Two Winters Past

FADE IN...

Birds chirping.

VALENTINE opens his eyes.

He is laying on a dewey slope. CHLOE ISIS is beside him. VALENTINE sits up.

VALENTINE walks to the top of the slope. They are on a cleared patch of a hillock in an evergreen forest.

CHLOE ISIS sits up.

CHLOE ISIS: (yawns) You finally woke up.

VALENTINE: Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep...

CHLOE ISIS: It’s okay, I didn’t expect either of us would.

VALENTINE: If we can find a road, I think I can get us to the highway. I have a good direction sense.

CHLOE ISIS: How is that measured?

VALENTINE:I always have a good feeling where I’m headed. As long as you know if it’s morning or afternoon, you can tell east from west.

CHLOE ISIS: You learn that in elementary school.

VALENTINE: Hey, shut up. It’s something I’ve always paid attention to. Many people don’t.

CHLOE ISIS: If we manage to rebuild society, we will need astrologers. In the mean time, we need some ammunition. Are there supplies in the city?

VALENTINE: The safehouses stockpiled everything they could horde.

CHLOE ISIS: How many of those can there be? You know how to avoid the monsters, we can hit up some neighborhood that changed early on. You have to know a couple of those.

VALENTINE: I’m not going back in there. You should have seen...

REMMY (OS): Hey there, pretty girl!

VALENTINE: How the hell did he find us?

REMMY (OS): Don’t know what you’re thinking, letting me go, but now we’ve got your man!

CHLOE ISIS: Popper!

REMMY (OS): We tied up that leg, but he ain’t talked in a while. Might still be able to save most of him.

VALENTINE: What do you want?

REMMY enters. He is pale and holds up his wounded arm.

REMMY: I’d like this pretty lady to come down and live in the nice warm house I build for her.

VALENTINE: Go fuck yourself.

REMMY: Now you, I was gonna put you on a patrol, give you a chance to prove your worth. It’s a fairer offer’n what I gave you before. You don’t want that. Well...?

CHLOE ISIS: Where is your sniper?

VALENTINE: And where is Popper?

REMMY: Popper ain’t going nowhere, and my men are watching you.

CHLOE ISIS: Why should we believe you?

A shot is fired. It hits the dirt near VALENTINE. He jumps to avoid debris.

REMMY: Watching you real close. I’ll tell you what. I’ll start back to the house, and if you’re interested, you can follow me. I won’t be worried about turning my back on account a you having no bullets.

REMMY laughs and backs out of the clearing.