Panic Room Page #9

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Directly underneath the vent, Meg is hunched up against the

wall, her arm around Sarah.

She sniffs.

Again.

Sarah sniffs.

They look at each other.

She looks up. Sees the streamers floating above her.

She leaps to her feet, steps up onto a shelf, and stretches

her nose toward the streamers. Just as she does --

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Near the tank, Raoul shoves Burnham out of the way.

RAOUL:

We ain't playin', here.

He cranks the valve handle of the grill open all the way.

The gas pours into the hose with an audible WHOOSH.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Meg, at the vent, falls back, two lungfuls of propane, and

drops to her knees on the floor.

SARAH:

What, what, what is it?!

MEG:

On the floor! Get on the floor!

Now Sarah coughs. The gas is pouring into the room.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Raoul is standing guard over the tank, to make sure no one

messes with the valve.

BURNHAM:

Look, don't be stupid...

Junior has his head pressed against the door to the panic

room, trying to hear any sounds from within.

JUNIOR:

Be quiet.

BURNHAM:

We're trying to scare them, not kill

them!

JUNIOR:

They're coughing.

BURNHAM:

They're gonna die in there!

JUNIOR:

Nobody is gonna die, man, will you

please have the balls to follow

through with a good idea? Think

about it, what would you do if you

were them, stay in there and choke

to death, or come out?! Huh? We're

just getting them to come out for

forty-five minutes, forty-five

f***ing minutes! The worst that's

gonna happen is they pass out, we

drag 'em out here into the fresh

air, and they'll be fine.

BURNHAM:

Junior, you gigantic idiot, how are

we supposed to get into the room if

they pass out?

Pause. Junior turns to Raoul.

JUNIOR:

Cut it back a little bit.

RAOUL:

No f***ing way.

JUNIOR:

He's right, we can't get into the

room if they're dead!

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Meg and Sarah are down on the floor, rags covering their

mouths, trying like crazy to filter the air, but it's not

working. Sarah is crawling around the base of the wall, near

to where she was before, clawing at the strange portal thing

again.

Finally, she finds a small metal handle, folded back into the

clover-leaf seal on the portal. She unfolds it, twists it.

The portal cranks open, revealing it to be at the end of a

tube, about a foot long, an emergency ventilation source

directly through to the exterior of the house. She bends

down and looks through it. It's covered by a metal mesh at

the opposite end, but she can see and smell the outside

through it.

She sits up, gestures to her mother to bend down next to her.

She does, and they both jam their mouths up near the end of

the tube, gulping fresh air greedily.

Meg looks at Sarah, good job, and they both drop to the floor

at the portal and suck air. It's temporary, but it works.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

In the master bedroom, the debate has turned physical.

Burnham lunges across the room at Raoul, to get his hands on

the valve, to turn off the gas. But Raoul catches him and

hurls him aside.

Burnham SLAMS into the wall, bounces off and SCREAMS at

Raoul, who SCREAMS right back. Junior leaps into the middle,

trying to break it up, to get them to shut up, keep their

voices down.

It's bedlam.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

In the panic room, Meg knows this can't go on forever. She

turns away from the portal, looks up at the vent, where the

streamers still stream.

She looks to the other side of the room, to where Sarah found

the waterproof matches and lighters.

She thinks. Takes a deep lungful of fresh air from the tube

and crawls over to the lighters. She selects one, snatches

up a screwdriver.

Sarah looks at her, has a vague idea of what she's thinking,

but can't believe it. She shakes her head vehemently.

In response, Meg picks up two or three of the fireproof

blankets and piles them over Sarah, right up to her

disbelieving eyes. She bends down, takes another gulp of

air. but she's getting woozy. This can't go on much longer.

She staggers across the room, hoists herself back up onto the

shelf she stood on before, and gets right up next to the

vent. Holding her breath to avoid breathing the toxic gas,

she unscrews the vent cover.

The duct is wide enough to put your arm in. She reaches in,

past a bundle of multicolored wires that run down through the

wall. She reaches all the way in, lighter in hand.

INSIDE THE DUCT,

we see her hand crawl in, lighter clenched between her

fingers. She raises a thumb to the flint wheel, cranks it

once.

Too slow. Not even a spark.

Her hand shakes. She tries again. Still no spark. But with

the effort and the angle, when she thumbs the lighter it

makes her hand twitch, banging up against the sides of the

duct with a hollow BOOM.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Burnham turns abruptly.

He turns around. They all freeze, listening. He hears it

again. The hollow BOOM, coming from inside the wall. Now a

third time.

He walks forward, slowly, toward the wall.

BOOM.

He moves closer, gets right up next to the wall. He leans

into the wall, putting his ear right up next to the air duct.

This close, he hears the sound in more detail, realizes it's

two sounds.

SCRATCH. BOOM.

He arches an eyebrow.

INSIDE THE DUCT,

Meg's hand is trembling, tiring. She tries again, thumbs the

flint wheel. It SCRATCHES as it rolls, her hand twitches,

BOOMS against the side of the duct.

Still, the gas HISSES through.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Meg's face is turning color, she's running out of air. Her

feet tremble on the shelf, she's about to lose her footing.

INSIDE THE DUCT,

she tries again. SCRATCH. BOOM.

IN THE BEDROOM,

Burnham's eyes suddenly pop wide as he identifies the sound.

BURNHAM:

Oh.

He tears himself away from the wall --

INSIDE THE DUCT,

-- Meg's thumb tenses for one good hard turn --

IN THE BEDROOM,

-- Burnham leaps through the air, hurling himself toward the

propane tank --

INSIDE THE DUCT,

-- Meg cranks the wheel, a spark sparks, a flame flames, and

a hot blue cloud shoots out in two directions, one toward the

panic room, the other toward the bedroom.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Meg jumps off the shelf, throwing herself as far away from

the vent as she can, her arm engulfed by licking blue flame.

She drops to the floor of the room, covering her daughter's

body just as the entire ceiling of the panic room turns into

a lake of fire with a deafening WHOOMP. The fluorescent

light tubes EXPLODE, showering glass everywhere.

IN THE BEDROOM,

the blue flame shoots out of the wall, into the hose, through

the hose, backing up toward the tank.

Burnham CRUNCHES to the floor next to the tank, knocking the

other end of the hose away from the spigot just as the blue

flame erupts from the end of the hose.

The flame engulfs his entire body, his hair starts on fire,

his chest, his arms. Raoul lunges forward, Junior tears the

blankets from the bed and throws them over him, Burnham HOWLS

and rolls on the floor in pain.

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