Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “Babe,” he said, low, “you should’ve let me stay overnight. The bail was too much.”

  “None of that.” She kissed his cheek and dropped her hand into his as she towed him toward the exit. Keeping contact with him felt essential. So did getting out of this place. “They shouldn’t have arrested you.”

  “We knew they probably would.”

  They reached outside and Terry breathed in the fresh air like she was the one who’d spent two hours in a cell.

  “You must wonder what I was thinking,” Andrew said. “I tried to call. It was just the order that we all had to pay attention to this speech. That we have to pretend like it means anything. I…We had to do something.”

  “I know.” For Terry, it was that simple. She understood.

  “I thought about you and the lab…how brave you are.” He shook his head. “This won’t be the end of it.”

  He’d thought of her. And she knew this wouldn’t have a simple end. “Let’s go home. For tonight, that’s the end of it.”

  It wasn’t, though. The possible consequences clung to them like shadows. They were quiet in her crappy hand-me-down car as they drove back to Andrew and Dave’s apartment. Dave and his other friend had decided to stay overnight in jail. Terry wasn’t sure if it was a decision so much as their parents’ refusing to come bail them out.

  She pulled into a parking spot, and left the car running. Andrew turned and lifted a hand to her cheek. “Hey, my rescuer, can I convince you to come in? Stay tonight?”

  The question lay heavy between them. She could see the need in his eyes.

  Hers matched it. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  The silence from the car followed them into the apartment, into Andrew’s bedroom, their lips already touching. They said everything to each other that words couldn’t. The threat was anyplace where their skin didn’t touch. The outside world would want to separate them, disrupt what they had together. The threat was in what the school would do to punish Andrew, and in Brenner and the lab’s power if Terry had to challenge them.

  So they fought against the outside the only way they could: by pretending it didn’t exist.

  And, for that night, it might as well not have.

  2.

  Terry cut a generous wedge of sugary, custardy Hoosier Pie and delivered the round dessert plate to her last active lunch table. She breezed back by the counter and exchanged a nod with Laurie, the other waitress on the day shift, who also made all the pies.

  “I’m on my break for ten,” Terry said.

  “You got it, sweetie,” the older woman said. “Go hang out with your friends.”

  Terry picked up a chair and moved it to the end of the booth where Ken, Gloria, Alice, and Andrew waited after having finished their lunches. BLTs and Cokes all ’round. They’d been easier to take care of this time. Not least because she’d been expecting them.

  “Why did you want to see us?” Alice asked with zero preliminaries. “Did you come up with an idea?”

  Andrew nudged her. “Kid sister, you know she did.”

  “Maybe, but only if you agree.” Terry kept her voice low. “I’m wondering…Assuming I can find some way to get in the wing where I saw Kali—”

  “I think I can help with that part,” Alice said. “I watch when Brenner enters his code. Nine-five-six-three-nine-six. It’s the same every time. It probably works on all the keypads in the place, and so it should get you in.”

  A moment of silence. “Alice,” Terry said, “you will never stop surprising me. I’ll need you to write that down so I can memorize it.”

  “Sure.” Alice gave a slightly embarrassed shrug. “I just notice things is all.”

  “What’s next in your plan?” Gloria asked.

  “With that taken care of…If one of you could create a diversion I might be able to find the girl again and talk to her, assuming she’s there. If she’s not, maybe I can look for Brenner’s office and do some snooping. We know we can’t just stop going…”

  “Are you sure about that?” Andrew asked.

  Terry felt like an exposed nerve. “One, there’s a small child taking part in something and we don’t know if she’s safe.”

  “And two,” Gloria said, “it won’t be that easy. The three of us would flunk out of school, and that’s if they let us leave.”

  “What do you mean, let you leave?” Andrew asked, outraged. Terry reached a hand over to remind him to keep his voice down. He lowered it. “You have rights. You’re Americans.”

  Gloria smiled wryly. “When it’s our government involved, I think you’ll find our rights are often to be determined.”

  Andrew absorbed that. “I don’t like this.”

  “Welcome to my club,” Gloria said. “I’m the chairperson.”

  “Look, I’ll do whatever you need,” Alice interrupted. “I’ve been dying to take apart that elevator. I could probably convince them to let me.”

  “Alice isn’t even in school, she probably could leave.” Andrew again.

  Gloria cleared her throat. “You can’t know that. These are people with resources.”

  Alice sat up straighter. “Don’t debate like I don’t have a choice. I’m not leaving until everyone does. And I can be the distraction.”

  Ken finally spoke up. “No. You have enough to worry about. I’ll do it.”

  “You?” Alice’s tone was skeptical.

  “I rock at distractions, man.” He shrugged. “And the acid doesn’t do anything to me. I just feel like I need a nap. They just leave some junior guy with me. I’m not even sure why I’m there, except that I’m supposed to be.”

  Alice sighed.

  “Well, if you’re the distraction, just don’t fall asleep,” Terry said, feeling this meeting about to slip out of her control. “We can figure out timing. I can ask Kali about ‘Papa’ and what happens to her at the lab. But…what if I find Brenner’s office instead? I wish I knew what would help us the most in terms of information.”

  Gloria put her elbows on the table. “I might be able to help with that part. If you can get into his office, the best thing would be documents that describe experiment protocols. Also subject records.” She frowned. “You might need to find a key. Brenner’s not a slouch. Most scientists would lock up classified information.”

  “I can pick a lock,” Alice said.

  Crap, but then…“He’s too arrogant for us to need to,” Terry said. “I bet he takes the protections all around him in Hawkins for granted enough not to worry about the security inside his office.”

  Gloria lifted two crossed fingers. “I think…I might be able to grab some samples of the drug cocktail. In case we need it for proof or to analyze somehow.”

  “All right,” Terry said.

  Gloria lifted her eyebrows. “Then we have a very slim, risky plan.”

  “So we do,” Terry said.

  It felt better than not having one, slim or not.

  Alice nudged Andrew’s arm. “I read about your protest, big brother. Can’t believe you got arrested. Everything okay?”

  Her obvious concern made Terry’s heart grow. This might have been the only five minutes today she hadn’t spent worrying about him.

  “I’m fine,” Andrew said, ducking his head.

  “He meets with his advisor and the dean on Friday. We’re hoping he gets off because of the other guys,” Terry said.

  Andrew gave her a grateful look.

  Gloria lifted her fingers again, still crossed.

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “We need all the luck we can get right now.”

  3.

  Ken got out of the van last and hurried to catch the others so they could walk to the lab entrance together.

  The entire approach had grown as familiar
to him as his own handwriting. Once outside the city came the cornfields, followed by the woods, and then the chain link and the speed bumps, one, two, three, as they rolled through the security stops and on into the building for their LSD. He felt like he’d seen it in glimpses, before they’d made the first drive. He knew the others didn’t believe that he was psychic. What people believed didn’t matter.

  The truth did. He didn’t see monsters, but he got feelings. Certainty would lodge itself in his chest. He had dreams with snatches of reality mixed in. Flashes of intuition. These came unpredictably—which he always thought was funny—and so he was never surprised if an inkling showed up. Or if it didn’t.

  He hadn’t been lying when he told the others he knew they’d be important to each other. It’s just…that was most of what he knew.

  So, sure, he understood why other people didn’t believe he was psychic. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe there just wasn’t another good word to describe it.

  The entry protocol had also taken on a familiar rhythm. Each of the women scanned in with ID cards, then Ken last. The driver usually played escort, bringing them to the elevator where Brenner or one of his staff would meet them. The driver, of course, was also a plant—one of Brenner’s orderlies who almost always peeled off with Brenner and Terry, into whatever room she was taken into.

  So it went today.

  When the agreed-upon two hours into their trips arrived, and he began to shriek about how the walls were bleeding, the guy assigned to watch him shifted nervously.

  “They’re bleeding! The walls are dripping blood!”

  “Keep it down,” the guy said, fidgeting.

  “Pull an alarm!” Ken roared. “You have to tell everyone! Invaders! Don’t you see the blood?!”

  “Uh…” The man stood in his orderly costume looking around as if someone might help him, but they were alone.

  It was now that Ken would pull out his big gun—a packet of ZotZ. He’d bought his mom’s Halloween supplies and when he’d seen this new type of candy in the aisle, it had called to him. He’d bought three packs and put them in a desk drawer in his dorm room. He’d known why the moment Terry said she needed a diversion.

  Keening and covering his mouth, he put a handful of the candies with the sour exploding centers in and chomped down, then threw his head back so the guy could hear the fizzing sound and see the foam. He jerked as convincingly as he could, imitating his uncle mid-seizure.

  As anticipated, the practically-a-kid orderly flipped out.

  “I think he’s got rabies!” he said before he rushed out the door.

  “The blood! The blood!” Ken shouted, barely able to keep from cracking up. He ran out into the hallway and pulled the fire alarm lever on the wall, then darted back into the exam room and proceeded to swallow the remaining ZotZ and convulse on the floor.

  The alarm shrieked on and the orderly finally returned with a tall female doctor who gave Ken one look and said, “We’ll have to get Brenner.” The orderly did nothing, and she shoved him. “Get Brenner! And tell him to bring some sedatives.”

  Ken turned his face toward the floor so he could grin.

  Go, Terry, go, he thought. You can do this.

  4.

  Terry discovered that having comrades-in-arms and a shared plan made everything feel different.

  She had both less and more weight on her shoulders.

  Everyone else believed Brenner might be into something he had no business messing with, too. Meeting Kali followed by the revelation of Alice’s monsters—and Brenner’s electroshock—just gave her more reasons she had to get to the bottom of this. People in this area were conservative, generally speaking. They wouldn’t approve of government-funded acid trips. That might be enough to end the whole thing. But even Terry knew they needed proof that wasn’t their word against his. And they still didn’t have a real idea of what was happening.

  Ken had promised she’d know when his distraction came—they’d agreed he would time it early enough in the acid trip that she’d still be on the uphill swing, and not the downhill tired paranoia spiral. And he didn’t lie. A fire alarm screamed and then a young orderly knocked on the door to the room.

  “Is there an emergency? A fire?” Brenner demanded. He’d been pleased at her report that no one knew she’d placed the bug—and he’d seemed to already know it was there. Bless Gloria’s quick thinking in actually doing it.

  “I, uh, I don’t think so. I have a patient emergency.” The orderly was flustered and babbling. “Dr. Parks sent me to get you. Come quick! Oh, and she said bring sedatives.”

  “Prepare them,” Brenner barked to the orderly attending him, their looming, bearded driver as usual. He walked over to Terry and crouched beside the cot where she reclined. “I want you to stay here and relax. The alarm is all in your mind.”

  “All in my mind,” she said, as blissed-out as she could manage. “Like pretty music.”

  “Let’s go.” Brenner waved for the orderlies to come. Terry watched through slitted lids. She was up as soon as they cleared the door.

  The hall was busy with staff evacuating or asking whether they had to evacuate. A security guard passed Terry and said no to one of them, that the alarm system had been manually triggered and there was no evidence of a fire. The threat was being investigated and the alarm would be off soon.

  She kept her head down and hurried along the wall. A glance into a door and there was Alice, grinning, an enormous machine like a portable iron lung beside her.

  The route to where she met Kali felt burned into her brain, but she made a wrong turn. Then another. She’d almost given up hope when she recognized the corridor, the wing separated by the keypad. She hurried to it and entered the code Alice had given her.

  The keypad beeped and the door released with a click.

  Terry rushed through, past the doors of empty rooms until she reached one with bunk beds and a little table with crayons on it. But Kali was nowhere to be seen.

  At least that probably means she’s not staying here. Terry hadn’t been able to get the horrible idea out of her mind, unlikely as it seemed.

  So the next step was to try to find Brenner’s office. If Kali called him Papa, it must be close by, right? She was either his daughter or important to him in some other way.

  Terry turned back and tried the other hall past the keypad. She came almost immediately to another set of doors with yet another keypad, where the code also worked, and was encouraged when this hallway had offices instead of exam rooms. There were placards with names beside the doors.

  She scanned each one, praying the letters would stop vibrating and dancing and knowing the acid meant they wouldn’t.

  DR. MARTIN BRENNER. She traced her fingers across the raised letters.

  Hallelujah. She tried the door and it opened, unlocked. The fire alarm abruptly stopped, but she knew Ken would do his best to stretch out his disruption. Still, she didn’t have endless time. They couldn’t afford for Brenner to know what they were up to.

  Not yet.

  She tried his middle desk drawer and it was locked. Gloria called that.

  But then how many files could it hold? There was a tall wooden filing cabinet behind the desk. She said a silent prayer and pulled at the second drawer down.

  It slid free. She paged through the files, seeing the words MK ULTRA and then INDIGO typed at the top, along with CLASSIFIED stamps. Neither meant anything to her. She skimmed, looking for the terms Gloria had mentioned, and came up empty. Next drawer, then.

  Terry’s interest spiked as she took in what she’d found.

  There were no names on these files. Numbers. 001. 002. 003. And on they went, up to 010. The words PROJECT INDIGO after them. More CLASSIFIED stamps at the top of the pages inside. But it was the physical descriptions that told her what she’d
found. The low weights. The heights that started at 3′2″. And then the ages listed as entered at.

  Age 4.

  Age 6.

  Age 8.

  If these were anything to go by, Kali wasn’t the only child involved. But involved in what, exactly? The notes were mostly focused on the progress of each, and not much had been made apparently. Except for the file of 008, which contained encouraging but cautionary notes…

  You don’t have time to read all this.

  She shut the drawer.

  Terry’s heart pounded as she left the office and hurried down the hall and around a corner, retracing her steps. She chanced looking for Kali again and found her back at the table, drawing, once again in a gown.

  She could have appointments the same day you’re here.

  Before Terry could knock on the door to ask, a hand grabbed her arm. Kali didn’t see her as a man in an ill-fitting suit moved her back up the hall.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked. “This is a restricted sector.”

  She scrambled for a story. Then she realized Ken had given her the perfect cover. “I heard the alarm and was trying to evacuate.”

  “But how did you get back here?” he pressed.

  “I’m not sure…I followed someone, I think?”

  She couldn’t tell if he bought it.

  5.

  Alice had to stop herself from clapping as the alarm filled the air and glee filled her. A fresh-faced, panicked orderly appeared at the door a moment later and, before Dr. Parks could even ask about a fire, begged her to come see another test subject.

  Ken.

  He’d managed it. How about that? Alice had been coming up with plan Bs and Cs all during the drive here. Thinking those words made giant versions of the letters B and C float through her head as if drawn by skywriters. That was the drugs. No electricity yet today, which meant no monsters either. It had been two weeks; maybe the monsters were gone.