WILDFIRE ↝ E. MUNSON

[23]

"Okay," Nancy began, pulling the garage door open to reveal Ted and Karen's cars, both held down in tangles of vines, with a set of four bikes leaning against the wall next to a small tricycle, no doubt meant for a younger version of Holly. "We have four bikes here, and so do the Michaelsons across the street."

"We'll go," Lily offered, gesturing to where she stood next to Eddie, Nick, and Sarah, and the four of them rushed to the two-storey house across the street.

Mrs. Michaelson hadn't always been the kindest woman in Hawkins, usually loudly complaining if Max and her friends had ridden their bikes too close to where the flowers were growing at the edge of her yard, but Lily didn't have it in her to care that night as they worked to get the garage door open. Inside sat the bikes for Mr. and Mrs. Michaelson along with their children, now both moved out of the house as the youngest had been in Eddie's original graduating class in 1984, but, in the dimension frozen in time, the bikes still sat together as if they had never left.

Lily grabbed the bike having belonged to their youngest son, Scott, and she climbed on it, moving up the kickstand as she maneuvered the bike out of the garage and to where the rest of the group sat waiting at the end of the Wheelers' driveway. As they made their way down the cul de sac, en route to the main roads of Hawkins, Lily tried her hardest to avoid breathing in any of the particles floating through the air, though she knew her luck wouldn't be the greatest over the next seven miles.

As the path to Forest Hills led them down an all-too-familiar street, Lily looked over at the white house on the corner, her heart lurching as she took in the original Mayfield/Hargrove residence. It hadn't been her house yet by any means, they hadn't moved in until nearly a year after the gate opened, but she couldn't help the longing feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach for the sense of peace, of normalcy she'd had while living there, a sense she didn't think she'd ever get back, no matter how hard she'd tried the past seven months.

Lily forced her eyes away from the house to see Eddie watching her, studying her expression as he kept glancing back from where he was leading the group. He raised an eyebrow slightly in her direction, as if asking if she was okay, and she nodded, turning back to face the route ahead of them and letting the house rest behind them in the distance.

The miles began to pass by in a blur as the teenagers willed themselves to keep pedaling, Lily's shins beginning to burn the further they rode. They made their way outside of town, the trees growing closer together as they rode through the outskirts, and at the unmistakable sound of the bats from earlier that evening, Lily looked up through a gap in the trees to see the Creel house in the distance.

The house loomed over a field of overgrown grass at the edge of the trees, the dark exterior illuminated by a flash of red lightning in the sky. The house was covered in vines, and an endless amount of bats swarmed overhead, as if guarding the house. Lily's heart sank in her chest at the realization of what, or rather who, the bats were guarding, as Vecna resided just inside the dilapidated walls.

Anger surged in her chest as her thoughts began to race with the hell Vecna had put them all through in the last week. The losses of Chrissy and Patrick, who she'd considered friends, as well as Fred Benson, though she hadn't known the editor of the Hawkins Tiger all that well. Eddie having to go on the run as he was hunted down by the townspeople of Hawkins, and Max's own near miss with the creep. For a brief moment, Lily hadn't thought about the lack of weapons with them, or the imminent danger they were hurtling towards, but instead she was solely focused on their need to take Vecna down, once and for all.

"Come on," Eddie spoke up, pulling her attention to where the Forest Hills sign now surfaced in the distance. "We're almost there."

Lily pedaled her bike further as they made it to the trailer park, following the familiar gravel path as her mobile home came into view. Despite the vines wrapping around the trailers, this version of Forest Hills almost seemed peaceful, without all of the angry yellow police tape blocking off the Munsons' trailer.