The Abyss Page #8

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BUD:

How you guys doing?

SONNY:

I'm alright, I'm dealing.

CATFISH:

Triple time sounds like a lotta money, Bud. It

ain't. I'm sorry...

BUD:

We're here now. Let's get her done.

We see Bud working, calming them, talking them through it. He's sweating

rivers in his helmet, not looking too steady. His projection of calm to the

others is his own salvation.

Coffey pauses in the doorway to the communications room.

COFFEY:

This part I do alone. Brigman, take you men and

continue aft. Split up into two teams of two.

Let's get moving... we head back in fourteen

minutes.

Bud leads his team into a narrow corridor.

INT. CORRIDOR/ROOMS 72

They search the rooms along the corridor with their lights until they come to

a vertical hatch, open. a pit of darkness below.

BUD:

Okay, Cat, Lew, Sonny. You guys stay on this

deck. Hook you line onto mine. Any problem,

you tug my line. Two pulls. Jammer, you're

with me.

Bud drops down through the hatch to the level below, followed by Jammer, who

barely fits through. Catfish hooks his safety line onto Bud's with a

carabiner and move along the corridor with the others.

EXT./INT. CAB ONE73

Lindsey circles the hull, documenting, photographing. Her strobes sear the

darkness, give glimpses of the dead leviathan's form as her tiny submersible

circles it like a bee.

INT. COMMUNICATIONS CENTER 74

Working from a plastic card, Coffey spins the dial on the wall safe and opens

it. He removes several plastic binders... the code books. He also grabs

handfuls of classified documents and orders, and a set of missile arming keys,

all which he places in a pouch at his waist.

INT. CORRIDOR 75

Bud leads Jammer through a long, claustrophobically narrow corridor, tapping

on the walls and hatches periodically. After he taps, he waits a few

moments. There are no answering taps. They open doors and shine their lights

into the rooms. The are bodies, but they seem anonymous. Crumpled shapes

in khaki or blue. They undog and open a hatch. Beyond it is the largest

chamber of the sub, the...

INT. MISSLE COMPARTMENT 76

The missile compartment is the large gallery a hundred and twenty feet long

and forty feet high, with two rows of vertical launch tubes, 24 in all. The

chamber is divided into three levels by a floor of open steel grillwork.

JAMMER:

Where are we?

BUD:

Missile compartment. Those are the launch tubes.

They sweep their lights around the chamber. Jammer turns... his beam

illuminating a body just beyond the door. A coveralled seaman turning

slowly in the eddying current. Small albino crabs crawl slowly over the

man's face. One scuttles out of his gaping mouth.

JAMMER:

Lord Almighty.

BUD:

Hey, you okay?

Bud goes to him. Gets up close to his face. Sees that he's not. That he's

hyperventilating. Fighting nausea. Bud grabs him by the shoulders.

BUD:

Deep and slow, big guy. Deep and slow. Just

breathe easy.

JAMMER:

I... they're all dead, Bud. They're all dead.

I thought... some of them... you know...

BUD:

I'm taking you back out.

JAMMER:

No! I'm okay now. I just don't... I can't go

any further in.

Bud sees that the big diver's breathing has stabilized. He looks at his

watch. Checker Jammer's pressure gauges.

BUD:

Okay, Jammer. No problem. You stay right here.

I have to go there to the end... you'll see my

lights. We'll stay in voice contact. Just hold

onto the rope. Five more minutes. Okay?

JAMMER:

Yeah, okay. Okay.

He moves off through the center aisle of the gallery swimming between the huge

cylinders. He pays out the lifeline as he goes.

INT. COM-ROOM 77

Coffey is working rapidly and efficiently, moving from one rack of electronics

gear to the next, setting thermite grenades at vital points. As the thermite

ignites, it generates an intense arc-bright light and tremendous heat. The

circuit chasses melt. Coffey works calmly in the infernal glare.

INT. MISSLE COMPARTMENT 78

Bed negotiates his way through the tangle of wreckage near the far end of the

missile compartment. He goes down a stairwell to the lower level. A HUNDRED

FEET AWAY, Jammer loses sight of Bud's dive-lights. He starts to get

nervous. Suddenly his own lights begin to DIM, flickering lower and lower.

They become little orange candles, the filament barely glowing. The darkness

closes in.

JAMMER:

Bud? BUD?! You readin' me? BUD?!!

BUD, at the same moment, is fiddling with the connector cables on his helmet

lights, which are dimming and flickering. He hears nothing from his helmet

transceiver.

JAMMER, smacks the side of his helmet. Shakes the transceiver on his belt.

Nothing... just static. Then even the static dies. Panic time.

He grabs the safety line and pulls twice. Hard. It is snagged on a sharp

metal edge ten feet from him. He pulls twice more, harder, hauling the

thing. The line severs. Jammer stared at the frayed and floating toward

him. His eyes bug. He looks all around in the darkness. Can't see Bud.

Can't decide what to do. We can see hysteria revving up inside him like a

flywheel.

Then he becomes aware of a faint radiance flickering over the walls. It is a

cold and ethereal light, unlike the warm-white of their dive lights.

It grows brighter. He turns slowly toward it.

The glow is moving beneath the steel grill of the deck, sending shafts of

cold light flickering upward hypnotically, coming toward him.

JAMMER:

Bud? Is that you?

C.U. JAMMER, shielding his eyes, staring into the radiant source.

Guess what, Jammer? It's not Bud. In the brightest center of the glow,

SOMETHING is moving, a figure casting strange inhuman shadow across the walls.

Jammer blinks against the glare, his face registering total, outright

astonishment melting into terror.

The glare pulses subtly, hypnotically. The shifting shadow falls across

Jammer. He finally snaps out of his fixity...

Screaming and gulping air he spins away and starts clawing hand over hand

through the treacherous wreckage.

His harness catches on a twisted pipe.

He struggles, totally out of control... the big man reduced to a blind panic.

Jammer heaves forward with all his adrenalized strength.

He tears free of the entangling debris. Launches like a torpedo... slamming

his backpack full force into the top sill of the hatchway. His tri-mix

regulator takes the full brunt of the impact.

ON BUD, swimming furiously back toward Jammer's position. The strange

radiance is gone. His dive light flare back to full brightness.

BUD:

Jammer? Answer me, buddy, JAMMER?!

He reaches Jammer only to find him thrashing violently in place. A seizure.

Bud grapples with him.

BUD:

Hang on, big guy. Hand on!

Catfish, Sonny, and Finler arrive from the corridor a moment later. They

leap into the fray.

BUD:

He's convulsing!

CATFISH:

It's his mixture! Too much oxygen!

Then they're all yelling at once, grappling with the big man, struggling with

the valves on his breathing gear.

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