Written as part of my scriptwriting major in 1996, The Coming Storm is a near future dystopia set around the landscape of the South Downs. It follows slacker Demain Holdsworth as he runs away from a deadbeat data-entry job and finds love, adventure and a reason to live in the days leading up to the deadline to World War 3.
INT. A PUB IN A GHOST TOWN. LATE MORNING.
FADE IN
We see a modern looking bar that has been vandalised, empty alcohol bottles litter the floor alongside broken stools and upturned tables, the once brightly coloured neon tubing broken and shattered on the floor, the bar’s mirrors fragmented) casting distorted images around the room from the daylight spilling in through the smashed door, every available surface has been scrawled with graffiti proclaiming such slogans as “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH … AT LAST” and “FUCK THE FRENCHY”, alongside band and gang names.
We TRACK along the floor following a welting river of blood, ebbing and flowing around the debris and ruin, as the blood nears it’s source we see a hand and then a young man’s face1 lifeless, his head smashed in by some heavy object.
As we PULL OUT another young man becomes visible sitting next to the dead body, he is breathing fast) almost to the point of hyperventilation, a bead of sweat trickles down his face. He is pressing a gun loosely to the underside of his chin) finger poised on the trigger, he is trembling. Outside we hear sounds of a struggle involving a group of people, comprised of men and women of varying ages, a girl screams and calls out:
GIRL
DEMIAN… DEMIAN help me!
She screams again, and we hear the group of people cheering on their fellow gang member who is in the throws of raping the girl, DEMIAN’s eyes flick to the door and his grip on the gun tightens.
DEMIAN
(Voice over as if thinking to himself)
My fault, this is all my fault. Stupid idea,
what a fucking stupid idea. if I hadn’t…oh who am I kidding, this ain’t my fault, I never started this!
