Ultimus Chapter 15: What’s Past is Prologue

Andrew grabbed the shotgun off the ground and pulled the trigger. Blowing off the raptors tail in view. The creature screamed out in pain and left his view. Andrew crawled out of the crevice with shotgun in hand and looked the way the raptor went only to see it go around the corner.

“Where you going!! Coward!!” Andrew screamed, but a snarl came from behind him. Andrew turned his head and saw another raptor coming around the other side. It charged towards him, however he didn’t run and instead turned and began walking towards it, shotgun aimed at it. He fired his weapon at the creature’s chest and the creature staggered, but Andrew continued pushing towards the creature, he aimed his gun for the head and fired again and again. It dropped on the floor only a few feet from Andrew with its skull and neck disfigured. Red blood and Magenta liquid pools began to form around the body. Andrew thought it was unusual that the pools didn’t mix together but instead separated when leaving the body. He looked around and only saw the three bodies lying on the ground. He saw a blood trail that was from the fourth raptor and began following it, shotgun to his shoulder. However following it lead him to the hallway and outside where the blood trail disappeared. Andrew was furious that he didn’t get it, he was ready to yell at the top of his lungs. He walked back to where he was and picked up his rifle. He saw the two raptors that laid there, how much he wished it was three. He turned around to see Reuben’s lifeless body on the ground. No movement, no breathing, lifeless. A pool of blood built around him and had a gash in his side and on his throat. Andrew knelt down looked and grabbed him, his eyes wide and lifeless. Andrew hands turned red from the blood, but he didn’t care. Andrew’s eyes watered underneath the goggles and he began having a hard time breathing with the bandanna over his face. He took both off and began crying the hardest he had in a very long time. Why couldn’t he have saved him, why did he freeze… Why didn’t he pull the gun out faster. He thought of these questions as he held his best friend’s body in his arms. He cried holding him for what seemed like nearly an hour. He looked down at Reuben, tear running down his face and his nose running. He seemed more peaceful in his death than what he expected from what happened. Andrew gently lowered Reuben’s body, tears still ran down his face. He didn’t deserve to rest here as his resting place. He went around quickly looking for something in one of the crates he’d seen before. A painting blanket, after looking in several crates, he finally found it. He went back to Reuben and wrapped him up in it. Andrew quickly looked around for a shovel and found one in the War and Military History Museum storage container. Andrew came back to the wrapped body and looked down at it while putting his goggles and bandanna.

“Forgive me for failing you.” Andrew said as he put the shovel in with the wrapped body. As he got ready to pick it up, he paused. He was missing something still, he went around looking through the crates and found an art piece of a cross and in another crate found a hammer. went back into the War Museum container and found a knife and began carving words into it. He came back and put the cross and hammer in with the wrapped body and picked it up and began his way to find a resting place for his best friend…

* * * *

With a flash, Andrew was back home alone. This being the worst day for him he’d ever had. He took a step off the teleporter and dropped the hammer and shovel he had in his hands. He saw Tracy grazing close to his house and walked right past her.

“Not right now Tracy.” Andrew said quietly.

Everything for him was now becoming distant, as if he was watching himself from the outside. He could hear his breath echoing as he walked towards and opened the door to his parents house. He took off his goggles and bandanna and saw he got blood on both. He looked at his hands and saw the dried blood stains on his hands and forearms. He began switching off the Tek armor and took off all the pieces.

Andrew walked into the living room and collapsed onto the couch and cried. He was genuinely alone for the first time from everyone and everything he ever knew. All his family and friends were gone. His best friend died for the longest to his doing. All he could do is remember him. As he thought about Reuben, his mind began to wander to his parents, his friends, Rue. But instead of vivid memories and warm moments, he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember how they looked or what they felt like. All he could remember was their voices and even those were hard to remember correctly. He quickly got up and began tearing the house apart for something, anything that had a photo, audio or video clips on one of the computers of his family and friends. He searched almost every room in the house but found nothing.

He walked into the hallway and looked at a closed door. A door he hadn’t entered since he awoken. He began to reach for the door and grabbed it, his heart pumping fast as he turned the door knob and opened it. Dust began filling the air lightly as he did so. He looked inside and began having smaller, vivid memories of them. Him hugging his mother, his dad teaching him how to shoot. Playing chess and other board games with them, them helping him with school and watching movies and shows with them. Their voices became stronger and more recognizable to him. But he still couldn’t remember what his parent’s faces looked like. He began searching the room for anything with pictures. Dust began flying and filling the air, but he didn’t care. He coughed his way through looking for anything with their faces on it. But again, nothing. He couldn’t find anything, he checked twice, even three times for a scrapbook. He knew his mom kept one, she liked doing things old fashion like that. But there was nothing.

Andrew couldn’t breathe anymore with how much dust and began running out of the room and slammed the door behind him before he collapsed on the ground, heaving and coughing that slowly turn into wails and tears as he couldn’t remember anyone from his life before, all he could remember was their voices, painful voices with no face to them. He pounded his fists against the floor. His wailing got worse as realization hit him. He was alone and forgotten, and he would die alone. His crying began to quiet down and he got himself up off the ground and sat down against the wall. Fear and regret filled him, tears still running down his face. All of this thoughts began to break him down, he no longer was able to think on anything else but his mistakes and how it was all his fault for getting Reuben killed. Hate for himself began building, that he deserved this pain for his mistakes and deserves everything that happened. But did Reuben? Did Reuben deserve to die for Andrew’s mistakes, no. But maybe it was a mercy for him, maybe it was something that he-

‘No, it wasn’t something he deserved either way, it was no mercy for him to die to that raptor. I should’ve killed that thing as soon as I saw it. It should be dead instead of Reuben.’ Andrew’s thought, his hate for himself began to obsess over that raptor. That it deserved death. It deserves the death Reuben had, a worse death than that. Agonizing suffering and pain with no peaceful end. Hate for himself became hate for that beast and he filled with rage. Revenge filled his heart. Revenge became his reason to stood. Revenge was his only motivation to continue on. Revenge for Reuben was all that mattered to him.