The Crazies

EXT. OLD PRAIRIE ROAD - NIGHT

It's DUSK. The DIN of night insects is all around. We're

trudging along a rutted dirt road toward a glow on the

horizon...

EXT. BALL FIELD, OGDEN MARSH HIGH SCHOOL, KANSAS - NIGHT

A baseball game being played under the lights behind the

local high school. STUDENTS, FACULTY, TOWNSPEOPLE fill the

wooden bleachers. It's the regional playoffs. Everybody is

here. The MAYOR, the PASTOR, the FIRE CHIEF, all the VIPs a

small town has to offer.

Even the town sheriff has turned up for the end of the game.

He parks his cruiser in the overflow lot and comes down the

hill to the diamond, keys jangling on his belt beside a

holstered gun he never uses. DAVID DUTTON. Easy-going.

Second-generation sheriff. Pillar of the community.

Trading a dozen hellos, clapping some old timer on the

shoulder, giving the coach a thumbs-up about the score, he

comes around the backstop to the little CONCESSIONS TRAILER.

Sets his hat on the counter. Handsome. Grinning with

hometown pride.

DAVID:

They're playin' well, Kev, they're

playin' awful damn well. Win this

one they could have a shot.

(to Vendor's wife in b.g.)

Hey Linda.

She nods hi. The VENDOR pours him a cup of coffee, on the

house.

VENDOR:

Fryeburg's tough. They'd be next.

DAVID:

(smile fades)

Fryeburg, yeah. Sh*t. Well, one

at a time, one at a time...

David heads off, coffee in hand.

DAVID:

Thanks, Kev.

David leans on the sideline fence, sipping his coffee,

watching the game. The star pitcher blows a fastball past

the batter. David lets out a howl.

2.

DAVID:

Scotty McLeod! You throw like you

drive, son, too damn fast!

He puts down his coffee so he can applaud the strikeout with

both hands then picks it up again and takes another sip.

DAVID:

Look alive, fellas! Deano, watch

the squeeze!

No one has yet noticed the DARK FIGURE walking out of the

shadowy woods beyond the outfield. Weaving like a drunkard,

he walks right onto the playing field, oblivious to the game.

A man of fifty. Local pig farmer. His name is RORY HAMILL.

He is carrying a SHOTGUN.

Heads turn, mouths falling open in the bleachers and dugouts,

everybody staring in collective disbelief. It's surreal, a

guy with a gun just walked past Petey Jenkins in left field.

DAVID:

Rory, what in God -- ?

David drops his coffee and jumps the fence, goes out across

the diamond to intercept him, hollering, waving his hands.

DAVID:

Rory, whoa, Rory, Rory, whoa, whoa,

whoa!

Rory Hamill gets as far as the infield before David, cutting

in front of him now, keeping ten feet of distance, finally

gets his attention.

DAVID:

STOP I SAID!!

Rory stops, glassy-eyed, head lolling sickly to one side.

David keeps his gun holstered, tries to reason with him. The

players frozen at their positions on the field.

DAVID:

The hell you doing, Rore? Hunh?

Got a ball game going on here.

We're playing ball, you come out

here with a gun? The goddamn hell

you doing?

Rory casts a glance around the field. A dizzying number of

faces out there. All eyes on him. He wobbles a little,

catches himself.

3.

DAVID:

Lay it down, Rory, you're drunk.

His gaze floats back to David and it's different than it was

a moment ago. Harder. Deadly. David is not a man easily

spooked, but that look sends a chill right through him.

DAVID:

Lay it down!

Rory takes a wavering step forward. David draws his weapon.

Rory responds in kind, leveling his. People gasp. David

retreats a step. Might be the first time in his life he's

had a gun pointed at him by someone ready to use it.

DAVID:

Don't do it, Rory! Don't you do

it!

Rory brings his eye to the sights, draws back on the trigger

and - BANG! - David shoots first. A single shot, but a

deadly one. Rory Hamill collapses midfield.

SCREAMS from the bleachers and SOBS in the aftersilence as

the whole town registers the strange human tragedy that just

played out under the lights behind the high school.

A body facedown in the grass behind the pitcher's mound,

Sheriff David Dutton standing over it, astonished, holding in

his hand the gun he never uses.

FADE TO BLACK.

EXT. FIELD / HOUSE - BEFORE SUNRISE

The stillness of prairie grass in the blue hush before dawn.

Beyond it, a traditional white clapboard house with an old

barn that needs painting.

INT. BEDROOM, SAME HOUSE - CONTINUOUS

A young woman awakens to find her husband's side of the bed

empty. Runs a hand over the sheet, checking for body warmth.

It's cold. Strange. She puts on a robe.

INT. STAIRS - CONTINUOUS

Comes downstairs in the darkened house.

WOMAN:

Babe...?

No reply. Worried, she comes down the hall into the

4.

INT. KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS

No sign of him. She startles at a movement behind her.

The SCREEN DOOR, creaking back and forth in a draft.

She comes over to close it and sees, through the screen, her

husband sitting alone outside in the shadowy dawn.

EXT. BACK YARD - CONTINUOUS

It's David out here, second-guessing himself. His wife JUDY

sits down quietly beside him, come to lend a sympathetic ear.

If he is one pillar of the community, she is the other, a

local standout who came back from med school to be the town

doctor.

DAVID:

He didn’t give me a choice.

Judy shakes her head in reassurance of that fact. Takes his

hand for moral support. Looks to the distance, reflecting.

JUDY:

You asked me once when we first got

together if I thought less of you

for staying here after high school

and following in your dad’s

footsteps. I want you to know

something. People like you, the

ones that stay, are the reason why

people like me come back.

David meets her gaze, heartened by that, and then places his

hand gently, tellingly, on her midsection.

DAVID:

You should be sleeping.

EXT. HIGHWAY 50 - DAY

David’s cruiser travels through the lonesome countryside.

EXT. HAMILL HOUSE - DAY

Turns in the drive of a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of

town. Poorest family in Ogden Marsh. Parking, getting out,

David meets eyes with two boys feeding pigs behind the barn.

JAKE and CURT HAMILL. Rory's teenage sons. Tough kids, but

they've both been crying. Before David can say anything they

turn coldly away.

5.

He goes up the front steps to the house. Takes off his hat,

knocks. The door opens to reveal Rory's widow. PEGGY

HAMILL. Awkward is an understatement. David is the last

person she expected to see on her doorstep this morning.

DAVID:

Peggy, I...

(sudden loss for words)

I knew what I was gonna say before

I got here...

(then)

I'm real sorry, Peg. I liked Rory,

I liked him a lot.

Whatever resentment she might have harbored is defused by

David's simple decency. Looking him in the face, she just

crumbles. It's heartbreaking.

PEGGY HAMILL:

(in heaving sobs)

What was he doin'? What was he

doin'?

David holds her, the only thing keeping her upright. And we

see them from a distance, together in their anguish, the town

sheriff and the wife he made a widow.

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