"Ready to go till dark?"
She smiled, picked up the mic, "And then some. You lead, I'll follow."
"Copy that."
They had been traveling together for a month now. Five hundred miles of heartbreaking, gut wrenching, unbelievable horror, and Missouri was no different than Indiana, Virginia, or Ohio. Except that the ground here felt bad; smelled and looked worse. They had even seen their first mutation yesterday. Only a single ant, pitch black and the size of a baby's shoe, all six of its eyes had watched them alertly as they went by.
When she'd stopped, Marc hadn't said anything, just waited while she squashed the freak under her tires. It had been a powerful moment for him, seeing Angie so appalled by something that she would decide it didn't have the right to exist, and he had never felt closer to her than at that moment. It was how he'd spent most of his adult life.
"Three o'clock, down low."
Angela narrowed her eyes and immediately hit the brakes, looking for a clear way over.
"Use your gun this time," he instructed and Angela didn't fight the urge to destroy, the need to do something overpowering. She'd had to let the worms go. These she wouldn't.
"Slow down. Don't scare them off."
The small pack of mutated ants didn't stray from their slow, disorderly course through the dying switch grass, and didn't seem afraid of the tires and engines that moved closer, but the Witch said they were aware, that she could feel the scent of alarm coming from them. Angela slid her window down and took the safety off her gun.
"That's close enough."
The Witch frowned at the distance, but Angela nodded. She could hit them from here if she really tried, and he knew it, wanted her to use this as a lesson too.
"My how we've changed," the Witch commented as anger and revulsion took over her trigger finger. "Not a killer, huh?"
Angela ignored the hurtful jab. These mutations were in reach and couldn't be allowed to endanger more of her people, couldn't be left free to turn America into a cheap slasher film.
Angela opened fire and ants began falling. They tried to flee, squealing, and panic-stricken and she took a savage, guilty pleasure in their destruction, getting the last one with her tire as it darted for cover under the Blazer.
Marc was impressed, turned on, and he struggled to keep it from his voice as he keyed the mic, "Very good. Ready?"