chapter xiii .
when faced with death
( meanwhile , somewhere
in alternate dimension )
VAL FLEW OUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GATE and landed painfully on her back. A groan of agony escaped her lips, but her voice caught and faltered when she opened her eyes to take in the sight before her.
It looked like Hawkins—Lover's Lake, to be exact—but as if it had been flipped over, dried up, and splattered with the intestinal-looking vines Val had seen when under Vecna's curse. The hivemind, she figured, meant that everything in this so-called Upside Down was connected, so she had just moments ago been somewhere in the distance, fighting off her deranged biological father/an undead being with ugly veins all over its body. As one does.
All around her, in the empty pit that used to be the center of Lover's Lake, her friends were at war; battling malicious bat-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth and leathery wings. The monsters were vicious, snapping and biting at every inch of skin they could find. Val stumbled back, gasping in fear. To her right, Steve was being bombarded by a clan of bats, gnawing at his exposed stomach. To her left, Nancy and Robin were ripping apart one monster, Nancy clutching her arm.
Eddie burst through the gate a few moments after Val had been able to take in her surroundings. He looked around for a second, clearly paralyzed with fear, but when he realized evil, man-eating bats were attacking them, he screamed, "Jesus Christ!"
"Stop screaming and help us out here!" Val demanded as she rushed over to help Robin stabilize Nancy by the waist, who was gripping the tail of one of the creatures—and would have flown off with it if the other two girls hadn't weighed her down.
"Come on, come on! You little bastards!" Eddie charged into battle wielding nothing but his bare hands. He grabbed the tail end of a bat and flung it into the ground, screaming, and jumped backwards when the bat exploded. Guts splattered across his face. "Holy shit!"
Val turned at the sound of furious grunting. Steve had made it to his feet and began doing the same as Eddie had done with the bat—throwing it on the ground repeatedly, WWE style. His exposed stomach was a gnarly sight—gaping holes in either side of his torso and blood seeping down into the hem of his pants grotesquely. Val held back a gag.
When the bat had had enough, Steve stomped his bare foot onto its face and ripped it clean in two. The bat screeched in pain, then fell silent, blood and guts and leathery bat skin draped across Steve's foot. All it took was one wet squelch from the dead bat and Val was dry heaving behind a clump of vines.
"Steve, are you okay?" Nancy asked, rushing to his side. She began to inspect his wounds. "Jesus..."
"Val, how you doing?" came Eddie's voice, and Val felt a hand on her back, supporting her. She lifted her head weakly and held up a sardonic thumbs-up.
"Peachy," she replied, coughing. "Jesus, that was vile."
Eddie raised his eyebrows. "Haven't you seen worse?"
"Yeah, and I actually threw up at that." She pursed her lips. "Gotta weak stomach. It's not my best feature."
"I think it's funny."
"Of course you do, asshat."
"Uh, hey," Robin called, pulling Eddie and Val's attention back to the situation at hand. "Do you guys think these bats have, like, rabies, or something? It's just that rabies are, like, my number one greatest fear and I think we should probably get you to a doctor, like, really soon because once the symptoms set in, it's too late. You're already dead."
