Chaper I (I)

Night on the wastelands was filled with bitter cold and so nightmarishly windy, that any gap between clothes caused discomfort. Whether because of the goose bumps or the cursed dust mercilessly squeezing in through every opening it could find. Silence reigned, and it was broken only from time to time by unidentified screams and calls, probably made by animals. The area looked more like a desert than a highway it had been in a distant past. There were some witnesses of those times - the remains of lamps, often broken and bent, sticking out from a thick layer of sand. On one side they disappeared inside a thing, which might have been a tunnel. From a certain point, someone stupid enough to be wandering alone and sticking nose in not exactly his business, could also hear the echoes bouncing off its walls - a constant arguing of two people.