Sanitation Run

Chapter 6: Convergence

GATES, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

A branching gravel road connects various facilities lit by flood lights: a gatehouse, a Quonset hut, an assemblage of decommissioned utility trucks. Far off lies an office building and massive water tanks.

The light is insufficient, the darkness overhead OPPRESSIVE.

Valerie lands, jacketless, on the inside of the fence, and clutches her side. She’s bleeding.

She looks up at the fence at her capelet tangled up in barbed wire, then down at her gloved hand, WET WITH BLOOD.

She lurches into the shelter of the utility trucks and performs quick first aid with contents from her shopping bag.

Shivering, she dons her parka and looks into the bag, deciding to toss it under a truck.

Valerie closes her eyes and listens: for a second all she can hear is her pounding heart. Then rushing water. Then an engine. High beams approach the gates from a half-mile off.

She goes.

PICKUP TRUCK, GATES, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

Bruce’s truck rolls up to the main gate. He kills the music and reaches his badge through the window to the sensor. He starts to roll through the gate and stops.

Bruce takes up a hefty flashlight and exits the cab, pacing along the fence. He trains the beam on the object stuck there but can’t tell it’s a jacket. It looks like flesh, or an animal skin. He scans the gravel at the base of the fence and looks up at the black sky as if he hears something.

OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

Klaxons BLARE. Flashing red lights fill the room. Bruce, still in street clothes, hustles in.

BRUCE: (shouting) Dave?

Bruce checks the screens. There’s a blockage: a MASSIVE SLUDGY BLACK TUMOR. He stares (agape) and then goes for the door.

OVERLOOK, INTAKE RESERVOIR, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

Catwalks corral the IMMENSE intake below where river water surges in against what should be a screen but is instead a MASSIVE SLUDGY BLACK TUMOR.

Valerie stares in disgust. It’s that smell again.

Sensing movement, Valerie ducks behind the railing. The large man across the reservoir doesn’t see her. He’s focused on the blockage and holding a long rake.

A FRIGID rain starts, thick raindrops that sting like wasps. There’s no shelter here.

The large man gets to work, tearing away at the tumor. Smoky tendrils unfurl and evanesce.

The water in the intake reservoir rises.

Valerie hears something overhead. Her head snaps up, eyes scanning the sky. There’s nothing in that blackness.

She turns back to the core of the SLUDGY BLACK TUMOR which the large man has unearthed:

The corpse of a man--holding something.

CATWALKS, INTAKE RESERVOIR, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)

Bruce wipes rain and sweat from his forehead.

It’s Dave.

He glances at the rising reservoir, water sloshing onto his boots, and gets back to clearing the blockage.

Bruce crosses the catwalk and rakes the opposite side.

The substance peels away like congealed tar, within it untold amounts of detritus: balls, shoes, paper, food waste, tree limbs, dead animals. Dave: bloated, bulging, pale. He pulls what he can out onto the catwalk.

Bruce sets down the rake and lies prone on the center of the catwalk above the screen. He squeezes his upper half through the rail and grabs hold of Dave’s arms and strains.

MUSCLES BULGING, Bruce manages to lever Dave out of the reservoir. It’s too late for CPR.

The rain picks up. Bruce is SOAKED. He stands, grimly admiring his work.

Dave’s holding something: THE PAYLOAD. Bruce (curious) reaches for it. Dave’s hand SNAPS SNAKELIKE for Bruce’s leg.

Surprise becomes horror. The grip is INHUMAN. Dave yanks Bruce’s leg and Bruce falls hard.

Bruce kicks out and connects with Dave’s chest. Dave falls away but snaps back, elastic, hands leaping for Bruce’s throat.

There’s hardly room to move on the narrow catwalk.

Bruce deflects, scrambles to his feet. Dave launches himself horizontally through the air: eyes BLACK, tongue BLACK and flapping like a necktie.

Bruce’s knee meets Dave’s jaw. Bruce advances.

Dave lies supine, maw wide and belching tar in guttural rasps.

The rake handle falls from the sky, piercing through the back of Dave’s throat and the catwalk grate.

Bruce looks up.

VALERIE: (pointing at THE PAYLOAD) That’s mine.

BRUCE: (unphased, nods up at a pair of approaching helicopters) Those too?