Apocalypse Now

The entire temple is devastation. Vultures by the hundreds circle overhead. There are a few survivors. Everywhere is smoke and heaps of bodies. Colby, a Sergeant, and some Montagnards sit near them.

Their eyes are red and glazed, their jaws hang slack and they tumble occasionally. They stagger away from the field of slaughter. Willard looks down and sees something. Moves over to it, kicks several bodies away and in the foreground below is Lance, dead.

Colby stumbles over. Willard holds Lance up by his hair.

COLBY

Who is he?

WILLARD

He was the tragedy – the tragedy of this war.

CUT TO:

THE P.B.R.

Battered, moving slowly down the river.

TIGHTER VIEW

Colby is at helm. Kurtz lies feverish, delirious. Willard sits by him. As the boat moves, Montagnards, those left alive, come and pay their respects by the riverbanks. Colby takes an automatic weapon and FIRES it into the air. Some of the natives move in terror, frightened of him. The battle is not over.

KURTZ

Don't. Don't frighten them away.

Willard looks down at him.

WILLARD

So you understand this?

Kurtz looks up at him, past him with fury, longing in his eyes. There is a slight smile.

KURTZ

Do I not?

EXT. RIVER – MEDIUM VIEW

The boat moves as though naturally carried by the river.

KURTZ

My river... my people... my jungle... my ideas... my country... my wife...

(he looks at Willard)

... my death.

WILLARD

You had immense plans... immense plans...

KURTZ

Yes...

WILLARD

I'm taking you back.

Kurtz looks up to him, then an expression of overwhelming intense and hopeless terror, hopeless despair. A whisper at some image, at some vision, he cries out twice, a cry that is no more than a breath.

KURTZ

The horror, the horror.

We HEAR the distant SOUND of HELICOPTERS approaching. The SOUND of ROTORS in the distance. They look up, craning their eyes at the sky. Colby points.

COLBY

There.

Over the jungle mountains the small formation of MEDEVAC helicopters hooping toward them.

COLBY

(continuing)

How did they know?

WILLARD

They must have seen the fire.

The helicopters are closer now but high up. Two of them breaking off, spiraling in TOWARD US.

COLBY

They're coming to rescue us. They're Medevac.

CLOSE SHOT ON WILLARD

He stares up at the sky.

WILLARD

(to himself)

They're coming to take us back.

Copters directly overhead.

WILLARD

(continuing)

Yeah.

COLBY

Colonel Kurtz, he's dead.

WILLARD

Yeah.

He raises his M-16 and FIRES the entire clip at the approaching rescue helicopter.

FULL SHOT – THE COPTER

It frantically pours on the power and wheels up to the sky.

FULL SHOT – WILLARD, COLBY

WILLARD

Yeah.

Colby takes his rifle and joins Willard in FIRING at the retreating American helicopters.

HELICOPTER'S POV – ON THE BOAT

The men in the boat FIRING AT US as we fly further into the air, the boat getting smaller and smaller.

WILLARD (V.O.)

... Don't remember a lot about my rehabilitation... but I was sent back to the world before the fall of Saigon...

EXT. MARINA DEL RAY – EXTREME HIGH ANGLE – NIGHT

MOVING DOWN back to the pleasure boat at the Marina.

Pause. Willard is very silent.

WILLARD

I never answered questions about Kurtz – I gave them a few of his unimportant papers – but for the most part I saved everything. There were other letters, personal ones written earlier to his wife. I brought them to het. I watched the fall of Saigon on television in a bar in Alameda...

EXT. CALIFORNIA NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

A bright clear day in a scrubbed-clean California neighborhood. Some kids are playing in the street.