Prologue

Interior, morning. A small row house on Gower St. in downtown St. John’s, comfortable but cluttered: cheap bookcases crammed with books in a disorderly fashion, papers scattered on most horizontal surfaces, a battered futon for a couch, a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table, etc. The rented home of two doctoral students, John and Meg. Meg is pretty and pinkish, like a harassed cherub. John is medium height and handsome in a nondescript way.

John stands in the sink in the kitchen, looking out the window as he sips his coffee. He is dressed for jogging in mid-autumn.

JOHN
I still can’t get over the fog here.

He is obviously a mainlander, speaking with an Ontario or possibly an Albertan accent.

MEG
from upstairs: What?

JOHN
louder I still can’t get over the fog you people get.

Meg appears in the kitchen, similarly dressed for jogging. She wears an impish grin.

MEG
“Us” people? By which you mean …?

She speaks with an outport brogue softened by years living in town and being a graduate student. There is a teasing quality to their banter, and we get the sense that this is a theme to which they return frequently for their own amusement—the mainlander and the bay-girl. It is important that we grow to like them in this brief prologue.

JOHN
Scientists.

MEG
Scientists get a lot of fog?

JOHN
Well, Newfie scientists do.

She is about to retort, then suddenly remembers something.

MEG
Crap.

JOHN
What?

MEG
I’ve got to run up to campus—I left a disk of data in the lab.

JOHN
grimaces at the thought of going to campus on a Saturday, but says No worries.

MEG
I’ll be quick, I promise—in and out.

The possible joke hangs in the air between them, but Meg lightly punches him on the arm before he can make it.

Come on … we’ll pop by after we run.

EXTERIOR: Gower Street near Rawlin’s Cross. John and Meg exit from a tall, narrow bright red house. It really IS foggy, even by St. John’s standards. It is close and even a bit claustrophobic, at once muffling sound and carrying a weird admixture of clangs and shuffling footsteps. There is no one to be seen. They walk a few cars down to a battered old Honda Civic. As John leans down to unlock the door, they are startled by a short, strangled cry in the distance. They pause, listening. Looking at each other, they shrug, and get into the car.

As they drive, we pass a couple of odd and suggestive scenes: a few lumbering pedestrians, a handful of children clustered around something on a front lawn, someone frantically trying to unlock a door. Because of the fog, it is difficult to see these figures distinctly and John and Meg don’t really notice them. They drive in silence until the pass a lurching figure, forced to swerve slightly as he steps off the sidewalk onto the road.

JOHN
As he swerves Fuck! laughs That one got lost coming home from George St., I think.

They arrive at Quidi Vidi Lake, parking by the Rowing Club. John detaches the car key from the ring, and ties it to his shoelace. The rest of the keys he throws in the glove compartment.

MEG
Getting out of the car Why don’t you buy a pouch?

JOHN
Why don’t YOU buy a pouch?

MEG
I don’t like keys jangling on me while I run.

JOHN
Me neither. Shut up.

John locks the car. After a few cursory stretches, they start to jog clockwise around the lake.

The fog is even thicker down here. You cannot see the other side of the lake—indeed, you can barely se further than ten feet or so. As John and Meg run, the only ambient noise at first is their own muffled steps and breathing. Slowly we become aware of occasional moans and shuffling dragging step. Nothing obtrusive: just enough to make Meg and John occasional glance around.

A breeze blows through, sending some of the fog riffling by in eddies; it is enough to raise the visibility for a few moments as they pass the dog park, and they see the shadowy forms of a cluster of people moving toward the lake.

JOHN
Hmph. Indicates the group to Meg with a toss of his head Lot of people out on such a foggy day.

The fog thickens again as they round the eastern tip of the lake. As they leave the boardwalk section of the trail, the fog eddies again and they again see people, this time closer to the trail. One of the figures lets out a scream as he is grabbed by about three of the others and dragged to the ground.

John and Meg pause in their run, and John without thinking leaves the trail and approaches the group.

JOHN
Hey! What the hell—

We see John from the front as he advances, with Meg a few steps behind. He is very suddenly tackled from his left, blindsided. Meg screams as she suddenly sees the assailant clearly—blank eyes, a bloody face, gashes all over its exposed skin. It crawls over John as he tries to scramble away. He manages to kick the zombie off of him, but before he can get to his feet, two more fall on him. One attacks his arm with its teeth, the other his face. He is screaming.

Cut to Meg, who instinctively moves to help, but is checked when she sees another dozen or so lumbering figures advancing out of the fog. Close-up on her face: we see the torment of the choice she has to make—try and help and be certainly overwhelmed, or abandon John and try to save herself? The decision is made for her when the zombie attacking John’s face pulls back and she sees that his throat has been laid open. He is dead.

With a convulsive sob, she sprints away for the parking lot.

A note on the zombies: while not as slow as George A. Romero zombies, neither are they as fast and agile as those in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead. They have enough speed and dexterity to be very dangerous in close quarters, but are easy to outdistance.

As Meg runs, the trees on either side of the trail close in, and she has a couple of near misses as zombies emerge on either side of her. She manages to dodge them, tripping and stumbling to her knees for a tense moment, but makes it to the parking lot.

Where she sees a man fending off a few zombies with a tire iron. He manages to clip one across the jaw and another in the chest, knocking them back, but the only one that stays down he staves in the skull of.

Meg gets to the car, and then realizes that the key is still tied to John’s shoe. She pounds the top of the car, weeping in frustration.

Meanwhile, the man with the tire iron gets outflanked—one of the zombies takes him from behind and to his right, getting its teeth into his neck. The man screams and jerks spasmodically, sending the tire iron skittering across the ground to rest at Meg’s feet. She picks it up as one of the zombies, spotting her, advances.

A look of angry determination crosses her face, and she squares her shoulders.

MEG
You fucker.

She smashes the zombie across its face, half ripping its jaw off—but it keeps coming. She hits it in the face again, sending it staggering back. On its third advance, she brings the tire iron in a massive overhand swing squarely down on top of its skull, dropping it in its tracks.

Without pausing, she sprints back down the trail. The one zombie she encounters in the middle of the trail she clips across the side of the head before it can do anything.

Oddly, the pack of zombies seems to have moved on … John’s body lies sprawled beside the trail in a grotesque position. Weeping again, Meg kneels down and scrabbles at the key tied to his laces, looking frantically over her shoulders as she does so.

She has the key and is about to rise, looking fearfully behind her, when suddenly John’s hand clamps onto her wrist. She screams, seeing her dead boyfriend struggling up toward her.

MEG
Whispering I’m so sorry.

She smashes him in the head with the tire iron.

Meg runs back up the trail, making it to the parking lot. There are a few zombies still wandering around, but she makes it to the car before they are fully aware of her. As she starts the engine, the window smashes beside her face. It is the zombie of tire-iron man. She reverses as he reaches into the car and grabs a hank of her hair. We see her head yanked to the side as the car squeals backward. POV shot through the windshield of tire-iron man standing with a clump of her hair in his hand.