A Guess At What Happened On Under The Dome Last Night
From the New York Times: “The two sides in the fee dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable stayed in their respective corners Sunday, and may not engage in further direct confrontation for some time. As a result, CBS’s stations, and cable networks owned by CBS, remained blacked out in many areas, including large parts of New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. The continuing impasse resulted in two popular shows on the pay cable channel Showtime, “Dexter” and “Ray Donovan,” being unavailable to fans in those areas on Sunday night. And it means that the most popular drama of the summer, CBS’s “Under the Dome,” is likely to be blocked to millions of viewers on Monday night.”
EXT. DOME – DAY
A few members of the town, including Julia, Barbie, Norrie, and Joe, are gathered near where the dome ends. It seems like they’ve all been there for an hour, at least. The land outside the dome is still destroyed from when the bomb went off, and a bunch of guys who are clearly from the army are out there walking around.
JULIA
What’s going on?!
BARBIE
Some guys from the army are out there. I’m a retired Army captain, I know what they look like. They’ve been walking around all day. They’re probably trying to figure out a way to deal with this mysterious dome we’ve been under for about a week now. After the bombing didn’t work about two days ago–
JULIA (interrupting)
I have to get to the radio station. It still works within the town, and the townspeople deserve to know this information. Also Dodee, who works at the radio station, is a radio-head and she figured out a way to intercept radio signals from outside the dome. I have to see if we can figure out what’s going on. I’m a journalist. They have to let me on air.
Julia gets into her car and drives away. Behind her, Norrie and Joe touch the dome at the same time, sending a burst of light from their hands. Suddenly the air is a bit fresher. Barbie sees the light, sniffs the air, and runs over to the two teens.
BARIBIE
Hey! What did you just do!
JOE
Uh, what? Uh, nothing, sir.
BARIBIE
I just saw you. When you touched the dome something happened and the air got fresher, like you altered the dome’s mesoporous membrane, increasing the pore size to that of a macroporous membrane.
JOE
Oh, well we have this thing where we both have seizures, and we’re the ones who stopped the town form getting destroyed by that bomb because we kissed, and sometimes when we touch the dome–
NORRIE (interrupting)
Ugh, I’m out of here.
Norrie runs into the woods.
CUT TO:
INT. HOSPITAL – DAY
Dead bodies litter the floor of the hospital, forcing the remaining nurses to hop over them in order to see and treat the few remaining patients who are alive. Linda bursts through the hospital doors.
LINDA
What is going on in here?!
NURSE 1
We ran out of medicine two days ago. We can’t keep these folks alive on good intentions, God bless them.
LINDA
You ran out of medicine after THREE DAYS?!
NURSE 1
It might have been four days!
LINDA
And they ALL had life-threatening illnesses and were dependent on medication to stay alive?!?!
NURSE 1
Hey, bring that chart over here, Nurse 2.
Nurse 2, stumbling over the dead bodies at her feet, grabs a chart from one of the hospital doors and hands it to Nurse 1. When Nurse 2 turns around to leave, she falls on top of a body. Linda makes a yuck face. Nurse one takes a quick glance at the chart.
NURSE 1
Hmmm… Yep. Looks like it.
LINDA
And you’re just going to leave all of their bodies here, in the hall!?! That seems very inconvenient, not to mention unsanitary and just plain gross and also weird!
NURSE 1
What do you want us to do, Linda? We’re nurses, not gravediggers. All the gravediggers are caught on the other side of the dome.
LINDA
I’ll figure something out.
CUT TO:
EXT. DOME – DAY
Barbie stands near a car in the main section of town. Linda drives up in her police car.
LINDA
Hey, Barbie, I have a favor to ask you.
BARBIE
I don’t want a badge, Linda. I’ll help you out, but I–
LINDA (interrupting)
Whatever, okay, that’s not what I was going to ask.
BARBIE
–don’t want a badge.
LINDA
OKAY. That’s fine. I was just wondering– You don’t have any experience digging graves, do you?
Barbie’s face goes slack as we flashback to the scene of him burying Julia’s late husband, and maybe a scene of him mouthing “I murdered him,” if we can find it, and then maybe a scene of Julia showing him the picture of her husband, and then if possible a scene of his reaction to seeing the photo of Julia’s husband for the first time.
BARBIE
What? Why? What? No. What? No. What? Why? No. NO. What? WHAT? Linda. What? No. Why?
LINDA
Whoa, Barbie! I was just asking because they have like a billion bodies over at the hospital that need burying.
BARBIE
A billion bodies? Why, what happened?
LINDA
Ran out of medicine.
BARBIE
WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN HERE FOR A WEEK YET!
LINDA
It’s a small town. Now, are you going to dig graves with me or what?
BARBIE
Yeah, I’ll help.
CUT TO:
EXT. GRAVEYARD (DOME) – DAY
Linda struggles with digging her graves. We see that so far they’ve all been oddly shaped and probably a little too shallow. We then see Barbie’s graves — all perfectly rectangular and uniformly 4.5 feet deep. Linda notices.
LINDA
Barbie…
Julia drives through the graveyard in her car and gets out near where Linda and Barbie have been digging.
JULIA
I’m a journalist, I have a right to be– Whoa, Barbie…
Barbie’s eyes widen as he looks back toward his sea of perfect graves. He gets up and starts running into the woods. Julia runs after him.
JULIA
BARBIE! WAIT! WHO ARE YOU?! WHY ARE YOU HERE?! I’M A JOURNALIST, TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!
(Scenes from next week include Linda chasing after Barbie, the guy from the radio station playing a song, the two teenagers looking at each other, and Big Jim shouting about how they’re under a dome.)
