Sami stories with Zombies and religion in a year 1700's - scripts and screenplays Giallo and Romero approach
2 Different Stories in the same Article!!
Below is a feature-length screenplay (compressed to fit here, but formatted with proper sluglines, action, and dialogue) in the style of 1970s/80s Italo horror—a moody, pulpy “voodoo-zombie” homage set in Northern Finland, c. 1700, within a large Sámi community. It blends giallo-style color and sound cues, snowy folk horror, colonial-religious tension, and a slow-burn to ravenous undead mayhem. Violence is stylized and eerie rather than graphically explicit.
Note on cultural respect: The story employs fictionalized ritual elements and names (ikämieli/akmeeli as folkloric forces) and avoids real sacred practices. It is a supernatural horror tale, not a statement on Sámi traditions.
SNOW-PALE DEVILS
An Italo Voodoo-Zombie Tale in 1700s Northern Finland
Written by: Kalifornia Jani & ChatGPT
TITLE CARD (RED ON BLACK, GRAINY, HISSING TAPE NOISE)
SNOW-PALE DEVILS
Cue: sinister analog drones + distant drum (goavddis) + whispered breath in Northern winds.
FADE IN:
EXT. TUNDRA – NIGHT
White infinity. The aurora spills toxic green silk across a moon like a polished bone. Snow whispers over crusted drifts.
A SÁMI FUNERAL MOUND—low, half-buried, ringed by crooked birch stumps. Talismans—bone, copper, cloth—rattle softly.
A WOMAN’S SILHOUETTE approaches with a reindeer-hide drum. This is AILA (early 20s, Sámi, sharp, luminous, apprentice-noaidi, both modern-spined and myth-haunted). Frost breath coils from her lips.
She kneels, fingers the talismans.
AILA (whisper, Northern Sámi & Finnish-inflected English)
Áigi galgá boahtit. Time comes.
Her drumstick taps—thump… thump… thump—measured like a heart hiding under ice.
A burst of blue gel light washes the mound—Italo horror palette. The wind stops. Far off: a bell clang.
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. LUTHERAN CHAPEL (WOODEN) – NIGHT
Candle-blackened walls. PASTOR MIKKO LAHTI (30s, hard-eyed zealotry straining against a genuine wish to save) paces before a crude altar. A CUT-GLASS CRUCIFIX refracts sickly colors.
CAPTAIN RUTGER SJÖBLOM (40s, Swedish Crown, mercenary discipline) leans on a musket, bored.
MIKKO
Their drums mock the Gospel. Spirits and beasts! The Crown brings order. We must cut where rot spreads.
RUTGER
We bring tax and timber, Pastor. The rest is… winter.
He loads powder. Candle flames bend inward—like breath sucked from the room.
MIKKO (quieter, shaken by a draft)
Did you feel—?
RUTGER
It’s just cold.
It isn’t.
EXT. SÁMI CAMP – NIGHT
Lavvu tents glow ember-orange. ELDER ÁHKU (grandmother-noaidi, seamed face, eyes like ravens) ties a woven charm to a child’s sleeve.
ÁHKU (to AILA, who returns with drum)
You walk where the dead remember. Careful which name you say.
AILA
They take our lands, our tongues. We ask our roots to stand.
ÁHKU
Roots hold. They also strangle.
She points at the aurora—now pulsing like a wound.
ÁHKU (cont’d)
Ikämieli. Akmeeli. Old hunger with many names.
A distant church bell. Áhku makes a warding gesture. Aila looks toward the chapel lights across the valley—tiny, arrogant.
CHAPTER CARD (GIALLO YELLOW)
I. THE BELL AND THE DRUM
EXT. FOREST TRACK – DAY
A CROWN PATROL on skis—Rutger, two soldiers, and MIKKO on a sled. Frost clings to mustaches, breath smokes.
They stop at a Sámi shrine-tree hung with red cloth and silver coins. A soldier rips a token free.
MIKKO (sharp)
No theft. Nothing of darkness in our hands.
He yanks down all the cloths, tossing them into the snow.
RUTGER
Make up your mind, Pastor.
From the shadow of spruces: Sámi eyes watching. Aila among them, unblinking.
AILA (calling)
Leave what is not yours.
MIKKO
Child, God asks for your heart, not your charms. Come learn.
AILA
We learned before your God had a name.
RUTGER
We’re done here.
The patrol pushes on. The wind rises as if angry.
INT. LAVVU – NIGHT
Warm reindeer hides, smoke up the cone. Áhku paints soot marks on Aila’s drum.
ÁHKU
If we call, we must feed.
AILA
What price?
ÁHKU
Always the living pay.
AILA (low)
We already pay.
She drums—a slow gathering pulse. The sound design slithers into Italo synth under the beat.
EXT. CHAPEL YARD – NIGHT
Snow like ground glass. Wooden crosses tilt. Mikko prays, gloved hands clenched white.
MIKKO
Lord, still their witchery…
He rises. Footprints in the snow circle the chapel—bare, many, coming from the graveyard hill—but no prints leaving.
Mikko’s breath stalls. He makes the sign of the cross. A distant wet sound.
CHAPTER CARD (BLOOD ORANGE)
II. AURORA OF THE HUNGER
EXT. FUNERAL MOUNDS – NIGHT (LATER)
Aila and a small circle (Áhku, IENNA—a cousin with fire in her eyes; ASLAK—a hunter with sorrow) stand with bowls of marrow and cloudberries. The drumbeat deepens. The aurora flares, sickly magenta—unearthly.
ÁHKU (chanting)
Old root. Old will. Sleepers under snow. Hear breath. Hear drum. Come to guard what is ours.
ASLAK (aside to Aila)
If they come… can we make them stop?
Aila’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t answer.
The snow collapses in rings—as if something pushes up from beneath. A hand—white, bluish, fur tatters—grasps the air.
Gasps, a mix of awe and regret.
IENNA (tears in her voice)
Áhku… is this right?
ÁHKU (a prayer and a warning)
Right is a word for summer.
From the mounds, they rise: the SNOW-PALE DEVILS—corpse-pale Sámi dead, eyes filmed milk-white, enamel coated with frost. Not rage—hunger. They sniff, whisper in a tongue eroded by ice.
WIND carries whispers: ikämieli… akmeeli…
ÁHKU raises the drum to command, but the dead turn their heads—past the living—toward the chapel.
AILA (hoarse)
No. Listen to us.
Some undead pause, like dogs waiting—then shudder, and amble downhill toward the chapel’s bell. The bell clangs again—faster, terrified.
ÁHKU (to Aila, urgent)
They remember hunger better than home.
EXT. VILLAGE – NIGHT
Doors slam. Babies cry. The first undead reach a shepherd’s hut—hands on shutters, teeth at wool, a bleat cuts off. We only see shadows thrash across a lit skin wall, red gel washing the snow.
Italo zoom on Aila’s face—resolve and horror.
INT. CHAPEL – NIGHT
Mikko rings the bell with a rope. Rutger bars the door; soldiers shove benches against it.
THUMP… THUMP… THUMP on the wood. Nails squeal on planks.
RUTGER
Conserve shot.
The window breaks; a pale face pushes through, teeth snapping—
BLAM! Rutger fires. The head jerks back, silence then scrabbling multiples. More coming.
MIKKO (shaking, to himself)
Not men… not beasts…
He pours oil at the sill. Hands writhing at the gap. He sets a spark—WHUMP—flames push the dead back.
RUTGER (hard)
Stay behind me.
MIKKO (eyes burning)
No. I must see what they are.
RUTGER
They are coming through.
The door creaks inward. The bell rope breaks and the bell’s mouth snarls silently, its tongue swinging. The sound design mutes—a claustrophobic hush safer than screams.
CHAPTER CARD (NEON BLUE)
III. THE PRIEST AND THE APPRENTICE
EXT. COURTYARD – PRE-DAWN
Aila, Áhku, Ienna, Aslak advance with smoldering juniper torches. Snow eats sparks. The undead cluster at the chapel, gnawing and pressing—like blind wolves.
AILA (calling in Sámi)
Hear me! I called you! I feed you! Stop!
A few dead turn heads toward her voice—faces tilted, remembering weight of the name. But the bell, even silent, pulls them like a moon.
Áhku lifts the drum, strikes a counter-rhythm—slow-slow-fast like breathing. The undead flinch; some kneel on the snow, hands patting the earth—like greeting a mother.
ÁHKU (command)
Back to root—until we say otherwise.
Sudden musket flash from inside the chapel—BANG. An undead collapses, then crawls again—persistent, mindless desire.
ASLAK (to Aila)
They’ll overrun the place and keep eating till… till there’s no one left.
AILA (fierce)
This was never for that.
She steps forward, lifts a bone charm and cuts her palm—blood patters hot on snow.
AILA (loud, to the dead)
I called you to guard us, not to feed on the living. Back! Back to the mounds!
The undead hesitate—hunger vs. command. Then Rutger kicks the chapel door open—he and a soldier charging, bayonets out.
RUTGER
Drive them into the yard!
He bayonets a dead through the chest, pins it; the soldier hacks. The undead mass turns on the motion—a feeding frenzy vector.
ÁHKU (to Aila, urgent)
Break the bell. It binds as much as the drum.
Aila runs for the belfry ladder rungs iced in rime.
INT. CHAPEL BELFRY – CONTINUOUS
She climbs, slipping—Italo close-ups: her bleeding hand, the rope burn, the bell looming like a metal skull.
Below: Mikko sees her through smoke.
MIKKO
No! Not the bell!
Aila reaches the beam, swings the drumstick like a mallet and cracks the bell’s lip.
A disharmonic shriek, aurora pulses, undead convulse—like static through a body. The bell fractures, a chunk falls, smashes the floor.
Silence.
The undead still—then turn their faces to Aila, scenting the blood on her palm—new gravity.
AILA (small, oh no)
Oh…
They climb the walls like snow-wet bears.
MIKKO throws the pulpit ladder to her.
MIKKO
Take my hand!
She hesitates—this man wants to erase her people. But his hand is steady.
She takes it. He hauls her down as hands slap at her boots through the hatch. Aslak’s spear drives through an undead wrist—wrench, drop.
RUTGER (to Aila, curt)
What else binds them?
AILA (panting)
The root. The mounds. My… my drum. And—constraint. I must call them back and seal.
MIKKO (reeling, but lucid)
Then we buy you time.
He turns to Rutger and, with terrifying resolve:
MIKKO
Captain, burn your chapel.
RUTGER (beat; then nods)
As you say, Pastor.
He tosses a lamp. Flames climb the pews, the crucifix prisms bleed rainbow in the heat—Italo gel ballet.
AILA (to Mikko, shocked)
Your house of God—
MIKKO (hard, strangely gentle)
A house is wood. The Word lives elsewhere. Go.
CHAPTER CARD (SICKLY GREEN)
IV. THE MOUNDS OPEN
EXT. FUNERAL MOUNDS – DAWN
The aurora drains into pale gold. Blizzard hush. The undead lumber after Aila and Áhku, drawn by drum and blood.
ÁHKU beats a descending rhythm—the sound of going under. Aila bleeds into a birch bowl, mixes ash, marrow, snow—a seal.
IENNA (weeping)
Aunt—if they won’t listen?
ÁHKU
Then we give them a story stronger than hunger.
ASLAK plants a line of pitch-soaked stakes around the ring. He sparks one with flint. A perimeter blossoms into fire.
The undead ring the flame, swaying—entranced by heat, memory of hearth.
ÁHKU (chanting)
Go under. Sleep. Keep the bones. Guard the names.
*(in Sámi) *
Boađe fas, muorraid vuolde.
(Come again, beneath the trees.)
Aila drums with her wounded hand—blood on hide—marking each beat with a name of the dead she remembers: “ISKO! NIEIDA! JUTTA!…”
Some undead mouth the names, startled, and sink to knees, hands patting snow, finding their old place. The mound sinks a breath.
Others—newly turned, strangers—thrash, fight the pull, eye the living across the fire.
One lurches for Ienna—Aslak tackles it, they roll across snow, teeth near a throat—
RUTGER’S musket cracks—the undead spasms, goes still. Rutger limps into frame, face scorched, coat smoking.
RUTGER
Owe me a chapel.
MIKKO staggers beside him, hoarse, soot-streaked.
MIKKO (to Aila)
If a bell binds, let the Word unbind.
He recites the Psalms, voice broken but fervent, not to convert, but to steady his own soul. Oddly, the cadence helps the rhythm.
AILA (nods, eyes on the dead)
Keep the beat for me.
He does. The drum + Psalm fuse into a single tempo, ancient and new, woodsmoke and scripture. The undead shudder, sag, settle.
ÁHKU (whisper to Aila)
Now seal.
Aila pours the blood-ash-snow mixture into the mound’s mouth, tracing a spiral and crossing line—a symbol that is hers, not borrowed. Wind dives inward, whoomp, candles snuff invisibly. The snow slumps, smooths—silent.
IENNA (trembling)
Is it… over?
ÁHKU looks at Aila—Aila looks at the other mounds—dozens, maybe hundreds downvalley.
AILA (very small)
It begins.
CHAPTER CARD (CRIMSON)
V. THE PRICE OF THE DRUM
EXT. VALLEY – SERIES OF SHOTS – DAY TO NIGHT
— Aila, Áhku, Ienna, Aslak, Mikko, and reluctantly Rutger move mound to mound—calling, calming, sealing.
— Villagers, Sámi and Finn alike, hold torches at perimeters, hum along to keep fear from shaking them apart.
— A child recognizes a grandmother among the dead; Aila covers the child’s eyes, sings low, seals that mound faster.
— Rutger stares too long into a corpse’s eyes—something softens, the soldier looks away.
Over this:
SOUND—the drum, Psalm, wind, teeth tapping (subtle), Italo strings rising with fatal beauty.
EXT. LAST MOUND – NIGHT
The sky black, stars drilling cold. Only one mound remains, largest, adorned with ancient antlers.
ÁHKU (faint)
This one… old as the first story.
A deep rumble. The snow buckles. From the mound crawls a TALLER UNDEAD—antler-crown frozen into scalp, jaw unhinged wider than human—something older than Sámi, older than Crowns—a root-hunger given face.
The torches gutter. Even the aurora shuts its eye.
RUTGER (pure soldier now, aimed)
Down.
AILA (steady, to all)
No shot. If we break it, we break the seal.
This one must be talked into sleep.
She steps into the ring. Drum mute at her hip. No rhythm—voice only.
AILA (soft, fierce)
I know you. You are hunger with names: ikämieli, akmeeli. But there is a name you forgot—Enough.
The undead tilts its head, snow drifting from antlers. Its nostrils taste her blood.
ÁHKU (hoarse)
Price, Aila.
Aila lifts her palm again—deeper cut. Blood thicker, hot in cold air.
MIKKO (pained)
Child—
AILA (eyes on the ancient dead)
One night’s hunger for a people’s years.
She smears blood across the antlers’ base. The creature shudders—memory stabs through hunger. It kneels—like a white reindeer at salt.
AILA (whisper)
Sleep. I will beat the drum when thunder comes, not before.
She kisses its brow—we see only steam from the touch, no gore. It folds into the snow. Aila seals the mound—spiral, line, breath—her legs buckle.
ÁHKU catches her, weeping and laughing.
ÁHKU
You found your own sign.
RUTGER (softest he has been)
And kept your land.
MIKKO (spent)
And kept your souls.
AILA (to both men, dead honest)
We kept each other’s.
The wind lifts. Somewhere a fox barks—alive and ordinary.
CHAPTER CARD (WHITE ON WHITE)
VI. AFTER THE HUNGER
EXT. VILLAGE COMMON – DAWN
Ash-scented snow. The chapel is a charred frame. Villagers and Sámi share weak beer and bread. No banners. Just breath.
MIKKO stands before the ruin, removes his clerical collar. He ties it around a birch sapling near the chapel.
MIKKO (to Aila)
Let this be my cloth. I took yours.
A beat. Aila nods—exchange accepted.
RUTGER counts cartridges, looks at the horizon—no orders cover this part of the world.
RUTGER
No report fits.
(to Aila)
If the Crown comes… I was never pious.
AILA (a small smile)
Nor were we.
He snorts—respect given.
ÁHKU hums a soft joik, old and new. It wraps the scene like a shawl.
EXT. FUNERAL MOUNDS – LATER
The mounds lie smooth. Aila stands alone, drum under her arm, hand bound.
AILA (to the snow, a vow)
We will not call you for hunger again. Only for home.
She lays the drum on the mound; takes out a new skin—clean, unmarked. Begins painting a sign: her spiral-and-line, the one that sealed instead of unleashed.
ÁHKU (O.S.)
A noaidi writes with sound and with silence.
Aila doesn’t turn; she smiles, painting.
AILA
Then we will write louder with silence.
Aurora shivers—not malign—like a curtain adjusting. Somewhere, a church bell rings faintly—a different church, a different place—and does not command anyone.
EXT. TUNDRA – MAGIC HOUR
A wide, painterly shot. Reindeer ghost across the snow. The sky bleeds pink into blue.
Aila, Mikko, Rutger, Áhku, Ienna, Aslak walk together across the ice toward three paths that split—forest, river, ridge.
They stop. Look to each other. No speeches left.
RUTGER tilts his head—soldier’s goodbye. Leaves toward the ridge.
MIKKO sets his hat, breathes the cold like penance, heads down the river to rebuild something gentler.
ÁHKU squeezes Aila’s shoulder; Ienna and Aslak flank her. They turn toward the forest—home.
AILA (V.O.)
We are roots and roads.
We will eat, and we will plant.
We will not wake hunger again.
Cue: final Italo theme—melancholy synth over trembling strings.
CUT WIDE: the mounds in the distance—quiet, like sleeping whales in a frozen sea.
ROLL CREDITS over grainy freeze-frames: drum-skin drying by a fire; the birch with the pastor’s collar; children learning a new beat with mittened hands.
END
Below is a second-version feature screenplay—same setting (Northern Finland, c. 1700), but now in a George A. Romero–style zombie outbreak (contagion, siege, social critique) with Italo giallo color/staging accents. The Sámi community, under pressure from southern church authorities and crown troops, chooses to weaponize a plague—and pays for it when the sickness refuses to stay on their side. Violence is stylized and tense; gore is implied more than dwelled upon.
SNOWBOUND: A ROMERO FABLE IN THE FAR NORTH
(1700s Northern Finland — Sámi vs. Crown & Church — Zombie Contagion, Giallo-tinged)
Screenplay by: Kalifornia Jani & ChatGPT
FADE IN:
EXT. TUNDRA – NIGHT
A white desert under toxic-green aurora (giallo gel). Wind whispers over a reindeer grave pit—half-buried carcasses, old winter die-off.
A hand-sawn cross leans nearby, tagged with charcoal: “NO ENTRY — PLAGUE.”
CRUNCH. A boot stomps it flat.
CAPTAIN RUTGER SJÖBLOM (40s)—Crown soldier— waves two men forward. Behind them, a sled of Lutheran relief: grain, bibles, muskets.
PASTOR MIKKO LAHTI (30s) dismounts, breath fogging.
MIKKO
We tag and burn, Captain. Charity—and order.
RUTGER
We’ll freeze before we burn.
A drip falls from the carcass pile. Not thaw; black ichor.
CUT TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD (yellow on black): SNOWBOUND
CHAPTER ONE — THE FIRST BITE
EXT. SÁMI WINTER CAMP – DAY
Lavvu tents, reindeer, sleds. AILA (20s)—Sámi, quick-eyed, resolute—stitches a hide with IENNA and ASLAK nearby. ÁHKU (elder) watches, smoking a pipe carved with antlers.
A distant bell clangs from the new wooden chapel downvalley.
AILA
They toll like we’re cattle.
ÁHKU
You don’t toll a people. You listen.
Rutger’s patrol arrives with a wagon. Mikko holds up a leather writ.
MIKKO
By decree: catechism class on Sundays, burial by christened earth, surrender of pagan charms—
(softening)
—food in exchange.
Murmurs of anger. Aila steps up.
AILA
We bury our way. We eat our way.
RUTGER
You’ll eat the Crown’s way. Or starve politely.
Aila’s eyes harden.
ÁHKU (low, to Aila)
This winter has another road.
A church soldier wanders off to piss near the reindeer pit. He kicks at frozen hide. Something moves underneath. He leans closer.
CHOMP.
He screams. The camp erupts.
They drag him out; his calf shredded. The wound seeps black.
MIKKO
Old plague—seal him in the chapel until we see.
RUTGER
He needs a blade, not a psalm.
ÁHKU (to Aila, urgent)
Close his mouth. Not for mercy— for silence.
Aila binds the soldier’s jaw shut with twisted cloth.
Giallo zoom on his pupil: a tiny black starburst blooms.
CHAPTER TWO — RULES OF THE DEAD
INT. CHAPEL – NIGHT
The wounded soldier shivers, bound. Ichor threads his bandage. Mikko prays; Rutger cleans a musket, cold and practical.
MIKKO
If it is God’s test, we must pass it.
RUTGER
God doesn’t shovel.
The soldier dies. Mikko closes his eyes, whispers a prayer. The candles bow inward—a draft? Or breath returning?
SNAP. The corpse sits up—jaws grinding under the cloth. Mikko gasps; Rutger fires. Head jerks; body slumps; keeps moving.
MIKKO
Holy—!
RUTGER
Head. Always the head.
He reloads. Mikko, shaking, grabs a prayer mallet and smashes the skull. The motion stops.
RUTGER (matter-of-fact)
Rule one.
CUT TO: MONTAGE (GIALLO COLORS & NOTES)
— Rule Two: Bites infect. Aslak cleans his knife; a black fleck hits his lip; Aila slaps his hand immediately, wipes him with spirits.
— Rule Three: Heat stunts the rot; cold preserves it. Áhku gently lays a dead fox by the fire; movements stop as the hide warms; she pushes it back into snow; twitch, it resumes.
— Rule Four: Noise draws them. Church bell rings; in the treeline, pale faces turn toward it, synchronizing like moths to a flame.
— Rule Five: They remember hunger, not home. Ienna holds up a child’s carved reindeer; a corpse sniffs at it, snaps at her fingers instead.
END MONTAGE.
CHAPTER THREE — THE WEAPON
INT. LAVVU – NIGHT
The camp elders meet. Áhku and grim hunters. Aila’s drum beside her—unused.
HUNTER #1
They build a fence of rules to choke us.
Use their bell. Use their blood. Turn the winter on them.
MIKKO (O.S.)
—And then what?
He stands at the flap—invited or not.
MIKKO (cont’d)
You unleash the devil to chase a thief. The devil eats your lambs, too.
ASLAK
We have no lambs left, preacher.
ÁHKU (to Aila)
You know the pits. You know the cold’s breath. If we drive the rot through their ranks and into their fort—
AILA (quiet, torn)
You ask a well to flood the village.
ÁHKU
You ask the winter to be warm. Choose your miracle.
Aila looks at the drum—doesn’t touch it. She looks at tallow, peat, pitch—all the earthly things.
AILA
No spirits. No drum.
We move them… with hunger’s own feet.
Plan: Poison the grain wagon with pit ichor, coat iron nails with the same, stage a feigned tussle, bleed just enough, lure the infected to the Crown storehouse, ring the bell, lock the doors, burn it.
Romero logic. Human cause.
MIKKO
This is not defense. This is murder by plague.
ÁHKU
You murder by sermon. We murder by winter. Both are ugly. One is new.
RUTGER (appearing, heard enough)
Say the word, I leave my post. The Crown never paid me enough to be eaten.
AILA
You stay. You watch. You carry word south that we are not sheep.
RUTGER (meets her gaze; after a beat)
I stay.
EXT. STOREHOUSE – NIGHT (THE OPERATION)
Giallo staging: bold red and sickly green gels wash the snow.
— Aila, Ienna smear grain sacks with thin ichor.
— Áhku’s hands shake as she coats nail-tips quietly.
— Rutger “arrests” Aslak on cue; Aslak thrashes, bites, “infecting” the guard with the planted nail.
— Mikko rings the bell once—his face wrecked—then stops.
SHOUTS. The infected guard staggers inside the storehouse, collapses on sleeping men.
LOCK. BAR.
A beat of silence. Then SCREAMS. Thuds. Chewing. The door bulges.
ASLAK (to Aila, low)
Light it.
Aila holds a lamp. Her fingers refuse.
ÁHKU (very soft)
If we stop, we die.
Aila lights the pitch seam. WHOOMPH. The storehouse becomes a furnace.
Inside: silhouettes claw the windows—then still.
Aila stares into the fire. No joy. No triumph.
MIKKO (hoarse)
Now you know my fear.
AILA (tears freeze on her cheeks)
Now you know mine.
CHAPTER FOUR — CONTAINMENT FAILS
EXT. CHAPEL YARD – DAWN
Snow falls on smoking ruins. Rutger counts survivors. Too few. Aila’s people and Crown militia ring the perimeter together, muskets loaded.
RUTGER
We cut trails to the lake. No bodies. No graves. We burn everything.
MIKKO (exhausted)
And pray God forgives us before the thaw.
A distant moan. They turn.
From the frozen reindeer pit, dozens of snow-blue hands pull free. The storehouse fire… warmed the ground.
AILA
We melted the lock.
ASLAK
They come.
ÁHKU (final authority)
To the chapel! Stone and flame!
INT. CHAPEL – DAY (SIEGE)
A classic Romero siege.
— Windows boarded.
— Firing slits.
— Oil and snow buckets.
— Food stacked (dubious: the rest of the grain, potentially tainted).
— Arguments—the true infection spreads.
ASLAK
We ration bullets. Aim for the eyes.
RUTGER
You aim for center-mass. I’ll take heads.
MIKKO (to Aila)
If we live, the Crown will hang you for the storehouse.
AILA
If we live, you’ll downplay this in your sermon.
A slow, sick grin from Rutger despite himself.
Outside: moans layer into a chorus. The dead press like a tide. Children cry. Áhku hums—counterpoint.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. Corpses pile, form stairs of bodies up the wall.
BANG. Ienna fires. CLICK. She’s out.
RUTGER hurls a tar pot—splash, burn—the dead shamble through fire, cracking like glass.
MONTAGE (giallo color ramps):
— Red: muzzle flashes strobe faces.
— Green: frost on lips, close-ups of gnashing teeth.
— Blue: Aila’s eyes as she stitches a bite wound shut without telling anyone.
Rule Six (revealed): Shame spreads it too. People hide bites.
ÁHKU (notices Aila’s secret work; whispers)
Don’t outrun your shadow, child.
CHAPTER FIVE — THE VOTE
INT. CHAPEL – LATE NIGHT
The dead quiet for the first time—frozen where they stand, a wall of statues. Moonlight through cracks.
Inside, a vote: Romero morality.
RUTGER
We open the back door at dawn, cut for the lake.
Anyone bitten, stays. Those hiding bites—God helps you.
MIKKO
We do not abandon souls to the cold.
ASLAK
They abandoned us years ago.
Eyes on Aila’s wrapped hand.
IENNA (protective)
You speak like you didn’t light the match.
MIKKO (guilt-ridden)
I rang the bell.
ÁHKU
We all pulled different ropes.
RUTGER (grim vote)
Hands for opening the door and running the lake?
Most hands go up. Mikko’s does not. Aila’s stays down.
RUTGER
Motion carries.
MIKKO (to Aila, low)
If you were bitten, tell me now.
Aila does not answer.
CHAPTER SIX — THE RUN
EXT. BACK OF CHAPEL – DAWN
They unbar a rear hatch. Snow bites exposed cheeks. The dead freeze faster at dawn, a thin gift.
RUTGER leads with three men; ÁHKU and children in the middle; MIKKO and AILA bringing up the rear.
They move—quiet, deliberate. Passing inches from frozen dead—eyes move behind rime.
A child slips; an arm cracks, grabs his ankle. Screams. Rutger slashes the wrist. They haul the boy. Speed now.
They reach the lake—wind-hardened ice—a white runway.
ASLAK
Don’t cluster! Spread weight!
They fan out—
CRACK. A line whips across the ice. Someone goes under. Mikko throws a rope, hauls the man out blue-lipped—alive, bitten.
MIKKO
We save who confesses.
RUTGER
We save who runs.
WHOOOOMP. Over the ridge: a sudden fire column—someone else’s storehouse? or the plague moving onward.
ÁHKU (to Aila, final choice)
If you run, your bite runs with you.
Aila stops. Pulls her mitten. Black veins crawl.
IENNA (shattered)
No. No—
AILA (calm, resolute)
I lit it. I’ll drown it.
MIKKO (tears)
Child—
AILA
Keep moving. Tell them we fought the cold… and the kind of warmth that kills a village.
She steps backward toward a polynya (dark opening in the ice). The undead, sensing warmth, turn heads—toward her.
AILA (to the dead, almost fond)
Come on then. Eat a fire.
They shamble; she lures them onto thin ice.
CRACK. SLAB. She and a dozen corpses vanish into the black.
Bubbles. Silence. The ice slushes over.
Áhku collapses, howling—a sound older than churches.
RUTGER (broken, to Mikko)
We go. That buys us minutes—maybe hours.
MIKKO (numb)
God grant they be enough.
They move. The camera stays on the dark water, then tilts to the aurora—green-to-yellow, like a sick sunrise.
EPILOGUE — THE SOUTH
INT. CROWN MAGISTRATE’S HALL – SPRING (WEEKS LATER)
A warm room of ink and ledgers. Rutger, filthy, reports to a MAGISTRATE who doesn’t look up.
MAGISTRATE
So—winter unrest, pagan resistance, one burned storehouse, a regrettable fever.
(beat)
We will send more grain and a sterner pastor.
RUTGER
It wasn’t fever. It walked.
MAGISTRATE
Soldier, if it walked, it’s in your report. If it’s in your report, it’s in the Crown’s records. If it’s in the records, it’s my problem.
(sips)
Is it my problem?
Rutger stares. His jaw tightens.
RUTGER (quiet)
No, my lord.
He signs a polite lie. The magistrate smiles, relieved.
EXT. LUTHERAN CHURCHYARD – DAY
Mikko kneels beside a new birch. He ties a strip of Sámi weaving—Aila’s—around it. He places a thin drum ring at the root.
He looks at his hands. Heavily scarred. He flexes them, like they belong to someone else.
MIKKO (V.O.)
We lay a ribbon for the dead and a lie for the living.
Maybe both are mercy.
He stands. Children laugh in the distance. A bell rings once. He doesn’t ring it again.
EXT. TUNDRA – NIGHT (NEXT WINTER)
Wind over snow. A lonely lavvu. Áhku sits by the door, smoking, eyes on the stars. Footsteps crunch. Ienna appears with a sack of fish, older now.
They don’t speak. They share warmth.
On the wind, a faint moan. Not close. Not done.
ÁHKU (to the night)
We know your rules now.
She taps her pipe twice on her boot: tock… tock.
The aurora flickers—yellow/green giallo. In the far distance, figures walk the ridge. Maybe men. Maybe not.
CUT TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD:
“IN THE SPRING, WE BURY. IN THE WINTER, WE COUNT.”
END.
Romero-style “Rules” (as established in-story)
-
Destroy the head to stop them.
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Bite = infection (black-star veins). Shame and secrecy spread it faster.
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Cold preserves / heat agitates. Thawing wakes the dead.
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Noise draws them (bells are bait).
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They remember hunger, not home.
-
Fire cleanses but backfires (melts ground, releases more).
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No certain cause: talk of plague, peat gases, God’s wrath—people fill in what suits them.
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