Chapter Text
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
[Eddie Munson is 15 minutes late to our scheduled interview. He is intensely apologetic as he ushers me up to his third-floor apartment in the recently-rebuilt neighborhood of Andersonville. For someone of his celebrity status - both pre- and post-war - the space is surprisingly modest, with little hinting at his previous life as a member of Corroded Coffin bar a few framed records and a battered red Warlock mounted on the wall. We are greeted at the door by a large mutt, who Munson introduces as Merry and assures me “doesn’t bite, unlike his brother, Pippin.” He leads me into their living room, where I am introduced to Pippin - a large, grizzled cat - and insists on making me coffee.]
I couldn’t have been less aware of what was going on, honestly. [He laughs.] I couldn’t have told you what was happening in Ohio or Tennessee, let alone the beginnings of the panic in South Africa, or the crisis in Taiwan. I was - and I hate to say it, really, I do - the typical self-obsessed rockstar at that point of my life. The only reason I didn’t go down in flames with the Windy City was that I was too busy setting fire to my personal and professional relationships - thank fuck for the Munson self-destruction gene, huh? It got so bad, my band told me either I was getting sober or they were getting a new lead guitarist.
[He shoots me a sideways look as he settles onto the couch, leaning his cane up against the coffee table.]
I’m guessing you’re already familiar with my, uh, backstory. Pre-war, that is.
I am.
Oh, thank fuck. Sorry, I got so fuckin’ sick of rehashing the whole recovering addict1 shit after the whole story leaked, I can’t bear doing it again. So you know why I was in Hawkins?
A stopover on your way to rehab?
Close, but no cigar.
[He pats his pockets.]
Speaking of, you mind if I…?
[After I shake my head, he pulls out a pack of cigarettes.]
I quit over the war, unsurprisingly, but after the NYT article I picked it up again. Steve’s got me down to one a day, but I gotta smoke it out on the balcony or he’ll finish what Zack started - shit, sorry, you gotta pause your tape and everything. Never mind, I’ll smoke it later.
[He puts the pack away again and begins spinning one of the rings on his fingers.]
What was I saying? Shit, I gotta mind like a fuckin’ sieve these days. The virus’ll2 do that to you, y’know? Fucking crazy long-term effect of it. Pisses me off to no end.
Your trip to rehab.
[He snaps his fingers.]
Right, that’s it! So, as I’m sure you’re aware, my previous attempt to get clean was unsuccessful due to meeting my new dealer at the wonderful establishment of Sandy Pines Recovery Center. This time, the guys weren’t taking any fuckin’ chances, so they enlisted my uncle. Rehab take two was gonna take place on the couch in his trailer.
You weren’t willing to try another facility?
I wasn’t willing to try anything . [He laughs again.] No, I didn’t want to go back to conventional rehab. It didn’t work for me the first time around - was pretty fuckin’ awful, actually, celebrity addicts are way worse than normal ones - and as much as they were mad at me, the guys didn’t really want to force me to go through that again. So: my uncle Wayne’s couch, and this addiction counselor a friend of mine recommended was gonna call every day until I was doing better.
That friend was…?
Chrissy Cunningham. She, uh. She probably saved my life, to be honest. She…
[He pauses and takes a deep breath.]
I’m sorry. It’s hard to talk about her. At the risk of sounding all, uh, how would Robs3 put it - self-flagellatory - I still, you know, blame myself.
For her death?
Yeah. For all of it.
You were accused of being the source of the outbreak in Hawkins .
Yup. Which is funny, considering when the first case was reported all I was capable of doing was violently throwing up into a bucket and watching old reruns of Scooby-Doo. Hawkins was a small town, though, and I was a deeply unpopular figure there even before the dead started rising.
Because of your album4 about growing up there?
Oh, that didn’t help, but mostly because I used to deal drugs. [He notices my surprise.] Shit, that one’s still not common knowledge, huh? Yeah, I was a little surprised the NYT didn’t put that in their tell-all feature about me. Call it an exclusive. [He winks.]
It was meant to be a secret, me coming back. The only people who were meant to know were my uncle, obviously, and the guys from the band, plus a couple close members of the team. Still don’t know how the news got out - I have my suspicions, as you can probably imagine, I won’t air them for fear of getting sued by the estates of the accused - but it did, and by the time Barb disappeared, people were putting two and two together and getting seventy.
You knew Barbara Holland?
Not well, the Times got that wrong. But I knew Bob Newby, he was the stepdad to one of the kids I played D&D5 with back in high school. He was a real nice guy. Fucking awful, how he died. How both of them died.
[He pauses for a moment.]
Sorry, I’m getting off topic. I was only just re-entering the land of the cognizant when things really started kicking off. Hawkins was one of those slow burns, you know? It wasn’t like some of the other outbreaks, ones where the virus made a big splash and everyone took notice, got the Alpha Teams involved. It bubbled just under the surface, like so much shit in that town. Nobody wanted to believe it could happen there, so it didn’t. You know what I mean?
I do.
And I’m not trying to blame anyone! People were turning up like Bob Newby, or not turning up at all for days like Barb, and Hawkins - Jesus, I can’t remember what the stat was, but it was something like there hadn’t been a murder in the past seventy years6. People were scared, and the cops - unsurprisingly - didn’t have any answers. [His tone grows sarcastic.] I’m sure the one who went through Barb’s notes and leaked my name to the press was just trying to help.
You were a person of interest for a short time, correct?
I was a person of interest because the town decided I should be. Listen, Hawkins did a good job of keeping up the facade of idyllic suburbia, but it had a dirty underbelly just like any other town in America. I know Barb had other patients, and I’m not saying the police should have put their names out there like they did with mine, but if you find the archives - what’s left of them - the police announcing me as a POI came after that piece in the Hawkins Post. They didn’t even interview me! If they had, I could’a pointed them to the big dent in the couch where I’d been wallowing in my own misery for days . But no, they decided to placate the slavering hordes with my name, and that - that’s when things started going downhill for me. Even when the real patient zero in Hawkins was formally determined, that town was baying for my blood until Zack went mainstream.
The real index patient being…
That’s not my story to tell.
[The front door to the apartment opens, and Munson smiles, reaching for his cane.]
Looks like your next appointment is here.
1. Pre-war, Munson struggled publicly with substance and alcohol abuse.
2. One of the suspected long-term consequences of post-exposure immunity to UDV-03 is short-term memory impairment.
3. Robin Buckley, U.N. translator and author of International Survival.
4. Corroded Coffin’s second album, Small Town Sacrifice, revolves heavily around their experiences growing up in Hawkins.
5. Dungeons & Dragons, a popular pre-war tabletop roleplaying game.
6. Previous to the outbreak of UDV-03, the last murder in Hawkins took place in 1963.