The following contains descriptions of graphic sexual acts between consenting teenage boys. It is a work of pure fiction and has no basis in the real world. Any similarities between people and places is just simple and plain coincidence. Do not read this story if you are under 18 or the legal age in your area; or, if it is just down right illegal to read this material where you live. And, don't go any further if you don't want to read about gay/bisexuals falling in love and having sex.

The author of this story retains copyright to this story and its characters. Reproducing this story for distribution without the author's explicit permission is a violation of that copyright.

Please, feel free to email me with your comments, questions, or just general thoughts for this story at mavjk99@yahoo.com.

Strangers on a Train

by J. A. Adkins

Part 22-Siege on the Blue Sky Express

I saw the first tree in hours.  It filled my vision in such a way I would have preferred it not to.  Lonnie threw the plane  downward in a half-spiral dive and then pulling his small aircraft upward in the last seconds of the most sheer, screaming terror I had known to that point.  The chest-thick branches that stretched like muscular arms a hundred years old holding up the clouds and sky passed inches above the upper and wing and tail.

"What the hell are you doing?!  Don't do that!" I yelled over my shoulder.

"I'm trying to gain some speed!"

"Well do it differently!"

"Oh, sure!  Just let me push the turbo button, here, so the jet engine I have hidden under the tail will turn on," Lonnie yelled sarcastically, flipping the plane on its side as we swept past a water tower that stood beside the empty railroad tracks.  "This isn't the Bat-plane, you know!" he added.

He quickly leveled the plane out again.  My stomach sank back into its original position.  "Ohhh," I groaned in a very un-enthusiastic way.

"We're almost there!  Another minute or two!" Lonnie said matter-of-factly.

He was right.  Looking straight ahead I spotted the back-end of the Blue Sky Express.  I heaved another semi-nauseous sigh of relief.  With each second that ticked by, I began to make out more of the scarred details on the last car.  The bullet holes were tiny pockets of cool shadow on the otherwise smooth, dust-stained silver surface.

Lonnie gently eased the plane upward in a steady, even arc until we were two dozen feet or so above the train top.

"OK!  Go ahead and get ready!"

Suddenly, something awful dawned on me.  Until now, I hadn't put much thought into what we were going to do once we reached the train.  Glancing over my shoulder, I watched Darren unbuckle the straps holding him against the soft leather seat.

"Darren?!  What are we getting ready for?!"

Darren looked down at me, knowingly. He didn't have to say anything.  I just knew.  "Oh, no."  It was all I could say.

I should have known.  It's not like the train is an aircraft carrier.  What was Lonnie going to do?  Land on it?!  Why didn't I just take a plane-a big plane, with soft seats and free drinks-to Chicago?  I shook my head.  At the rate my luck had been going, though, the damn airliner would have crashed into a fucking mountain.  There's no recovering from that!

I watched the Blue Sky's last car pass out of sight beneath us.  It's heavy, marching din that still thudded faintly in my memory was lost in real-time under the loud, obnoxious buzz of the tiny airplane's engine.  I looked over at Darren again.  Already he was carefully climbing out of the passenger seat in front of Lonnie and stepping hesitantly onto the wing.

"Start loosening your straps!" he yelled as he fixed himself into a steady position between the fuselage and the cross-beams of the wing.

"Loosen the straps?!  What the fuck for?!"

Darren glared at me, taking his attention from the small duffle bag he was digging through.  It was the same one he had put the weapon's cache in when we were in the roadster.  "Just do it!" he shouted.

"OK!" I shouted back.

Using one hand to hold onto the grip bolted to the wing, I blindly searched for the buckles holding the heavy, cloth straps into place near my right side.  It took a long minute, but, finally I had them loose.  I could feel the stiff fabric sliding subtly backwards across the width of my back.  I looked up at Darren again.  He finished his search and tightened the satchel slung across his shoulder.

"Here," he said, leaning close to me.  I felt him lift the tail of my shirt and slide something cold between the waistline of the pants the Baden family had given me and my bare skin.  Darren's fingertips noticeably hovered above my trembling flesh for several seconds before he let the wind push my shirt back down.  "You might need that."

Without having to reach and feel for myself, I knew it was a gun.  I looked up at Darren.  He nodded at me confidently then turned his head toward Lonnie.

"We're ready!"

Lonnie shook his head.  "OK!  But just for the record, you both are still crazy!"

"Note taken!  Now get us closer!"  Darren yelled sternly, moving closer to the back edge of the wing.

With those words I turned my attention forward.  For barely a second I saw faces in the windows in the train car underneath and ahead of us.  They gazed up with curious wonder and probably amusement.  This was certainly a train ride of a different kind for everyone.

The plane seemed to hover above the hot, gleaming surface of the car's rooftop.  I took a deep, ultra-nervous breath.  I couldn't believe we were about to jump off a plane and onto a moving train only then to attempt to lay siege to it.  What was this?  Was this real?  Was it a dream?

"On the count of five I want you to let go!"  Darren's voice crawled into my ears.  Nope, I thought.  Not a dream.

I took another deep breath.

"Five!"

My heart could have exploded in that second.  I felt every ounce of color in my face and body drain away and fly off in the wind.  I glared at Darren.  He smirked in response.

"Four!"

One more deep breath.

"Three!"

I closed my eyes.

"Two!"

I clenched my fingers against the grips until they started to sting with a white-hot pain.  Nope, still not a dream.

"One!"

I opened my hands and relaxed my muscles.  I felt the plane pitch up slightly.  The smooth yellow skin of the wing slipped away and in a heartbeat was replaced with nothing but air.  My eyes opened in a panicked flutter just in time to see my feet come in painful contact with the train.  The physics of the fall sent me sprawling backwards and rolling over myself.  In the last moment before falling completely off the edge of the train, my momentum stopped.  My fingers fought to keep their fragile hold on the searing metal groove near the edge of the roof.  My feet kicked and dangled in the rushing air racing along side the train as the next wave of passing panic swept through my nervous system.

My attention shifted when I saw Darren leap from the edge of the wing.  The shadow of the small bi-plane zipped suddenly over the rest of the train as Lonnie eased off on the throttle and made his exit.  Darren landed a second later, tucking and rolling professionally across the rooftop.  He remained still as his body adjusted to the impact.  Meanwhile, I was just trying to keep from sliding off the side of the train.

Darren pushed himself onto his knees and looked around quickly.  I waved hastily then re-locked my fingers to the long, narrow groove of hot metal.  "A little help," I said, my voice strained slightly.

"Nice landing!" he said, crawling toward me.

"Thanks!  I think I'll have to settle for the bronze, though."

"Oh, well.  Silver isn't really your color."

His hand gripped mine.  It was a tremendous moment.  I felt his strength, his courage, his pure childlike, enthusiastic, and almost endless energy and drive in that single grip.  I also got to feel his strong hands again.  His ten fingers held mine in an embrace the rest of my body was jealous of with the greenest of envy.

"So... you come here often," I asked sarcastically as he started to pull me up towards him.

"For you... anytime."  There was that smile that left me speechless, flooded with warmth, and hard as a rock!

Ah, but all our best moments seem to come to such swift and sudden ends.  We didn't hear the crack of the shot until after the tiny bullet shell snapped dangerously close to Darren's foot against the steel rooftop.  We both turned our heads toward the shooter at the same time.  It was Mr. French, Devoy's tall, ugly, and quiet sidekick.

He lifted his heavy pistol higher so it was aiming right at Darren's head.  I remembered the gun Darren had placed in my jeans.  I think Darren remembered it too.  He glanced down at me-actually, past me.  His eyes darted towards my butt.  As much as I would like to think he just wanted to see my ass one last time, I have no doubt he was just looking at the outline of the gun.  I took a deep breath, acknowledging I was ready for whatever he had in mind.

Mr. French stood like a narrow-eyed statue at the head of the car.  His arm never wavered.  He kept his gun fixed on Darren, watching his boss' nemesis' every move.  Darren popped his youthful shoulders before carefully shifting all of my weight to one hand.  Muscles I had never noticed these last few days swelled and bulged  in such splendid, tan beauty.

"Brace yourself," he said simply.

Darren raised his hand in a gesture of surrender.  "I'm just going to help my friend!"

Mr. French said nothing.  His expression never changed.  Darren stared at the tall man with the cowboy hat-which had yet to blow off his head.  Slowly, Darren reached his free arm past me, grabbing my ass.

"Be ready to fire as soon as you are clear," his strained voice said near my ear.

I nodded.

And then, I was in the air for a split, dizzying, second.  Darren hadn't even counted this time.  Before I knew it he had pulled and tossed me up and across the train.  My limbs slapped across the hot metal of the train as I rolled like a rag doll behind a strange looking air vent meant to pull the sultry air outside the train into the car under our feet.

I gained my bearings quickly, rolling over onto my stomach.  I looked toward Darren as he stood up, both hands in the air this time.  I waited until he was out of sight, making sure all of the quiet cowboy's attention was on a single target.  Uggh!  How cold was that?  My hopeful boyfriend was suddenly a "single target".

The gun wedged against the bottom of my bare back and the top of the tight jeans I had picked from an attic-smelling box in the Baden house seemed to pulse and throb.  I pulled it out into the open air, remembering to take the safety off.  I stayed crouched behind the squeaking air vent for another moment, waiting to see if I really had to do this.  A quick countdown in my head and I leapt to my feet.

"Hey!" I yelled toward the front of the car, finding Mr. French as Darren suddenly ducked out of the way.

French's eyes lifted in a heated glare toward me.  I squeezed the trigger on the gun.  The loud shot made my arm shake violently, tossing me back slightly in surprise.  I saw the quiet cowboy duck instinctively, though I have no real clue as to where the bullet even went.  The hit-man adjusted his shoulders then raised his gun again, this time at me.

He fired.  I ducked, hearing the bullet strike the vent fan with a loud, deafening crash.  Another shot pierced the air.  I looked up past the vent in time to see Mr. French recoil toward the right, his shoulder already bleeding.

"Get to the engine car!" Darren yelled, jumping to his feet and charging at Mr. French.  "Go!"

Mr. French turned back toward us.  He lifted his arm, the sun catching the top of something in his hand.  Darren's much smaller body slammed with all his strength against the brick wall of a human being that was the older man.  At the same time, I saw the strange object leave French's fingers.

The word "Grenade" filled my mind.  "Oh, shit!" I yelled, realizing why I was thinking of that word just at that moment.  I ducked and pushed myself tightly against the vent.  A quick and brilliant flash flooded the air and in its wake was a devastating and earth shuddering roll of crackling thunder which came and went in a pounding instant.  What sounded like rain I knew was jagged shards of small shrapnel splashing and cutting with deadly force into the rooftop.

I didn't hesitate long to look past the vent.  My main concern was Darren.  Actually, he was my only concern.  But he was no where to be seen.  Neither was Mr. French, for that matter.  A hazy cloud of choking, salty smelling smoke passed by me as the train continued its quick, unending march across the slowly changing landscape.

I hurried from my hiding place toward the head of the train car.  My pulse began to race fearfully.  The regular edge of the train car was gone.  Replacing it was a serrated, flash-burned wound carved into the upper portions of the car I was standing on and the car ahead of me.  The entry doors to each were damaged.  The small windows flanking the doorways were smashed in by the shrapnel.  Sparks pierced the shadows near the partly-broken couplings just above the tracks.  It wouldn't be long before the two cars separated when the scarred joints snapped apart.

"Darren!" I yelled hopefully, but heard no answer.  "Darren," I yelled again with the same result.  I glanced back once then leapt down onto the narrow platform of the neighboring car.  People were shouting nervously somewhere ahead in the smoky interior.  He had to still be alive, I thought.

Without another moment to loose, I took a deep breath of the smoky air and hurried into the train, knowing there was no turning back this time.  I was on that plane heading for the mountain.  But maybe, there was still time to save the day.