The Retreat

EXT. CITY PARK - NIGHT Sometime before 4am, when the city is just about dead and the sky is as black as it gets. No stars, no moon, just the underside of a permanent overcast looming over the skyscrapers like jagged mountains. Trees frame the scene, leaning over a jogging trail that's getting lost in the undergrowth. It's a big park and this isn't the best trail to push your $400 jogging shoes down. JOSH WHEELAN is running. Running straight at us and by in a flash. His eyes are huge, his breath is coming fast, and he's sweating. He dressed in a hurry and it looks it, shirt buttoned uneven, shorts askew, shoes barely tied (and definitely not $400 trainers). At a bend, he slumps against a tree and looks at the STICKY NOTE he has folded in half in his sweaty hand. "PARK" Josh wheezes and grits his teeth. Looks around with a steady intensity. Another NOTE is stuck to the next tree along the path. All it has on it is an arrow pointing...

INT. RECTORY BATHROOM - NIGHT The bathroom is in utter disarray. The entire mirror is ripped out of the wall, drugs strewn everywhere. The shower curtain is pulled half-down and sags limply across the way. Spots of some red liquid browning at the edges fleck the back of the shower. CSI has clearly already been and gone, leaving marks and outlines around this and that. DETECTIVE JOHN MAY crouches over the mess, looking about as disgusted as a 30 year member of the force might. DETECTIVE HIRAM AHRENS stands just outside, Hasidic dress and beard clashing incongruously with his environment. He leans against the doorframe and appears to be sketching the outlines of the room in the air. MAY You still creep me out a little, you know. AHRENS Meh. God is good to you and I alike. To you, he gives a partner who sees things. To me, he gives a burden I can learn to carry. Wonderful, no? May creeps along the edge of the tub, looking at the lines of residue. AHRENS ...

EXT. DIRTY BACK ALLEY SOMEWHERE IN LOS VEGAS TWO MEN laboriously, painfully turn over in a pile of spilled garbage bags in front of a tipped over bin. One reeks of YUPPY GONE TO POT, pop-collared salmon shirt smeared across a big belly borne of beer, while the other might've dropped straight off the nearest REDNECK FARMER catalog, all jeans and plaid shirt and baseball cap (Go Braves!). CAPTION: MIKE JEONATHON, 80's LEFTOVER MIKE (yuppy) Oh, Jesus. He promptly vomits into a nearby corner. CAPTION: BUTCH WALLAR, ETERNAL REDNECK CHAMPION BUTCH Well, that could'a been way worse, Mike. I mean, look up there. That's, what, three, four stories? Dayum, could'a been ugly. Mike makes it to his feet unsteadily. One hand on the tumbled bin, he walks toward Butch. The second is a little steadier. The third brings him close enough to PUNCH Butch right in the jaw. Butch stumbles back a few steps and rubs at the redness. BUTCH I may...

INT. CARGO BAY Boxes, colour coded by content, some as big as a small car, some the size of a fist, stacked in magnetic racks that leave little room to move around, lit brightly by light that spills from behind and around. Where you can see the walls, they're industrial white and marked with the omnipresent signage of space. TWO MEN load one a flat platform with both mag-latches and straps. They both wear suits which, while not bulky, add a certain girth, like medieval armour. The unmistakable lines of augmentative EXO-FRAMES run along the sides of their limbs, giving them many times their expected strength. One of the men, the name ROBINSON is blazed across his upper back and down one leg as well as his upper chest, pushes off the floor toward one of the upper stacks. Zero gravity. The other, VALIENT, grunts in effort as he sets the hooks at the sides of his wrists into one broad BOX COLOURED GREEN for foodstuff. He swings it in that peculiar way you shift t...