England was a vast and broken body spattered with breakouts of blistering civilisation scratching across the arid barrenness of the countryside. Man-made c*****e had finished what nature had started, leaving huge expanses of terrain uninhabitable, poisoned, and abandoned. Roads, villages, even some cities were impassable, scorched from biological weapons and radiation. But other areas blossomed in the c*****e, offering sanctuary to seasoned travellers. The brothers knew many of these oases from their experience tracking as boys, and they could narrow down their search to a manageable area.
They passed through a private toll as they crossed the motorway. Many of the stations marking independent zones just collected money, but some, like this one, insisted on an ID check too. Their identifi
