Blood Rock Springs Created by Mark R. Healy A Beyond the Dark production Season 1 Episode 9 The Paddock Sarah, come on. Just a little further. Max, wait. Where are we going? I can barely see a thing. Don't touch that flashlight. Don't you dare. If I fall and break my neck... We're here. We're good. Where? Where are we? Your place? Yeah. We'll be safe here. For a while, at least. Will we? I think so. Oh, that's real reassuring, Max. Yeah. You got a better option, Sarah? No. Look, we just need to lay low for a few minutes. Now we're inside the house, we can defend ourselves at least. Defend ourselves? Defend ourselves with what? You've got a cricket bat and I've got a kitchen knife. We'd have a hard time defending the bloody lunch buffet from a pack of hungry pensioners at the retirement home at this rate. Well, we'd better figure out a way, because there's no one coming to help. The phones are still down and it's not like we can just walk out of this freaking town. What if we just hide? Go somewhere no one can find us. at least until the dangers pass. If it passes. I'm not sure it will. And in a couple of hours, we're going to have other problems on our hands. The whole thing with the air, remember? We'll be screwed either way if we wait that long. So that means we have to make a run for it. We have to get to the bunker. Stumbling around out there in the dark. Probably break our bloody necks. We'll use the torch. That's a bad idea, and you know it. If we start shining lights out there, Well, that could be the end of us. Oh, shit. Damn. You still think we can wait this one out? Maybe not. We should have gone out of this town long ago. Both of us. Well, too late for that now, isn't it? Yep. I'm sorry, Sarah. I should have come up with a better plan. Don't beat yourself up over that, Max. What's done is done. There's got to be a way out of this. We're missing a clue or something, I'm sure of it. We're not missing anything, Max. We never had a chance from the start. That's all there is to it. Just give me a second here, Sarah. Give me one minute. Let me think back. Think back to what? To the start. When this shit all began. There must be something that went down these past couple of days. I just need to find it. Think, Max. Think. Well? Anything? I just bloody started, Sarah. Give me a break. We don't exactly have a lot of time on our hands here, Max. Okay, let's be methodical. What do we know about Whittaker? That's the problem. We know fuck all about him. The bastard's been keeping us in the dark this whole time, which was his intention all along, obviously. He didn't want anyone to know what he was really up to here. There might be more we could find at his house, but I guess that place is scorched earth now. With all those lights blazing, the squiddies are going to be all over it. I'm not going back there. No friggin' way. What about when he came into the co-op the other day? Was there anything he said or did that we can use? Whitaker? Let's see. He said he specialised in applied chemistry. That doesn't help. He also said he was doing an all-nighter. Bought some no-dos. And then he paid with cash and left. That's it. Lucy said he was pretty much a shut-in. She delivers all of his groceries for him every week. Yeah, if she was still around, she might be able to tell us something more about him, but... You said something about him too. You saw him wandering around a field or something? That was months ago, out near the Simpson place. Well, what happened, exactly? Well, I was on my way to Bellamy for something, taking a shortcut through the back roads and I saw him in the paddock. Doing what? Staring at the sun like a crazy person. Lucy called him eccentric but harmless. We know he anything but harmless now don we Yep He was playing us all for idiots this whole time So, that makes me wonder, was he really staring at the sun out there? Or did you catch him in the act of doing something else, and he just adopted the crazy old man routine to throw you off? Oh shit! You think he might have been on his way to the mine entrance? Well, what else would he be doing out there? I guess it's a possibility. But if he was keeping the entrance a secret all this time, why go out in broad daylight? Well, could have been an emergency. It's more likely he only ever went out there under the cover of dark to keep it all a secret. But maybe this one day something happened and he needed to change his schedule. Okay. The paddock. Yeah, maybe that's it. So, what do we do? It's not safe out there right now, but I don't know if we can wait. Dawn is still hours away. Is there even going to be a dawn tomorrow, Sarah? Considering how thick that dust is getting, I'm not sure the sun's even going to come out again. So, where does that leave us? You've still got the mud map, right? For the tunnels? What? You're thinking of going there now? What else are we going to do? Wait here for the squiddies to come find us? You don't think we should try to find Wally's bunker? Maybe he and Savage made it back there. We have to get to the mine, Sarah. Forget about everything else. Yeah, but... You've been telling me all along that I need to take charge of things, right? Yeah. That's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to sit around and wait for things to play out. I'm going to take charge. You can stay here if you like, but, well... No way. I'm coming with you. Alright. There's no time to waste. Get your shit together and let's go. It's almost pitch black out here now, Max. Can't see a bloody thing. I'll stick the torch under my shirt and use it that way. Maybe that won't attract quite as much attention. Worth a shot. How's that? Yeah, I can see. Kinda. Guess that'll have to do. Oh, shit. I hope the others made it out okay. They're on their own now. Nothing we can do to help. So, how far to the paddock, do you reckon? Not that far. Maybe a bit over a K? Well, normally that wouldn't feel like a long way. But tonight... Yeah, I know what you mean. What are we going to do, even if we find the artifact, Max? What do we do with it? I guess it's not like the two of us are going to be able to reprogram it or anything like that, is it? We just have to keep it simple. Smash the bloody thing. What happens when we do that, though? Does all the dust just disappear, or... You're asking the wrong person, Sarah. I have no friggin' idea. In the end, it doesn't really matter, does it? We have to do it. If we don't... Kill the light, quick! Don't move a muscle. Do you think it saw us? What was that? Shit, that was really close, Max. Get ready to run. Thunder. Did you just hear someone say thunder? It did sound like that, didn't it? Thunder. There it is again. Wally? Is that you? Thunder. Oh, come on. You're supposed to say flash. It's a sign and countersign. Haven't you seen bloody saving Private Ryan? Oh, shit. You're okay. Come away from there, you two. Over here, quick. Savage! Is that you? Yeah, I'm here. Get down and stay out of sight. What's going on? Where did you guys come from? After that shit show at Whittaker's, we tried making a run for the bunker, but didn't make it that far. There's a pack of squiddies moving south toward the highway. You might have heard one of them a few seconds ago. Yeah, we heard it. We're waiting here while they pass. I'd advise you to do the same. Are you guys okay? What happened back there? Well we went looking for the battery system so we could shut the lights down but there wasn really time for that As you no doubt discovered the mutants were everywhere You managed to slip past them unscathed I think in this case ironically the house proved to be a handy distraction The mutants went straight for it. It's just a good thing we managed to slip out before they got there. We tried looking for you, but in the chaos... It's fine. I'm just glad you got out alive. Oh, guess who we saw leading the pack of calamari heads back at the house? Who? Squid Gazzer. Recognise him by the bloody overalls again. And let me tell you, I wanted nothing more than to greet that bloody traitor with a shotgun to the face. But no time. Don't worry, though. He'll keep. I meant to say something about our friend Squid Gazzer, actually. Something's happening to him, I believe. Keen powers of observation there, Savage. Was it the tentacles coming out of his eye sockets that set you off? Or the fact that he's running around snapping people's necks with just a flick of his wrist? No, you don't understand. He's still changing. Still evolving, it seems, even now. Why do you say that? When I saw him charging at us outside Whitaker's place, I noticed the tentacles had grown more abundant. Not only that, but it seemed some were wrapping around the back of his head as well. So what's that all about? I can't say for sure. And it's not as if I had time to stand there and study him, but I do have some theories. Okay, let's hear it. I think we all agree that, reading between the lines, Whittaker believes this technology belongs to an alien civilisation. Personally, I haven't ruled out the government yet. Oh, come on, Wall. That's a bit far-fetched. The government more far-fetched than aliens. I doubt it. Personally, I've always thought the idea of UFO crashes was stupid. I mean, these little green men have the technology to travel the length and breadth of the known bloody universe, travel across unimaginable distances, light years, in fact, and then when they get to their destination, they can't even park their bloody spaceship. It's ludicrous. I don't think the artifact crashed here, no, not at all. If it didn't crash, then why is it buried under the dirt in the middle of nowhere? Because burying the artifact is exactly what the aliens intended. Whitaker said he thought the artifact was an exploration device. How does burying it help with that? Because I don't believe it is an exploration device. I believe it's a colonisation device. Care to explain that theory? Let's look at the facts. We know the artifact alters the atmosphere around it. We also know that this altered atmosphere changes the DNA of biological entities, humans, goats, and so on. It turns them into something else. The squiddies. Yes. Now, let's consider how an advanced civilization might populate far distant worlds. The first option is to build giant generational ships that are designed to carry living specimens across the great void of space. These voyages would likely last for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, and therefore the ships would be incredibly difficult to design and maintain. We humans know from our own brief experiences in space that it's a logistical nightmare even keeping specimens alive for a few weeks. So what's the second option? Well, if you want to expand your civilization to far distant regions of space, why send a massive ship full of complicated life support systems when you can send a single small vessel containing just one thing? a machine built to terraform the planet on which it lands. You think the artifact is a terraforming device? I thought those were supposed to be huge. We don't know what a terraforming device would look like, Max, because we've never built one. We've only imagined them in science fiction stories, but let's consider the best way of populating an alien planet where conditions are hostile, shall we? How would that work? Like Max said, you build a big-ass atmospheric processor and slowly but surely pump out breathable air until the whole planet is habitable. Wouldn't it be more efficient to start small? Create breathable air for your workers in a smaller area, maybe a few kilometres across to start with. You just said there were no living workers though, right? Just a machine. That's where the other function of the machine comes in. What if it doesn't just generate breathable air but also has the ability to create workers at the same time. Oh, I think I get what she's saying now. The people and the animals that have been turned into squiddies, they're becoming aliens. Well, they're becoming something. Whether these mutants are the aliens themselves or some kind of rudimentary worker drone designed to assist in the terraforming process, I don't know. Maybe their job is to build more artefacts and spread them out across the entire globe an entire network of terraformers I can say for sure All I do know is these creatures that are wandering around Blood Rock Springs haven finished evolving yet. Squid Gasser is evidence of that. So who knows what they'll look like when it's all said and done. So the artifact is designed to take over or transform other biological life Forms? Assimilate would be an appropriate term, I think. Or maybe at its core, it's more like a parasite. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I watched a show about this kind of shit. There's a zombie ant fungus that lives in tropical forests that does something just like that. It infects the ant's brain and turns it into a slave. I don't know if that's quite the same, but you get the general idea. What I don't get is, how can a computer buried underground create dust storms and turn people into mutants? It doesn't seem possible. This is an advanced alien technology we're talking about here. Imagine trying to explain your iPhone to a person from the 1500s. The fact you can see and hear a person on the other side of the world in real time with a device that fits in your hands, no less. We take it for granted now, but to someone from a less advanced culture, it would seem mind-boggling. So you think Whitaker's got it all wrong about this artifact? There's no doubt that he's wrong. Graham wants to believe that he's on the verge of a great scientific triumph Something that will make him the subject of admiration and adoration across the world for centuries to come But I believe that ambition has in fact blinded him to the truth He can't see the artifact for what it really is He's in denial about the Squiddies too Wouldn't have a bar of it when we tried to explain what was really happening around here Yes, I don't think there's any getting through to him We'll have to do this without his help. Well, as it turns out, Sarah and I were just on our way to take care of that. What do you mean? We think we've worked out where to find the mine entrance. Really? Where is it? Sarah saw Whitaker wandering around in a paddock near the Simpson place a little while back. Yeah, I was taking a drive to Bellamy and he was out there in the hot sun, just looking up at the sky like a weirdo. I didn't think much of it at the time, but... What? You think the mine entrance is there? Possibly. Hang on, let me get this straight. You saw a bloke going out for a walk, and now you think you've blown the lid off the whole bloody case? Well, going by your logic, the entrance to the mine could just as easily be right outside the bakery, couldn't it? Because I saw Whittaker standing there one day too. This is different, and you know it. I'm not sure I do, actually. You got a better idea, Wally? Yeah, I do. We head for the bunker. What are we going to do there? Stick our heads up our arses and wait for the dust to turn us into squiddies. The bunker's close by and we can defend ourselves there. Well, that's more than I can say for... It sounds like the mutants are heading away. This is our window. Whatever we're going to do, we have to do it now. I say we head for the bunker. And I say we go for the mine. All or nothing. Look, you're a nice bloke, Max, but... I'm with Max. As am I. His plan makes sense. We have to get inside that mine no matter what. So, are you with us, Wal? Or are you going to the bunker alone? Me? I've never walked away from a fight in my life. So you'll come with us. Wouldn't miss it for the world, mate. And it's good to see you finally stepping up, Max. Didn't know you had it in you. Lead on, mate. Savage, are you good to go? Yeah. I'm ready. All right. Gear up and let's go find this bloody mine. Hey there, this is Mark R. Healy, the creator of Blood Rock Springs. I hope you're enjoying the show. In case you didn't know, I'm the sole member of Beyond the Dark Productions. I write, cast, direct, sound engineer and produce all of my own shows. I also self-finance these productions and without the help of the community, it's just not possible to keep things going. If you'd like to hear more episodes, please consider taking a look at my Patreon. That's patreon.com slash beyondthedark. For a few bucks a month, you can get early release episodes ad-free, along with exclusive content, and as an added bonus, you'll also be helping to keep my productions going. Check it out if you get the chance. That's patreon.com slash beyondthedark. Blood Rock Springs, Season 1. Stars. Thomas Barker. Chloe Elmore. Marlon Dance Hui. Sian Luxford. Floyd Kennedy. And Gavarock. Created by Mark R. Healy A Beyond the Dark Production
