Jeremiah (2002) s02e11 Episode Script

The Past Is Prologue

1 Previously on Jeremiah You have to trust me.
You sold us out.
I didn't.
I swear.
Bullshit! You were spying on us.
You were keeping tabs on everything we were doing.
You can stay at the Mountain on a probationary basis, but you're no longer head of security.
That role goes to Erin.
As far as I'm concerned, you're just another pair of hands to do the work ahead of us.
In time, I hope you earn back my trust.
All right, Smith, you ready to go? Pretty much, but, um Lee, haven't seen you in a while.
Well, Markus has had me working latrine and clean-up duty.
Nobody sees me.
Nobody wants to.
Well, sorry, can't help you there, man.
Smith, let's go.
Actually, I was thinking I would bail on you this time around.
Why? Kurdy, I'm never going to regain Markus' trust doing scut work.
I need to go outside.
I need to do something that'll earn me a chance to come back as head of security.
Lee asked if he could ride shotgun instead of me on this one, and I said I thought it was a good idea.
Smith said you're going to East Clifton, to scope the place out, to see if it's a good prospect for the alliance.
It's a rough place.
You could use the back-up.
You don't know the history here, Smith.
Yeah, when I was running security, I made some errors in judgment, but I was doing what I thought was best for everyone.
Markus is willing to give me a chance to prove myself.
Why aren't you? I've spent four months in hell, Kurdy.
Give me a chance to earn my way back.
I mean, someone's got to start trusting somebody here, right? I think that's a good idea.
Whatever.
Come on, Lee, let's go.
Thanks, Kurdy.
So why didn't you ask Jeremiah if you could go with him to Milhaven? I'm not exactly his favorite person in the world.
Lee, you're nobody's favorite person in the world.
See, the thing about Jeremiah is He's not as hard to get along with as everybody thinks.
Are you sure you don't want me to No, sir, wouldn't hear of it.
I've been driving this truck a long time, it can be kind of eccentric I think we're getting along just fine, sir.
How was it that, uh, you got to be my liaison to the troops in Milhaven, anyway? I lost a bet.
What kind of bet? Sir? Well, was it a big bet or a little bet? I mean, I'd like to know.
Was it something important, something stupid? What? What kind of bet? I don't remember.
You don't remember.
No, sir.
You're lying to me.
Yep.
I like that.
We're going to get along just fine.
Take the road up here to the right.
I studied the maps of the area, and the road you're thinking of goes south.
We want to head north, then back again on Clearbrook Road, which will take us to Milhaven.
Yeah, it'll add about an hour.
It's the safer road.
The south road goes through some areas Thunder Mountain hasn't scouted yet.
If they haven't scouted, how do you know it's a safer road? Technically, I don't, but the north road is a better road.
It'll be easier to go that way.
We don't get points for doing things the easy way.
Take the south road.
If it doesn't work, we'll double back.
Yes, sir.
We're stuck.
Yeah sir.
So those points we get for not doing things the easy way, how many do you think we'll get for this one? All right I've got a deck of cards, also a flare gun.
Oh, here's two MREs from 16 years ago, so you know they're going to be good eatin'.
We can't just sit here and eat.
Of course we can, sir.
Sooner or later, the rain will stop, flowers will bloom, birds will sing, and we can find out where the hell we are, or someone will find us, and they'll say we should've taken the north road.
Yeah, you, maybe.
I'm getting out of here.
Where are you going? All we need is some gravel or a board, something to provide a little traction.
I saw some lights a little ways back.
I'm going to go check it out.
All right, well, then I'm coming with you.
You are not coming with me.
- Sir - That's an order.
It's been 15 years since a strange disease wiped out all of the adults and left us kids to fend for ourselves.
Now I'm moving ahead, through the past.
I can't let go I'm holding hope so tight It's hard to breathe when the whole world falls I'm gonna put the stars back back up in the sky Let them all just shine down I'm gonna try I believe we'll find the world together through your eyes That's all I can see I believe we're looking at forever In a world where we can be free I believe (Lee): If there was ever a place that needed to join the alliance, it's this one, all right.
Yeah.
I'm just not sure how much they can bring us.
You spend enough time at the Mountain, you forget there are still places this messed up out here.
I don't forget, Lee.
I don't forget any damn thing.
Something wrong, Kurdy? Nah, I just want to scope this place and get out of here, see if it's changed any.
So you've been here before.
Yeah.
When? A lifetime ago.
(Man): It's a good thing you found us.
It's a hell of a day out there.
Hell of a day.
Here, this'll warm you up.
Thanks.
It smells great.
That's corn chowder.
That's Lisa's specialty.
The whole town is after that recipe, but we're not going give it to them, though.
No point having a secret recipe if you tell everyone about it, I always say.
Mm.
Well, that corn sure is special.
You guys are lifesavers.
A day like today, you could've wandered around for hours all by yourself.
I mean, I assume that you are all by yourself.
Yeah, I walk it alone, pretty much always.
So, how many people live around here? Oh, quite a few.
There's a whole town of us here.
Really? Hmm.
Didn't say anything about that on the map.
Well, then, doggone it, I'd say you need a better map.
Anyway, it's a very nice town, nice people.
Yeah, very nice.
You might say we're fortunate.
Favored, if you will.
Good things happen to the people here, because the town, well, the town has a real heart to it, you know? Yes, it's real heart.
Uh, you said you had some boards Oh, yeah, yeah.
Right out back.
Get you out of that hole just like that.
You take your time.
All right? There's no rush.
Eat that soup while it's still hot.
Is he? Oh, yeah.
He's out cold.
It's those secret ingredients.
They'll get you every time.
Yeah, well, I'll tell the others we got another one.
Good times are here to stay, Lisa.
Good times, indeed.
I checked around, tried to find out who was in charge.
Thing is, nobody's in charge.
It's just well, it's a mess, that's all.
Nobody even has a chance of pulling it together because you've got all these little groups pulling in different directions.
Only bunch I hear close to being a power around here is some gang called The dead.
I'd hoped they'd be gone by now.
You sound like you know these guys.
Yeah, I do.
Well, well, well, well So you came back, you son of a bitch.
(Woman): Are you finished with your nap yet, sleepy-head? I mean, I know you've had a hard day at the office, and I do try and explain that to Jimmy, but, well, he's young, and sometimes he has a hard time understanding.
You know how he loves playing parcheesi.
Where am I? Oh.
Oh, got the groggies from your nap? A little backrub will take care of that, but that's later.
Right now there's a very nice pot roast waiting for you downstairs, with spinach and creamed corn and roast potatoes, and I know that's your favorite.
Well, it, uh, would probably be anybody's I was talking to Marge the other day, and she said, "Sandra, "the way you take care of that husband of yours, why, you make the rest of us look bad.
" Isn't that sweet? I thought it was sweet.
Well, hurry up.
We don't want to keep dinner waiting.
Sandra, is it? Don't play silly.
Of course it is.
Right.
Uh, Sandra? Do me a favor? Do I have a bullet hole right in the back of my head here? 'Cause I feel weird.
You're such a kidder.
February, 2004? Did you say something, Jeremiah? Yeah, I said, "February, 2004" And here I thought you wouldn't remember.
Next month is our 15th wedding anniversary.
That's crystal, glass, or watches, depending on whether you want to go modern or traditional or That calendar's old.
Only about a month.
2004 That's 17 years ago.
It's the year before the Big Death The big what? The Big Death.
Now, you know as well as I do "death" is a word we do not allow in this house.
This is a happy home.
There's no death, big, small, or dinner's getting cold.
Now, Jimmy, I told you, no games at the table.
Put it away.
Mom, come on.
Hey, dad.
What? Uh, what's going on? It's called dinner.
Now just sit down, and I'll I don't want to You're such a tease.
They're watching us constantly.
Play along or they'll kill you.
Now, Jeremiah, what were you saying? I don't want to miss my favorite meal.
Pot roast and potatoes, and, uh Creamed corn.
Creamed corn.
Good job, Ben.
The family's intact again.
Our little piece of heaven is as it should be to guide us into the future.
The past is the future.
The future is the past.
Where is he? Hello, Kurdy.
Ike? So you remember.
Good, because I sure as hell I haven't forgotten you.
Look, hold on.
So you like traveling with murderers? 'Cause because of him My brother is dead.
Look, clearly, you've made a mistake.
That true? Did I make a mistake? Well? Go on.
You're not a murderer So tell him he's wrong.
He is wrong, isn't he? No.
He's not.
No.
Let him be.
The man's suffered enough because of me.
Because of me and my choices.
Heads left.
Tails right.
Come on, lucky coin, don't fail me now.
(coin drops) Fuck! Fuck! You fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuckety-fuck! (banging) Piece of junk! So what's going on here? It just keeps shutting down halfway through the game and I have to start all over again.
Hmm.
Let me take a look at it.
Hmm.
You know that part that you were just banging on the table there? Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to do that, right? No.
What I would do is take hammer, smash the hell out of it.
That way, if you don't fix it, you do get the satisfaction of smashing the hell out of something.
Oh, here's your problem.
See these old spring leads? Sometimes they get bent in, and then they don't connect, and you don't get the power.
You've just got to reach in and bend 'em up a little, like that, and I think That should do the job.
(game beeping) There you go.
Hey, cool.
Thanks, dad.
(tv crackling) We can talk here.
The cameras tend to short out when it rains, so we have a little while before they get around to fixing them.
Okay, so, now maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on here.
You know what a cargo cult is? No.
It's an african cult that believes the planes are gods, so they built wooden planes to lure the gods out of the sky, or get them to grant favors for the tribes, so the crops grow and the children stay healthy.
Yeah.
Okay, okay.
Africa, and it's a cult.
What does it have to do with me? Well, the people in this town believe that if they can recreate a piece of the world as it existed before the Big Death, that those days will some day come back.
Keeping this illusion going, they think it'll bring good fortune for everyone here.
They believe that what we create in this house, the life we had before the death, happens to the whole town.
So everyone pitches in.
They set aside part of their food, and take turns running the generators.
Yeah, drag people in off the street, bring 'em into this little playhouse here.
There are worse things.
Name three.
Look around you.
You have food and heat and light and television.
We don't have to forage.
You can't be serious.
You like it here? The windows are barred and the doors are locked from the outside.
We're under constant surveillance.
There is no way out, Jeremiah, so after a while, you You just kind of give up.
You learn to adapt.
I won't.
Then they'll kill you.
I felt the same way when they found me and stuck me in here.
That was two years ago.
I remember what it was like to be free, to walk on the beach But after a while, I adjusted, and so did Jimmy when they brought him over here in the summer, But the oth Understand? You are not my first "husband.
" The others, they fought, too, and they paid the price.
I would give anything to get out of here, Jeremiah But there's just no way out.
There's just no way.
So, are you going to tell me what this is all about, or do I have to wait for divine revelation? It was about a year before I met Jeremiah.
I was a different person, okay? My world didn't look the same as it does now.
There were two ways I managed to stay alive.
First, by being tougher and crazier than anybody I ever ran into.
Second, I found who the power was in town, and linked up with them for as long as I stuck around, and there were other gangs in town beside the dead.
You know, some had more guns, some had more guys, but we had the one thing none of 'em had.
We had Tony.
And Tony was bugfuck.
It didn't matter if he had nothing and you had a gun pointed at his head, he'd still come after you.
We used to say the nights belonged to the dead.
Days, I tried to be a person.
That's how I met ike and his brother Cal.
They were cool.
They weren't part of a gang.
They were just trying to get by.
They shared their food, even had some books they gave me, and in return, I made sure they stayed out of trouble.
I was talking to bill the other day, and he said there were some tools in a warehouse over on sixth.
Cool.
Maybe tonight we can scope it out, pick up some things we need to fix this place up.
No, not tonight.
The dead's walkin' on sixth.
They grazing? Yeah.
Grazing was what we called it when we hit the streets, grabbed whatever we needed from anybody we met.
I didn't like it, but there wasn't much of a choice, you know? Maybe tomorrow, then.
Yeah, tomorrow'll be cool.
That all right with you? Yeah, man.
All right.
But it was a bad way to live, but I used to say, "hey, it could be worse, right?" Then one day, it got worse.
Okay.
Here's the deal.
I'm tired of this penny-ante bullshit.
We need to show these sheep that we are a power, and that we're running the show.
The other gangs, they can have their piece, but the pie is ours, and here is how we're going to do it.
We are going to make a statement.
We're going to cut through this whole part of town like a hot knife through butter.
We are going to take what we want.
We are going to do what we want, and we are going to kill everybody and anybody that we see.
We're going to blood this place from end to end, so everybody knows who runs this town, and best of all, we do this once and we do it right, we'll never have to do it again.
I signed on to survive.
I signed on, knowing I was going to end up doing some shit I didn't like, but I did not sign on to go around killing people in cold blood.
If I'd stayed and tried to warn Ike, or Cal, or anybody else, they would've found that I was missing, and I never would have made it out of there alive.
There's no way I could have taken on that whole bunch and lived, so I did the only thing I could do.
You ran.
I ran.
And back then, I didn't think one guy could make much difference.
I know better now, but at the time, man, I did the only thing I could do.
I didn't warn anybody.
I didn't tell anybody.
I just Ran.
And whatever was going to happen happened.
Cal! Cal! So, yeah, I killed him, just as much as if I'd pulled the trigger.
Him and anybody else I could've warned.
Damn right you did.
So now that you got me all trussed up You going to finish me off? I'm going to finish what I should've finished a long time ago.
Ike, I'm not the same person I was.
I've got resources now.
Now, I know I can't bring Cal back, but I can set things straight.
Yeah? How? You're going to have to trust me, okay? Now, somebody's got to start trusting somebody here, right? Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? Lee, there's an alliance town about five, ten miles away from here.
They they've got a radio.
I just put them up last week.
I need you to get Thunder Mountain on the line, tell them we need some shock troops, we need them right now, we need the best they've got, there's no way this town can come back as long as the dead are running this place.
What about you? I'm going to stick around here, keep my eyes on the place, and lay out a game plan so we can go after these guys.
Meet me back here once you get word.
And, Lee, it's dangerous out there, man, so be careful.
He's so lucky to live in the old world.
It'll come back again soon, Lisa.
Just got to believe, and any day, any day now.
This whole room, it's just just like I remember.
It's like stepping back in time.
We have stepped back in time, Jeremiah.
In here, it's always February, 2004.
A good year for America, for the world.
A year of endless frontiers, of new possibilities.
The warm, pre-death long summer night we hoped would never end.
Outside, they have to deal with the world as it is.
We get to live in the world as it was.
That's not really so bad, is it? It's still living in a cage.
I won't live in a cage.
I don't care how nice the bars are.
Jimmy? Where on earth did you get to? It's a beautiful day, and I'm in a mood for a game of parcheesi, how about you? Your friend's been gone for hours.
How long does it take to drive 10 miles? 20 minutes, there and back.
Unless Unless what? I saw the way he was looking at you, man.
You're not big on his hit parade, Kurdy.
Maybe he wants to get rid of you, sell you out the same way you sold us out, he can take your place.
Hey, Kurdy.
Welcome back to the neighborhood.
We missed you.
We've got a score to settle with you, man.
Tony's going to be happy to see you again, man.
Real happy.
He's got plans for you.
You ran out on the dead.
Nobody runs out on the dead and lives.
And I was thinking tomorrow, when we get up, I can make pancakes for breakfast.
We can have pancakes, and orange marmalade, and bacon with toast, and fresh milk.
How's that sound, honey? I thought you'd be in bed by now.
You said that the people who are doing all this, they think that whatever happens inside this house will happen for the town, that it's reflective of what they want, and what they believe that they'll get? Yes.
Now, as I was saying Do you remember that you told me you walked on a beach once? I know you know what it's like to be free.
Do you want the chance to walk on that beach again? I think I figured a way out of here, but I'll need your help.
Yours and Jimmy's.
Jimmy won't help.
He likes it here.
He gets to sit around, play games, I don't think he can be trusted.
What about you? Will you help me? Can you help me? I can't You can.
You just you've got to do what I ask.
Listen to me.
Pancakes it is, then, and we'll have syrup, maple syrup, and it'll be a good day, a great day What the hell are you doing out here? Well, well, looks like I was right.
You didn't go anywhere, did you? Where's Kurdy? Forget you.
He's probably dead by now anyway.
I said, where's Kurdy? It's dangerous.
Everything is dangerous, I know that, but do you really think that you're safe in here? Do you really want to grow old and die in here, in this house? I know, I know.
But you're right.
I hate to say it, but you're right.
- It's the only chance we've got.
- Yes.
What're you guys talking about? Jimmy, come here.
Listen, do you remember when you and I talked, and I told you sometimes the only way to deal with something that's frustrating you is to take a hammer and just smash the hell out of it? Yeah? Okay.
How would you like to take a really big hammer and smash this house down so we can all get out? You know, I read once about these fish.
They swim hundreds of mile upstream just so they can die in the waters they were born in.
Kind of like you, Kurdy.
You came all this way, you came back home to us, and now, you're going to die here.
Symmetry's a beautiful thing, Kurdy.
A beautiful thing, indeed.
Reunion's over, Kurdy.
Bye.
Drop your weapons! Fuck you! You don't have to do that, you know? We were like family, right? You were one of us.
I was never one of you.
So, Ike? This even things out between us a little bit? You don't win people's trust back that easily, Kurdy.
Even if you save their life.
What took you so long, Lee? They had the rover.
There were too many of them guarding it.
So how'd you get to the next town? What else was I going to do? I walked.
Ran Walked.
You know anybody else who'd walk 10 miles to help somebody out? So what do you want to do after tonight's services? I'm not really sure.
Oh, no Is there a problem? What's that? Looks like blood.
Okay, everybody, out! Excuse me.
I'm wondering if you've seen Tell everybody to get out of town now! They have to get out before the infection spreads! - Hurry! - It's been tainted! Big Death those are Big Death markings.
That's not possible Jeremiah? Yeah? I think I think they can't see us now.
The power's off.
Good.
Okay, the next thing is they're going to want to come in and check - to see what happened.
- Jeremiah? What? (shouting) Listen.
What are they where are they going? What are they doing? I just wanted to get their attention.
Yeah, well, I'd say we got it, all right.
They never wanted us to mention the Big Death, because the very idea of it was enough to taint this place.
I guess once they saw the Big Death come to their dream of the past The good luck totem became the bad luck totem, the death totem.
Would you stick around long enough to find out what happened? Hey! We're still alive! Hey, we're locked in here! Hello! Hey! You suck! You going to let our son talk to us like that? Hey! Hello, we're still in here! Hey, lady! Over here! Slow down! So, you think the ice cream's melted by now? Yup.
The water's not running anymore, heat's off.
How long can we survive without food and heat and water? I don't know, but I got us out of a situation, didn't I? I scared off a whole town.
That's got to be worth some kind of respect, right? Okay, I suck.
When the food runs out, you can eat my body.
Start with my left arm.
Dibs on your fingers.
(loud banging) Morning.
Sorry it took me so long to find you, sir.
I had to go from house to house till I found the right one.
It's okay.
She's with me.
Come on.
Sandra, Jimmy I want you to meet the outside world.
Outside world, this is Sandra and Jimmy.
Okay, so, maybe you don't suck after all.
Yeah, well I tell you what.
How about next time we go to your place? You're on.
Anything else, Romeo? Just memories.
You look like shit.
You've got to take better care of that uniform.
Synced and corrected: quinnell
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