Platoon
Barnes, given a new lease, limps angrily forward and tackles a wounded Enemy trying to crawl away, terrified at the sight of Barnes coming after him. Barnes lets out a vivid scream.
And beats the soldier mercilessly, half the stock of his M-16 flying apart broken.
Chris swivels alert on his knees. A pause. No more enemy. Turns to Barnes, his back to Chris still beating at the dead corpse.
CHRIS Barnes!
Barnes swivels instinctively off the corpse and for a petrifying moment Chris sees:
A maddened scar of a face, lips specked with foam. The EYES – refracted in a red-green flare overhead – the pupils distorted into angry red points.
For Chris it is no doubt the most frightening single image he has seen in his life. It will be in his nightmares forever. The essence of evil: wrath, obsession, anger, fear, hatred, permanence – he is paralyzed.
Barnes smashes him full across the face with the broken stock of his M-16. Not even conciously, for at this point, his mind has gone over the edge and the entire world is his enemy. American or Vietnamese, it makes no difference as he strikes Chris harder and harder.
Chris struggles, moans, his teeth and nose cracked. Barnes emits another chilling yell an springs like a humpback up on his good right leg, the left bent – set to deliver the killing blow, the mangled rifle pulled to its highest arc.
CHRIS (CONT’D) Nooooooooo!
The PHANTOM FIGHTER JET comes now like a great white whale. One big beautiful monstrous beat of deafening sound. Its silver and white belly hurtling low over the treeline in one giant leap of sound momentarily illuminated by a flare. Then a monstrous ROAR of anger.
The bomb ripping Barnes off the body of Chris and spitting Chris across the jungle floor – crashing into a tree some 30 yards away.
FADE OUT
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – CHRIS’ JUNGLE – DAWN
FADE BACK IN. Vague sunlight. Blurry. Chris fluttering his eyes. A sharp MOVEMENT in the bush. His eyes fight their way open.
SOFT EYES are watching him from behind foliage. A soft, furry head, alert, rigidly still.
Chris fights his way up to his elbow, in pain, looking at the eyes. The head turns and in one fluid move, bolts. Gone. Like the wind. A deer. A big brown deer. Or was it? Chris will never be quite sure. But whatever it was, it was surely a sign of grace – the grace of Elias. This he knows as he feels himself for the first time alive.
And in pain. His left hand torn and bleeding, shrapnel in his side, cuts on his face, dried blood caking him. Looking around his garden of eden. A messy jungle floor. Cordite fumes. Burned bush and trees. Torn sandbags. Dead NVA. Bird songs somewhere in the distance. It is the very crack of dawn, a pink- red sun casting long oblique light patterns through the trees. A holy light.
Chris pushes himself to his feet, feels his weight and the pain. He walks. In the near distance, towards the LZ area, there’s the sound of Armored Personnel carriers grinding, men moving, calling out in Americanese. But Chris is alone here.
He fishes up an AK-47 from a dead NVA. Checks it, a weapon. Walks on.
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – BARNES’ FOXHOLE – DAY
Past scores of NVA bodies. Past the Foxhole where Bunny lays dead in the bottom, faceless. Looking over at Junior bayoneted to the ground, dead. NVA everywhere around the hole, some of them still moving, badly wounded.
Chris looking around, then noticing a movement a little further out in the Jungle. Then he sees who.
The uniform is shredded, the figure obviously hurt in several places (thigh, back, neck, hand) but not mortally so, now struggling to right itself, dragging its face up from a belly- down position. Streaked with dirt and blood, we see Barnes once again re-emerging from the dead.
Chris steps over to him, a solemn look on his face. Barnes looks up, begs.
BARNES Get me a Medic will ya. Go on …
Chris doesn’t move. Barnes looks at him again, reading the intention that has crossed Chris’ mind. An expression of surprise crosses his face, then amazement, almost shock.
BARNES (CONT’D) Fuck you in hell …
Chris shoots him. Once. Twice. Three times. Silence …
Barnes is finally dead.
Chris looking at the corpse, numbed, no exultation in his expression. Just cold satisfaction and little feeling left.
Behind him, the SOUND of a big machine moving. He turns.
A huge Nazi flag on an antenna looms up in the bush, followed by the great belly of a turreted dragon crunching down a tree for its breakfast.
A big tough GERMAN SHEPARD comes boudning at him sniffs, followed by a flak-jacketed MONSTER MAN – filthy and greasy, unshaven face, earring in his left ear, ‘DEATH CORPS’ scrawled on his shirtless flak jacket and a drawing of a death’s head, he looks like a cross between a pirate and a hell’s angel. Behind him, a SECOND MONSTER MAN and the ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER grinding its engine, a human skull hanging from its turret.
MONSTER MAN (to Dog) Bozo! Get back here!
His eyes passing on Chris like so much meat.
MONSTER MAN (CONT’D) (to Chris) Can you walk outta here?
Chris nods. The Soldier pointing to the LZ behind him as a sign he should go that way. The other Soldier already stripping the NVA dead, as the APC grinds on into the jungle, reconnoitering.
Chris walks out of the jungle, head bowed, nauseated, mixed feelings roiling him.
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – FRANCIS’ FOXHOLE – DAY
In another foxhole, Francis waits, the sounds of the approaching APC cutting through. He thinks about it a moment. It must be fast. It must be a hard cold decision. Now!
He pulls out his K-bar and with one last anguished hesitation, drives it into his thigh muscle.
Francis yells out and collapses in his hole.
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – O’NEILL’S FOXHOLE – DAY
In another foxhole, O’Neill, unscratched but covered with dirt, waits tentatively as SOLDIERS arrive at his hole. They’re a little awed by the sight of the tough-looking O’Neill emerging from his foxhole like Sgt.Rock, dozens of dead NVA littered around him.
APC SOLDIER #1 You alone Sarge?
O’NEILL Fuck yeah. They all left me, bunch of fuckin’ faggots.
APC SOLDIER #2 Man, you gonna get yoself a silver star.
O’NEILL Fuck the silver star. You got any booze?
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – RHAH’S FOXHOLE – DAY
Rhah, alive and well, is poking around the NVA corpses with a long gnarled walking stick, looking like a crazy Johnny Appleseed with his pants rolled up on his thin hairy ankles and wearing a red bandana tied in a four-knot around his head.
As one of the APC SOLDIERS carves an ear off a dead NVA, Rhah works his way through the torn bloody pocket of an NVA Troop in full rigor mortis, extracting what he thought was there – a wrapped cellophane of heroin.
Rhah’s face glows with satisfaction as he tastes it, then snorts it. With a certain satisfaction of triumph over the grim circumstances.
RHAH (to the powder) Yeah, that’s good shit …
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – LZ – DAY
CHRIS is hauled out on a litter. Morphined, his eyes watching it all from somewhere deep in his brain. Passing:
Groups of SOLDIERS looking like bowery bums and moving like rats through the smoke and garbage snooping for souvenirs with wheezy tired eyes and grunts of greed.
Passing a bulldozed PIT with heaps of NVA BODIES in them. a BULLDOZER pushing another set of bodies in, like photos of a Nazi death camp.
Nearby, two burly SOLDIERS lift a WOMAN NURSE and with a once- through build for momentum, toss the fresh body into the pit.
Chris, numb, goes by.
RADIO OPERATOR (into radio, exhausted) – 37 U.S. KIA, 122 wounded and still counting. Estimate 500 Victor Charlie KIA, 22 wounded and still counting. Over.
2ND RADIO OPERATOR Sir, a television crew’s coming in with the General –
CAPTAIN HARRIS doesn’t respond; at this point he doesn’t give a shit, standing apart from the radios looking numbly at the remnants of his boys filtering by on litters.
Chris intersects him now, Harris’ eyes looking blankly, then nodding sickly trying to give him encouragement. Just coming to the edge of tears, choking it back, and turning back. These are his sons who are lost. A good officer.
Rodriguez, wounded, is lifted up in his litter and moved out to the waiting MEDIVAC CHOPPER, a huge red cross painted on a white square.
Doc goes by on another litter, then Ace, Adams, Huffmeister, etc.
Then Francis is littered by, bandages around his leg, a big smile on his face.
FRANCIS Hey Taylor, you okay man?
CHRIS Yeah. How ’bout you?
FRANCIS Jes’ fine man, jes fine! Ain’t never felt better! Both of us two timers man, we’re out. (gives him a slap as he goes by) See you at the hospital man, we gonna get high-high yessir … (goes off)
The Medic points to the chopper.
MEDIC (to Chris) That’s your ride man, you ready?
CHRIS (tries a smile) You bet.
Chris starts towards it, the Medic assisting him.
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – LZ – DAY
Sgt.O’Neill watches the loading process forlornly from the distance. Captain Harris intersects him.
HARRIS You got Second Platoon Sergeant.
O’NEILL (reflexively) Yes sir –
And as Harris moves away, O’Neill is left thinking. Finally there is a certain frustration to his actions; he has taken such great pains to stay alive that the tuition he pays is precisely to stay in this Jungle. Inevitably his time will come – one way or another.
His eyes now follow the MEDIVAC CHOPPER upwards, whatever is left of his shrunken soul yearning to go with it.
EXT/INT: PERIMETER #3 LZ CHOPPER – DAY
As the Chopper rises off the battlefield, Chris, who is sitting at the edge so that he has a full view out the open door, waves back at Rhah.
EXT. PERIMETER #3 – DAY
Rhah, at the edge of the treeline, vigorously shakes his walking stick at him, his other hand a fist, waving them, emitting his cry.
RHAH Baaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
Defiance. Pride. Dig me, I’m Rhah – and there isn’t nobody like me in the world.
EXT/INT: PERIMETER #3 – LZ CHOPPER – DAY
The chopper – with its huge red cross painted on – now rising to meet God. Smashed on morphine, Chris looking out at the waving ants below.
Now the trees, the skyline and the chopper is moving fast over the devestation. The jungle forever locked in his memory, Chris looks back, copious, quiet tears flowing from his eyes.
CHRIS (V.O.) I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves – and the enemy was in us … The war is over for me now, but it will always be there – the rest of my days. As I am sure Elias will be – fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called possession of my soul … There are times since I have felt like the child born of those two fathers … but be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to this life …
