Mᴜᴛᴀɴᴛ Aᴘᴏᴄᴀʟʏᴘsᴇ 5: Bʟᴀᴄᴋ Mᴀsᴋs ❪✓❫

28 || 𝐁𝐈𝐆 𝐇𝐀𝐔𝐋

𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝗼𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐎𝐕
𝐍𝗼𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐫𝗼𝐮𝐩

Donnie let his horse trot on the ground firmly, the hoofbeats strong and rough. Ever since he woke up this morning, he kept thinking back to the dream he had-- the one where he spoke a different language.

If he thought hard enough, forcing his mind to look back on the past, he could see the images, hear the sounds, and get a whiff of the smells of that night. A night he doesn't want to remember, but he does because he felt drawn to it.

The rain, the mud, blood, the shouting and cackling, all of the numbers. Numbers.

"Paenitet, mi amice." The mutant turtle whispered.

Don breathed out the moment he heard his screams and cries, shaking the shoulders of someone that became his friend when he was a lost cause. When he was someone that betrayed himself.

"Up here," Osa says lowly, snapping Donnie out of his thoughts. The shapeshifter leads her group behind a cluster of trees and bushes, stopping behind them and signaling Mikey to come near her right side as they crouched and viewed a town full of infected. It wasn't badly infested-- it could be taken care of easily. Osa pointed out to the closest ones limping around and clicking loudly.

Osa whispers to her group and instructed them to go around the other side of the town to get a better angle on the infected. Faith, Mikey, Maddy, and Donnie follow the shifter to the front of the town as the rest go off in stealth mode.

Each individual hunkered down into the tall grass for cover, crawling so they wouldn't disturb the twigs or rocks underneath them. Osa keeps a good grip on the knife she had, happy to have it still on her person. She sneaks up on the first Clicker that wandered and stumbled on its feet.

She took a deep breath and looked at Faith, Donnie, and Mikey, nodding once to take out the infected people they targeted. Osa leaped on the shoulders of the Clicker, stabbing the stick into the thick fungal plates that felt like extra hard foam.

The infected squealed and croaked when the mutants took down the roamers.

When Donnie took down the Stalker he chose, his hands shook, including his bionic hand. He could feel the adrenaline rising and he kept Rep on a down-low.

Osita checks on her small crew and sees the other mutants on the other end of the town. They successfully took out the infected there and met in the middle. "That's that." Faith says, scanning the town.

"Search the buildings," Don said, his voice shaky, pointing out to the town.

"You good?" One of the mutant panthers asked him.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" The turtle replied, gesturing for the mutants to get to work. "Come back to the middle of the street in twenty."

The mutants shrugged and Donnie turned around to go get Stamina from the forest while the others stripped the stores of their merchandise. Any town that he encounters reminds him of the very beginning-- when he began to lose his mind.

Donnie came up to his horse, gripping the sides of the saddle, and leaned his forehead on Stamina's shoulder. He could see a faint memory forming inside his head.

...

He walked for an endless day, taking in the sun's rays, the gusty winds that tickled his skin and fluttered his mask. Donnie's leather-like textured scaly skin that gained many scrapes and bruises is beginning to grow filthy with a ton of dirt stains, taking away its unique characteristics. Don sluggishly, lazily, and gloomily walked the middle of the road he strolled on, seeing there is another town up ahead.