Scene 2.20 - Stay Down!
EST: INT. Gymnasium Basement - Night.
MS: BASEMENT STAIRWELL
BOBBY
There’s no way to lock it!
PERCY
Bobby! Don’t let them get us!
BOBBY
I won’t, come on!
(They descend the stairs.)
PERCY
Bobby, they’re gonna kill us!
(The door behind them opens. MOTEL ZOMBIE, HOPE, DRIVER, CHARITY and PANDORA are easily seen in the mob approaching. BOBBY and PERCY round another doorway into a small room and reach a dead end.)
PERCY (Cont’d)
Just kill me, Bobby-
BOBBY
(Takes pistol from her hand.) No!
(Uses the pistol to shoot FAITH, who had somehow gotten too close, squarely between the eyes.)
PERCY
I don’t want to be one of those things! Kill me!
BOBBY
No! Get behind me and stay down!
(PERCY crouches behind him.)
PERCY
Why are they after us? What do they want?
BOBBY
(Fires.) Me.
PERCY
Why?
BOBBY
Oh, baby, it’s a long story...
PERCY
(Ludicrous in its humor, yet in total fear, using any mental escape she can find:) I’d like to hear it, honey...
BOBBY
I don’t think we got the time right now. Oh, Pandy...
(BOBBY fires and kills an undead PANDORA who strayed around the doorway. PERCY screams.)
PERCY
Yes we do. We got lots of time. I’m so scared Bobby.
BOBBY
Remember when I went off after our honeymoon?
PERCY
(Clutching him, eyes bolted to the open door of the room.) To Saudi Arabia?
BOBBY
Yeah.
(He fires off two rounds. He reloads. As he’s reloading, another zombie comes around the doorway, and BOBBY fires off his other pistol and sets it back down and goes back to reloading the pistol that he took from PERCY. Sporadic chaos is heard above. We notice the generator’s hum and the machine noises a little more and it perfectly blends into the familiar flashback flute and drum beat from before.)
DISSOLVE TO:
FLASHBACK SCENE
(BOBBY, wearing the ring, holds a staff and walks over a sand dune, revealing the semi-modern city of Hafir-Al-Batin. Livestock and merchants fill the dirt streets and BOBBY makes his way to the old estate where he met FAISIL’S FATHER. It’s older and dirtier, but remains intact. He knocks on the door, a woman lets him in.)
WOMAN
Come in, Roberto Hades.
(BOBBY enters. The palacial mansion hadn’t changed a bit.)
BOBBY
I knew it!
FAISIL’S FATHER
You have returned to us, Roberto Hades. Come in, sit. Smoke with us.
BOBBY
It’s because of you. Do you mind telling me how this is all possible?
FAISIL’S FATHER
This is your legacy. As part of our family, you live as we do; simple, uncomplicated.
BOBBY
I haven’t seen you for seventy-seven years and neither of us has aged a day and you call that uncomplicated?
FAISIL’S FATHER
It is a gift from Allah. You are immortal. You do not die as others do.
BOBBY
No kidding. Didja think people might start asking questions?
FAISIL’S FATHER
What could you say to them? It is God’s will. I see you still have your ring.
BOBBY
I took it off once, thinking I would start growing older again. I didn’t.
FAISIL’S FATHER
You won’t. It is a destiny of the stars, Roberto Hades. It is your fate to live.
BOBBY
Yeah, but getting older is supposed to be part of that fate, isn’t it? If I wanted to live forever, I would have asked.
FAISIL’S FATHER
How are you sure that we don’t live forever regardless? Life is only a journey to understand who you are.
BOBBY
All I understand is that there’s something unnatural about this.
FAISIL’S FATHER
How is it unnatural to live?
BOBBY
Cheating death, never getting sick, it isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.
FAISIL’S FATHER
Isn’t it? Why have you come, Roberto Hades? I hear you’ve taken a wife?
BOBBY
Yes, I have.
FAISIL’S FATHER
Is she with you?
BOBBY
No. Leave her out of this. She ain’t coming. I don’t want your blessings anymore.
FAISIL’S FATHER
All blessings are from Allah. (Kisses his fingers, touches his heart and gestures skyward.) He is the source of your abundant wealth.
BOBBY
Then tell Allah I don’t need any more of his help. I want to grow old with my wife.
FAISIL’S FATHER
There is nothing I can do but pray for you, Roberto Hades.
BOBBY
This all started when we met, and I think you know how to end it.
FAISIL’S FATHER
You give me and this family too much credit.
BOBBY
Do I? One day I’m a nobody in the Army, and within a year I am head of the Mexican Mafia, out of the blue. I don't even speak Spanish. How did that happen?
FAISIL’S FATHER
It is from your own desires and actions, not from us.
BOBBY
And who gave me the Midas Touch on Wall Street? Why am I a rock star when I can’t even read music?
FAISIL’S FATHER
You speak of things that are from you, no one else. It is your fortune, your luck.
BOBBY
This ain’t luck, it’s tinkering with the way things are. Nature doesn’t approve.
FAISIL’S FATHER
What do you want from us, Roberto Hades? We are a simple people.
BOBBY
Answers! How did it become this way? How can I change it? Why is it this way?
FAISIL’S FATHER
On the road you came in, there is a mosque. Go there, but do not enter the mosque. Walk around the mosque, and follow the path that leads from it.
BOBBY
I’m not playing around. I’m tired of this. I want out. I want to grow old. I want a real life. If I don’t find what I’m looking for there, I’ll be back.
FAISIL’S FATHER
(Slowly toking on his hookah:) See you soon, we will be waiting.
DISSOLVE TO:
(BOBBY walks uphill from a beautiful mosque. Atop the hill is a small monument. On the monument is a list of names under a family crest. BOBBY looks about; there are other small obilisks dotting the hill. He realizes he is in the equivilent of a graveyard, only no bodies are buried here.)
BOBBY
Mother Mary and Joseph!
(Under Faisil Ali is written Roberto Hades, and under that, Percy Fawney, the last name engraved on the stone. He walks back to the estate. This time, he sees it as it is, old, decayed, left to the sands of time. He hangs his head.)
WOMAN
Come in, Roberto Hades.
BOBBY
The stone. What is that supposed to mean?
FAISIL’S FATHER
You are part of our legacy. So is your wife.
BOBBY
What is this legacy? Are we dead?
FAISIL’S FATHER
Oh no, not dead. We are very much alive.
BOBBY
What does this mean? How did my wife’s name get on that stone?
FAISIL’S FATHER
It has always been written there. You are bound by fate.
BOBBY
I didn’t come here to get more confused, I came to get answers! What’s the truth?
FAISIL’S FATHER
You already know the truth, you just don’t want to accept it.
BOBBY
How am I supposed to explain this to my wife?
FAISIL’S FATHER
There is nothing to explain. There is nothing to fear.
BOBBY
I’m telling you, get my wife off that list. She doesn’t deserve this.
FAISIL’S FATHER
You seem to consider the blessing to be a curse.
BOBBY
It is a curse! Everywhere I go, death surrounds me! I fall from the sky in a plane, everyone dies, except me! I drown in the ocean, and sink to the bottom of the sea inside a ship, and still I wash up on shore a day later -- ice-cold and spitting-up salt-water! A man puts a bullet through my skull -- through my skull, from back to front, like this -- watching my brains and one of my eyes go flying out in front of me -- and I laugh about it -- and I heal like I had only cut myself shaving! -- And yet, it still hurts every time someone does it. -- Do you know what it’s like to see your own brains splattered against a wall? There’s nothing natural about this! Escaping death: Call it what you want, but it is not a blessing!
FAISIL’S FATHER
Things change. Cheer up. You keep talking as if we are somehow the cause of this.
BOBBY
You are the cause of this! Every success I have means someone else fails! Every time I cheat death, someone else dies! I want it stopped! I want out! I want out of the Mob and I want to grow old and die like everyone else gets to do! Now are you gonna just sit there, or are you gonna help me?
FAISIL’S FATHER
I have no power to help you, Son.
BOBBY
There was a time when I was honored to be called your son, but that time is over.
FAISIL’S FATHER
We have no choice in this matter. Perhaps a friend can explain it to you. Faisil!
(FAISIL enters, looking alive, not a day older than he was in 1991.)
BOBBY
No, no, this ain’t happening.
FAISIL
(Jovial, playful:) What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
BOBBY
Now I know for a fact that you were killed. I know they buried you. This isn’t real.
FAISIL
You’re right, this isn’t real. Life is just... an illusion.
BOBBY
Oh, don’t start with that life-is-an-illusion crap! You’re a corpse. You’re dead.
FAISIL
Yes, maybe so, Robert Hades. Here, my friend, take my hand.
BOBBY
I don’t believe this. You must be, a son of his, or something...
FAISIL
Walk with me. Come on, Roberto Hades, walk with me.
BOBBY
Where are we going?
FAISIL
I want to show you a place I know you have never seen before...
(The two walk out of the dusty house to the town square, holding hands. The camera doesn’t follow. They become small on the horizon.)
BOBBY
How did all this happen, Faisil?
FAISIL
One day, we were all one thought, one prayer of Allah. The next, here we are.
BOBBY
How can this be?
FAISIL
My dear friend, you really need to ask, how can it not be?
END FLASHBACK SCENE
DISSOLVE TO:
(BOBBY is running out of ammo. The bodies are piling up.)
BOBBY
Reload!
(BOBBY hands PERCY an empty pistol. The bodies are stacking up, but the zombies are still coming. A zombie dog scampers over the pile.)
Z-DOGG
Bark! Bark! Bark! Growlllll.
PERCY
Last clip, honey.
BOBBY
Hide behind me, put your head down. (BOBBY gets the dog between the eyes and empties the clip into four or five cop-zombies and as the German zombies are seen crawling over the pile, BOBBY takes out a grenade. He contemplates for a moment, hears the zombie’s guttural groans, sighs and pulls the pin.) Here goes nothin'.
(He throws it to the pile of bodies as the zombies are closing in on the two. He covers PERCY with his body and puts his head down as best as he is able.)
FX: Explosion
FTW
SILENCE
FTB