“Interesting,” I said, looking back at the warehouse. It must have been a battlefield back then.
“We come from dust, to dust we all return, even failed Ultimate Corp projects.”
We spread the red cloth right in the middle of the parking lot, using stones we found littered around the place to hold it down. And there we ate a heavy lunch from the food packed for us. He used his small capture station to draw cool water; it was small but still much bigger than the one I had. Mine certainly couldn’t have drawn enough water in minutes to slake ours and the steer’s thirst. Even with the clouds in the sky, my personal capture station was the size of a keychain and would only have drawn a few cups of water. The steer drank noisily from the bag; thankfully, I’d taken water into my cup first. I shuddered when I saw him drink his water after the steer. Fried chicken, goat cheese, dates, something he called latchiri, some kind of vegetable soup he called takai haako—by the time we finished, both our bellies were comfortably full.
“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.”