CHAPTER 22

Sunuteel

The old African man named Sunuteel hit pause. Can you blame him? Unlike so many of the characters in the story he’d been listening to for four hours, he was only human. Yes, his sharp old mind was reeling, connecting dots across wide spaces and time and spoken words. His head was swimming, and even though he’d paused the audio file, he could still hear her feverish voice. Her words echoed and bounced around like the atoms of heated matter.

He took a long pull of water and wiped the sweat from his face. It was no longer sunny but it was warm. He froze. The sun. Where had the sun gone? He crawled out of his tent and looked at the sky. For the first time, he noticed that thick heavy clouds had tumbled in. They churned and roiled. He gasped and crawled back into his tent. When he looked at his portable, he saw that there were three messages from his wife.

“How did I not hear the alert?” he hissed. And there was something stranger but he didn’t want to say it aloud. Why had the alerts not shown on the virtual screen showing the words as he listened to The Book of Phoenix audiobook? Had his alerts been disabled? By whom?

No time to read them. He dropped the portable into his pocket. He got to work, moving as fast as his old body could move, which was not slow. His joints creaked, his knees popped, his whole body ached and groaned, but still he managed to gather all of his things.

He tried not to look at the sky or listen to the too calm air as he trudged across the stretch of hardpan. He nearly tumbled down a sand dune when he came to its peak faster than he anticipated. He’d been looking at his feet, too afraid to look at the sky. Being struck by lightning was a terrible way to die. He hoped his wife would also find shelter. Rarely did ungwa storms happen so close together. It hadn’t been more than a few days since he’d left his wife after the last storm. They should have had at least a month before the next one.

He didn’t pause when he came to the cave full of computers. He ran and made it inside the cave just as the rains came. The smell of ozone was in his nose. The crash of lightning packed his ears. The heat of charged air caused the hairs on his arms to prickle. He turned and gazed out at a sight he rarely saw. The entire desert awash as water fell from the sky in sheets. Plump clear drops. He stumbled back as a bolt of lightning crashed, striking the sand dune he’d been on moments ago.

He turned to the cave and shivered. The computers were crammed deep inside. The cave was slightly raised, so not a drop of water flowed in, nor did it leak from the ceiling. There was a reason the computers had survived here for so long. He moved in further, keeping a distance between himself and the computers, and sat down on the sand dusted stone floor.

He brought out his portable and read his wife’s messages.

“Sunu, where are you? See the sky? There’s a periwinkle tint to it.”

“Sunu, why aren’t you responding. I am moving. I have a feeling.”

“Sunu? An ungwa storm is coming. If you get this, find shelter.”

He quickly clicked on her coordinates and waited.

“Sunu?!” his wife screamed.

He spoke quickly before she started shouting. “I’m sorry. I’m safe! Are you safe?”

There was a pause. Her face appeared on the tiny portable screen. It distorted with each crash of lightning. “I thought you . . .”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m in a cave. Where are you?”

“I found two ancients,” she said. Sunuteel nodded. Ancients were the crumbling remains of old metal, stone, or petrified wood structures. “I’m underneath two huge stones. I was lucky. I am safe, too.”

Sunuteel breathed a sigh of relief. His wife probably began searching hours ago, as soon as the sky shifted. Lightning crashed as he looked out of the cave. He blinked. He could have sworn he saw a shape in the flash. A black shape.

“Wife,” he said. “I think I found something.”

Lightning crashed again, and three bolts struck not far from the cave’s mouth, consecutively. This time he was sure he saw it. He shuddered, frightened to his old bones. A woman dancing in the flash. “What is that?” he whispered.

“Sunu?” his wife asked frowning. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Do you remember your premonition?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked. “Have you been visited?” He felt silly. He’d never humored his wife about her strange superstitions.

“No,” she said. “But I still have the feeling.”

“I think she is here,” he quickly said. “Wife, there is a woman in the flames outside. I found a cave. It’s full of ancient technology, Okeke technology. Our people’s sins.” He looked outside. No black dancing woman, but now a wind had picked up. “One of the computers put this file on my portable. It’s speaking to me. That’s . . . why I missed your messages. I was”—he lowered his voice and whispered—“listening.”

His wife stared at him for so long, that Sunuteel began to wonder if the screen had frozen. “Wife, what do . . . ?”

“You’re safe?” she asked. “In that cave?”

He nodded. “It’s perfectly dry. No lightning wants to strike it.”

“She’s causing the storm,” his wife declared.

Sunuteel was about to deny this. But he couldn’t. All he had to do was look at the strange rain and lightning-laden sky outside. The smell of burning sand on the air. He knew what he saw out there. He knew what he’d been listening to on his portable. “Well, what do I do?”

“Finish,” she said. “Let her finish her story, husband.”

When she clicked off and her image disappeared, Sunuteel looked outside. The rain was coming down harder than ever, the lightning crashing near constantly. He put the portable on the sandy ground before him and opened the virtual screen. He clicked un-pause and the spoken words and red words on the screen continued.