The wheels rolled over the cracked asphalt, kicking up dry, choking dust.
The barbed wire that marked the border between order and chaos on the Northern Border of Northern Darfur quickly shrank in Song Heping's rear-view mirror, eventually swallowed by the pervasive yellow dust.
Ahead lies Libya.
The year is early 2014, the third year after Colonel Ka's downfall.
This once prosperous North African country has long been trampled and shattered by the iron feet of civil war.
The air is filled with the mix of despair and gunpowder, pungent and heavy.
On either side of the road, the ruins of towns torn apart by artillery fire stand like grim skeletal remains, silently pointing to the gray sky.
Between the broken walls and rubble, ragged figures occasionally search; are they survivors or vultures?
It's hard to tell.
