The old man at the gas station kept talking while sizing up their vehicles and the people inside them.
Charlie coughed, signaling for him not to go too far.
"All right, thank you."
Charlie declined to buy gas and politely said goodbye to the old man.
It was obvious that Charlie's refusal to buy gas annoyed him. The old man stood there cursing under his breath for quite a while.
Two miles was not far, but it was not exactly close either. With the sky growing darker and darker, they did not travel much farther before finding a spot sheltered from the wind and setting up camp for the night. They would continue in the morning.
"This route is no fun at all. We should've gone through Southern California and Arizona instead. You could've stopped by to see your ex-wife while we were at it?" Samantha said pointedly as they put up the tent, in the way wives so often did.
Charlie hurried to soothe her, saying that his ex-wife was doing just fine these days and there was no need to bring her up.
Bella stayed out of the married couple's squabble. Natasha had just rubbed a large amount of body-tempering medicine all over her again, and now her whole body itched. She took a beach chair out of the car, forced herself to endure the discomfort, and lay facedown nearby to rest.
Little Kitty and the Divine Dragon each had a handheld console and seemed to be playing some kind of competitive game.
Little Elsa was lying in her bassinet stroller, snoring softly as she slept soundly. Back at home, this was normally when she went to sleep too.
"Wake up, wake up. Take a look at this." Natasha wandered around nearby for a while, then came back and woke Bella.
She dragged back a roadblock covered in sharp spikes. It was more than five meters long, had clearly been repaired many times, and was covered in rust.
Bella immediately perked up. "Where did you find that?"
"Right in the middle of the road eight hundred meters ahead of us. There's something wrong with this road." Natasha spoke with open excitement, even licking her lips.
That excitement of yours is seriously hard to comment on... Bella knew that lately she had been forbidding her lover from doing this and that, and had probably bottled her up a little too much...
Anyone who placed a roadblock like this on a small road was making their malicious intent perfectly obvious.
Bella looked around. Everything within sight was dark-brown rock, with an utterly ordinary mountain not far away. Just looking with her eyes, she really could not see anything unusual.
She closed her eyes and swept the surroundings with the mental power of a demigod. This time, she actually found something.
Pointing in one direction, she said, "There's an old man behind a rock three hundred meters away?... Hmm, that's the guy from the gas station, isn't it? He's watching us through binoculars. He's hostile—extremely hostile."
"Want me to call him over and ask?" Bella said casually.
Natasha knew that the "call" her lover meant definitely was not an ordinary call, but that was exactly the kind of forceful approach she liked!
"God, I love you! Hurry up, call him over and let's ask."
They were still quite far apart. Bella whistled once, and five minutes later the old man from the gas station came running over to them with trembling legs, binoculars in one hand and a shotgun slung across his back, his entire body shaking like a leaf.
Charlie, who had been building up the mood with his wife and getting ready to add another child to the Swan family, froze. What was this about?
"Up ahead, up ahead... there's an ambush up ahead! Irradiated... irradiated mutants! The irradiated mutants are going to rob you! Then, then kill... kill you..." The old man had no idea what was happening. Bella had forcibly controlled his mind and made him run over.
His body was completely beyond his control, and his mouth was even less so. His face was deathly pale with terror, as though he had seen a ghost, and he spilled everything he knew in one breath.
Charlie knew far too well how bad public security could be in the western United States. He simply had not expected it to be this bad, much less expected it to happen to him. He questioned the old man sternly. "Why did they target us?"
The old man's neck turned stiffly to the side like a machine in desperate need of lubricant. He looked at Bella and Natasha. "...Your cars are good, so you have money, and there's only one man. Everyone else is women and children..."
"Interesting! Now I think this route is starting to get interesting!" Samantha made almost the same gesture as Natasha. Bella's stepmother licked her lips, looking rather excited.
What was so fun about making babies? Beating people up was fun!
She knew perfectly well how ridiculous the firepower on their side was. They could attack a U.S. military base without a problem.
"You can go." Natasha waved a hand, and the old man ran away at nearly the same speed he had arrived.
Natasha did not bother hiding anything. She gave Bella a look, and Bella nodded to show that she knew what to do.
Once the old man ran out of their sight, he would break his own neck.
Samantha was eager to beat someone up, so Charlie did not call for backup. There were four Transformers right behind them anyway! What was there to be afraid of? It was not as if Megatron was going to come rob them.
They treated the sudden incident like some kind of family entertainment. Samantha and Natasha picked out weapons inside the vehicle in the same tone they might use to discuss what to have for dinner. Even Bella, who had been lying around lazily, picked up an M4A1 and calmly loaded a magazine. It was a family activity, after all. She ought to participate enthusiastically!
"By the way, what exactly are those 'irradiated mutants' that guy mentioned? Huh? From the looks of it... you all know already? Am I the only one who doesn't?"
Samantha had previously been nothing more than an ordinary small-town sheriff. Naturally, she was not as well informed as a presidential candidate, a Goddess of Secrecy, and a super-agent. Seeing how completely unfazed the three people around her were, she finally realized something was off.
Charlie looked at Bella, wanting his daughter to explain.
Bella shook her head lightly. She was the Goddess of Secrecy. She was responsible for controlling secrets, not explaining them. She looked at Natasha, but Natasha shook her head too. Her own mother still did not know she had been an agent!
After the question made a full circuit, Charlie was the only one left to answer. "Apparently, sometime in the last century, the U.S. military conducted several nuclear tests around Nevada. Their calculations were wrong at the time, and both the yield of the bombs and the radiation radius were far greater than expected. Some nearby residents were exposed to radiation and developed deformities. After that?... After that, the records were sealed. All I know is that some of their descendants still live in mine tunnels in the mountains."
Samantha's sympathy lasted only a dozen seconds before vanishing. If they were planning to kill her family, what was there left to hesitate about? Just shoot them dead!
The irradiated mutants were not the same people who had been directly exposed to nuclear radiation back then. In any era, nuclear radiation was extraordinarily lethal to human beings, and the people originally exposed had all died within a few years.
The people now called irradiated mutants were their descendants. After one generation, and in some cases even two, their genes had gradually adapted to the energy in the nuclear radiation.
Their bodies and faces were still somewhat deformed, but their strength, speed, and endurance had all improved to varying degrees.