Two Winters Past

INT. SPRAGUE’S OFFICE. EVENING.

Office is lit by half a dozen candles arranged around the room. SPRAGUE sits at his desk reading a book. BLYTHE enters.

SPRAGUE: Look at this, John. I don’t see you for months, and now you’re in my office three times in a day.

BLYTHE: Girl let you look at her?

SPRAGUE: (Speaking low) She’s sleeping. Talk quietly.

BLYTHE: What did you find?

CLOSEUP: SPRAGUE takes a deep breath.

SPRAGUE: I was busy this winter, John. You’ve been out a while now. I’ve been working.

BLYTHE: What about the girl, Sprague?

SPRAGUE takes a binder from his desk and opens it in front of BLYTHE.

INSERT: Binder. Photographs of corpses on metal tables.

SPRAGUE: All this equipment came from Whitney Point High School. Metal tables. Microscopes, dissecting equipment. Turner found all this for me and brought it back, do you believe it? He wanted answers. He wanted to save the men is what he wanted most, but you can’t. There is no coming back from this.

BLYTHE: Is that Begley?

SPRAGUE: We got surprised around the beginning winter. Begley was out with a squad that got stuck in Glenn Aubrey. Rippers kept them trapped in a house for two days, and Begley got bit pretty bad when they came out.

SPRAGUE flips through the pages. There are photos of more bodies. Some have been dissected.

SPRAGUE: Turner got me more subjects to work with. Must have brought me 20 dead rippers in the next week. The place stank worse than it normally does!

BLYTHE: Begley?

SPRAGUE: There is no coming back. Not after the worm gets into the brain.

BLYTHE: Worm?

SPRAGUE: The worm is what turns the rippers. It passes in the bite. Ripper saliva is full of eggs. They are ugly things.

SPRAGE flips forward a stack of photos to display a worm.

CONTINUITY ERROR: The pincers on this worm are significantly larger than the worm that was pulled from VIC in Episode 3.

SPRAGUE: The worms crawl around in the body until one reaches the brain stem.

SPRAGUE: The worm goes up into the base of the brain and chews a big hole. Those bristles on the side were legs that fan out into the brain. I believe that is how they control the body. Begley went about two and a half weeks until there was no more man. The last few hours were a lot of pain, but he would not let me put him down. He was so brave.

BLYTHE: Is the girl infected?

SPRAGUE hesitates.

SPRAGUE: One small bite through the skin can leave thousands of eggs in a wound, and when I tested Begley’s blood I found live worms every time. One or two in each sample, but they were there. It was only by chance I even noticed, but I’d happen to draw a sample before he started having serious pain and dementia. I was flustered, and I’d forgotten, so I drew his blood again. I had a two hour window where every worm I’d seen before was alive, and after every worm I saw was dead.

BLYTHE: And Kay?

SPRAGUE: I have never seen so many worms at one time as I did in that girl.

BLYTHE is shocked. He sits back in his chair.

BLYTHE: I, uh… I… I had no idea about Spider. She hid the bite from me. She let me fuck her only one time, and she still had her shirt on, and I had no idea...

SPRAGUE: Spider was a nice girl. I’m sorry you saw that.

BLYTHE: She went crazy, chewed up a Triangle kid. I was so deluded I let it happen. I just watched her eating until he was dead.

SPRAGUE: That wasn’t her, John, it was the worm. As far as I can tell, as soon as one worm gets into the brain and starts chewing, all of the other worms die, like RIGHT AWAY.

BLYTHE: Fuck me…

SPRAGUE: John, I’ve been looking at her blood for more than an hour now, and I haven’t seen one live worm. I’ve never seen this in a person who is still up and walking around on their own.

BLYTHE: So what do we do, do we need to kill her?

SPRAGUE: We need to watch! I need to test more of her blood. Did she complain of any pain? John, this is a wonderful thing you’ve done, if I can find out how her body is killing worms, a vaccine might be possible!

BLYTHE: By keeping her locked up here.

SPRAGUE: You should talk to her. Convince her. She trusts you.

Continued tomorrow