The red earth of the Arizona Wilderness, once the sky was shrouded by the crimson, looked like an alien battlefield.
After nightfall, the crimson turned into a dense pitch-black, the minus-fifty-degree gale scraping a layer of blood frost across the ground. The Joint Train line lay in a winding halt on the plains, flanked on both sides by parked motorcades and the Iron Guard Brigade's forces, stretching toward the distant darkness as far as the eye could see.
More than two million people were like a great migration across the wasteland, a mighty steel dragon still on constant combat readiness. In the dark, apart from drones and manned Mecha equipped with Dark Energy Synchronization Devices on patrol, everyone else was holed up inside their vehicles.
