chapter iii
madmax

"REEFER RICK'S HOUSE? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?"

"Yeah," Eddie said, as he felt a hand across the bottom of Rick's porch swing in search of a spare key. "Pretty goddamn serious, Valerie."

Val paced back and forth across the porch while Eddie scoured for the key. Her hands ran through her hair over and over again as she replayed the scene in her mind—Chrissy's body flying to the ceiling, her bones snapping in two, her eyes popping and dripping blood out of their empty sockets. Now that she was somewhat more clear-minded, Val lifted a hand to her face to find a few drops of dried blood staining her cheeks. She scratched it off, fighting back the bile that was clawing its way up her throat.

"Jesus, I'm gonna be sick," she muttered, clutching her gut. "That was fucking—vile. Jesus."

Eddie finally found a key buried beneath the pillows on the swing. "I know, I know, I was there too—so can you stop talking about it, please?" He inserted it into the lock and pushed the door open, gesturing for Val to go in first.

     "What the hell happened to her?" Val continued, ignoring Eddie's pleas for her to stop. She made her way inside the familiar home of her ex-drug dealer. "I've never seen anything like that before. That was some.. some real fucked up shit."

     "You don't need to keep saying that," Eddie said. Val's eyes followed him as he rummaged around for something. "God, he doesn't have any food around here?"

     "Considering the fact that he got arrested and hasn't been able to keep the place stocked, I don't think so," Val sneered, rolling her eyes. "How could you even think about eating right now? I feel like I'm about to puke up whatever mush they fed us for lunch."

     "If you do, please be sure to aim for the toilet," he said, his face buried in an open cabinet that looked to hold just pots and pans inside. "I'm not looking for food to eat right now; I'm looking for food to eat in the future so you don't go feral and try cooking me."

Val froze in her tracks. "How long do you think we're going to be here, Munson?"

He stopped his searching and turned around to face her, his usually jovial expression replaced by that of complete seriousness—which looked incredibly out of place on the face of Eddie Munson. "Let me lay it our for you," he said slowly, closing the gap between them with a few steps. "As of a few hours ago, Chrissy is dead."

     "Yeah, I gathered that," Val snapped. "Thanks for the help, Captain Obvious."

     "Would you just shut up and listen?" His sharp tone drew Val's lips together out of pure surprise. Eddie held up both of his hands. "There are two ways this could go. The first is that they rule her death as some kind of freak accident, okay? That's the best-case-scenario. But that involves the cops entering my home to find all of my stocks, which ends with them arresting me."

     "And the second way?" Val asked, but she was pretty sure she already knew what it involved.

     "The second option," Eddie said, lifting one of his hands higher than the other, "is that they find her body in my trailer and decide that 'Hey, huh, maybe the freak did this!', and they come after me with pitchforks and torches."

"So what the hell do I have to do with this?" Val asked, growing uneasy, shifting her weight between her feet. "Either way ends with your ass in jail, if they catch you. But I don't have to be associated with this shit. Nobody knew I was there."

"No, you're right." Eddie swept his hands toward the door. "So of course you're free to go, princess. If you so please."

Val's eyes narrowed. She ran through a billion possibilities and 'what-if's in her mind. Was it possible that somebody had seen her go into his house, and run out with him thirty minutes later? There was definitely a high chance—the trailer park was pretty well-populated. And not many people spend their Friday nights shut in their homes...

But then an idea struck her like a brick upside the head. She straightened up and crossed her arms. "Well, I could always find out."

Eddie raised his eyebrows and paused the rummaging, which he had returned to in her moment of thought. "Find out.. what, exactly?"

"What the stakes are. You're right about yourself—you can't go out there, they'd prosecute you before you could even catch a breath—but I'm not immediately associated with your house. I bet I've got... a day and a half before anyone comes forward and says they saw me with you, if anyone even did. So I'm going back out there."

     Eddie nodded, his hands stroking his chin in genuine thought. "It's probably best for your car not to be here," he added, as a forethought. "Just in case they come after me and this is the first place they decide to look."

     Val held up her hand, and he tossed her her keys. She only had one foot out the door when Eddie stopped her and said "Stay safe out there, Valerie."

     "Not my name," she said over her shoulder. "But you stay safe in here, Munson."

     "Not my name," he repeated as the door swung shut on Val's heels.

Some part of her felt insane as she climbed into the driver's seat of her car, but she found herself biting back a smile, turning the key in the ignition to ignore the feeling. Eddie Munson had ruined her life once before—she would not let him do it again.

               COPS WERE SWARMING THE TRAILER PARK. Of course they were, Val thought—they must have sent every responder they could muster to the scene. Murders like this don't just happen in Hawkins.

     No, not murders. Deaths. Chrissy wasn't murdered. At least, not by any living thing.

     Val's car pulled to a stop across the way from Eddie's trailer, a few feet away from the cops and the barricade they'd created. Not much could be seen through the commotion, but the door to Eddie's trailer was wide open—and just inside was Chrissy's lifeless body, now pale and deoxygenated from a whole night of... well, being dead. Val swallowed down whatever was about to spill from her throat—she hadn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours, so she was afraid of what would come out.

     "Holy shit," came a voice from a little behind Val. She glanced over her shoulder to see a girl she recognized to be a freshman standing on her own porch—she had fiery red hair, tied back in a low bun, headphones connected to a Walkman hanging around her neck. She caught Val's gaze. Her eyes were pale blue and captivating, but the glare she clearly was used to using was put aside, as she gave Val a curious look. "Do you know what's going on?"

     "I—I think someone died," Val said, turning away so the girl couldn't get a good look at her face.

     "That's the Munsons's trailer," the other girl muttered, clutching the wooden railing of her porch. Her eyes moved back to Val and her brow furrowed in what looked like recognition. "You seem familiar."

A pang of anxiety hit Val's stomach. She managed to throw a tight smile at the freshman. "We probably go to school together."

"No, I know, but I feel like..." The girl's gaze hardened as she was finally able to put a finger on it. "I saw you here last n—"

Val spun around, slamming a hand over the redhead's mouth before she could finish her sentence. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the cops had heard any of it—none of them seemed suspicious of Val, so luckily they must've missed it. Val kept her hand on the girl's mouth until she was able to lead her to behind her own trailer. Music was still playing out of her Walkman, but she didn't seem to care.

     "Did you just lick my fucking hand?" Val hissed, removing it from the girl's mouth and wiping it on her jeans.

     "What the hell?" The girl shoved Val's shoulders. "You don't just do that!"

     "Jesus, I'm sorry, okay? You were just about to say something that I could've gotten in a lot of trouble for."

     "What, that you were here last night?" The girl's eyes narrowed and she took a cautious step back, holding out a hand. "Did.. did you—?"

     "No, I didn't fucking kill her!" She tried to keep her voice down, but this girl was too skeptical for her liking. "I just.. happened to be there when it happened."

     "So you know who did kill her."

     "Nobody killed her," Val said, which wasn't technically a lie. "Just—You're, like, what, fourteen? Go back inside and make your bed, or something. Leave this to the cops to handle."

     "Tell me what happened."

     Val scoffed, shaking her head in incredulity. The stubbornness of this girl... "You wouldn't believe me if I did tell you."

     The redhead gave Val a disbelieving look. "What's your name?"

     "Val."

     "Well, Val," the girl said, crossing her arms and taking a step forward. "I'm Max. I've been through some crazy shit. I could tell you how I spent last summer, but I think you'd run away screaming. Nothing you can say will surprise me, trust me."

     Val considered this Max character, a hard glint in her eyes as she looked her up and down once. Some part of her told her that what Max was telling her was true, even though she had no idea how she knew it, but Val was not one to ignore her instincts. She glanced at the cops once more, then shuffled Max further away from the commotion and lowered her voice.

     "Fine, but don't blame me when you think I'm losing my mind," she said, her jaw hardening. She told Max everything that she could, having to pause once or twice so she didn't dry heave onto Max's lawn. She tried her best to keep Eddie's name out of the story, but it was his trailer, so she could only do so much to help him. As she spoke, Max's expression was hard to read. She looked like she had mixed opinions on what Val was telling her—upset, angry, maybe even disappointed—but no part of her looked like she was disbelieving of what she was hearing. Val's gut twisted with relief. She needed someone to tell her she wasn't crazy, and Max seemed like that was exactly what she was about to do.

     At least, Val thought that was what she was about to do. What she really did when Val finished her story was suck in her cheeks then sigh, sort of like an old man who was tired of everything.

     "Come on," she said, grabbing Val's wrist. "We have to go talk to someone."