SCENE 7: THE CACTUS PEOPLE ATTACK
Cut to scene outdoors. The town is quiet. Ominous music plays. Camera moves through the empty street, then we see the headlights of Randy’s car approaching.
The camera follows the car through dark and empty streets as it approaches the edge of town. Cut to interior of car. The boys are tense and silent.
Randy (driving): “We’re almost at Doc’s house.”
Close-up of Randy’s face over the steering wheel. We see sudden shock and horror. He jerks abruptly to brake the car. Squealing of tires on asphalt.
The camera looks out the car window to see what caused Randy his horror. A dark sea of cactus things has surrounded Doc’s house, and is moving on the town like an ocean tide.
The headlights of Randy’s car bring a few of the monstrosities in sharp focus, and we get our first clear glimpse of the things.
They look like walking cacti, half-human, half-cactus, with shreds of Marine Corps uniform dangling from their twisting, writhing bodies. Helmets and gun belts hanging from leather straps. They have no real faces – eyes, noses, mouths and ears are all distributed randomly along their bodies.
Instead of legs, they have long root-like appendages that slither forward like slews of snakes, gripping the ground – by this means, the cactus things drag themselves forward, in jerky, wobbling motions. Some have three arms, some have four, some arms are short, some, impossibly long, and they lash the night air like whips. Some have appendages that have no names.
All are covered with cactus needles, some long, some short, all sharp as shards of glass, and deadly looking. Some are so covered with the needles that it looks like fuzz all over their bodies.
As our eyes dwell upon this mass of misshapen monstrosities surging toward the occupants of the car, we notice a form among them, being dragged along. As the dragged form comes closer to the light of the headlights, it seems oddly familiar to us. Then, with a sudden turn among the lurching of the sea of cacti, the form is jerked forward, and we recognize Doc, the pharmacist, apparently dead, and his body covered with cactus needles.
His eyes are closed, and the teenagers in the car give out a whoop of horror.
“Oh, no!” “Oh, God!”