Panic Room Page #17

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INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

In the living room, there is an audible CLICK as the speaker

is activated. Meg looks up, hears Burnham's voice, in the

middle of a sentence.

BURNHAM (O.S.)

-- posed to mean?

RAOUL (O.S.)

You're here with me, you're already

on the hook for one. Buy one, you

get the rest for the same price.

You know that.

BURNHAM (O.S.)

Get the f*** away from me.

RAOUL (O.S.)

The kid in here. The other two when

we come out.

Meg listens, horrified.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Sarah holds the intercom button down with a trembling finger.

BURNHAM:

Bullshit.

RAOUL:

You know how this gotta end.

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

Meg stares, in shock, as Raoul's voice echoes in the empty

room.

RAOUL (O.S.)

They stay in the house.

There in an abrupt CLICK, and the speaker turns off. Meg

turns, goes to Harris, falls to her knees, no idea what to

do. She holds him close, their foreheads touching. She's

terrified, exhausted, wants to collapse in his arms.

Instead, she starts to pull the gun from his fingers. He

tightens his grip, what are you doing? He tries to hold onto

the gun, but she pulls his fingers off it, takes it away from

him. He is too weak to resist.

CUT TO:

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

In the panic room, Sarah has her hands clamped over her ears,

her mouth is wide open, and a hideous METAL SHRIEK seems to

be coming out of it.

But the SHRIEK is actually coming from the safe, where

Burnham continues to work, another drill, a bigger bit. The

noise is deafening.

ON THE MONITORS,

Sarah sees her mother approaching the monitor in the bedroom,

carrying a jacket. Meg tosses the jacket, this time she

doesn't want them to see what she's doing.

The monitor goes black.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

In the master bedroom, Meg pulls on a pair of jeans that are

hanging over a chair.

She steps into a pair of boots.

She shoves the gun into her belt.

Here in the bedroom, she can hear the drill. From the house

next door, she hears POUNDING again, more MUFFLED CURSES.

Apparently the neighbor can hear the drill too.

Meg looks from the walls of the bedroom to the walls of the

panic room. Her eyes light up with an idea.

She goes to the front wall of the bedroom, stands with her

back against the exterior wall (street side), with her left

shoulder against the common wall that's shared with the

neighbor's brownstone.

She begins to step off the distance, heel to toe, measuring

with her feet until she reaches the metal door that is the

entrance to the panic room.

MEG:

Fourteen.

She hurries out of the bedroom. What's she doing?

INT. LIBRARY - NIGHT

Meg comes into a small room full of empty bookshelves, a

library. There is a window that looks out over the sidewalk,

one floor up, same level as the stoop.

She looks up, into the corners of the room.

MEG:

No camera, no camera, no camera...

They're bare, no video cameras. Good.

She goes to the window, tries to open it. Screwed shut, of

course.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

The safe is almost cracked. Raoul is watching the monitors

carefully.

ON THE MONITORS,

we see Meg as she searches through the tools in the living

room, finds a screwdriver, a sledgehammer.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Raoul furrows his brow. Now what?

INT. LIBRARY - NIGHT

Meg is back in the library, hurriedly unscrewing the window.

She gets the last screw out, shoves the window up.

The wind BLASTS in, it's a hell of a spooky night out there.

She leans out the window. We lean with her. The sidewalk is

empty (we see it only from our vantage point inside the

house). She's one floor up. To her right is the house's

front stoop.

She tosses the sledgehammer over, onto the stoop. Climbs up

onto the window ledge, and slithers out herself.

We lean further, watch her as she edges along the ledge, hops

down onto the stoop, and freezes, staring in horror --

-- at the video camera that covers the front stoop.

ON THE MONITORS,

we see her staring straight up at the camera, clearly

standing on the front stoop, outside the house, where she was

specifically told not to go.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Sarah sees the image of her on the stoop. Raoul happens to

be looking away at the moment, at the safe, but he starts to

turn around, to look at the monitors again --

-- and Sarah kicks him, hard, in the ass.

RAOUL:

Hey!

He turns, away from the monitors.

SARAH:

Sorry. Can't control it sometimes.

Raoul scowls at her. Behind him --

ON THE MONITORS,

Meg darts down the front steps and disappears from view on

the monitor.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Sarah sees her mother go.

SARAH:

(to Raoul)

Won't happen again.

INT. LIBRARY - NIGHT

Still leaning out the window, we can see Meg from here as she

reaches the sidewalk and runs up the front steps of the

neighbor's house, which is contiguous.

Straining to see (yet stay in the house), we see Meg all the

way at the right edge of the frame, as she shifts the gun to

the back of her pants and knocks on the neighbor's door,

sledgehammer held slightly behind her leg.

After a long moment, we hear the neighbor's front door open.

The conversation begins. The wind is gusting right in our

faces, we can't make out the details, but the gist is clear --

let me into your house, and don't as me a lot of questions.

The NEIGHBOR -- and by the tone of the voice it sounds like

an old woman -- is slow to respond, grumpy.

Losing patience, Meg just pulls the Neighbor out of the way

and shoves into the house. The Neighbor stumbles out onto

her front stoop, and we were right, it's an old lady in a

nightgown, but she's no shrinking violet. In fact, she's

royally pissed off and not at all intimidated.

NEIGHBOR:

What the hell do you think you're

doing, young lady?!

She storms back into her house, following Meg. As both of

them disappear from the frame, we move out of the library,

into the foyer, and move along the common wall, the one

shared with the neighbor's brownstone.

From the other side of the wall, we can hear muffled voices,

arguing, Meg and the Neighbor shouting at each other.

We drift up, up the stairs, and hear the THUNDERING of

footsteps on the stairs next door. We keep pace with them,

from inside this house. We pass right through the floor --

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

-- and rise up out of the floor in the master bedroom, and

now we can hear the conversation on the other side of the

wall in here, the Neighbor's fearful, angry tones, Meg's

firm, urgent declarations.

We move with Meg, even though we can't see her, we know what

she's doing, she's stepping off the paces on the other side

of the wall. We drift down that wall, fourteen steps, until

we reach the metal door to the panic room, then we pass

through that door --

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

-- and arrive inside the panic room, where Burnham is this

close to getting the safe open, when all of a sudden --

WHOMP.

CRUNCH.

Burnham and Raoul freeze, alarmed. It's coming from the long

wall, the shared wall.

They look at each other.

WHOMP.

CRUNCH.

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