really.
"So," she said hesitantly. "What about your parents? Either of yours, I guess." She looked from Stan to Richie.
Richie's face went blank, carefully blank, blank like a lawyer's. "My parents are in LA," he said simply.
Stan's voice was hard. "My parent's corpses are currently locked in the basement."
Bev dropped her fork, one hand going up to cover her mouth.
Stan looked down at his empty plate.
"I'm so sorry," she said.
"You didn't kill them," Stan said.
"I'm still sorry," Bev retorted. He didn't respond, so Beverly stood. "We can't stay here," she said.
Richie looked up. "I thought the cop told you to say hidden," he said.
"He did, but we're not staying here," she said. "I say we get up tomorrow morning and head out of town. Hopefully everywhere else is sane. We can go north and find somewhere else to hide."
"Why don't we go tonight?" Richie asked. "I mean, they have to sleep sometime, right?"
"Right," Bev agreed. She looked to Stan, who nodded. "Great. It's all settled then. Come nightfall, we're blowing this popsicle stand."
It wasn't funny, but it got Stan to smile, so she counted it as a win.
They take turns sleeping.
Richie and Bev packed a bag with nonperishables and flashlights. Richie went looking for replacement batteries while Bev looked through Stan's closet and put his Letterman jacket on. When Richie came upstairs, batteries in hand, he laughed and said she was too cool for him. He gave her aviator sunglasses and she snapped finger guns at him and he swooned.
While Bev slept, Richie filled thermoses with coffee and Stan stared at the wall.
While Richie was asleep, Beverly drew patterns on Stan's arms in purple ink, and Stan told her to keep the jacket. "My baseball days are behind me, anyway," he said with a tired smile. Bev didn't think sleeping had helped him. If anything, he looked even more exhausted. But she didn't say anything, because she didn't think it would help.
Then night fell.
Stan woke Richie up, and they walked out into the street.
Beverly had the brightest flashlight. It cut clear beams of light across the street as they walked north out of Boston.
She kind of wished she didn't.
The sidewalk was too narrow for all of them to walk side-by-side, so Beverly was left ahead while Richie and Stan fell into step behind her.
That wasn't really the problem.
The problem was that it left Bev to warn them about everything she stumbled upon.
The roads were mostly deserted. The power had gone out throughout most of the town, so street lamps were lit only occasionally. Cars were sometimes driven up onto the sidewalk, and more than once, Bev had to call back about bodies. Twice, she stepped in a puddle of blood, and Richie laughed both times.
It really wasn't funny.
Just before dawn, in a stretch of the middle of nowhere, they find a warehouse.
Bev nodded at it, eyebrows raised in a silent question.
Stan shrugged, as if to say, might as well.
Rolling her eyes, Bev lead them inside.
Bev blinked at the boy slumped on the floor. Broad-shouldered, easily taller than everyone else in the room.
Didn't really look the fainting type.
"Please let me help him," the blond said, clearly panicking. "You can't just let him die!"
Bev looked back down at the boy on the floor, then over to Stan. Stan shrugged, and the boy he held at knifepoint (shivpoint?) glanced rapidly between Bill and Bev as if he wasn't sure what she was going to do.
Bev looked back to the blond. "Fine."
Richie let the boy go and immediately bent to grab his shin, hissing in pain. Blond threw himself forward so hard he fell to the dirt, then he half-crawled, half-ran to Bill's prone body. He unzipped the fanny pack low on his waist and took an inhaler from it, puffing on it once. Then he set the inhaler down on his leg and dug out a small army of painkillers. He muttered something under his breath and propped Bill's head upon his lap. putting the inhaler in his mouth again without puffing on it. "You don't have a water bottle, do you?" he asked around the plastic.
Bev arched an eyebrow but sheathed Richie's kitchen knife in the waistband of her overalls. "Rich. Water, please?"
"Aye-aye, capt'n," Richie said with a mocking salute. He went to the back of the warehouse and returned with the water bottle, offering it to the blond with a flourish. "For you, good sir."
The blond took it and, unceremoniously, poured it onto Bill's face.
Bill sat up with a sputtering gasp, and Blond had enough time to say "careful-" before he fell back down again, mostly collapsing onto blond's lap. "ow," Bill muttered.
"Thank God," Blond said, visibly relieved. He grabbed the water bottle and offered it to him, then poured a few multi-colored painkillers into Bill's palm.
Once Bill had drunk his fill, swallowed the pills, and generally ceased looking like death, Bev nodded to Richie, who seized the blond one once more.
"huh-huh-hey!" Bill muttered, trying to push himself to his feet. "Luh-let him guh-guh-go!"
"He stuttered like that before he fell, right?" Richie stage-whispered.
Bev crossed her arms, ignoring him. "No can do, buster," she said.
"Buh-buh-Bill," Bill said.
"Start talking," Bev moved one hand to the handle of the kitchen knife.
"fuh-fine," Bill said. "I'm Bill. These are muh-my friends, buh-Ben and Eh-eh-Eddie." Ben gave a tiny wave, and Eddie huffed. "Wuh-we're hiding from the z-zombies. Any questions?"
Bev looked at Richie. He shrugged again, and she sighed. "Fine. Out."
"What?" Eddie demanded, for once stopping in his struggle.
"Get out," Bev repeated. "This is our warehouse."
"What are we supposed to do?" Eddie demanded.
Bev shrugged. "Don't know, don't care." She drew the giant knife back out of her waistband. "Now scram.:
"Huh-hold on," Bill said. "Th-there's nothing f-f-for miles. Juh-just getting in here nearly guh-got me k-killed."
Bev looked at Stan, who looked at Richie, who made a face and shrugged again. Bev did a so-so sign with her hand, and Stan rolled his eyes. "Okay," She said with a sharp sigh. "I guess we can't just kick you out to be zombie chow." Richie and Stan released their respective captives, and Bev spread her arms wide. "Welcome to the club."
Richie snorted. "Yeah, the Losers' club."
Eddie laughed, and then everyone else did, too.
After that, they fell together easily. Bill and Bev went through the supplies, Bev making a list in permanent marker on her arm, while Stan and Ben huddled in a corner, heads bowed together. Occasionally, one would look up, glance around at everyone else, then hunch back down, whispering fervently to the other. It was unsettling. Bev wasn't sure what they were planning, but she didn't think it was anything good.
All of this left Richie and Eddie with nobody to talk to but each other, which was both a disaster and somehow fitting. Richie seemed endlessly delighted by the shorter boy, and Eddie seemed ready to break some teeth. Bev wasn't quite sure where the seriousness ended and the joking began, but Eddie warmed up after a little while, and he started laughing.
Eventually, though, they began to burn out. Eddie drew up a schedule in the dirt. and somehow this resulted in Bev getting stuck with the first shift.
She sat in the dirt with the sleeves of the Letterman pulled down over her hands like paws and watched the others.
While awake, the two groups had blended together almost seamlessly, but asleep, they drew back to the ones they trusted. Stan and Richie were hopelessly entangled, Stan's head on Richie's chest and their legs a jumbled mess. Bill was close enough to them for his fingers to brush Stan's side, and Eddie was next to him, curled against Bill like a cat. Ben was next to Eddie, slightly distance but with an arm still slung protectively over the smaller boy.
When her shift was over, Bev carefully pulled Richie away from Stan. It took several minutes and a lot of whispering, but soon enough Richie was sitting where she was only minutes ago, glaring at her and rubbing his eyes.
"Morning, sleeping beauty," she whispered, smirking.
"Go to sleep, asshole," he responded, yawning.
"Cool. I'm stealing your boyfriend, though," she stage whispered, crawling next to Stan.
"Not my boyfriend," Richie mumbled, but Beverly was already asleep.
She woke up when Richie crawled back to them, wrapping his arms around her and Stan together. He mumbled something, and Stan responded, but she was too tired to hear.
Sleep crept back over her mind like moss, and she gave in to the darkness of her subconscious.
"Rise and shine, losers, time to start the day!" Eddie's voice was shrill and loud and definitely not the first thing Bev wanted to hear in the morning. She sat up, rubbing her eyes.
Everyone else was already awake, except for Richie. He was spread-eagle across the dirt, snoring softly. How he slept through Eddie's yelling, Bev had no idea.
The room was nearly pitch-black, and Bev had to squint as she stood, stumbling a few steps before she regained her balance.
"Richie! Get up!" Stan shook Richie's shoulder.
"Mm, fuck you," Richie grumbled, rolling over onto his back. Stan huffed an aggravated sigh and looked to Bev.
Bev rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. "Hey! Asshole!" She flung herself onto Richie, landing knees-first in the small of his back. "Time to get up!"
"Ow!" Richie rolled over, dumping Bev onto the floor. "The fuck was that for?! Your knees are like tiny daggers!"
"Time to get up," Bev repeated, shrugging.
Eddie shined his flashlight beam at them, and Richie hissed, bringing one hand up to cover his eyes. "If you're done having an orgy over there, let's go," he said.
"Technically, it would be a threesome," Richie said, grabbing his glasses from the floor next to him and putting them on.
"Do you think before you speak or is it all empty up there?" Eddie asked.
Rolling her eyes at Stan, Bev got to her feet.
The plan was simple. They would head north to Bill's house in Maine and go from there. Really, it was all banking on Georgie. Bev didn't know much about Bill's situation, but she did know one thing: Bill would stop at nothing to find Georgie, and the others were willing to follow him anywhere. Even Stan and Richie had warmed to him- he had a sort of magnetic quality about him, something that screamed that he was a leader.
"Wuh-we j-just have to get to duh-duh-Derry," he said, which is a place Bev had never heard of. "Huh-hopefully juh-Georgie is there. And suh-safe."
And sane.
The words hung in the air, heard yet unspoken.
Bev smiled thinly. "Let's go."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What a bitch.” Eddie was still storming ahead, hands clenched at his sides. His knuckles were rapidly turning purple and yellow.
“Wuh-wuh-well-” Bill winced. “I m-mean…”
“No! Don’t defend her!” Eddie was near hysterics, chest heaving and eyes blazing. “What kind of
person
sees a group of orphaned teens and goes, ‘
hmm, now’s the time to start quoting Revelation!’
Not to mention what she said to Bev!”
Bill opened his mouth to say something, but Eddie barreled on. “And another thing!” Eddie turned on his heel and stopped. “I can’t believe you all stood there while she- while-” His face was red with anger, and he struggled to get the rest of the sentence out. “Y-yeah,” Bill agreed quietly. “I’m suh-sorry.”
“It’s not me you have to apologize to,” Eddie huffed, and he stormed over to where Richie was, who immediately started exclaiming about Eddie’s hand.
Bill turned thoughtful eyes to Bev, waiting for her to catch up. She didn’t look up as he started walking beside her, instead sniffing and wiping at her eyes.
“S-suh-so,” Bill said.
She looked at him, her glare nearly enough to scare him away. “So,” She repeated.
“Th-that kind of sucked,” Bill said.
“No shit,” Bev snapped.
“I juh-just wanted to suh-say s-sorry,” Bill said.
She sighed, deflating like a balloon. “I thought this was fucking over,” she muttered.
Bill frowned. “Wuh-what?”
“Just drop it, Bill,” She said, and when she glared this time, he actually shrunk back a little.
She stormed over to Eddie, and Bill sighed, walking back to the front of the group.
As the night wore on and dawn grew closer, Bill found himself more and more isolated. He had, somehow, managed to piss everybody off through Bev, except for maybe Ben, who just looked confused.
Bev, Richie, and Eddie seemed to be perfectly happy talking amongst themselves, occasionally roping Stan into their conversation. This left Ben to cling helplessly to Stan or stand awkwardly by himself, glancing from Bill to Bev like he wanted to talk to him but also didn’t want to fall out of Bev’s favor.
But the isolation helped, in a way, because it helped Bill realize how he was different from the group:
Georgie.
Every other loser- as far as he could tell- had some form of closure. They knew if their family was alive or dead, or at the very least, didn’t give a shit either way. And while Bill was solidly sure that Zach was dead, Sharon and Georgie were still up in the air. He couldn’t give less of a shit about his mother’s fate, but he worried about Georgie. Did Sharon kill Georgie? Was Georgie home alone when the phone-crazies hit, and he called 911, turning himself into one of them? Or did he survive? If he did, would he make it until Bill got there? These thoughts tossed and turned about in his mind like an anxiety-ridden washing machine.
“Hey, Bill.” Ben’s arrival startled Bill out of that particular train of thought, and he blinked over at Ben, his mind suddenly blanking. “Uh. H-hey, Ben.”
“Sorry about everyone else,” Ben said. “I think they’re all siding with Bev, but it’s not like they did anything, either.”
“Thank y-you!” Bill exclaimed.
They lapsed into a moment of silence.
“Georgie?” Ben asked, and Bill surprised himself with his hollow reply.
“Of c-c-course.”
Ben smiled sympathetically. “I’m sure he’s okay, Bill. If he’s anything like you, he’s smart.”
Bill smiled back, tears swimming behind his eyes. “Thuh-thanks, Ben.”
Ben shook his head, blushing a little. “No problem, Bill.”
The group decided to camp out in the nearest convenience store, hoping against hope it had something to feed them. They’d ran out of their stale Starbucks hours before sun-up, and the group was looking worse for wear.
The front window was completely smashed, so Richie and Stan pinned a tarp up over the exposed entrance while Eddie and Bev went off in search of food.
Ben mulled about for a moment before calling Bill over. He’d found the jackpot- seven sleeping bags, made for backpacking trips. Ben piled them in a corner along with some pillows while Bill busied himself picking up shards of glass, trying to clear a place for them to sleep.
When he reached the counter, he paused, briefly considering if money would be worth anything in a post-apocalyptic society.
Probably not,
he decided, when a shape caught his eye.
Peering down, Bill saw the body of the cashier slumped on the ground, blood pooled around him. But the body isn’t what caught his eye.
In the body’s hand was a small handgun.
“H-hey, guys?” He called to the rest of the group. “You’re going to want to see this.”
In the end, the body was rolled in one of the sleeping bags and tossed outside because none of them can stand the idea of sleeping with a body, and Bill was left with the handgun as the only member who’d ever touched one before.
Bill and Bev drew up a list of watch shifts, and as the rest of the group settled into their respective sleeping bags, Bill wondered what his life had come to.
Eddie was up next for watch, so when the time came, Bill shook a very sleepy Eddie awake and dragged him over to the broken window, where the tarp fluttered in the morning wind.
“Wakey wakey,” Bill said, and he set the gun next to Eddie.
There was a prolonged stretch of uncomfortable silence as the two just stared at each other.
“Y-you don’t muh-mind if I stay, duh-do you?” Bill asked quietly, and Eddie yawned, stretching his arms over his head.
“No,” Eddie said, eyes wide. “I’m not mad at you, Bill.”
Bill ducked his head and sat down. “Sh-sure seemed that wuh-way,” he muttered.
Eddie sat next to him, eyes dutifully trained on the door. “Sorry,” he offered, and Bill blinked at him, surprised. “What? Never heard an apology before?” Eddie snapped, and Bill recoiled at the sudden mood swing. Eddie sighed before Bill could say anything, scrubbing his face with his hands. “I’m sorry. That woman just got me all worked up.”
“Y-yeah,” Bill agreed. “She was a m-m-mega b-bitch.”
“I didn’t punch that lady because she called Bev a slut,” Eddie admitted, small and quiet and guilty. Bill raised a single eyebrow, and he looked sheepish. “Okay, a little bit because of that.” He looked down, picking at a loose thread in his red shorts. “But mostly… mostly because she reminded me of my mom.”
Bill couldn’t hide his surprise. “Yuh-you p-p-punched someone because s-she reminded you of y-your m-m-
mom
?”
Eddie glared. “Overbearing, hated women and the gays, could quote the bible in a heartbeat? Yeah. That sounds like Sonia Kaspbrak.”
Bill whistled. “Y-your mom sounds like a ruh-real p-piece of wuh-work.”
“She was,” Eddie said, grin brittle.
“Oh sh-shit, I f-forgot-” Bill sputtered, but Eddie waved him off.
“Don’t be sorry. Good riddance, anyway.” He looked sullenly at his shoes.
After a moment, Bill spoke up, somewhat hesitantly. “I hated my mom t-too,” he offered.
Eddie’s smile was bitter. “Oh, yeah? What was she like?”
Bill thought for a moment. “A bitch.”
Eddie’s startled laughter was loud, and Bev stirred in her sleeping bag. “Shut up, dickwad,” she mumbled, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, still giggling.
Bill smiled, nose crinkling, and Eddie stuck his tongue out at him.
“Okay, okay,” Eddie said, much quieter now, “abused kid bingo.” He grabbed the notepad Bill and Bev had written the watch schedule on and tore off a new page, quickly sketching out two bingo cards.
“Physical abuse,” Bill read off. “Chuh-check.”
Eddie’s eyebrows flew up. “Really?”
“Wuh-where do you thuh-think the stutter came f-from?” Bill asked.
Eddie’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me.”
Bill shook his head. “N-nope.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Eddie said. “Is it psychosomatic? That’s a dumb question. Sorry.”
“Afraid to ask questions,” Bill said, pointing to Eddie’s card, and Eddie smiled as he checked it off.
After a while, they abandoned their bingo cards (Bill won), and resorted to simply talking.
“Eh-Eddie?” Bill asked quietly, interrupting a rant about canned cheese.
“Huh?” Eddie snapped his mouth shut and blinked at Bill.
“Y-you said your muh-mom sent you to a c-conversion c-camp…”
Eddie rolled his eyes, but nodded. “Yeah.”
“Wuh-why?”
Eddie paused, watching Bill closely. “Because I’m gay,” he said simply, still looking at Bill in that same close, guarded way.
Bill smiled, something in him unwinding at the confirmation. “C-cool,” he said.
“Not to Pastor Dan,” Eddie said sullenly, and when Bill laughed, Beverly threw her pillow at him.
Their next day started off on the right foot. While wandering back towards the road, they stumbled across an open house, and with nothing better to do, decided to loot it.
Beverly returned triumphant with a duffle bag, and Ben and Stan stuffed it with food they found in the pantry. The six of them took advantage of the gas-powered stove and mercifully working faucets to wash themselves off in warm water.
Only after they left did Eddie realize that he’d left his inhaler behind, but he didn’t turn them around to get it.
“The world’s ending,” he said. “Who gives a shit about asthma anymore?”
The strangeness started at around 10pm, when Stan suddenly stopped, frowning. “Do you guys hear that, or am I going crazy?”
Bill stopped too, giving him a perplexed frown. “S-stan, are you ok-k-ay…” He trailed off as he realized what Stan was hearing.
“Is that… Whitney Houston?” Eddie asked.
“Th-the one and uh-only,” Bill confirmed.
The six stood, flabbergasted, as
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
grew steadily louder.
Ben spoke first.
“Who’s playing it?” He asked.
“Survivors?” Eddie suggested.
“If it is, the’re either geniuses or the dumbest people alive,” Stan pointed out.
There was a brief moment of silence, in which the only sound was the chorus.
“Should we… check it out?” Richie asked, hesitantly.
“I don’t know,” Bev said. “I mean, what if it’s a trap? What if we follow the music and get ambushed?”
“Do you think the crazies are smart enough for that?” Eddie asked.
“I sure hope not,” She said.
“Maybe it
is
survivors, but they’ve gone all Hannibal Lecter on us, and if we follow it, we’ll get eaten,” Richie said.
Bill looked at him reproachfully. “
Dude.
This was
y-your
idea.”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”
“Guys,” Ben broke in. “What if they need help? I mean, doesn’t that outweigh the risks?”
Another moment of silence passed before Bev spoke up.
“We’re not heroes, Ben,” she said. “We’re just
kids
.”
“Not anymore,” he said, eyes steely. “We’re survivors.”
Bev shrugged. “The man has a point,” she said, turning to Bill. “What do you say?”
Bill thought for a moment, but really, the choice was already made. “Let’s check it out,” he said.
“Hell yeah!” Richie said. “Vigilante justice, here we come!”
As they walked, Richie talked, which was to be expected. He told them about all of the songs future generations would write about them, all the comic books and movies about the “Wayward Losers”, as Richie dubbed them, or as Stan said, “Knock off Avengers.”
“If we’re the avengers, then you’re the ‘Steve’ to my ‘Bucky’,” Richie declared, earning a blush and a harsh “fuck off!” from Stan.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Eddie said, holding both hands up. “How come
you’re
Bucky? Stan is very clearly the cold-blooded assassin out of the two of you.” He cut a glance to the glowering Stan. “uh, no offence.”
“Well
I
can’t be Captain America,” Richie said. “I’m basically a felon.”
“Richie, you’ve never done anything illegal in your life,” Stan said, rolling his eyes.
“Not true! There was that one time where-”
“Already off to a bad start.””
“Fuck
off,
Eddie!”
Bill tuned out the bickering as he walked, instead losing himself in his thoughts as he followed the ever-louder sound of Whitney Houston. He wondered what jingle Richie would inevitably write when he was on watch that morning, and he hoped it wasn’t too catchy, because once Eddie started singing it too, there would be no coming back.
He was so caught up in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice that his path dropped off, and Bev snagged the back of his shirt and yanked him off the edge of a severe drop off. He choked and fell back on his ass, eyes wide as he took in the sight below him.
A huge valley, overflowing with phone-crazies. They laid down, lined up in rows, eyes open and mouths slightly ajar.
“Holy fuck!” Richie exclaimed. Stan shushed him, slapping a hand over Richie’s mouth.
The frozen phone-crazies didn’t move. None of them even blinked.
The six of them looked around at each other before coming to a silent agreement- slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, Bev bent and picked up a rock, throwing it into the crowd with scarily accurate precision, hitting the boombox speaker.
The speaker exploded, the sound of Whitney Houston cutting off abruptly.
Still not a single movement from the phone-crazies.
The group exchanged another round of wary looks before Bill slowly drew the gun from his backpack, aimed it at a phone-crazy, and fired.
The thing’s head flew off, rolling to bump into the feet of the one behind it.
Bill lowered the gun, looking at the rest of the group with wide eyes.
“Holy fuck,” Richie repeated, but quieter, hushed with awe. “This is how we win.”
It took a huge chunk out of their walking time to do, but everyone agreed it was for the best. They split into pairs, raiding the nearby homes for cans of gasoline, spending countless hours collecting enough to cover the phone-crazies. They divvied up the jobs, Ben left to linger while the other five readied for what they were to do.
Bev went first, stepping carefully on the ground between the phone-crazies, pouring her can of gasoline on the face and chest. Richie and Eddie followed close after with their respective cans, and when someone ran out, Stan went down to meet them, fresh can in hand. The process repeated until they were positive that each phone-crazy was completely soaked, regardless of age or gender.
As soon as everyone had climbed up to safety, Bill dropped his match and impassively watched the phone-crazies burn.
“Did you hear that?” The group stopped, all six of them reaching for their various weapons as the sound filled the air again, low moans and groans echoing through the valley.
“Is that… the crazies?” Eddie asked, quiet and hesitant, and all at once, Bill understood. The crazies could feel the flock they’d left burning, their strange hive-mind abilities having an unforeseen downfall-- now every phone-crazy in the world knew that the Losers had killed one of their flocks. He opened his mouth to say as much, but in the flickering light of the lamp post above them, he saw they understood.
They kept walking.
When it happened again, none of them questioned it- they were beyond caring.
They weren’t fortunate enough to find another town before dawn started to creep on the horizon. They wandered onto the outskirts of a farm, and Bill kicked in the door of a large yet empty stable. The group spread out, and Bill dug the crinkled legal pad out from their backpack to scrawl out a hasty watch schedule. Everyone was exhausted, worn down to their core. Even Richie was quiet, looking at Bill with an unsettling hollowness in his eyes when Bill told him that he was first watch.
Normally it would take a while for everyone to calm down before they all went to bed, but not today. Bill laid in his sleeping bag, eyes turned up to the wooden beams, and fell asleep to the sounds of the morning lark.
Bill stood on a platform in the touchdown zone of a huge football stadium, the stands full of jeering people. Disoriented, he looked around to see Bev, Eddie, Richie, Stan, and Ben all there, looking just as confused as he did. Looking to his left, he saw a girl with dark curls and a broad-shouldered boy whose eyes were scared but shoulders set in determined confidence.
Bill heard words chanted in an unfamiliar language, and he looked sharply back to his right to see a phone-crazy, mouth torn open at one side so the cage of his teeth was exposed and covered in clown makeup. He had one hand held out over Eddie’s head, and as he spoke, the crowd screamed back, “
DON’T TOUCH!
”
The phone-crazy moved down the line, and he repeated the action over everyone’s head, the crowd growing louder and louder until he reached Bill. His yellow eyes met Bill and stared into his soul as he reached out, and when the crowd screamed, Bill could feel the hot breath of the phone-crazy on his face.
DON’T TOUCH!
Bill jolted awake with a gasp. Warm evening sunlight poured from beneath the stable door and through cracks in the ceiling, and he shielded his eyes against it as he looked wildly around the room, adrenaline still screaming in his veins. Behind him, Eddie mumbled something and rolled over, and Beverly was already awake, hugging her knees to her chest as she smoked a cigarette.
They looked at each other for a brief moment before Bev turned away. Sighing, Bill settled back against the wall and kept one eye on the door.
As the sun ducked below the horizon, he roused the others. They packed up their bags, looting the last of the supplies from their temporary home before heading out, eyes darting around as they looked for any straggling crazies. Only once the world went completely dark did Bill manage to relax, the tension bleeding from his shoulders.
They walked on for another hour before anyone even spoke.
It was Richie, of course, who broke the silence.
“Dude, I had the craziest fucking nightmare last night,” He said, voice loud as if to cover his fear. “We were all in this giant football stadium, and we were in one of the touchdown zones, but like, on this weird platform, and-”
“And a phone-crazy in clown makeup put his hand over our heads and said some weird latin thing,” Eddie interrupted, his eyes wide.
Bill couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe as he froze, looking intensely at Richie. Behind him, Stan spoke up, voice shaking. “We weren’t alone,” Stan said. “There were these people with us, a guy and a girl.”
“And the crowd yelled ‘don’t touch’,” Ben finished softly.
Bill couldn’t help the way his eyes drifted to Bev, who looked the way he felt.
“Did we really share the same dream?” Eddie asked, and everyone slowly nodded. “What does this mean? Bill?”
Every pair of eyes turned to him, and Bill squared his shoulders. “It means we keep going,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Richie said, throwing him a mocking two-fingered salute.
Bill laughed, and the group went marching on.