Ultimus Chapter 12: The Scrapper

Andrew and Reuben walked for miles, getting ever so closer to one of the domes. Yet he wasn’t going there. He continued following a path that led him between the dome and Sanctuary. He heard a screech coming from ahead and both Reuben and him ducked into some bushes. Coming up the path was raptor, however it was running away from what Andrew was trying to hide from. Several other raptors were chasing it, these were different however. A strange vine like material covered them, it glowed an ominous magenta color. They hunted and killed everything, even if it was their own kind. They were monsters, no longer animals with natural instincts. Their only instinct were to kill and destroy. Andrew watched as four of these raptors chased the one and continued chasing it out of his sight. Andrew and Reuben slowly walked out of the bushes, Reuben started shaking off branches and thorns that got stuck in his fur and hide.

“Come on boy, let’s get to where we need to go.” Andrew said as he walked down the path.

Andrew and Reuben only had to walk a little while further were. He could see what he was looking for just ahead of them. A back of a large building, halfway buried under the dust and element that surrounded this place. The exterior building was rusted out with several small openings on the outer layer of the roof and walls. Andrew walked around the building, passing what looked like a main entrance to the building and went to two large doors below that with one that was slightly cracked open. Andrew pulled with all his might and opened the door. Darkness from inside welcomed them, something quite rare for this place. And with slight hesitation, Andrew and Reuben walked inside.

Andrew stumbled his way through the huge corridor, feeling the right wall of the hall until it fell away to the side. Andrew turned walked along the wall, searching the wall for something. He searched until he felt a large, industrial switch. This was what he was looking for, Andrew grabbed it and flipped it. Light started to fill the light absent room, revealing a extremely large storage facility. With rows after rows of crates and even a few cargo containers. Further in the back was a large elevator for transporting crates and cargo containers. This place was massive, and Andrew barely had started scratching the surface for the past month.

‘Was it only a month? Has it been longer or even possibly shorter?’ Andrew thought, it was getting harder to keep track of days as he got older and the longer and longer he awoken from the pod. All he knew is that he was 23 now and 24 was around the corner. He looked for Reuben for a second and saw that he began wandering the rows of crates. Andrew grabbed an old crowbar off the floor.

“Alright, time to get to work.”

* * * *

Less than an hour passed as Andrew opened crates finding very little to practically nothing useful. He was getting discouraged from the nonsense he found in just this one crate. It was all a bunch of magazines on properties, places like Pandora’s Paradise Resort of the Caesar Estate and The Moonflight Building. Why was this stuff even stored? Was this stuff really that important? Andrew didn’t think so, most of these places didn’t even exist anymore. Most of these crates had random stuff, and very little of it has been useful for survival. Some mapping equipment and useful books like survival guides and encyclopedias all except for an elusive dinosaur encyclopedia. But he needed other things to survive. Ammunition was getting tighter for him, and element was too. He needed to find these things to keep his chances of surviving high. Without them, he’s chances drop significantly.

So he continued searching and after several more crates of junk and ‘Library Archives’ as some of the manifests in the crates said. He quit with the crates and went over to one of the locked cargo containers instead. The container had old, some of the paint was chipped away from where it was at and began to rust, Andrew couldn’t read it all but he could see it was URE. Other letters were scattered across the side with Ms, an H, a W and a couple As with one next to the W. He broke the lock and opened the container, inside were several more crates and smaller containers and stacks of air sealed cases.

Andrew walked inside and opened one of the cases to hear a slight hiss and saw an old fashioned rifle made metal and wood. Something Andrew never seen before, with a weird switch by where you normally loaded the ammunition. Andrew closed it and and took the case off and opened at the next one. The gun in this case was also wood and metal, but instead of a switch where you loaded it, there was a looped lever by the trigger and an angled hole on the side of the gun. Andrew closed up the case and broke open a crate, inside was ammunition for all sorts of weapons. Then finally Andrew looked at the side of the crate and read what it said.

“URE War and Military History Museum.” Andrew said out loud with a hysterical laugh as it finally made sense what this place was. It was a historical archive.

Andrew quickly got out of the container and ran to the back of the storage facility where the elevator was and looked for levels. The sign for the levels was made of metal and was engraved with the levels of the building. They’re were about twenty, the first eight being human history and one being news archive. Several other being sciences and other things. Andrew turned around with a big smile on his face. Reuben was sitting behind him, tail wagging. Andrew knelt down and started rubbing him with excitement.

“Reuben, they have a news archive!! Maybe we can find out what happened since we were asleep. It has been… many years-” Andrew said cutting himself off as he noticed a couple sticky spots on Reuben. Andrew lifted his hand off of him and noticed there was a little bit of blood on his hands. He was cut in several places. Andrew could only assume that he was cut up from the thorns and branches. Which were on a used game trail by dinosaurs. Andrew realized he forgot to close the doo-

A terrifying, echoing call came from outside the storage room and somewhere inside the dark hall.