The sun is about to rise. An empty DODGE CHALLENGER sits parked on the shoulder of an isolated country road, the driver-side door leD open. The seemingly endless CORNFIELD beside it fluIers in the gentle autumn breeze, a sea of overgrown tall golden crops broken by an ABANDONED TRUCK at the far edge and single large ROCK BOULDER formaOon resOng in the center. BLACKBIRDS perch on an ineffecOve SCARECROW ominously.

CuSng into the silence, footsteps franOcally approach and whip through the dense corn stalks. Two teenaged kids running for their lives. LAURA and HALLIE. There is something else moving unseen within the corn. A dark shape chasing them. As Hallie looks back over her shoulder, she trips on something and tumbles to the ground. She's run right into the horrifying remains of the OLD LADY FARMER who once tended this field! STRANGE PODS protrude from her mouth and one of her eye sockets. Hallie's scream is sOfled by Laura's hand over her mouth. They both stay low, in an aIempt avoid detecOon. The dark thing in the corn makes a strange reverberaOng moan, then passes them by and is moving off. It is some kind of CREATURE. Silence. Laura cauOously stands and listens. It seems like they've mayb- LAURA IS ATTACKED OUT OF NOWHERE AND DRAGGED INTO THE CORN! Hallie panics and bolts, running from the sounds of agony coming out of Laura. Several creatures start to circle Hallie, sOll obscured in the leaves. She has goIen turned around, disoriented in the endless crops. She has no choice but to pick a direcOon and run. Hallie comes to the face of the rock in the middle of the field, a dead end. The things in the corn are closing in. She desperately tries to climb up, slipping as she does. Just as the creatures are about to reach her a hand shoots down and clasps onto her sleeve, yanking her up and onto the rock.

Hallie scrambles back and braces herself... Seconds pass before she can allow herself to open her eyes. Nothing has happened. The things in the corn move off. A voice from behind her comes unannounced. --- PAGE BREAK --- Both kids stand atop the lonely rock, stranded in the middle of the vast cornfield. < NARRATOR HALLIE > It took a few minutes to really sink in aDer he pulled me up onto the rock. All of it happened so fast. We'd been on the run for a while when Laura stole that car. She didn't realize how liIle was in the tank, so we were scoping out the back roads for easy gas to siphon and I saw the truck leD out at the edge of the field. Should have been easy enough. Those things hiding in the crops, whatever they are, came out of nowhere. I don't know how long the boy had been stuck out here exactly, I didn't ask, but it looked like a while. Days maybe. Long enough for him to be fairly sure the things that aIacked us wouldn't come out from the corn. We were safe up here, or at least I was. He was hurt. Even though he tried to hide it from me I knew it was bad once the sun came up and I could see how much blood was on the rock. Either way, we were both in serious trouble. These roads are dead quiet almost all of the Ome, so there was no way to know when help might roll around, or even if it would. The old truck belonged to his grandmother, who he had come out looking for. They lived alone, just the two of them. There was nobody else who would noOce they were gone. Not anyOme soon. The way he spoke made it clear that he didn't know if she had made it out or not. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the body I saw sOcking out of the dirt as we ran. Well, what was leD of it. I could hear Laura crying from somewhere in the corn. Calling for me. I couldn't tell exactly how far out she was from the rock. SomeOmes it sounded like she might have been close enough for me to try... something. Anything. Maybe I could have helped her. The boy didn't think so. He told me he ran track, 100 meters in just over 11 seconds, an all-county record, and those things in the field were faster than him. They'd be faster than me. They clearly knew Laura was there but didn't seem to care anymore. Or maybe they leD her on purpose, trying to lure us back in. He was probably right. ADer a few minutes her cries turned to moans, and eventually... stopped. My phone has no service this far out. To be honest I wouldn't know what to do even if it did. Who would I call? The Police? Not aDer what we'd done. Maybe I deserved this, but I doubt the boy did. He saved me, and he didn’t have to do that. For a while he kept his gun close and me at a distance. I'm sure he knew that I had no good reason to be in that field before dawn, even if he didn't say it outright. Some hours into the day the boIle of water from my pack convinced him to let me get a bit closer, and aDer he had a drink, I used some to clean him off. His leg was injured preIy badly so I ripped up my shirt sleeve to wrap the parts that looked the worst and we both went back to quietly waiOng for someone to come along.

gone, must've fallen out when I was running through the field. He had one though. One of those gimmicky rabbit's foot things. Said he didn't smoke. It --- PAGE BREAK --- was just something he kept for luck. It had belonged to his dad who died a long Ome ago. We have that in common, I guess. I can't help but think its luck has preIy much run out. By sunset we hadn’t seen a single car pass by. I’ve never been very good with being stuck in one place. There were moments that night when I thought about just climbing down into the corn and crawling off as quietly as I could, even if it took hours to reach the road. Or maybe I'd just run for it, screw the all- county record. See if I could make it out before those creatures could take me. I would have thought they had to sleep someOme, but the deep shaky howls they made every few minutes was a constant reminder that they were sOll out there. Moving around. Ready for me. Each hour or so a jet plane would pass over us. The later it got the easier they were to make out. Dark shapes and blinking lights cuSng across the sky, leaving behind long trails from one end to the other. High up enough that they'd never be able to know we were even there. I kept hoping though. Hoping the next one that came along might be flying low, might see us and just know something wasn't right. I would imagine one of the people on board had the power to send help, to get us somehow out of this god damn field. I knew that was stupid to think. That nothing like that would ever really happen. They were so far from us they might as well have been shooOng stars, flickering out of sight just as fast as they appeared. SOll felt nice to hope though.

Hallie wakes up slowly, opening her eyes to see a sOll sleeping Logan laying on the rock beside her. She doesn't wake him. She just watches. A sound begins to cut through the calm morning ambience; the unmistakable swell of Ores rolling over pavement. Faint at first but growing fast. In seconds the vehicle is visible approaching from down the road. Hallie sits up. It's a POLICE CRUISER. She is momentarily frozen in fear. The Cruiser comes around the bend, passes the Challenger leD on the shoulder and slips out of view down the road. Hallie listens intently. ADer a long beat the Police Cruiser comes back around and seIles to a stop on the shoulder behind the Challenger. OFFICER VALENTINE gets out and approaches.

ADer a quick inspecOon of the car and scan of the general area, Officer ValenOne closes the Challenger door that was leD open and turns to head back to his Cruiser. An empty car on the side of the road is an oddity for sure, but not worth the paperwork.

Hallie's mind is racing, caught between her compeOng impulses. Logan's injuries are serious and he's running out of Ome. If she doesn't take this chance to get a rescue there may not be another opportunity. ValenOne reaches his Cruiser and opens the door. --- PAGE BREAK --- Logan wakes up and noOces the cop. HALLIE (calling out) Hey! Over here!

Just as he is about climb back into the Cruiser, Officer ValenOne noOces the faint calls from out in the field. OFFICER VALENTINE Huh, what the? Damn kids. He begins to approach the cornfield, making his way down the slope from the road.

Hallie and Logan try to warn him off. HALLIE & LOGAN No! Wait! Go back! Officer ValenOne cannot make out what they are saying from this far away. He enters the corn completely oblivious to the danger within.

Officer ValenOne ventures deeper into the cornstalks following the sound of the shouOng. He can’t see the creatures closing in on him through the dense foliage. A shape rustles in the corn behind him. He turns, finding nothing but sOllness. OFFICER VALENTINE Hello? Come on out of there... He moves towards the spot that the moOon came from, discreetly placing his hand over his pistol. He parts the leaves revealing... nothing. He looks down and recoils in shock. LAURA'S LIFELESS BODY IS STARING UP AT HIM! She now also has those strange pods erupOng from inside her. Officer ValenOne draws his pistol in a panic. Behind him a dark shape rears up.

--- PAGE BREAK --- Hallie and Logan watch on helplessly. The sound of screams and gunshots echo from within the corn. Blackbird's scaIer. The creatures below. The quiet sets back in. < NARRATOR HALLIE > We ran out of water someOme aDer the sun came back up and I could feel myself geSng weaker as the hours kept dragging on. The boy had it worse. He was Ored. Shaking someOmes. And the blood... he'd lost a lot of it. I tried my best to keep him awake and his mind off the pain. We talked about anything we could. Our favorite movies. The music we liked. How I moved around a lot as a kid, and how he'd never even been anywhere else. He'd spent his whole life in this one town. He said his grandmother told him this all used to be trees and stuff at one Ome, but the night the rock fell it cleared the whole field. Back then to remove it would have been more hassle than it was worth, so they just planted around it. Everybody called it "The Devil's Rock", no one really knew why. Or if they did, they never said. The crops here grew like crazy though, as if the land itself had been changed somehow. There were always rumors about the field. Stories people told. How every 17 years, when the summer is parOcularly warm and the rain is heavy, very bad things happen here. The boy grew up hearing them and thought that's all they were, stories. He never took them seriously. At least not before those things in the field appeared anyway. What the hell are they? Why won't they ever come out of the corn? I guess it doesn't really maIer why. Maybe they don't even know that they can. How would they if they never had. We’re right here. It would have been so easy to take us if that's what they wanted. All they had to do was... something different. By late aDernoon the boy was talking less. SomeOmes we would just stay quiet, listening to the wind in the corn, the distant thunder rolling in, the creatures howling. SomeOmes I would talk. Maybe it was the way he looked at me, like I wasn't a bad person. Maybe it was because he reminded me so much of my dad. Maybe it was because some part of me knew we were both going to die anyway. Whatever it was, I told him everything. I told him about that stupid camp up north I was sent to. How me and Laura escaped. How we held up a Q Mart in Hamelin County. How I needed the money and how nobody was supposed to get hurt. How I didn't know the gun was loaded, and how it just went off. I told him about how aDer... I ran. Kept running. How it felt like if I could run fast enough it wouldn't catch up to me. What I did. I told him all of this, and he sOll looked at me the same way. I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I never told him that I took the money. I leD that part out. So, that's it, I guess. I know it won't change anything, but if anybody ever hears this, I want to say I'm sorry. Sorry for all of it. --- PAGE BREAK ---

Hallie lays on the rock and plays back the final recording she made earlier on her PHONE. HALLIE Holy shit... Hallie shoots to her feet, and Logan groans as he comes to. LOGAN Okay, So? HALLIE So, I can use it. HALLIE A headstart. Logan realizes what Hallie is about to do. She's going to make a run for it. The moment lingers heavily between them. Part of him doesn't want her to go. Part of him knows if she doesn’t, they’re both as good as dead. --- PAGE BREAK ---

Hallie quietly climbs down to the ground and gets into posiOon below. She breathes deep, closing her eyes. Logan steps to the edge of the rock to get a clear view. The counter on the phone screen reaches zero and plays the isolated creature sound on a loop. The call echoes out and the creatures move towards it. Logan aims his rifle as one passes right by Hallie. It moves past not noOcing her. The plan is working. All the creatures are heading to the phone. One of the creatures, a parOcularly imposing one, looms over the phone. THE ALPHA. It pokes the phone almost confused, and then smashes it aggressively. Hallie shoots into moOon, starOng her run for the edge of the field, her feet pounding the dirt with every bit of strength she has leD. The creatures instantly take noOce and start to give chase. As their shapes pass around the rock Logan begins firing on them. Over and over unOl he runs out of bullets. Hallie pushes forward. The creatures begin to close the gap. Logan watches on helpless as they gain closer... CUT TO: BLACK CUT TO:

--- PAGE BREAK --- With a blast Hallie launches out of the corn and tumbles to the ground. She has made it! Hallie stands to face the creatures prowling just beyond the barrier of the field. The Alpha bellows its moan, and Hallie lets out a triumphant scream back at it in response. Hallie quickly pops the gas cover open on the Police Cruiser with a screwdriver from her pack and siphons the gas from it. She starts the Challenger successfully. The bag of cash on the seat catches Hallie’s eye and gives her pause. Hallie gets out of the car and looks out across the field to the rock. From this far and with the light fading she can barely make out Logan.

Logan falls back against the tree and slumps down. Relieved that Hallie has made it out, resigned now to the idea that he never will. The sound of the Challenger fades as it pulls off. He runs his fingers over his aching wound. The screech of the Ores catches Logan off-guard. He gets up and watches in shock as the Challenger swerves around, launches off the road and plows directly into the corn. It tears through the stalks, cuSng a rough path into the field as it goes.

The creatures throw themselves against the car to no effect as it pushes forward. The Alpha clamps onto the hood and we get our first and only real look at its horrifying anatomy. A bear sized monstrosity. Part cicada, part bird, part cornstalk. A bizarre organism lit up by the headlights. Hallie stomps on the gas pedal and grips the steering wheel. The Challenger slams directly into the face of the boulder, crushing the Alpha in the impact. Hallie is momentarily dazed by the crash. She shakes it off, forces open the sunroof and pulls herself out.

They reach the edge. Hallie takes the rabbit’s foot lighter, sparks it up, and tosses it onto the ground. The --- PAGE BREAK --- trail of gas ignites, and the flames race down the path towards the crash. ADer a moment the Challenger explodes in a brilliant fiery display. The money burns up. It doesn't take long to spread, and soon the whole field is ablaze. The roaring inferno drowns out the shrill howls of the creatures as they burn. HALLIE Yeah, I know. I think I'm done running. Logan holds Hallie's hand. They watch the field burn together and wait for help to arrive. CUT TO: BLACK