Music over a black screen, Willie Nelson's Time of the Preacher.
INT. BAR – NIGHT
The REVEREND JESSE CUSTER is dressed in his Sunday clothes, with his hair slicked back, black shirt with the white collar, standing in a shitty little small-town bar lecturing its redneck patrons.
Town this small hasn’t many secrets, am I right?
Closer on Custer.
Stuff everyone knows an’ thinks nobody knows, least of all your dumb-ass preacher.
CUT TO TERRY MORROW smashing Custer over the head with a pool cue. Quick montage of Terry and PAT MORROW stomping Custer on the ground.
INT. CHURCH - DAY
CUT TO Custer, the very next morning at service, standing before a packed church. His face is slightly puffy.
It... it sure is nice to see so many of you folks here this morning...
CUT TO several hundred yards outside the church. The camera accelerates as it flies at the church, bursting through its heavy oak doors. The screen goes black as the camera reaches Custer.
EXT. CHURCH RUINS - SUNSET
Reopen on TULIP O’HARE climbing through the smoking rubble of the church, gun drawn.
Jesse?
CU of Custer kissing Tulip, then quickly to black again.
I’ve got this thing in my head- shoved in my head from the outside. Whatever it tells me, whatever it says...
Close on Jesse looking past the camera, looking scared.
It sounds like the word of God.
CUT TO SHERRIFF ROOT and DEPUTY KENNY walking through the charred ruins of Annville after the sun has gone down.
Ask me, it was niggers.
Close on Root, spitting his chew.
Martian niggers, Kenny.
EXT. CAVE MOUTH - SUNSET
The SAINT OF KILLERS walks slowly out of a cave into the desert as the sun sets on the horizon. The voice of JOHN WAYNE narrates.
Goes by the name a’ the Saint a’ Killers. He’s got a soul so damn cold and rattlesnake-mean, Satan himself threw him back outta hell. And he’s lookin’ fer you, Pilgrim.
EXT. HIGHWAY - NIGHT
Root stands defiantly against the Saint across a stretch of highway. There are a whole mess of deputies around him, but they aren’t important. This is a stand-off between Root and the Saint.
Figure you got some guns in them belts, boy.
But you don’t look to me like the man who’ll take ‘em.
To black as gunfire erupts, modern gunfire overshadowed by the thunderous blasts from antique Walker Colts.
EXT. PARKING LOT OUTSIDE A BAR - NIGHT
Reopen on Custer and CASSIDY fighting a group of bar toughs. A TOUGH with a switchblade is coming up behind Cassidy.
Cassidy!
Cassidy turns in time to take the knife from the Tough in the eye. CUT TO a bloodied Cassidy, gutshot, with his glasses still cracked from the eye-wound earlier, hurtling through the air, and landing hard beside Custer, who’s lying nearly unconscious on the ground.
Cheer up, Preacher man, you’re rescued.
To black. Custer and the angel DEBLANC are talking in a parking lot at night.
Tell me the truth.
I am DeBlanc, angel of the Lord our God.
CU on Custer.
Don’t be shy.
They’ll kill me for this. It’s... the Lord our God... he quit.
Quick montage of gunshot bodies with the Saint stepping through them, looking angry, an angel and a demon, fucking each others brains out as the sky burns behind them, Cassidy, covered in blood after he’s torn one of the tough’s throats out with his teeth, smiling, Arseface looking into the camera (like a subliminal message it’s so quick) and John Wayne standing in the shadows outside a diner in the desert.
CUT BACK TO Root and Kenny in the ruins of Annville earlier.
Goin’ weak sister on me, Kenny?
All I’m sayin’ is, could be more than we can handle here.
Could be I’m gonna shit me the keys to Graceland tomorrow, but I kinda doubt that as well. Martian niggers, Kenny.
Root starts walking away and spits over his shoulder.
You wait an’ see.
Fade to black. White titles come across the screen: Preacher: Gone to Texas. Then red titles. Only on HBO. Summer 2008.
