Chapter Nine: Treacherous

A few minutes into the night, as Annie was looking around the junkyard, she heard someone coming up the ladder. She kept the binoculars where they were, but moved her head to see who her visitor was.

"Hey," Annie greeted quietly, a small smile coming to her face and looked back through the binoculars.

Max smiled back. "Hey." She got settled in the opposite corner from Annie, but they were still on the same side. They were quiet for a bit and Annie was scared it was going to get awkward until Max spoke up again. "It's kind of awesome."

Annie turned away from the binoculars again. "What do you mean?"

"The fog. It looks like the ocean," Max explained. There was a sad smile on her face as she talked and remembered.

"You miss it?" Annie asked. Max looked lost. "The ocean. The waves? California?" Max did a little shrug, but Annie knew that California was much cooler than it was here. "Hawkins seems pretty lame, I bet. In comparison."

"No, it's not that. It's just... my dad's still there, so..." she trailed off as she looked back out onto the fog.

Annie furrowed her eyebrows. "Why?" Sometimes she wasn't that bright.

"It's this legal term, called 'divorce,'" Max started to tease, and Annie's face heated up. "See, when two married people don't love each other anymore-"

"Yeah, sorry. I don't use my brain a lot..." Annie omitted her wish for divorce in her own life, because then maybe her time at home could be happier and she wouldn't have to worry about her parents being in the same room together for long.

Max took in a deep breath and kept going. "My mom and my stepdad, they wanted a fresh start away from him. As if... as if he was the problem, which is total bull. And things... they're just worse now."

Annie sat up from her weird laying down position as Max kept going. "My stepbrother's always been a dick, but now he's just angry all the time and... well, he can't take it out on my mom, so..."

"So he takes it out on you?" Annie asked, finishing the sentence. Her face filled with sadness and she never in her life wanted to hug someone so much. It really looked like Max could use one.

Max looked at her, then shook her head. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she said, trying to break out of the emotional conversation. But, against Max's usual ways, she decided to stay in the moment. "It's just... I know that I can be a jerk like him sometimes, and I do not want to be like him. Ever. I guess I'm angry, too, and I'm sorry."

They sat in silence for a moment as Annie tried to piece together something to say, something that isn't dumb and cliche. "Jesus! What's wrong with me," Max said, now regretting her openness. It was poorly timed, she thought. She shouldn't have done this now.

"Hey, don't." Max stopped and looked at Annie. "You are nothing like your brother, Max. You never will be. And that's because you've got some great people here, surrounding you who won't let that happen."

This was where Annie wanted to open up, too. To make Max feel less awkward. But she didn't know where to start. "You're cool and smart and actually super nice and, what were Dustin and Lucas saying? Totally tubular?" she joked.

Max laughed, and so did Annie. This was better. "No one actually says that," Max said through her laughs.

"You better not tell them, it might break their hearts," Annie joked as they laughed harder. They calmed down but still had smiles on their faces. "You're fun to talk with, Max."

There was a faint blush that came to Max's cheeks when Annie said that. "You are too, Barbie," she replied.

Annie sighed. "Man, if that's gonna stick I need to get a good nickname for you. Could always do generic and go with Red for the hair, but I need something a bit better than that." This had the girls in a fit of laughter again, until they heard an echoing growl.

It shut them up fast and they looked out to see where it came from. Annie got the binoculars back up to her eyes and searched through the fog. "Annie, whatcha got?" Dustin yelled up the ladder.

She looked around frantically, trying to find it. "One second, I'm looking!" she yelled back down. Her head moved as she scanned the ground for whatever it was- most likely Dart. "I- I got him! Ten o'clock!" she yelled down.

Without her asking, Annie handed the binoculars off to Max. She looked, then removed them from her face to look at Annie. "Are we sure that's not a dog?" she asked.

"I really don't know at this point, but I kinda hope it's not so we don't burn it alive," Annie admitted. Max didn't know that Annie knew, but not because she was a part of it, but because she was finally told about it. Annie had already pieced together that Lucas told Max and that's why she was brought along.

Annie took back the binoculars and looked at the unmoving Dart. "Why isn't he moving? There's a glorious pile of meat right there!" she questioned. The fear was coming out in her voice because this was it. This was either going to make or break the story she had heard.

There was shuffling down below, and then a metal scraping sound. Annie was lost at first, until she spotted her brother coming out of the bus. "Steve! What the hell are you doing?" she yelled at him, extremely panicked.

"Just stay on the bus!" he yelled back. Annie shook terribly as Steve held up his bat and made his way closer to Dart.

"Shit..." she whispered, and watched through binoculars to see what Dart was going to do. "Don't die, oh god please don't die."

Max stayed up on top with Annie, too worried about the shaking girl. "Guys, what's he doing?" she called down the ladder.

Dustin popped into view and said, "Expanding the menu."

This made Annie want to throw up. "Oh god- oh god I'm going to be sick," Annie complained but didn't move. No way was she going to mess up and cause her brother's death- no damn way.

Movement to her right cause Annie to glance away for a second. She saw two more creatures that looked exactly like Dart. Her eyes went wide and Max looked lost. "Shit! Steve, look out!" she practically screamed at him.

"Little busy here!" Steve yelled back.

Oh no. "Your three o'clock! Steve your three o'clock!" she tried again. Max took the binoculars to look and saw the same thing Annie did.

There was more noise below and the bus door opened again. "Steve! Abort! Abort!" Dustin yelled, panic also coming into his voice.

Annie sat and watched in terror as her brother started to run back to the bus, fighting off the creatures at the same time. "Run!" she yelled from above. Max moved and finally went down the ladder. But Annie was frozen in place.

"Annie, get down!" Max yelled up at her. But she couldn't, not until she saw her brother jump into the bus. He did, thank god, and one of the creatures slammed into the door right behind him, shaking the hole thing and scaring Annie.

"Shit," she said, nearly losing a grip on the binoculars. Now was a good time to get down. However, the creatures kept slamming into the sides and Annie was too scared to move, afraid she'd slip off the side with no tires.

Max was still below, looking up the ladder where she could only partially see Annie. "Annie, please, come on!" she yelled again.

Steve looked over, wanting to run to the ladder and pull his sister down and in the bus, but he couldn't rush moving otherwise the door would be vulnerable. "Annie, haul ass and get down!" he yelled instead.

The bus stopped shaking, and Annie used that to quickly slide over to the ladder. She barely got her feet on when something jumped up onto the bus in front of her.

It was awful. The thing didn't have any eyes and was so skinny she could see bones. It's head was a pointed looking shape, until it opened it mouth to screech at her and the entire head opened up to show off it's hundreds of teeth.

She screamed. It started moving towards her, and as it did Annie's mind blanked. She straight up let go of the ladder and fell down into the bus, still terrified and shaking.

Steve, now able to move, ran over to her. Max was looking out the hole and saw the monster, too, and it did the same thing: open it's mouth and screech at her. Steve got up to push Max out of the way and held the bat up defensively.

He was yelling at the monster, Annie and Max were still screaming in fear, and the boys were also panicking while Dustin tried to call anyone over the radio. Someone helped Annie up to her feet and she clung to them as they all backed away.

The monster stopped it screeching and all was quiet. The bus rattled as it jumped off, and it remained quiet. No one knew what to do from here, if they were all still out there waiting or if they had run off. But if they had run off, why?

While they stood and waited, Annie realized she was clinging onto Max. The redhead's arms were around her torso and Annie was holding them. Her face heated up significantly, but she didn't want to let go.

Steve carefully moved to the door and opened it, and that's when they could all let go of the breath they were collectively holding. They were gone.

Max and Annie finally parted and awkwardly followed Steve and the boys out of the bus. "What happened?" Lucas asked.

"Steve scared 'em off?" Dustin suggested.

"No, no way," Steve quickly said. "They're going somewhere."

Annie let out a shaky breath, one which Steve very much noticed. He shoved the bat (carefully) into Lucas' grasp and pulled his baby sister into a hug. She clung back to him and took in very shaky breaths.

They stood there for a second until Annie realized her stomach was still very unsettled from everything. "Hey, Steve?" she said quietly.

"Yeah?" he replied just as quietly.

"I'm going to throw up."

Steve barely registered the words when Annie was pushing him away and running around the corner of the bus to get away from everyone, then she did as she promised. The raw meat thing, the fear of her brother getting eaten, seeing one of those disgusting things, almost dying- it was way too much.

She registered the hand on her back and heard Steve saying, "It's okay, we're okay, it's over for now." Of course, he couldn't say it was completely over, because no one knew if it was, but at least for now they had a bit of peace.

It was a couple minutes later when Steve and Annie returned to the group, Annie feeling a lot more awkward now that she basically threw up in front of them. Steve had found a napkin in his pocket for her to use and she left it crumpled on the ground. This was awful.

"What's our next move?" Annie asked, begging for them to move on.

No one spoke for a moment, until Lucas shrugged. "We find out where they went, right? Or do we go back home?" he asked.

Again, no one said anything. The obvious answer to Annie was go home, but she also didn't want to leave these things loose out in Hawkins. But what were they going to do? "I don't know," Steve suddenly spoke up. "Let's just walk and figure it out as we go."

So that's what they did. They started walking through the woods and found the train tracks. Steve had a protective arm around Annie's shoulders and Max was on the other side of her.

The group walked in silence for a bit, not really knowing what to say. For Annie and Max, it was confirmation that everything really did happen, and that this town was a lot shittier than it led on.

She could feel the other's hand brush against hers every now and then.

"Are you sure that was Dart?" Lucas suddenly asked Dustin, causing Max and Annie to looked up at the pair.

Dustin sighed. "Yes. He had the same exact yellow pattern on his butt."

"He was tiny two days ago," Max added on.

"Well, he's molted three times already," Dustin explained as if that cleared everything up. When Steve was confused, Dustin cleared it up.

"That isn't exactly normal, either. Doesn't it take a bit more time for reptiles to molt? Especially in between? How could that be possible- molting three times in less than 48 hours?" Annie piped up.

"It means he's probably going to molt again, question is when?" Max asked next.

"It's gotta be soon, cause Annie's right. He's much faster than a normal reptile," Dustin answered. "But, I bet it'll be the last. He'll be fully grown, or at least close to it. So will his friends."

The words had left a trail of goosebumps down Annie's arms. "Yeah. And he's going to be eating a lot more than just cats," Steve remarked. Annie nodded, and knew Steve probably meant people.

"Wait," Lucas said, throwing his arm out to stop Dustin and the rest of the crew. "A cat? Dart ate a cat?"

Dustin immediately went into denial, confusing Annie. "What the hell do you mean 'no,' I thought you said it ate Mews?" Annie asked for clarification.

Max looked confused. "Who's Mews?" she asked.

"Dustin's cat," Steve answered. Then Annie pieced it together.

"Steve!"

"I knew it! You kept him!" Lucas yelled.

Annie was mad, too. "Why would you keep it? That thing is gross and a monster!" she yelled, too.

He tried to deny it at first, struggling to come up with a sentence, until he gave up. "He missed me. He wanted to come home," Dustin admitted.

While Annie was mad, she was nowhere near Lucas levels. He was beyond pissed. "Bullshit!"

"I didn't know it was a Demogorgan, okay?"

"Oh so now you admit it?"

Max was tired of the fighting. "Guys, who cares? We have to go," she said. Annie nodded her agreement, knowing this was not important right now- this argument wasn't going to stop past-Dustin from keeping Dart despite how mad they all were about it.

"I care!" Lucas yelled, looking at Max then back to Dustin. "You put the Party in jeopardy! You broke the rule of law!"

"So did you!" Dustin basically screamed back.

"What?"

Dustin held his flashlight up right into Max's face. "You told a stranger the truth!"

Max scoffed as the light moved away from her face. "A stranger?" she asked, pissed off.

"You wanted to tell her, too!" Lucas yelled back at Dustin. "Besides, you literally told Annie so why are you accusing me?!"

"That was more on Steve, not me!"

"Okay, woah there," Annie interrupted, breaking away from Steve. "If anyone is going to be mad about truth telling, it's gonna be me!"

"Oh why should it be you?" Lucas quickly asked.

"Because I've known you guys for forever! We were all best friends until Will disappeared and you locked me out of your lives- your Party! I had no one and I had to go on believing you guys just decided you hated me all of a sudden. I finally learned the truth yesterday when I damn well should've know beforehand!"

"Guys!" Everyone finally shut up and turned to Steve, who looked as if he'd been trying to get their attention for a bit now. When they waited for him to keep going, they instead heard roaring noises in the distance and it sounded like the monsters.

Without much hesitation, the boys all started running towards the sounds. Annie and Max hesitated a lot more. "Hey, no, no, guys! Why are you heading towards the sound?" Max called after them.

"We should follow, it doesn't look like they're going to stop and come back," Annie suggested. The girls looked at each other and Max saw how scared Annie was, so she grabbed the brunette's hand and they went racing after them.

They came out onto a grassy clearing that looked down on Hawkins way below. It was dark and foggy to where none of them could make out much of anything.

Lucas got his binoculars up and looked around before stopping on something. "It's the lab," he said.

"Wait, as in the lab?" Annie asked. They only nodded. "Shit..."

His next words were grim as he removed the binoculars from his face. "They were going back home..."

A/n: some good Max and Annie quality time 😁 this is def a fav chapter of mine, hope you guys feel the same! And, I hope to see you back here tomorrow