Noor(25)

“It’s not so comfortable to eat when in the storm,” he said. “So fill up.”

I nodded. “Even now, I feel like three percent of what I ate was sand.”

He laughed. “Get used to that.”

Sitting there was eerie. Since I’d left my car, this abandoned warehouse was the first thing I’d seen that was like home. And it had an apocalyptic feel. When we’d passed the front doors, which were brown from the flames’ heat, I noticed that they swung a bit with the wind. I wondered what we would find inside if we went in there. Would there be charred remains of people who couldn’t escape? Or just a bunch of burned lawn chairs, mobile phones, jars of honey, clothes, warehouse things.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the warehouse parking lot, he had to turn the anti-aejej back on. We were back in the high winds, the sky was dark with dust and the looming storm finally fell on us. It blocked out the sun. It locked in the heat. It made hearing difficult. What a feeling it was to be there. No car. No nearby shelter. Only the sky above. Somewhere. I wished I could have photographed myself in this moment, maybe the photo would capture my conflicting feelings of vastness, smallness, freedom, and doom. But I’d left my mobile phone behind, along with any connection I had to the connected world. I was here. Only in the moment.

When a gust of wind strong enough to pass through the anti-aejej’s barrier made us stumble, we paused, meeting each other’s eyes. He quickly turned to the raffia ball he’d stuffed between the bundles on GPS’s back. He tapped on it and the raffia relaxed. The upper part of the ball collapsed revealing tightly packed items inside. He picked up and threw something white and small at me. I caught it and held it up. What slowly unfolded in my hand looked like a piece of clear gelatin. “It’s a mask,” he said. “Put it on now.”

I unrolled it more and held it up. It looked like it would fit comfortably over my face, but it had no mesh where the eyes, nose and mouth would be. “How am I supposed to breathe with this on my face?”

“Just put it on,” he said. He was holding up his own now. “I live out here. I know what I’m doing.”

I watched him press it to his face and ears. Now they looked covered in a thick layer of oily gel. I pressed mine to my face as he pressed masks over the faces and ears of GPS and Carpe Diem. The moment it was on my face, I felt it go from cool to warm like my own skin. Like it was alive. I frowned, slowly letting myself breathe. There was no resistance at all. I could also hear just fine.

“Without these masks, you won’t last long,” he said, helping GPS step into some kind of protective bright yellow jumpsuit. “Your face, ears, and lungs are now protected from the dust.”

When DNA was done, I looked at GPS and Carpe Diem and stifled a laugh. They looked as if they’d dunked their heads in buckets of water. And Carpe Diem, in particular, didn’t seem to like the mask because her eyes were wide with shock. With the tight yellow jump suits, they both looked like aliens. “Steer suits aren’t cheap,” he said. “If I had all my cattle, we wouldn’t be able to go. I’ve never gone into the Red Eye with my cattle.” He frowned. “Until now.” He reached for the off switch of the anti-aejej.

“Wait!” I shouted. “You’re turning it off?”

“Of course! You think an anti-aejej will be able to hold back Red Eye winds?” He laughed loudly and shook his head. “Oh, no no no. Maybe for a few minutes, but this small solar thing’s battery can’t withstand that kind of weight for long.”

Fumbling with anxiety, I wrapped my veil more tightly around my head, thankfully my heavy long skirt and a layered top were otherwise good for the dust storm.

“If you can’t quite see me, then stay close to the cows,” he said. “GPS will let you hold on to his horn.”

Just before he clicked off his anti-aejej, I looked ahead. I could see where it shifted from high winds to near madness. My God, we are going to walk into that. On purpose, I thought. Yet again, I marveled about how much my life had crumbled in a matter of forty-eight hours. What I saw up ahead reminded me of footage people on the Mars colonies were always posting on their social network accounts. The cloud of dust looming ahead of us was monstrous, spanning the entire horizon and lifting to block out the sun. In a few minutes, it would be like the night. “How the hell do people live in that?”

DNA laughed. “Some people like the dark.”

My heart was pounding in my chest. “Really?” My voice shook. Why did I come out here? There are better ways to die, I thought. But I didn’t really want to die any more. I had no foreseeable possible logical future, but I didn’t want to die.

“Who is this Baba Sola?” I asked. “Why can’t he come out of it and meet us here?”

DNA’s laughter was beginning to unnerve me.

“You’re just asking that now?”

“It’s never too late,” I said, irritably.

He turned off the anti-aejej. The force of the wind would have knocked me over if it weren’t for my ground grasping autobionic feet. I grunted as my body flailed a bit, then I leaned forward, sand slapping at my clothes. The mask was incredible. I felt nothing on my face, though I knew sand was grating at it. I could breathe perfectly. Not one grain of sand got in my mouth, and I could look around without sand getting in my eyes. It was almost like wearing a diving mask underwater, except the gel perfectly fit my face and made dwelling in the dust almost like a natural state. Still, the steer didn’t seem to like this “natural state”; they moaned miserably and crowded closer to DNA.