Page 45 of What is Lost

Get out of here.His eyes burned. He wanted to weep.Get out of here before she feels you looking and sees what a loser you are.

Still clutching the bottle, he slid back the way he’d come, staying in that long tongue of shadow.When he was sure she couldn’t possibly see him, he spun on his heel and double-timed it back to the med tent.

He masked; he gowned up. A nurse directed him to a leg in need of stitching, and so he worked, he just worked, hoping the work would help, praying that the work would squelch the thoughts spinning round and round:Stop. Don’t jump to conclusions. Friends do that all the time. Roni...didn’t she do this all the time? Crap. He couldn’t think of any timewhen?—

A tap on a shoulder. “Hey,” she said, holding up a pack, “I filched some extra MREs. So, in a couple hours, you? Me?” When he turned to look down,her gaze was direct and smoldered with desire. “Lunch?”

Somehow, he managed to drag up his voice from wherever it had fallen. “I could eat,” he said.

Although, once in his quarters, they went straight to dessert—and with a vengeance.

She’s mine, Driver.He tasted the salt in the hollow of Roni’s throat and drew circles with his tongue around her nipples and went lower and lower and kissed and sucked as her hands fisted in his hair.She’s mine,he thought, his tongue flicking her clit from side to side as she gasped and arched, and her clit swelled, and she pressed herself against his mouth and bucked and came with a loud, long animal cry of release.

She’s mine, and you can’t have her, he thought as she lowered herself onto his aching cock and began to move, both of them gasping and moaning and he reached for her breasts, felt her erect nipples against his palms as they moved faster and faster...

She’s mine.He shuddered as her tongue tasted his ear, his throat. Her hand cupped his balls, her fingertips brushing the sensitive patch at the shaft of his cock. Moaning, he drove himself into her, thrusting as hard and far as he could and then she was shuddering, gasping, telling him of her pleasure:John, John, John, come with me, John, come with me!

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!His back arched, as hispleasure, liquid and fiery, exploded, sheeting his vision white. Ecstasy raced down from his groin to curl his toes, and everything fell away because all that mattered was this woman, this woman, this woman... He cried out and so did she. They were both coming and loudly, and he didn’t give a damn who heard.

Because she’s mine.The thought was a delirium, a spiraling fever-dream of sweat and salt and her mouth, her tongue, her body.She’s mine, Driver, and you can’t have her. She’s mine, she’s mine, she’s mine.

Only a little later thatday when, sated, he was back on duty at the med tent, did he remember something.

In the end...Bogartdidn’tget the girl now, did he?

A FORK IN THE ROAD

NOVEMBER 2023: KHOROG

The going had been slow,with Parviz taking many detours to avoid a ruined patch of road or yet another slide, but they finally reached Khorog at two in the afternoon the day after the test with the pencil. As the van rumbled down Lenin Street, John thought that except for the snow-capped Pamir Mountains and a few free-roaming cows hunkered down in the park, they might be in small-town Wisconsin.

“We eat here,” Parviz said, hanging a quick left and cutting off another driver who leaned on his horn. “Best food.”

“You’re kidding,” Davila said. Facing the street, a red sign with white letters hung from a third-floor railing:MAC Doland’s. In case a customer couldn’t read the English, those unmistakable golden arches were a good a sign as any. “You want a Big Mac?Now? We’ve got only about two hours of daylight left, and we’re behind schedule. We need to keep going.”

“I get you to border tomorrow morning.” Parviz traced a big X with a forefinger over his left breast. “Promise heart.”

“How many hours to the border rendezvous?”

“From here, maybe five, maybe six. We no get to border before dark anyway and, if we go, we miss MACDoland’s!” Parviz gave the sign a rapturous look. “Onlycow from here to Dushanbe or Osh. Everywhere goat.” Popping his driver’s side door, he hopped out, stretched, and threw his arms out wide. “Wi-Fi, too! Civilized! We be fast, yes?” Without waiting for an answer, Parviz headed for the stairs.

“I think we’re stopping,” John said.

The restaurant’s entrance was at the end of three flights of stairs. The place smelled of fried potatoes, fried onions, and greasy fried meat, but that was where the similarities with the American version ended. The walls were decorated with red, yellow, white, and green stripes which seemed to be intended to match the eye-watering neon colors of the cushioned benches (red, lime-green, burnt orange) and Formica tabletops (red, lime-green, yellow, orange, and—weirdly—light lavender). Most customers were white-haired grandparents drinking cups of coffee and scrolling on their cellswhile young children, presumably their grandkids, used ketchup to brush up on their finger-painting skills. Judging from what passed for art on the walls—crude, bloody sketches of things which might be either spaceships trailing exhaust or tadpoles with exceptionally long tails—John thought the kids couldn’t do any worse.

MAC Doland’s served only the basics. No Happy Meals, for example. No combos. No chicken, either. They all ordered Big Macs, fries, and large coffees: milk and sugar for Parviz, black for John and Davila. “Come, come,” Parviz said, turning from the counter and heading for the back. “They bring.”

“Table service?” Davila asked.

“Cool.” John was about to observe that this was a hopeful sign but didn’t when Parviz passed several open tables before sliding into a back corner table. Which wasinteresting.

Davila must’ve been thinking the same thing because he said, “Keeping an eye on the place?”

“Maybe? Wearethe only Westerners in the joint,” he said, as Parviz pulled out a cell and started scrolling. The majority of the patrons had given them only a cursory once-over before going back to their conversations or phones. “Not like anyone’s eye-checking us, though.”

Still, an interesting spot.His gaze drifted to a poster on the wall immediately over Parviz’s leftshoulder. “Tell me what that poster reminds you of.”

Davila frowned. “Not sure, but…why do I keep thinking of a sewer?”

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