Leningrad: Flesh of the Revolution - script and screenplay
🎬 TITLE:
“Leningrad: Flesh of the Revolution”
GENRE:
Italo Horror / Historical Zombie / Political Allegory
STYLE:
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Grainy, 1970s Italian cinematography style — washed-out blues and browns, with stark red accents for blood.
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Synth + choral score (Goblin-style with Orthodox chants).
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Dialogue is minimalist; visual storytelling heavy with rot, cold, and hunger.
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Brutal practical gore, psychological dread, and metaphoric political horror.
SETTING:
Leningrad, 1921.
The Revolution is “won.” Lenin rules from the Kremlin. Trotsky commands from his office.
But in Leningrad, the famine has turned into hell.
Food is gone. Rats and horses have been eaten. Children disappear.
Markets whisper of “black meat.”
Soon, the city will devour itself.
PLOT TREATMENT:
ACT I: “The Winter of Hunger”
-
Sergei, a demobilized Red Army soldier, returns to Leningrad to find his wife and son missing.
-
Streets are filled with corpses frozen in snow; people trade boots for bread.
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Sergei finds the Smolny Institute turned into a morgue and cannibal bazaar — disguised as “meat market.”
-
A strange woman, Marfa, sells cutlets that “taste like pork.”
Sergei eats. -
That night, he dreams of blood flooding through the canals and Lenin’s statue laughing.
ACT II: “The Black Market of Flesh”
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Sergei learns of a secret police unit suppressing cannibalism rumors to protect the image of the Revolution.
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Marfa leads a group of “the Eaten” — those who survived by consuming human flesh.
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They begin changing — eyes pale, skin gray, violent seizures. They feel no cold anymore.
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The famine deepens. The “Eaten” prowl the streets at night.
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Lenin’s voice on the radio calls for “rebuilding,” echoing as people scream outside.
ACT III: “The Red Resurrection”
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The “Eaten” transform fully — undead cannibals — and overrun the city.
Their chant: “The Revolution never dies.” -
Sergei joins a band of starving survivors, including a disillusioned commissar.
-
Trotsky orders the city quarantined — no trains, no food.
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The final revelation: Lenin himself is already dead — his body preserved, fed upon by the first zombie.
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Sergei burns the Smolny Institute as hordes swarm the Neva embankments.
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Final shot: smoke rises over Leningrad, Lenin’s embalmed face twitching to life in the mausoleum.
OPENING SCENE (SCREENPLAY FORMAT)
FADE IN:
EXT. LENINGRAD – MARKET SQUARE – DAY
A gray sun bleeds through the mist.
Snow falls like ash.
Emaciated figures shuffle between makeshift stalls — bones and rags everywhere.
CLOSE UP — a frozen corpse half-buried in snow. Fingers gnawed to the bone.
VOICE (LENIN) – RADIO STATIC (O.S.)
Comrades... the Revolution demands sacrifice. Hunger is temporary. The future is eternal...
The sound warps and crackles.
A man, SERGEI (30s), in a tattered Red Army coat, approaches a stall.
Behind it stands MARFA (40s), with hollow eyes and cracked lips.
MARFA
(whispering)
Pig meat... fresh.
SERGEI
Where did you find a pig?
Marfa’s eyes flick to a nearby alley — blood stains in the snow.
MARFA
You don’t ask, comrade. You eat... or you die.
Sergei hesitates. His stomach growls like thunder.
He buys the meat.
He eats.
CUT TO:
EXT. NEVA RIVER – NIGHT
Sergei vomits into the icy water.
From behind him, a shadow moves.
Marfa stands in the fog, her eyes glowing faintly white.
MARFA (O.S.)
The flesh remembers... comrade.
She smiles, revealing blackened teeth.
MUSIC: Goblin-style synth riff builds to discordant choral screams.
TITLE CARD:
LENINGRAD: FLESH OF THE REVOLUTION
ACT I — “THE WINTER OF HUNGER”
FADE IN:
EXT. LENINGRAD – MARKET SQUARE – DAY
Gray sun. Snow like ash. A hundred hollow faces orbit shoddy stalls.
A CHILD drags a sled with an empty sack. Women stare at it like it’s gold.
A banner hangs tattered: “BREAD = REVOLUTION.”
A gust tears the word BREAD nearly off.
SFX: A gramophone needle drags over a record — speech in fragments.
LENIN (V.O.) – DISTORTED
Comrades… sacrifice… tomorrow will sing…
SERGEI (30s), gaunt in a faded Red coat, shoulders through the crowd.
His eyes: soldier’s vigilance, father’s panic.
He passes MARFA (40s), behind a stall. The same eyes from the opening.
She turns a pan, sizzling meat.
MARFA
Warm. One kopek a cut.
SERGEI
(hoarse)
One?
MARFA
(eyes flick)
You can smell it. You will live another day.
A beat. He buys a strip, eats, moving away like he’s already ashamed.
CUT TO:
EXT. NEVA EMBANKMENT – DAY
Frozen river. Sergei leans over the railing, fighting nausea.
A NEWSPAPER blows by: “WAR IS OVER.” The edges are stained dark.
SFX: Far siren. Close footsteps.
POLICEMAN (O.S.)
You there! Show papers.
Sergei hands over a grimy passport.
POLICEMAN
Sergei Ivanovich Aksyonov. Unit demobilized. Residence?
SERGEI
Voznesensky Prospekt. Wife Anna. Son Matvey.
The policeman glances at Sergei’s belly wound scar, old shrapnel tracks.
POLICEMAN
They evacuate families first. Try district office.
(softening)
Don’t stand alone at the river.
Sergei nods. The policeman moves on. Sergei watches the ice: pale shapes glide beneath — too smooth to be fish.
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. TENEMENT – STAIRWELL – DUSK
Dark. Breath steams. Echoing steps.
Sergei climbs, passing doors nailed shut from the outside. Scribbles in chalk: “CHECKED—EMPTY” and “FEVER”.
He reaches a door with a child’s charcoal drawing: a house, a sun, three stick figures.
He unlocks. Stale air rushes out.
INT. TENEMENT – SERGEI’S APARTMENT – CONTINUOUS
Cold. A table, a broken cradle, a coat on a chair like someone still sits in it.
A SAMOVAR, empty.
A SHEET OF PAPER pinned to the wall with a nail.
Sergei pulls it free, reads:
ANNA: “Bread line at Smolny. If not back by evening, wait with neighbors.”
He turns to the window. Outside, sparks pop from a far smokestack.
SFX: A building coughs somewhere. Plumbing dies with a metallic moan.
CUT TO:
INT. TENEMENT – NEIGHBOR’S FLAT – NIGHT
A candle. OLD WOMAN (70s) feeds it stubs of wax.
OLD WOMAN
Your wife went to queue two days ago. Didn’t return.
(lowers voice)
There’s… market meat, if you have coin.
SERGEI
I know.
OLD WOMAN
Don’t know what pigs they keep in Leningrad, so tender in winter.
Sergei stares, the meaning sinking.
OLD WOMAN (CONT’D)
I don’t ask. I pray.
(sincere)
Find your boy. Children don’t… keep long here.
CUT TO:
EXT. SMOLNY INSTITUTE – DAWN
Once a school for noble girls. Now government HQ.
And today — a line. Frozen men and women snake along the iron fence.
POSTER: Lenin’s profile. Under it: “WORK & EAT.”
An official with a ledger stamps cards.
Beyond the gates, carts with sacks. Guards at the gates send people away.
Sergei approaches a NOTICE BOARD with names scrawled in chalk: LOST, MISSING, FOUND.
He scans for ANNA AKSYONOVA. Stops at MATVEY.
Nothing.
A YOUNG COMMISSAR (20s, nervous authority) pins a fresh notice: “RATIONS SUSPENDED UNTIL THURSDAY.”
Groans ripple. A WAIL erupts, quickly muffled.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Order! Anyone disturbing order will be detained.
— You, comrade. Move along.
Sergei steps back. Hands shaking.
CUT TO:
EXT. ALLEY BEHIND SMOLNY – MORNING
Thin sun. Sergei follows a smell — spices, grease — not from the kitchens.
He turns a corner.
A clandestine BLACK MARKET breathes behind the building: rugs, boots, tobacco, glass vials, meat under gray cloths.
MARFA is here too, like a fixed star. She recognizes him.
MARFA
Hungry soldier returns.
SERGEI
I have a question. Two days ago — a woman, brown shawl, little boy.
She’d buy… she’d ask—
MARFA
(slow blink)
People blur. Meat remembers better than my eyes.
Sergei’s jaw tightens.
A THIN MAN at another stall sharpens a cleaver.
A CRATE nearby, draped in burlap. A drop of something dark plinks from it.
RAT darts from beneath; Marfa’s BOOT lashes out. Crack.
She pockets the rat with practiced indifference.
MARFA (CONT’D)
What did your wife trade, if she came?
Earrings? Boots?
Her finger?
Sergei lunges, grabs Marfa’s lapel — then stops himself. The thin man’s cleaver stills in the air.
SERGEI
(swallows)
Please.
Marfa studies him, then nods faintly to the thin man, who lowers the blade.
MARFA
Come night. The city speaks when it’s dark.
CUT TO:
INT. SERGEI’S APARTMENT – DAY
Sergei tears the place apart.
Under floorboards: a rag doll, a button, two rubles, a REVOLVER with one bullet.
He holds the revolver, chambers it. Noted.
He finds a BOX: Family photos.
One of ANNA and MATVEY on the river last spring, sunlight real and impossible.
He tucks it in his coat.
CUT TO:
EXT. NEVA RIVER – NIGHT
Snow thickens. Sergei waits on the embankment. Time passes.
Footsteps stop behind him. MARFA.
Her breath doesn’t fog. Or maybe it’s the wind.
MARFA
You said a brown shawl.
(gestures)
Follow.
CUT TO:
EXT. SERVICE TUNNELS – NIGHT
Marfa leads him down a grated stair toward a tunnel throat emitting warm, greasy air.
Faded paint: “CITY STEAM – NO ENTRY.”
SFX: Distant metallic banging. The steam hisses like serpents.
INT. SERVICE TUNNELS – CONTINUOUS
Pipes. Condensation. The light is bad and yellow.
They pass doors with numbers burned off.
MARFA
There are families who… process. Strict. Organized.
Nothing goes to waste.
People do what they must.
SERGEI
Tell me if you saw them.
MARFA
You think I don’t know the face of hunger? I know a woman who would sell her wedding icon for a cutlet to give her boy.
(stops)
I know a man who would lie and tell her it’s pork.
Sergei swallows hard.
They reach a steel door. A symbol chalked on it: a circle with three lines — crude skull.
MARFA (CONT’D)
Wait here. If you hear boots, walk back out and never return.
She slips inside.
Sergei leans on the wall. Drops of water hit his cheek.
He looks up: pipe seam. The droplets are red.
The door opens. MARFA returns, jaw tight.
MARFA (CONT’D)
There was a woman. Brown shawl.
She came two mornings ago.
She bought meat for her boy.
She didn’t return last night.
Sergei’s eyes glass over, rage and terror mixing.
SERGEI
What meat?
Marfa holds his gaze.
MARFA
Do you truly want to know?
He doesn’t answer.
MARFA (CONT’D)
You asked for truth.
They call it black meat.
People who eat it do not stay… the same.
SERGEI
They die?
MARFA
(small smile)
Not exactly.
CUT TO:
EXT. COURTYARD – NIGHT
A feral, half-buried yard surrounded by brick.
A FIRE BARREL glows.
Three figures hover. One is the THIN MAN. Another, a GIRL (12) with soot on her cheeks and a butcher’s apron. The third, a MAN WITH A CLUB.
Marfa and Sergei approach. The trio watches like wolves.
THIN MAN
You bring the soldier.
MARFA
He’s looking for a woman and child. He pays.
Sergei sets down his rubles and the revolver. The man with the club eyes it.
SERGEI
Names. Direction. I don’t need sermon.
GIRL
Don’t need sermon.
(tastes snow on her tongue)
I saw a woman with a brown shawl near the Haymarket. She had a boy.
They went toward the canal.
SERGEI
Alive?
The girl shrugs.
The thin man slides the revolver back with a toe. Generous, or cruel.
THIN MAN
You can’t shoot hunger, comrade.
From the shadows, a RAGGED FIGURE lurches to the fire, hands outstretched. Skin gray, eyes filmed.
The man with the club smashes it back into the dark. A wet moan.
Sergei flinches.
THIN MAN (CONT’D)
We keep our fire clean.
CUT TO:
EXT. CANAL – PRE-DAWN
Blue hour. The city is a bruise.
Sergei moves along the canal, scanning alcoves, archways.
SFX: A distant CHORUS — Orthodox notes bending into synth dissonance (score).
His breath quickens.
He reaches a stone underpass. A small bundle is tucked by a pillar. He kneels.
It’s just rags. And a wooden soldier toy, broken.
Sergei’s jaw clenches. The toy’s head is missing.
A soft WHIMPER behind him.
He turns.
In the archway shadow… A BOY. Seven, maybe eight.
Not his. But starved and shaking.
SERGEI
(soft)
Come. I have—
The boy looks past him, over his shoulder. His pupils are pinpricks.
BOY
Don’t.
A HAND clamps Sergei’s wrist. ANNA (30s) — his wife — materializes from the dark, eyes wild, hair matted.
She’s thinner, but it’s her.
ANNA
Sergei—
They crash together, desperate, then pull apart.
SERGEI
Where’s Matvey?
Anna can’t answer. She trembles violently.
Behind her, the boy scurries away into cracks.
ANNA
I tried. The line— they said— I bought… I bought…
She doubles over, retching dry.
SERGEI
Where is he?
ANNA
He ate— I gave— he said he was warm at last— then he slept— then he—
She chokes. Sergei grabs her shoulders.
SERGEI
Where?
ANNA
(whispers)
He woke up wrong.
A shape moves at the top of the embankment.
A SMALL FIGURE stands, silhouetted — MATVEY (6). Coat too big. Head tilts too slow.
SERGEI
Matvey!
The boy’s breath does not fog. His eyes reflect the faint lamps like an animal’s.
He studies Sergei and Anna with hollow curiosity.
He steps down the stairs, one measured, scraping foot at a time.
ANNA
No— don’t— he—
MATVEY
(voice airy; words like learning again)
Mama.
Anna sobs, step forward, step back. Sergei holds her.
SERGEI
Matvey, come here, son.
Matvey smiles. Lips crack. The smile keeps going too far.
He sniffs, head twitching to the side — the way dogs do when catching scent.
Then he LAUNCHES — not fast, but inexorable.
Sergei yanks Anna back. Matvey’s fingers rake Sergei’s coat.
SFX: The score SCREAMS, then cuts.
A SHOT cracks the air.
Matvey staggers — not hit. The shot went wide.
YOUNG COMMISSAR steps from the bridge with a pistol.
Two soldiers flank him, nervous.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Away from them!
(to Sergei)
Move aside!
SERGEI
It’s my son!
YOUNG COMMISSAR
That is not your son.
Matvey turns toward the commissar. Head jerks; mouth opens too wide.
A hiss that ends like a laugh.
The soldiers step back.
ANNA
Please— don’t—
Matvey rushes. The pistol barks. ONE SHOT — Matvey jerks, falls.
Silence. Snow mutters down.
Anna keens, animal and human at once. Sergei can’t breathe.
Matvey shudders… Then SITS UP.
The bullet hole blossoms black, then stops bleeding.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
(trembling)
Again. Again—
He fires twice more. Matvey falls, writhes.
He keeps trying to stand.
Sergei moves before his mind catches up. He dives, grapples Matvey.
The boy’s small hands are inhumanly cold, strength wrong for his size.
ANNA
Sergei—!
SFX: Boots thundering down the steps. A WHISTLE. More soldiers.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Contain! Contain!
No bites!
A soldier kicks Matvey off Sergei. Another throws a NET — rope and canvas.
They pin the writhing child, who hisses like steam.
Anna collapses. Sergei lurches for the revolver in his coat— remembers he traded it— fists clench empty.
Matvey’s eye catches Sergei. For a heartbeat, it’s just a boy’s eye.
MATVEY
(soft, sudden clarity)
Papa.
Sergei freezes.
The commissar shoots point-blank.
The head snaps back. Stillness. Snow eats the gun smoke.
Silence again, real this time. Even the river seems to hold breath.
ANNA crumples beside the small bundle. Sergei stands, emptied, hands red with someone’s blood, maybe his son’s.
The soldiers look anywhere but at the family.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
(to troops)
Report unit to the Cheka. Quietly.
(to Sergei, softer)
I’m sorry, comrade.
Sergei sways. Behind him, a figure watches from the arch: MARFA.
Her face unreadable. She steps back into dark.
CUT TO:
INT. TENEMENT – SERGEI’S APARTMENT – LATER
Window black. The city’s distant sirens mourn.
Anna lies on the bed, turned to the wall, eyes open and not seeing.
Sergei stands in the kitchen, hands in a basin.
Water pinkens, then reddens.
He scrubs until skin peels.
He stares at the family photo — spring sunlight, smiles — sets it face down.
SFX: Faint radio in another flat — Lenin’s voice chopped by static.
LENIN (V.O.) – RADIO
Comrades, the last trial… new economic… cooperate…
Anna sits up slowly, voice cracked.
ANNA
We have to leave the city.
Sergei can’t answer.
ANNA (CONT’D)
Tonight. Before… before they come back.
They don’t let people leave. They close bridges sometimes.
But there’s a boatman— for rubles—
Sergei wipes his hands, moves to her, kneels.
SERGEI
He was alive inside, for a second. He called me. Did you hear?
Anna squeezes her eyes shut, nods, shakes her head — both.
ANNA
(whispers)
It wasn’t him.
CUT TO:
EXT. TENEMENT COURTYARD – NIGHT
Snow falls thicker.
Sergei and Anna slip out with a small bundle — clothes, the photo, two rubles.
They pass a group huddled around a barrel. A man stares into the fire the way one stares at an altar.
From a window above: a LULLABY sung without melody.
Marfa steps from a doorway, blocking the arch exit.
The thin man with the cleaver beside her.
MARFA
Leaving?
Sergei tightens. Anna pulls closer.
SERGEI
We’re done with your markets.
MARFA
It’s not my market. It’s the city.
(pointed look at Anna)
You fed him to live.
Now you must live with that, or die quickly.
Anna flinches.
THIN MAN
You have coin. Bridges close tonight. Cheka wants quiet.
A boatman will take you — East canal. Two rubles.
That’s my kindness for the day.
Sergei clocks it: trap? Or help? The man’s eyes are dead of mischief — just survival.
SERGEI
Why tell us?
MARFA
Because dawn is worse than night now.
And because I want you to see what we become when we survive.
(beat)
Then decide if you go.
CUT TO:
EXT. EAST CANAL – LATER
A rotting dock. A BOATMAN (50s) in a fur hat without fur.
He measures them with empty warmth. Holds out a hand.
Sergei passes the coins. The man tests them with his teeth, nods.
BOATMAN
Get in. Keep your hands inside.
They crouch in the skiff. The boat scrapes ice.
The city slides past like a corpse in water.
SFX: Far off, the CHIMES of a clock tower — then the clatter of a BRIDGE mechanism.
The boatman freezes. His oar stops mid-stroke.
BOATMAN (CONT’D)
They’re closing.
We’ll cut behind the bakery mill.
He turns them into a narrow sluice.
INT./EXT. MILL CHANNEL – CONTINUOUS
High brick walls, windows shattered. Flour dust? No — ash sifts in the air.
Anna stares into the darkness under the millhouse.
A dozen shapes clutch the pilings. Silent.
Eyes reflect like nails heads.
A HAND slaps the boat— not to tip it, but to feel.
ANNA
(whisper)
Sergei—
He puts an arm around her.
BOATMAN
Don’t look at them. Don’t breathe like meat.
A shape pulls itself up onto the stern. Face close — gray lips, gummed teeth, a milky eye.
The boatman slams the oar down. Crunch. It slides back with a hiss.
Sergei reaches for a weapon he doesn’t have. Anna grips the rail white.
They burst into open canal.
SFX: A SIREN wails somewhere else.
Shouts.
The skiff rocks. Something thumps beneath.
BOATMAN (CONT’D)
We’re fine. We’re—
His words die.
Ahead: a cordon — CHEKA launch with lanterns, rifles. The bridge beyond is rising.
CHEKA OFFICER (MEGAPHONE)
Return to the embankment! Curfew for health quarantine! Return!
The boatman turns, cursing under breath, but too late.
A rope TRAWL snaps up, snagging the skiff. The boat tips; Anna screams; Sergei grabs her—
They go into the water.
UNDERWATER
Green-black. Bubbles and flailing limbs.
Sergei clutches Anna’s wrist, pulls, kicks.
Shapes in the water move against current — too sure.
A pale FACE drifts inches away, eyes open, hair streaming like weed.
The mouth opens and a hand comes out — not possible — just a trick of ice and coat.
Sergei hauls Anna up.
SURFACE
They hack to the embankment stones. Cheka lanterns dazzle them.
CHEKA OFFICER
Hands where we see! Don’t bite!
(to troops)
Pull them! Sanitizer! Check them!
Gloved hands drag the couple up onto cold stone.
A soldier sprays phenol that burns like fire. Sergei howls. Anna gasps.
CHEKA OFFICER (CONT’D)
Any bite, scratch, bleeding gums, arrest.
SERGEI
We’re not— we fell—
CHEKA OFFICER
We decide what you are.
The officer peers into Sergei’s eyes with bureaucratic curiosity, not fear.
He nods, bored.
CHEKA OFFICER (CONT’D)
Release them.
(to another)
Shoot the boatman’s body if it floats. Twice.
Sergei looks back. The boatman is gone. The skiff bobs, empty.
CUT TO:
INT. BATHHOUSE – NIGHT
City bathhouse converted into a disinfection hall.
Steam rises from cracked tiles. Naked bodies, skeletal.
A NURSE with a rag swabs throats with something bitter.
People cough and spit into a trench.
Sergei and Anna shiver in a corner in rough blankets.
On the far bench, a MOTHER hums to an empty bundle.
A PRIEST without vestments dips fingers in a bucket and crosses foreheads furtively.
NURSE
Next— open— say “ah.”
She presses a dark swab on Sergei’s tongue. He nearly gags.
Anna takes hers without flinching.
NURSE (CONT’D)
If you feel the cold go away suddenly, report immediately.
SERGEI
What happens if the cold goes away?
She doesn’t answer. Moves to the next.
The Young Commissar enters with guards.
He spots Sergei and Anna, hesitates, then approaches.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
You survived the canal. Good.
You will go home.
You will stay home.
You will say nothing about… what you saw.
Do you understand?
Silence. Snowmelt ticks from rafters.
SERGEI
What did we see?
The commissar’s eyes plead for cooperation his mouth can’t ask for.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
You saw people who have betrayed the Revolution through decadence. Moral panic. Reactionary fever.
That is the official report.
ANNA
You shot a child.
He stares at her like she’s slapped him.
His hand trembles just enough to be human.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
I shot… what would have killed many.
(softer)
Please go home. Barricade your door.
(beat)
If you hear voices telling you to open, do not.
He turns away quickly.
CUT TO:
INT. TENEMENT – SERGEI’S APARTMENT – PRE-DAWN
Door bolted. The couple sits on the floor, backs to the wood, listening to the stairwell.
Silence. Then a shuffle. Then silence. Then a scratch.
Anna clamps a hand over her own mouth.
A CHILD’S VOICE (O.S.)
Mama?
Sergei’s eyes flood. He shakes his head, tiny, to Anna: don’t.
CHILD’S VOICE (O.S.)
Papa? I’m cold.
Anna breaks. She lurches toward the bolt. Sergei grapples her, holds her tight.
SERGEI
(sobbing whisper)
That is not him.
The voice at the door changes — a growl like broken glass.
Then the knob jiggles twice.
Silence again.
Something sniffs along the threshold.
After an eternity, the steps fade.
Anna slides down, empty. Sergei wipes his face with his sleeve.
ANNA
This city eats what it births.
SERGEI
Then we burn its mouth.
A distant BELL clanks. Dawn pullulates gray.
CUT TO:
EXT. MARKET SQUARE – MORNING
The same square from before, now more crowded.
Soldiers erect a fence around a quadrant.
A painted sign: “HEALTH INSPECTION.”
MARFA watches from her stall, eyes flicking to a line of EATERS at the edge — people who don’t shiver, who stare too bright.
They inhale the air like tasting it.
The YOUNG COMMISSAR climbs a crate.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
By decree, infected citizens will present for examination.
Do not run. Do not hide.
A murmur, fear and rage weaving.
A man in the crowd points at Marfa.
MAN
Her meat! It’s her meat that does it!
Heads swivel. Marfa raises her hands, calm.
MARFA
You bought it. You asked me to sell.
You begged.
Now you blame me for your own hunger.
The crowd swells forward.
SERGEI pushes in, eyes locked on Marfa.
SERGEI
You knew what would happen.
MARFA
I knew nothing. I watched. I survived.
(leans in)
But I learned something.
The flesh that eats flesh wakes. It remembers a deeper hunger.
It stops fearing the cold, the bullet, the word.
It is honest.
Sergei’s hands tremble. He wants to hit, to strangle, to thank — confusion boiling.
A SCREAM from the inspection pen — a woman’s teeth sink into a guard’s sleeve.
Gunshots. Panic erupts.
The fence TOPPLES. The pen spills.
The Eaters move with a dreadful patience, pushing forward like a tide.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Hold the line! Clubs, not bullets!
Heads— hit heads—
The square becomes chaos. Stalls crash. Meat scatters.
Marfa’s hand snatches Anna from a trampling wave. Sergei reaches — loses her — then sees her again, across bodies.
SLOW MOTION (ITALO HORROR STYLE):
— A sack of flour bursts, coating the air white like a snowstorm.
— A priest is knocked down; his cross skitters under boots.
— The girl butcher (12) swings her mallet precisely, jaw tight, unafraid.
— An Eater’s face turns to camera: eyes like winter fish.
SPEED RETURNS:
Sergei barrels through, grabs Anna. He turns toward Smolny — it rises like a cold citadel.
Marfa steps backward into an alley, the thin man at her shoulder.
She calls out, voice steady over the riot:
MARFA
Tonight, Smolny.
If you want to end it.
Sergei freezes for a breath. Their eyes meet.
He nods.
CUT TO:
MONTAGE – LATE DAY INTO NIGHT
— Sergei pries up floorboards; pulls out a bottle of lamp oil.
— Anna wraps cloth around a table leg — a makeshift torch.
— The Young Commissar at a desk, hands shaking, signs “Quarantine: Leningrad” and stamps it, eyes dead.
— Marfa sharpens knives with ritual calm.
— Bridges LOCK into place, iron teeth biting the river.
— A radio operator cranks a dynamo; Lenin’s voice skitters in and out: “new policy… emergency… unity…”
— The canals, blue-black arteries, churn with slow shapes below the ice.
END MONTAGE.
EXT. SMOLNY INSTITUTE – NIGHT
The building looms. Windows glow faintly.
Guards at the gate smoke, eyelids heavy.
Sergei and Anna slip in shadow.
Behind them, a handful of shapes detach from darkness — Marfa, the Girl Butcher, the Thin Man, and THREE OTHERS who move like ghosts.
MARFA
Once inside, down to the archives.
Heat pipes carry the air. Smells. We follow it to the heart.
SERGEI
And then?
Marfa smiles like a knife.
MARFA
We cut the city’s tongue from its mouth.
They move.
CUT TO:
INT. SMOLNY – SERVICE ENTRANCE – CONTINUOUS
A door latch pops with a thin bar.
They slip into a corridor of peeling paint, portraits with shattered glass.
In one frame: LENIN, face slashed.
Below it: TROTSKY, eyes gouged with a thumb.
GIRL BUTCHER
Superstition wastes time.
THIN MAN
Superstition keeps you alive.
ANNA
Where are we going?
Sergei answers without looking.
SERGEI
To the boiler guts. We light it all.
They descend.
INT. SMOLNY – BASEMENT TUNNELS – CONTINUOUS
Pipes groan. Water drips in a patient morse code.
Marfa walks like she knows this place. Maybe she does.
They pass a STACK OF FILES: lists of names, ration cards, photographs.
Anna pauses at a photo of a boy frozen in laughter. She pockets it reflexively.
A SOUND — a rattle of breath, not from any throat.
They turn a corner and stop.
A STORAGE ROOM — tables, hooks, white tiles.
The MEAT here is labeled in neat script: “CONFISCATED.”
And a shape stands at the back, facing a wall.
SERGEI
(whisper)
Who’s there?
It turns slowly. Not a person fully — a bent thing with a bandage over its mouth, stained dark.
Eyes pleading and monstrous at once.
It lurches toward them—
The Girl Butcher swings her mallet. CRACK. It drops.
Another rises behind it. Marfa steps in, a blade lightning-quick.
THIN MAN
They’re storing them now.
MARFA
No. They’re keeping them.
A door slams in the distance.
VOICES. FLASHLIGHTS. Cheka patrol, boots careful.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (O.S.)
This way. There’s a leak in the west pipe—
(he sees movement)
You— halt!
The beams catch Sergei and Anna.
Recognition with the Commissar is instant, painful.
He lowers his light a hair, then lifts it again — duty returns.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
You cannot be here.
SERGEI
Neither can they.
(gestures to the bound-faced bodies)
You keep them like livestock.
The commissar flinches, just enough.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
You don’t understand the orders we get.
MARFA
We understand hunger. We understand taste.
(steps forward)
Which one of you first tried? Or did orders come with recipes?
Guns rise.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Drop the blades. We walk upstairs. We talk.
From deeper in the tunnels, A CHANT rises — not religious, not political, something inhuman and rhythmic:
EATERS (O.S.)
(soft, pulsing)
The Revolution… never dies.
The lights flicker.
A RUMBLE moves through the pipes. Air warms suddenly.
Anna shivers — then stops shivering.
She puts a hand to her chest, eyes wide.
ANNA
Sergei—
He looks. Her breath no longer fogs.
She clenches her jaw, forcing air out until a faint cloud returns.
SERGEI
We’re leaving. Now.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
No one leaves.
From both corridor ends, EATERS appear.
Slow steps. Dozen. Two dozen. Faces mean nothing now.
The commissar goes pale, then steel.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Form line! Heads! Don’t waste bullets!
Sergei grabs Anna’s hand.
MARFA
(to Sergei)
The boiler room. Left path. Burn.
THIN MAN
We hold them.
The Girl Butcher grins, wild joy at last.
GIRL BUTCHER
I always wanted a bigger block.
She charges.
Chaos erupts.
Clubs crash. Blades arc. Flashlights jerk and die.
The commissar fights like a drowning man who refuses to go under.
Sergei drags Anna down the left corridor.
Marfa peels off, two Eaters in tow, moving like a dance.
INT. BOILER ROOM – CONTINUOUS
A cathedral of iron. Ancient boilers squat like gods.
Valves hiss. A red wheel spins lazily.
Sergei kicks a drum of oil — half-full. He yanks a rag from his coat, stuffs it into a bottle.
ANNA
It will burn the archives. The records. People will vanish who need to be found.
SERGEI
They already vanished.
He lights the rag with a shaking match.
Footsteps. Matvey’s voice — impossible — echoes from the door.
MATVEY (O.S.)
Papa?
Anna’s face breaks. Sergei’s hand shakes so hard the match almost dies.
He turns.
In the doorway: NOT MATVEY — a small Eater with a similar coat, the wrong eyes.
Behind it, more.
Sergei hurls the bottle.
IMPACT.
Flame blossoms up the boiler’s side. Heat roars in an instant.
ALARM WHISTLE shrieks.
Anna grabs Sergei’s arm and they RUN along the catwalk as fire crawls the pipes, hungry, eager.
Below, pressure gauges jitter into the red.
INT. TUNNELS – CONTINUOUS
Marfa and the others fight retreating. The Young Commissar covers them, now shoulder to shoulder with criminals and butchers.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Up the service stairs! Go!
The Girl Butcher laughs, exhilarated and terrified.
GIRL BUTCHER
Make it sing!
A heat wave surges through the corridor. Eaters hesitate, not from fear — from fascination.
INT. BOILER ROOM – CONTINUOUS
Valves scream. A pipe BURSTS, scalding steam erases a cluster of Eaters.
Sergei and Anna slam a door, throw a bar across it.
Flames lick the window slit. The door glows.
SERGEI
(mutters a prayer he doesn’t remember)
Forgive us.
EXT. SMOLNY – NIGHT
A bloom of FIRE behind basement windows.
The building exhales black smoke as if it were alive and offended.
Guards shout. Bells ring. Snow melts in rivers that steam.
INT. TUNNELS/STAIRS – CONTINUOUS
The group pounds up stairs two, three steps at a time.
The Young Commissar staggers, blood like black paint on his sleeve.
Marfa glances back — sees shapes walking through flame like it’s warm rain.
MARFA
(little, to herself)
They are learning.
She shoves the commissar forward.
EXT. SMOLNY COURTYARD – CONTINUOUS
They explode into the night air, coughing.
SIRENS. SHOUTS. GUNFIRE.
The city wakes to a new kind of alarm.
Sergei and Anna collapse against a snowbank, lit by orange hell.
Marfa steps out last, hair singed, eyes bright with reflected fire.
The Young Commissar leans on the wall, stunned.
He meets Sergei’s gaze.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
You just declared a different kind of war.
Sergei looks at the inferno.
SERGEI
Good.
CLOSE ON: The flames licking a shattered window, curling around a portrait of Lenin that doesn’t burn, just blackens — the eyes glint like something alive.
CUT TO BLACK.
END OF ACT I.
ACT II — “THE BLACK MARKET OF FLESH”
FADE IN:
EXT. LENINGRAD – DAWN AFTER THE FIRE
Smoke skeins the sky. Snow is black at the edges.
POSTERS are slapped over older posters: QUARANTINE in heavy type.
A hand stencils “SILENCE IS HEALTH.”
A BARRICADE closes the avenue: sandbags, wire, soldiers with scarves over their mouths.
SFX: A phonograph churns a funeral march. It warps, drops, resumes.
INT. TENEMENT – SERGEI’S APARTMENT – MORNING
Anna sits on the floor, unmoving, watching a patch of sunlight creep across the wall.
Sergei pours hot water into cups with a shaking hand.
He slips the family photo from his pocket, almost tears it, then pushes it away instead.
ANNA
It’s warmer today.
Sergei glances at the frost-laced window: it isn’t.
He studies her breath — thin, then… vanishes.
SERGEI
We’ll get you out. Across the ice to the dacha ring. Wood to burn. Potatoes in cellars.
ANNA
(too gentle)
There’s no out.
A RAP-RAP at the door. Their bodies seize.
SERGEI
(whisper)
Don’t answer—
YOUNG COMMISSAR (O.S.)
It’s me. Please.
Sergei cracks the bolt.
INT. TENEMENT – CONTINUOUS
The Young Commissar looks older by years. A sling. Soot in his hair.
He holds out a folded paper. PASS: “Public Health Brigade.” Two names typed, barely.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
This gets you through three checkpoints. No bridges. A barge east at night might still run.
He glances at Anna — notes the lack of shiver, the sheen in her eyes. He hides the knowledge poorly.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
There is a food depot near Tauride. It’s… not food anymore.
They keep saying trains are coming. Trotsky sent telegraphs. Nothing moves.
SERGEI
Why help us?
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Because I shot a child. And because if you burn more, burn the right thing.
A distant SIREN rises. The Commissar flinches.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
They’re sweeping Haymarket at noon. To make an example.
If you have anyone there— warn them.
Sergei and Anna trade a look.
CUT TO:
EXT. HAYMARKET SQUARE – NOON
Snow falls like ash off a black fire.
CHEKA TROOPS in masks form lines. CITIZENS corralled with poles.
A DRUM beats, cheap theater.
A tribunal table: a CHEKA CAPTAIN reads from paper with ritual boredom.
Beside him: a DOCTOR with pince-nez, antiseptic bottle like a sacrament.
CHEKA CAPTAIN
By order of the Revolutionary Council, immoral consumption of human flesh is sabotage. Saboteurs will be…
He looks up. The word won’t be said. He drinks it like bile.
He gestures. A row of MARKET SELLERS on their knees, hands tied.
Among them: MARFA.
She smiles at the Captain like at a boring play.
SERGEI (O.S.)
(hoarse whisper)
We can’t take that line.
ANGLE: Sergei and Anna in a recessed doorway, hunched. Girl Butcher (apron under a shawl), Thin Man behind them. Two more faces from the Smolny raid.
GIRL BUTCHER
We don’t take lines. We break them.
DOCTOR steps forward, swabbing tongues with bitter liquid, muttering: “Observe the cold.”
The crowd TENSES as Marfa opens her mouth for the swab. The doctor peers in; blanches.
DOCTOR
(to Captain)
She won’t feel the cold.
CHEKA CAPTAIN
(not loud)
Then she feels the rope.
He gestures. Soldiers move.
Marfa turns, finds Sergei in the crowd without looking. Their eyes lock.
MARFA
(shouts)
If I swing, you waste a blaze you need.
A BANG — not a gun. A TRAM crashes through a barricade at the square’s edge, sparks vomiting from its iron wheels on ice.
Thin Man stands on the tram step, a hook in hand.
Girl Butcher yanks a bell rope like it’s a battle standard.
GIRL BUTCHER
Open market!
PANDEMONIUM.
Citizens flood; soldiers swing clubs; Sergei darts like a knife.
He slashes a rope, another. Marfa drops like a sack — stumbles, then is up, eyes bright.
She seizes a CHEKA CARBINE not to shoot but to club.
Anna moves beside Sergei, patient and precise despite the tremor in her jaw.
The Captain orders FIRE. Bullets chew the tram wood.
A boy falls. A woman’s scream frays into laughter, then sobbing.
SERGEI
(hauls Marfa)
Move!
They spill down an alley, diving through a curtain of hanging meat hooks clanking like bells.
EXT. SERVICE COURT – CONTINUOUS
Breath clouds. Boots slide.
Behind, the square collapses into a swarm noise: orders, screams, the drum beating faster as if to catch up.
MARFA
You came.
SERGEI
For the blaze.
MARFA
(pleased)
Good.
She palms a paper parcel into his coat.
MARFA (CONT’D)
Powder for pipes. Burns without flame until it wants to.
Sergei nods, clocking the weight — nitre and something else.
GIRL BUTCHER
Where?
SERGEI
Tauride. The depot.
Anna lingers, listening past them, to something farther: a hum under the city, like a choir tuning.
She rubs her arms once, stops — her skin doesn’t gooseflesh.
ANNA
We should hurry.
CUT TO:
EXT. TAURIDE GARDENS – DUSK
An imperial garden turned to mud and checkpoints.
Beyond the trees, the TAURIDE PALACE squats — administrative now, lights in only two windows.
INT. TAURIDE – SERVICE CORRIDOR – DUSK
A chain on a door. A guard asleep, mouth open, frost on his moustache.
Marfa’s knife whispers. The chain is nothing.
They slip inside: a COLD STORAGE hall stinks of old blood and disinfectant.
RACKS hold WOODEN CRATES stamped “SUPPLIES.”
They pry one. Inside: bones wrapped in brown paper, labeled like goods.
ANNA
(whispers; fury under ice)
They rationed us our dead.
THIN MAN
Nothing goes to waste.
The Young Commissar steps out of shadow, gun low.
He looks gray as stone.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
I don’t know you here.
(beat)
The worst is below.
He gestures to a lift cage with a rope brake.
INT. TAURIDE – SUB-BASEMENT – CONTINUOUS
The lift groans down. The air cools to cellar-cold then… warmer.
Moist. Breath sticks to walls.
GIRL BUTCHER
Hear it?
They all do now: a slow, wet choir. Not voices — feeding.
They step off.
A long room, low ceiling, PIPES like tangled veins.
On trestles: BODIES.
Not dead. Not alive. Bound-faced, hands tied, drips in their arms taking something out instead of in.
A TECHNICIAN with a ledger ticks boxes.
He looks up, sees them, opens his mouth — Marfa’s blade closes it forever.
ANNA staggers. Sergei catches her.
SERGEI
Don’t look—
But she does. She recognizes a woman’s shawl pattern, like her own.
A boy’s boot size.
Her breath stops fogging entirely.
ANNA
(low, broken)
They harvested him twice.
The Young Commissar retches dry into a corner, then stands, face washed of all political color.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
I thought… it was rumor.
I thought we were… seizing contraband.
A metallic cough — the pipes rattle. The warm hum surges.
Something in the walls BREATHES.
MARFA
The city is digesting.
Sergei pulls the powder parcel from his coat, rips it with his teeth, hands shaking.
He jams handfuls into pipe seams, into the lift’s brake housing, into the cracks around the door.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
What is that?
SERGEI
Your report will call it sabotage.
Marfa lights a sliver of rag at her candle stub, tucks it into the powder like a prayer.
SFX: The feeding choir changes key.
In the far arch, EATERS stand, heads bent like listening monks. They lift their faces, sniff, begin walking.
GIRL BUTCHER
Go time.
They run for the lift.
INT. LIFT CAGE – CONTINUOUS
The cage lurches. The rope screams.
The Young Commissar hauls the brake like he wants his arms to come off.
Below, the powder whispers fire through pipes. No light, then sudden light — blue-white like a foundry.
BOOM.
The cage leaps. The shaft BELLOWS HEAT.
Eaters below turn their faces up to it like it’s rain.
EXT. TAURIDE – SERVICE COURT – CONTINUOUS
The lift door vomits them into snow.
A blast lifts cobbles. Windows cough glass.
They sprawl behind a stone trough as FLAME hunts the night.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
(airless laugh)
Arrest me later.
MARFA
If there is a later.
SIRENS. BELLS.
A LOUDSPEAKER cracks to life on a truck in the street: a recorded speech, tinny and paternal.
LENIN (LOUDSPEAKER)
Comrades, the New Economic Policy—
The speaker warps, snarls to static, then catches:
LENIN (CONT’D)
food will return— order— unity—
The words bounce off the palace as men bleed in the snow.
ANNA sways on her feet. Her skin is pallor washed in candlelight.
Her eyes reflect the flames wrong.
SERGEI
We rest. Then we head for the river.
(lying with love)
We’ll find a boat that floats.
ANNA
(soft, calm like a confession)
I’m not afraid of the cold anymore, Sergei.
He goes very still.
SERGEI
We keep moving. We don’t sit. We don’t listen to knocks.
GIRL BUTCHER
(blurts)
We go to the tram tunnels. They’re dry. They keep the warm down there.
And there’s a radio in the post office exchange. We can tell the city to run.
The Young Commissar nods, latches onto purpose like a drowning man to wood.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Yes. Broadcast quarantine truth. Not orders.
(looks at Anna, then away)
We hurry.
CUT TO:
EXT. POST OFFICE EXCHANGE – NIGHT
A square brick block. Antennas claw the sky.
A PLATOON of Cheka is posted at the front.
INT. TRAM TUNNELS – SAME
The group moves under the streets along the rails, lantern thin.
Muffled boot thunder passes overhead.
SFX: Distant tram gong — dead grid still ringing from memory.
A RAT KING — tails knotted — creeps oblivious. Marfa steps over it like over a rosary.
ANNA pauses at an alcove. A MURAL — half-scrubbed — of saints turned to workers. The eyes were never finished; they look like open wounds.
She touches the wall. Frost should bite. It doesn’t.
ANNA
Do you hear them singing?
They all do now. The Eater Choir rides the air through brick, rising.
INT. EXCHANGE – SERVICE ROOM – LATER
The back door gives. They slip into a maze of switchboards and wire racks.
A RADIO TECH reaches for the alarm — the Girl Butcher grabs his wrist, presses a knife gently to it, looks into his eyes.
GIRL BUTCHER
Please don’t.
He doesn’t.
The Young Commissar drops into a chair, throws switches like he’s been waiting to do this all his life.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Power… power… come on—
The set warms, valves glow.
Static fills the room like snow on glass.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
Microphone.
Sergei finds one under a cloth. He stares at it as if it might bite.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
(suddenly shy)
I… I should say something careful.
MARFA
Say something true.
He nods. He breathes. He looks at Anna, sees the time he doesn’t have.
He keys the mic.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (INTO MIC)
Citizens of Leningrad—
Listen. Stay off the canals. Do not eat market meat. If your neighbor stops feeling cold, tie their hands and pray.
(beat)
We are not receiving trains. We are not receiving orders that feed us, only orders that silence us.
(voice roughens)
Tonight, the Tauride stores were burned. We did it. We will burn more.
If you have a place to go, go now. If you have someone to forgive, forgive them.
(soft)
And if you hear a child at your door— do not open.
He lifts his finger. The room listens to the echo.
SFX: Outside, an answer: HOWL. Not wolf, not wind. Eaters answering their names.
The lights flicker. Power wobbles. The radio coughs and catches again.
LENIN (AIRWAVE)
—discipline—
The Young Commissar slams the off switch. Silence crashes in.
THIN MAN
They heard enough.
ANNA
They heard everything.
INT. TRAM TUNNELS – LATER
They move again. The hum is near now.
Around a bend: A FEAST — a pile of bodies arranged almost carefully, as if set for worship.
Eaters kneel. Hands move delicately, like communion.
One stands — small — turns. Matvey’s coat, not Matvey.
It smiles, mouth torn wider since the canal.
SERGEI
(quiet; empty)
Keep walking.
The Eaters step aside, politely, let them pass.
Their eyes glint almost curious.
One reaches toward Anna’s hand — not to bite — to touch. Anna flinches hard, like from a memory.
EXT. RIVER EMBANKMENT – PRE-DAWN
They emerge to knife air. The Neva is a sheet of lead.
Across the water, the Admiralty spire pierces a bruised sky.
BARGES sit iron and dead. CABLES thick as wrists spider to moorings.
A FIGURE stands on the ice — coat, cap — turns: CHEKA CAPTAIN from Haymarket.
He lifts a whistle, blows once. SHADOWS shift along the river wall: rifle silhouettes.
CHEKA CAPTAIN
Health Brigade. Halt.
Marfa steps forward, palms up. The Young Commissar raises his pass.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Authorized—
CRACK — a shot kicks snow near his boot.
CHEKA CAPTAIN
(tired)
Not anymore.
He nods at Anna.
CHEKA CAPTAIN (CONT’D)
That one comes with us.
Sergei goes very still.
SERGEI
No.
The Captain’s eyes are raw. He doesn’t want a fight; he wants order like a blanket.
CHEKA CAPTAIN
She doesn’t feel the cold. You know what that means.
ANNA steps out, barely. She speaks before Sergei can.
ANNA
If you take me, don’t let them put me in pipes.
The Captain blinks. For a moment he’s just a man who once loved someone.
Eaters rise at the quay edges, heads turning.
GIRL BUTCHER
We are out of time.
SUDDEN: A siren from upriver. A TRAIN HORN — impossible — carries through cold: a barge with a locomotive on its deck, pushing through slush, lanterns blazing.
Men on deck wave red flags. A banner: RELIEF.
The Captain turns, stunned. The Young Commissar’s mouth opens like a child’s.
MARFA
(superstitious whisper)
Don’t trust gifts from a cold river.
The barge grinds closer. Lines are thrown. Workers cheer raggedly from the embankment.
The first crate hits the stones, stenciled GRAIN. Crowds converge like tide.
A WORKER pries it. Grain pours… then clatters. Not grain.
Teeth.
Jars of teeth.
The cheering dies like a throat cut.
The barge crew stand very still. Their skin is too smooth. Their breath doesn’t fog.
They smile in unison.
EATERS leap from the rail like seals, silent, precise.
CHAOS.
Rifles crack. People scream.
The Captain fires, reloads, fires. Two Eaters drop, get up, crawl.
Sergei grabs Anna; Marfa yanks the Commissar; Girl Butcher swings, hook bites flesh that doesn’t flinch.
THIN MAN
Off the quay! Into the warehouse!
They bolt for a customs warehouse door. Sergei drags a crate in front; Marfa drops a bar.
Outside: a wet thudding and a chant that sounds too much like words:
EATERS (O.S.)
soft, patient
The Revolution… never dies.
INT. WAREHOUSE – CONTINUOUS
Dust motes swirl like snow.
Stacks of bales, rope, tar, paper.
A trap door to a lower store is already unbarred from below.
The Young Commissar looks at it, then at the door they just barred.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
We are the rat in a bottle.
GIRL BUTCHER
Then we chew glass.
ANNA walks to a high window slit. She watches the Eaters move outside, organizing in lines, pairing, stacking crates like workers.
ANNA
They learn.
SERGEI
We burn.
He tears a tarred rope, breaks a lantern on the floor, dips cloth.
Marfa pours lamp oil, not enough, but some.
Girl Butcher kicks bales into a funnel.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
When we open, we run north along the quay. The Peter & Paul bastion is stone. Gates, guns.
THIN MAN
Guns are slow. Hunger is not.
The barred door BUCKLES under patient, rhythmic pressure. Not frenzy — labor.
ANNA
(soft to Sergei)
If I turn— if I stop shivering— and I speak with someone else’s mouth—
(looks at him)
You burn me.
Sergei stares. He looks like a man watching himself drown in a mirror.
SERGEI
I will hold you.
I won’t let you be put in pipes.
She nods, relief like a wound.
The bar collapses.
Door inward. Eaters flood.
FIRE meets them, a sudden tongue.
They hesitate — not fear, calculation.
The Young Commissar empties his pistol into their faces.
Girl Butcher hooks, yanks; Marfa cuts, neat, economical; Thin Man shoves burning bales, making a corridor of pain.
They burst out the back, into the night.
EXT. QUAY – CONTINUOUS
The barge is ashore now — crew-Things distributing jars, arranging them into pyramids.
Teeth tinkle on stone. It sounds like a toy shop in hell.
They run.
Past a dead horse frozen like a statue.
Past a broken cart.
Past a child sitting calmly amid it all, legs crossed, watching.
The child’s breath fogs — still human — eyes huge.
ANNA stops, hard. Sergei almost tears his shoulder.
ANNA
Go!
She scoops the child, thrusts into Girl Butcher’s arms.
ANNA (CONT’D)
If we don’t make it, you do.
The Girl Butcher nods once, savage solemn.
GIRL BUTCHER
I’ll teach them how to use a hook.
They sprint.
EXT. PETER & PAUL FORTRESS – MOMENTS LATER
Stone walls, iron gate. A SENTRY at the murder hole peeks, rifles them with his eye.
SENTRY
Pass?
Young Commissar thrusts the Health Brigade paper, voice like a whip.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Open! Enemy at quay!
The gate winches. Slow. Too slow.
They squeeze through a gap as Eaters arrive, hands through bars, gentle, searching.
Inside, the courtyard: ARTILLERY on sled mounts. SOLDIERS thin as their rifles.
A COLONEL appears, moustache rimed with frost.
COLONEL
You bring plague to my house?
YOUNG COMMISSAR
We bring truth. Point guns at the river.
He does. Guns cough flame. Eaters tumble and get up.
But the barge crew, hit by shrapnel, burst like sacks of offal — stuffed with glass and rope and jars. Not men.
Silence falls like ash. Even the guns pause in disbelief.
MARFA
They sent containers, not soldiers.
COLONEL
(sacred whisper)
What did they send?
YOUNG COMMISSAR
A message.
ANNA sways, hand to wall. Her breath is a thread now, thin and intermittent.
She looks up at the cathedral spire, a sliver of night, and smiles sad.
ANNA
There’s a song under the city. It wants me to learn the words.
Sergei takes her hand, holds it too tight.
SERGEI
We drown it out with fire.
Marfa watches them, something like sorrow in a face that made peace with sorrow.
MARFA
Then we go where the song is loudest.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Where?
MARFA
The Admiralty cold rooms are empty, so say the posters.
(beat)
Empty rooms sing loud.
The Colonel overhears, eyes haunted.
COLONEL
You won’t get far. The bridges are steel and shut. The river is traffic you don’t want.
GIRL BUTCHER
Then we take the sewers.
The Colonel studies them — a butcher, a thin man, a commissar, a wife going pale from inside, a soldier with nothing left to lose.
He nods once, as if saluting a parade gone wrong.
He barks to a runner.
COLONEL (TO RUNNER)
Two sacks of powder. One coil of rope.
(to them)
If you’re going to burn a song, sing loud.
SFX: A BELL tolls six. Cold blue bleeds into the east.
Sergei looks to Anna. She looks back steady.
ANNA
One more fire.
SERGEI
One more.
HARD CUT TO:
INT. SEWER MOUTH – PRE-DAWN
Black brick, shallow river of filth.
A VIRGIN ICON in a niche, face soot-black, candles stubs at her feet.
They descend into the throat of the city, lantern bobbing, cold sweat that feels like not-sweat on Anna’s brow.
EATERS’ CHANT threads the pipes. Closer now. Organized.
It harmonizes in thirds, like a choir taught by a conductor.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
(whisper)
Who is teaching them?
MARFA
Hunger teaches everything.
They vanish into the dark, toward the Admiralty’s underbelly.
CUT TO BLACK.
END OF ACT II.
ACT III — “THE RED RESURRECTION”
FADE IN:
INT. SEWER TUNNELS — PRE-DAWN
The tunnel curves like an intestine.
The Eater chant is nearer, echo bouncing until it’s impossible to tell direction.
Lantern shakes in Sergei’s hand.
MARFA
Downstream. The current leads straight to the Admiralty cellars.
Anna walks barefoot now, skin almost luminous. She doesn’t shiver; she hums under her breath—
the same melody the Eaters chant.
GIRL BUTCHER
She’s hearing them.
SERGEI
She’s hearing us.
The Young Commissar shoulders his rifle.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
We end this before dawn. Then you run. Understand?
Nobody answers.
INT. ADMIRALTY SUB-CELLAR — LATER
A rust-stained door. Above it, a plaque: “Refrigeration Facility No. 3.”
Marfa twists the wheel latch; it squeals like a scream.
They step into a chamber colder than outside air should allow.
RACKS of preserved bodies hang in wire cradles, labels pinned to toes:
PARTY CADRE — MOSCOW, ENGINEER — KAZAN, LEADER — PRIVATE.
Each chest rises, shallow, impossible.
At the far end, a glass cabinet glows faintly. Inside: a body under linen, perfectly kept.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
(reads the tag)
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
(hoarse)
He’s supposed to be alive in Moscow.
Marfa steps close, fogs the glass—except her breath doesn’t fog.
MARFA
He never left the city.
A pipe on the ceiling thrums.
The chant outside grows to a march rhythm.
ANNA walks to the glass. Her reflection and the body’s overlap.
ANNA
He’s dreaming through us.
He wants everyone to keep working.
The body’s eyes snap open—pale gray, not human.
The Eater choir hits a single note that bends into mechanical vibration.
LENIN’S VOICE (V.O.) — tinny, everywhere at once
Comrades… hunger is reactionary. Feed the machine with what it has built.
The pipes burst, venting warm vapor that smells of blood.
Eaters pour through side ducts like water.
FIGHT MONTAGE
— Girl Butcher’s hook arcs, splits a skull.
— Thin Man shoves powder sacks into vents, sparks a match with his teeth.
— Young Commissar fires point-blank until the rifle clicks empty.
— Sergei drags Anna behind a column, hands slick with oil and blood.
— Marfa kneels before the glass case, knife at her own throat, whispering.
MARFA
No gods. No masters. No hunger.
She drives the knife through the glass—into the embalmed chest.
The body jerks. A gush of black preservative floods the floor, catching the lamplight like oil.
FLAME ROARS.
INT. TUNNELS — CONTINUOUS
Fire races along pipes, eating the city’s veins.
Above, muffled explosions. Stone shakes dust like snow.
YOUNG COMMISSAR shoves Sergei and Anna toward the sewer mouth.
YOUNG COMMISSAR
Go! If the Revolution won’t die, let it burn with its prophet!
A falling beam pins him. He laughs once, dry.
YOUNG COMMISSAR (CONT’D)
Tell them I… told the truth—
The roof collapses.
EXT. RIVER OUTLET — DAWN
They crawl out through a culvert onto ice shot with flame reflection.
Behind them, Leningrad burns: church domes glowing, smoke pillars where avenues were.
GIRL BUTCHER stumbles up with the child from before in her arms.
GIRL BUTCHER
He’s still warm. Still breathes. We keep him moving.
THIN MAN
(half-smile)
That’s new—someone breathing.
The air trembles.
From across the river, a column of Eaters marches in step, not chaotic now—organized, purposeful.
At their head: a tall figure in a scorched coat, face wrapped—Marfa’s.
She turns once toward Sergei, then toward the burning Admiralty.
The choir resumes, slower, grander, almost patriotic.
ANNA
(soft)
They’re not ending it. They’re continuing.
She looks at Sergei; her eyes are all reflection, no color.
SERGEI
Then we stop it here.
He pulls the last grenade—a Cheka relic—from his coat.
Pins it on a wire to the lamp oil drum leaking from the culvert.
SERGEI (CONT’D)
When the river swallows the fire, we go under with it.
ANNA
I already am under.
She kisses him once—cold, dry—and steps back into the tunnel mouth, singing with the approaching choir.
Sergei’s hand stays on the pin.
He watches her silhouette merge with the others.
He smiles—a soldier’s small, tired smile.
SERGEI
For bread.
He pulls the pin.
WHITE FLASH.
EXT. LENINGRAD — MORNING AFTER
Smoke drifts low. The river steams.
Snow falls again, gray-red.
The child walks alone along the quay, clutching the wooden soldier toy.
He looks up: sky full of ash that almost looks like hope.
Behind him, a hand breaks the ice surface—gray, calm.
The choir hums one last bar, resolves on a major chord that feels like sunrise and sickness at once.
TITLE CARD:
LENINGRAD – FLESH OF THE REVOLUTION
FADE OUT.
THE END
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