Panic Room Page #8

---

Meg's hands are over her mouth, she's trembling, shaking her

head from side to side. This can't be happening.

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT

In the kitchen, Junior goes to the wall phone Meg used to

call for pizza earlier. He cuts the phone wire with a

knife.

He stands there, staring at the phone, wiping the sweat from

his palms on his pants. Not satisfied, he pulls the phone

itself out of the wall, cuts the cord for the handset too.

CUT TO:

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Meg pushes herself back into the corner of the panic room,

horrified. Sweat has broken out on her forehead, her whole

body seems to vibrate. Sarah comes over, leans in front of

her.

SARAH:

Mom?

But Sarah's voice is hollow, seems far away.

SARAH:

Are you okay?

Meg looks at her. As she watches, Sarah floats away from

her. In fact, the entire room is floating away from her,

elongating.

And narrowing. Meg looks to the sides, and the walls don't

just seem like they're pushing in on her, they are pushing in

on her.

Meg opens her mouth, screams, but no sound comes out.

Sarah stands up and bends over her, but now she's just a

figure far away, all the way at the end of a long, impossibly

narrow hall.

SARAH:

(barely heard)

MOM?! MOM!!

Meg crawls out, into the middle of that hallway, to get away

from the wall, but they both continue moving in on her.

MEG:

Not here... not here... someplace

else... someplace else...

Her eyes roll back into her head, we see just the whites, and

she loses her balance, falling over onto her back.

We fall with her, move in tight on her face, and the dark

hallway carpet beneath it turns to green, all green, grassy

green. She sits up, looks around, and we realize she is in

fact somewhere else, she's --

EXT. GREAT LAWN - DAY

-- in the middle of the Great Lawn, in Central Park. She

stands, turns in a circle, she's completely alone on the

great green grassy plain in the middle of a beautiful spring

day, tall buildings sparkling in the distance.

Meg stretches her arms out, smiles, but far off in the

distance, she hears a voice calling to her, dimly:

SARAH (O.S.)

Mom?! Mom!!

Meg ignores the voice, she's so happy to be out here, out in

the open, in the beautiful wide open, she could stay here

forever, she spins around, throws her head back, but there's

that voice again, insistent:

SARAH (O.S.)

Mom, please!!

There is the sharp sound of a SLAP, and Meg's face abruptly

jerks to the side. She touches her cheek, confused, as a hot

red handprint rises up on it.

What the hell was that?

BAM!

Now the perfect spring day is shattered suddenly by a

deafening CRUNCH. The smile vanishes from Meg's face, she

turns. Where did that come from?

BAM! Another one, even louder. Meg's whole body winces at

the sound.

BAM! A third one, and on this one Meg falls to her knees,

covering her ears, walls spring up around her, right there on

the Great Lawn, we rush in on her, the walls close in, and

she's right back --

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

-- in the panic room, where she always was, and that pounding

is real, it's right outside the door, it's like somebody's

trying to smash their way right through the wall.

Sarah is right over Meg, holding her by the arms, and that

handprint on Meg's face is real, Sarah must have slapped her

to try to bring her out of it.

SARAH:

THEY'RE COMING IN! THEY'RE COMING

IN!

Meg looks to the wall, watches it seem to vibrate as another

deafening BANG crunches into it from outside.

BAM! BAM! BAM! The sound is deafening. Sarah throws both

hands over her ears. Meg looks around, still disoriented.

SARAH:

YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU CAN'T FREAK

OUT LIKE THAT! YOU HAVE TO STAY

HERE WITH ME!

MEG:

I am. I'm here.

SARAH:

YOU HAVE TO!

MEG:

I'm here. I'm here.

They huddle there, terrified. Meg blinks, wipes the sweat

from her forehead, begins to come back around. She turns her

head, sneaks a look at the funny wristwatch Sarah wears,

tries to look without her daughter knowing. It's not an

ordinary watch, it only has one number, a tall, flashing

digital display:

120

Meg nods, as if reassuring herself.

MEG:

We're fine. We're okay.

She turns, looks at the video monitors to see what the hell

they're doing out there.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

BAM!

In the master bedroom, a claw hammer CRUNCHES into the

sheetrock on the outer wall of the panic room.

The intruders are in the master bedroom now, and Burnham is

like a man possessed, tearing at the sheetrock with the sharp

end of the tool while Junior shines a flashlight into the

hole.

As the sheetrock tears away, we see the skeleton of the wall

behind it. There's a latticework of two by four studs, and

beyond those the dull shine of the wall's metal core.

But that's not what he's after. He continues tearing,

reveals an air duct running through the wall, feeding into

the panic room through a welded hole in the steel. Burnham

tears away with the hammer, exposing a short section of the

duct.

CLANG! The claw hammer drops into an opened toolbox.

Burnham drops to his knees, rips open another tool case.

This one has a sophisticated looking power drill in it, along

with a couple dozen specialized bits. He selects one, twists

it into the drill.

At the wall, Burnham puts drill to metal and hits the switch.

A horrendous METAL SCREECH fills the air and the drill bit

tears into the duct, opening up a jagged hole about the size

of a quarter.

Raoul hurries through the doorway of the bedroom, carrying a

coiled garden hose. Burnham snaps his fingers for it, Raoul

tosses it to him, holding one end, and the hose uncoils in

the air as it snakes across the room.

Burnham shoves the end of the garden hose into the hole he's

just drilled in the air duct.

RIP! He tears off a length of duct tape and seals the

connection, makes it airtight.

SLIT! Using a large hunting knife, Raoul hacks a ten foot

section of the garden hose off the coil.

He stretches it out, across the room, to the white five

gallon tank we saw before, which is now sitting on the floor

up here. We move in close as Burnham snugs the cut end of

the garden hose over a spigot at the top of the tank. Red

block letters are easy to read on the side of the tank.

PROPANE:

CAUTION - FLAMMABLE

Along with a number of other dire warnings.

Burnham raises his hand to the knob, hesitates, doesn't

really want to do this, but doesn't stop himself either.

He spins it open. Halfway.

JUNIOR:

Open it.

BURNHAM:

I did.

RAOUL:

He said open it.

BURNHAM:

Just sending a message. She'll get

the point.

Gas HISSES through the spigot and into the hose. We follow

along the length of the hose, across the floor of the room,

through the hole in the sheetrock, into the hole that's been

drilled in the air duct --

INSIDE THE WALL:

-- through the wall itself, where we see the horizontal lines

of an air vent up ahead. We squeeze between two of the

horizontal lines --

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

-- and come out in the panic room. Three red streamers, tied

to the air vent, flap to life as the gas HISSES into the

panic room.

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote