by D. L. Line
“Okay.” Shelby took a deep breath and ducked her head under the open edge of the window. The train was moving at a good clip, somewhere in the area of thirty to forty miles per hour. That was Shelby’s best guess anyway as she turned to pull herself out the window and took hold of the ladder. She pulled hard to get her feet clear of the window. The wind stung her eyes and whipped her hair as she wrapped her right arm around the ladder and reached back toward the opening to grab her duffel bag. “You are fine, Shelby Hutchinson,” she muttered, imitating Tasha’s accent as she ducked her head under the strap of her bag. “It’s time for facing fear. Well, bite me. This sucks.” She started to climb the ladder. Once she got far enough up, Tasha ducked out the window, wiggled into her backpack, and followed, urging Shelby to keep moving with the occasional hand on her butt from below.
Fortunately for Shelby, the ladder curved up and onto the smooth, flat surface of the top of the train, so there was no need for any acrobatic feats. Aside from the occasional vent hood and trap door emergency exit, there was now nothing to hang on to, so Shelby belly-crawled far enough out onto the roof of the car to give Tasha some space to climb on as well. She stayed as low as she could, squinting against the wind as Tasha scrabbled up onto the roof of the train and pointed back, away from the engine, indicating that Shelby should head that way. She managed to crawl to the end of the roof but stopped when she reached the break between the cars. “What now?” she hollered over her shoulder.
“Now you must jump to the next car.”
“Oh, no fucking way.” Shelby was adamant. Thanks to Riley, she had already seen what happened when the human body flew off a moving train at a moderate speed, and she was in no hurry to try it out herself. But, again, Tasha was having none of it.
“Da, Shelby Hutchinson,” Tasha shouted over the noise of the wind. “Remember physics. The train is moving forward. You are moving backwards. You will not fall. It’s only a short distance.”
Shelby still wasn’t sure. “But what about my luggage?”
“Leave the bag. Jump to the next car. I will throw the bag to you.”
“Oh, come on.” Shelby knew she would have to jump eventually. There just wasn’t another option.
Shelby stood with Tasha’s assistance, surfing the train with her arms outstretched for balance. She slid tentatively toward the edge and looked down. “Shouldn’t have done that,” she said as she swallowed the accompanying wash of vertigo. After a long, calming breath, Shelby closed her eyes and jumped. She landed hard on the next car and immediately dropped to her hands and knees. That wasn’t so bad. She turned back toward the front of the train and held her arms out, letting Tasha know she could toss over the duffel bag.
Tasha threw the bag then jumped, landing much more confidently than Shelby had. She pointed toward the back of the train again and Shelby got back up on her feet and started moving, each step making her feel just that much more confident that she could do this. She reached the next break between cars and hesitated for just a second. She knew Tasha would probably just give her another push if she waited too long, so she didn’t even bother setting down her duffel. With the strap pulled tight around her shoulders, Shelby jumped again, landing on the next car. She managed to stay on her feet this time and didn’t even bother to look back. She just kept moving steadily, jumping the break between cars until she got to the end of the train.
Tasha caught up as Shelby crouched low at the end of the train, and she pointed toward the ladder that led down to the landing at the back of the caboose. “That way,” Tasha shouted over the noise of the wind.
Shelby dropped to her hands and knees to crawl to the edge of the car, then began to climb down the ladder. The train chose that moment to lurch to one side, forcing Shelby to grab the ladder even tighter to keep from falling as her feet slipped off and swung free in the same direction as the sway of the train. “Shit, shit, shit.” Shelby struggled to maintain her death grip on the ladder and get her feet back onto the closest rung. She managed to regain her footing and wrapped both arms around the metal support rails long enough close her eyes and take a long breath to try to stop the panic she could feel bubbling its way to the surface.
Tasha shouted down from the top of the ladder, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just fucking dandy, thanks.” She braved a look skyward and saw Tasha acknowledge her with a nod of her head. Tasha pointed toward the back of the caboose, indicating Shelby needed to get off the ladder and onto the landing. She hung on with one arm as she pulled the duffel over her head and heaved it onto the small platform. It landed with a thud as Shelby adjusted her grip on the ladder to follow. She swung her feet toward the steps and landed hard. She grabbed the rails at the back of the caboose to keep from falling and to pull herself out of the way so Tasha could get off the ladder and join her on the small landing.
“Now what?”
“We must jump to get off the train. Remember to roll when you hit the ground. Okay?”
That was the answer Shelby hadn’t wanted to hear. “Okay.” She picked up her duffel bag, leaving one hand free for whatever was going to happen next. She didn’t get a lot of time to think about it as Tasha took her by the hand, counted to three in Russian, and jumped. Since Shelby didn’t have another option, especially considering Tasha was pulling her along, she jumped too. She let go of Tasha’s hand and the duffel, windmilling her arms as the train continued forward while Shelby flew to the side. The bag landed with a crunch in the branches of a small bush, followed shortly by Shelby as she hit the ground hard with a grunt and rolled in the deep grass to the side of the rails.
Shelby came to a stop on her back, looked up at the threatening gray sky, and decided she’d had just about enough adventure for one day. She took a quick inventory. Her ankle was a little sore, but after a quick experimental twist of her foot, she decided nothing was broken. Well, nothing but her will.
Tasha’s voice sounded in Shelby’s ear. “Are you okay, Shelby Hutchinson?”
Shaking like a leaf, Shelby sat up and gave into the meltdown that had been brewing since her first view of the tunnel earlier in the day. “No, Shelby Hutchinson is not okay. Shelby Hutchinson has had it. First you make me crawl through a tunnel with a similar diameter to a toilet paper roll, then you lock me in the trunk of a rattletrap piece of shit car and drive like a maniac through every pothole in East Berlin.” Shelby flailed her hands in the air as she continued to rant and rave. “Then, we’re on a nice, safe train, but nooo…we can’t stay there because there’s more spies and goons with guns. So then I get to watch you crack one of them over the head, steal his money, and throw his ass off the train. Great. Just fucking great. But hey, we’re not done yet.”
Shelby was close to hysterical now. “Next, I get to climb out the bathroom window of a moving train like some crazy person in a silent movie western, where I might just mention I almost fell off because the engineer evidently hates me too, and once I’m safely back on the train, you tell me I have to jump, which I did, and now I’m sitting on the side of the road, God knows where, and there’s no fucking way I’m going to ask you what comes next because, honestly, I just don’t want to know.” Shelby stopped to take a long breath. “So, to answer your question, Tasha, no. Shelby Hutchinson is definitely not okay.”
Despite the smile on Tasha’s face, Shelby didn’t share her good mood. Tasha shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Shelby was incredulous. “How? Please tell me how the fuck this could be worse.”
“Could be raining.”
Meltdown over, Shelby laughed a little and tried to answer, but stopped when she was interrupted by a loud clap of thunder. “Oh, no.” Shelby groaned as she looked at Tasha.
Tasha grabbed Shelby’s hand and yanked her to her feet as buckets of rain began to fall, whipped by the wind. Shelby snatched her duffel from the bush as Tasha pointed toward a barn about two hundred yards away and pulled again, urging Shelby to make a run for it.
*
Of all the things Shelby ever imagined doing in her life, this just wasn’t on the list. Sitting in the hayloft of a barn somewhere right smack in the middle of Bumfuck, Poland, studying a shaft of moonlight, drinking something Tasha had pulled from her bag and declared to be vodka. Not the most civilized way to drink vodka, that much was for sure. A nice vodka and tonic after work, the occasional ice-cold Grey Goose martini with four olives on the weekend. That was the vodka Shelby was used to.
But there wasn’t much left here in Poland Shelby was used to anymore. The crystal clear liquid in the bottle tasted exactly like what she imagined lighter fluid would taste like and was proving to be a little more than mildly intoxicating. Perhaps that’s why that shaft of moonlight was so fascinating. Tasha’s voice pulled Shelby from her ruminations.
“Shelby Hutchinson, I can tell you are thinking. You have a funny look on your face again.” Tasha had just a hint of a slur to her words. She tossed the bottle back toward Shelby. “Here. You must stop thinking and drink more.”
Despite her best attempts, Shelby missed the bottle, toppling herself over into the hay. She giggled out a small “oops” and opted to remain right where she was. Anything else just seemed like too much work. “Fuck it.”
“Shelby Hutchinson, you are loaded, yes?”
Shelby sat up and attempted to spit out the hay that was stuck to her face. “No…wait, maybe…I think so…lemme check.” She stood up and swayed a little. “Um, yeah. Loaded. You?”
Tasha fell back into the hay. “Da, I am, how do you say, nailed.”
“Hammered. You are hammered.” Shelby crawled closer to climb on and straddle Tasha’s hips. “But we can talk about nailed if you like.”
“What is the difference?”
“Well.” Shelby pulled Tasha’s T-shirt out of the waistband of her jeans. “Hammered means you’re drunk, and nailed, well, nailed means…” Shelby hesitated long enough to work the button open on Tasha’s pants, looked around to make sure no one else was listening, even though she knew they were alone, and leaned forward to whisper, “Sex.”
“Ah, I understand. It’s like when you are being laid.”
“Getting laid.” Shelby pulled down the zipper on Tasha’s jeans. “Screwing, boinking, doin’ the wild thing, driving from the backseat, rounding third and heading for home, the horizontal mambo, take your pick. Ooh, roll in the hay. That’s a good one. Seems oddly appropriate considering where we are.”
“Da, Shelby Hutchinson. That seems correct to me also.” Tasha held her butt up off the floor so Shelby could remove her jeans. Tasha undid the buttons on Shelby’s 501s, encouraging her to lose the pants as well. But Shelby’s internal bad girl, totally fueled by her earlier dose of lighter fluid–flavored liquid courage, forged ahead. Pants or no, she didn’t care. She just wanted in.
And that’s exactly what she did, three fingers deep, using the force of her own hips behind her hand to show Tasha exactly what a good old-fashioned Chicago-style roll in the hay was all about. She rocked and pushed, responding to the pressure of the legs wrapped around her butt. Tasha held on to Shelby’s leather jacket, muttering incomprehensible things in Russian that only served to make Shelby rock and push even harder. Tasha’s growling might have had something to do with the vodka, but Shelby preferred to think it had more to do with her mad skills, especially when the orgasm hit. She responded with a growl of her own as wet muscles contracted around her fingers and Tasha pulled even harder with her legs, grinding herself against Shelby’s hand, still coming hard.
Once the spasms stopped, Shelby pulled out and rolled over, fighting to get her own pants and underwear off over her shoes. She managed to get one leg free. That was good enough, because what she wanted was Tasha’s fingers and she wanted them now. Knees on either side of Tasha’s hips, Shelby reached for Tasha’s hand, letting her know exactly what she needed. Tasha got the point immediately, bracing her hand against her own hip while Shelby climbed on and pushed down. She rocked forward and pulled at the front of Tasha’s jacket, urging her to sit up. Tasha let Shelby set the tempo she needed. She drove herself onto Tasha’s long fingers, each thrust making her feel like she was going to explode.
At some point, Shelby wasn’t even sure when, Tasha pushed her onto her back and really let her have it. She rocked with her hips, mimicking Shelby’s earlier actions. Since Shelby only seemed to have two words left, “harder” and “faster,” she used them to her best advantage, until finally, with the total lack of modesty vodka often provides, Shelby came with a howl, pulling hard at the pockets of Tasha’s jacket to keep her close.
Words filtered through Shelby’s inebriated, just-been-fucked moment. “Shelby Hutchinson, you bark like a dog. I like that very much.”
“Yeah, Tasha, me too. Woof.”
Chapter Six
Shelby came to consciousness slowly, helped along by an odd, scratchy sensation on her cheek. As she experimentally opened one eye just enough to see what was going on, she found herself nose to nose with a rather large, scruffy-looking barn cat. “Oh, shit.” Shelby sat up quickly to get away from the attentions of her new feline friend.
Tasha startled awake at Shelby’s exclamation, drew her pistol, and almost shouted, “What? What is going on?” Tasha visibly relaxed when Shelby smiled weakly and pointed at the mangy gray cat with the mangled left ear.
“Sorry, Tasha. Mr. Puss here must have thought I was tasty, but I don’t think you need to shoot him.” Tasha slid her weapon back under her jacket. “He kind of scared me.”
Tasha grinned, apparently amused by the whole situation. “Shelby Hutchinson, you are not afraid of a pussycat, are you?”
“No, I’m not afraid of a pussycat. I was asleep, and I woke up and there he was, doing that wet sandpaper tongue thing on my face. Hell, I don’t even remember falling asleep.” She tried to get up, but realized quickly that maybe she should take it slow. “But I do remember now there was lots of vodka last night.” She blinked a couple of times to clear her foggy vision and registered that she also had a sizable headache. It didn’t take her long to remember last night had included more than vodka as she looked down and noticed her jeans and underwear were still hanging from just one ankle. “Oops.” She felt herself blush and reached for her pants to try to make herself a little more presentable.
Tasha was in a similar state, at least as far as clothing was concerned. Her jeans were in a pile about ten feet away. Since Tasha looked confused about her own state of undress, Shelby pointed toward the knot of denim. “They’re over there.”
With an understanding nod, Tasha rolled onto her knees and crawled to retrieve her pants. Shelby braved getting up again, this time with a little more success, as she dusted off the hay that was now stuck to her butt and wiggled into her jeans and underpants. She also realized she was definitely in the clutches of a seriously wicked headache. She held her head with both hands and let go of a small groan.
“Ah, Shelby Hutchinson, you are hanging over, yes?”
Shelby forced a smile and laughed a little. “Hung over. Yes, Tasha, Shelby Hutchinson is definitely hung over. Aren’t you?”
“Nyet, I am not, as you say, hung over. You just need breakfast, then you will again be strong like bull.”
Shelby laughed again. “Well, okay. I suppose that is better than being drunk like skunk.” She patted her tummy as it growled unhappily. “Maybe I do just need some food. Is there a diner or something nearby?” She had no idea what to think when Tasha threw her head back and howled with laughter. “What? What’s so funny?”
“Shelby Hutchinson, we are in, how do you say, the middle of nowhere and Poland is a Soviet Bloc state. There are no restaurants for fifty kilometers.”
Well, shit. She hadn’t thought of that. “Okay, then what do we do for food?”
“You stay here in the barn. I will go to the house for food.”
“To the house? So you know the people who live—” Shelby stopped when she noted the look on Tasha’s f
ace. It seemed to warn her not to finish the question. Tasha pulled on her boots and backpack and climbed down the ladder to the lower level of the barn.
Shelby sat next to her duffel bag and began rooting through it for her toothbrush. Her mouth tasted like she’d spent most of last evening chewing on a tennis ball and it was not helping the pain in her head. “Ooh, maybe there’s a bottle of aspirin in there too.” Shelby smiled when she found what she had been looking for, a bright green plastic bottle filled with white tablets. She climbed down the ladder toward the only source of water she could see, a rain barrel just outside the barn. “Better than nothing, I suppose.” She chewed on her toothbrush and shook two tablets out of the small aspirin bottle, which she shoved into a pocket.
She looked up when she heard the back door slam shut and Tasha reappeared from the house. A long loaf of bread was sticking out of Tasha’s backpack, but Shelby forgot about it quickly when Tasha began running toward her, waving, and shouting orders. “Go, Shelby Hutchinson, run. Head for the train tracks.”
Shelby started to ask what was going on, but she swallowed the question once she saw why Tasha was running. A disheveled man appeared from the back door wearing nothing but boxer shorts, a ratty undershirt, and a pissed-off look on his face. He was shouting something in Polish that Shelby couldn’t understand, but she did understand the shotgun held tightly in his large hands. Shelby dropped her aspirin when he cocked the shotgun and Tasha flew right past her, sprinting toward the tracks. The sound of the blast urged Shelby to run like hell. They were both too far away for him to hit them with the shotgun, but Shelby didn’t care. She just wanted as much space as possible between her and the business end of that evil-looking weapon, especially considering Tasha had apparently just stolen his food. She ran as hard as she could, clutching her toothbrush in one hand and her duffel in the other, trying to ignore the pain in her head and the sound of the shotgun being cocked again.