The damaged tire was the right front, and it was, indeed, knifed. Kenshin frowned at the tire for a long moment, arms folded, eyes narrowed. Carrie thought that if looks could cause spontaneous combustion, the tire would have burst into flames.
Kenshin was mad. She had never seen him truly angry before. His patience had always seemed boundless. Finally, with a muttered oath in Japanese, he stalked to the car, opened the driver side door, popped the rear seat up, and extracted his jack and tire iron. Grumbling to himself he used the tire iron to crank the tire down from under the truck bed, then jacked the vehicle up.
"Put this in the bed, will you?" he asked Sandy, after unbolting the ruined tire.
Sandy silently carried the tire to the back of the truck and lifted it in. He was pale, eyes glittering with fury of his own.
"I'm sorry," Brandon said, standing behind Kenshin and watching him work on the tire, "this was probably about me. Sometimes the assholes take it out on my friends too."
"It's not your fault," Kenshin glanced at him as he finger-tightened the lug nuts on the spare.
"I'll pay for the tire ..."
"No!" Kenshin glared at him. "I can afford to replace the tire, it's not your responsibility, and you don't need to feel guilty for this."
"But ..."
"Brandon, shut up," Kenshin said. Carrie blinked. She seldom heard Kenshin speak so shortly to anyone. "This isn't your fault. The thing with your room was bad enough, but directly targeted at you. This is at me, simply because I dare to be your friend. That pisses me off in all sorts of new ways -- to start with, they're trying to isolate you, and that infuriates me. I think I'm going to have a few words with a few people. I suspect they'll leave you alone when I'm done."
"Umm, I don't want you getting hurt ..."
"Let me deal with this."
"Actually, that would be my job," Shannon pointed out. "If it's even the brats back at the dorm. And we don't know that it is."
Kenshin gave him a look, then pointed wordlessly at the driver side door. Scratched into the paint were the words, die faggot!
"Okay, still, not your job." Shannon folded his arms and scowled at the damage.
Kenshin swung around on him. "Shannon, unless you're planning on suddenly growing a backbone and sticking up for what's right, I would suggest you stay out of my way and let me handle this. I've had quite enough of this complete nonsense."
Shannon rocked back on his heels and stared at Kenshin. "But ..."
Kenshin picked the tire iron up off the ground and tightened the lug nuts with short, sharp, impatient motions. Then he quickly let the truck down off the jack, handed the jack and tire iron to Carrie, and walked around to the back of the truck where he shoved the tailgate shut. "Let's get out of here."
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Sandy drove silently, fingers clutching the wheel. Kenshin glanced over at him, and forced himself to ask quietly and calmly, "When did you get your license?"
"L-last spring."
"Do you have a car of your own?" Kenshin had assumed Sandy knew how to drive, since he was seventeen and had a license and most American kids started driving at around sixteen.
"No. But I drove my mom's sometimes. When she let me."
I didn't realize he was that green of a driver. Sandy looked scared behind the wheel. He was driving exactly at the speed limit, and had been excessively hesitant in pulling out of the parking lot. Kenshin identified the traits of a hypercautious young driver, which was better than a reckless young driver, but had he known Sandy had so little experience he would have had Shannon drive.
Except Shannon had consumed at least a six-pack, and was in no shape for it. He wondered if Brandon could drive -- no, Kenshin didn't think he had the dexterity in his feet to manage the pedals. Sandy it was, behind the wheel. There was no way Brandon would fit in the front seat if they pulled the bench seat far enough forward for Kenshin to be able to manage the pedals safely.
Maybe I can find a booster seat, Kenshin thought, with dry amusement.
Well, Sandy had to learn to drive someday. And he was doing well. Kenshin watched approvingly as the teen glanced over his shoulder to check for a car in his blind spot before changing lanes. He relaxed a little. "You're doing fine," he said, encouragingly.
Kenji was always a good driver, Kenshin recalled. The Trevors had owned an assortment of cars starting in the 1920's. In fact, Kenshin's first car had been a hand-me-down from his son in the 1930's, when Kenji had replaced the Packard with a newer model.
Miss that old beast, Kenshin thought, with a bit of wistful fondness. It had gotten -- maybe -- five miles per gallon, on a good day, with a thunderously powerful straight eight engine that had stretched out longer than his arm under the hood. He had taken it home to Japan with him but World War II had spelled its doom; he had not been able to afford fuel for it anymore, or get parts to repair it.
Sandy tensed up further, however, when the winding mountain road that led to the creek started to descend a steep mountainside. The hillside fell sharply away on the driver's side into a rocky ravine. Sandy, fingers gone white, eyes fixed straight ahead, slowed down dramatically.
"You're doing good," Kenshin said, reassuringly.
"Sorry. I hate heights."
"You're fine." Well, there's a difference between my Kenji and Sandy, Kenshin thought, with private amusement.
"You should, given the number of trees you fell out of," Brandon said.
"Like you didn't fall out of your share of trees!" Sandy shot back.
How in the hell would Brandon climb a tree? Kenshin wondered, then decided he didn't actually want to know. The father in him was already cringing. Kenji, climbing things, had been bad enough -- Kaoru had joked at times that Kenji could join an acrobat troop if he ever got tired of kendo.
"Only once!"
"Twice."
"The tree-house doesn't count!" Brandon huffed in indignation.
"Tree-house?" Shannon said, sounding curious.
"We built a tree-house," Sandy explained. Talking seemed to make him calmer; he relaxed as he drove. "But we didn't quite engineer it sturdy enough. It fell out of the tree with both of us in it. I still say we needed to use more rope."
"More rope wouldn't have made a difference," Brandon retorted. "It was the platform that came loose, not the beams we had strapped to the tree."
"But they slipped first and then the platform came loose."
The argument sounded like an old one. Kenshin smiled, listening to them. "How old were you two?"
"Thirteen," Brandon said, "Sandy was ten."
"Were you hurt?" Carrie asked, with morbid fascination.
"Broke my arm," Sandy glanced at her, very briefly, then stared nervously back at the road.
"Fourteen stitches on my knee," Brandon put in, grinning broadly. He displayed his hand for Kenshin to see; a fine white scar bisected the heel. "Nine in the palm of my hand. Chipped a tooth. Concussion. Though I think my mom was angriest about me trashing my braces in the fall. They're not cheap."
"Then," Sandy put in, "there was the time you tried to learn to ride my bike."
"It had training wheels on it!" Brandon glowered at his brother. "I thought I could. I was eight."
"The problem was," Sandy said, with a grin, "he can't really peddle very well. So he was learning by pushing the bike to the top of this hill by our house and coasting down."
"Lots of fun," Brandon agreed.
"That was, until the brakes on the bike got stuck," Sandy said, shaking his head at the memory. "He must've been doing thirty, forty miles an hour when he ran into the side of a parked car at the bottom of the hill. He was passing cars going down the road. When he hit that sedan, he dented the door. Mom was furious when she got the bill."
"I wasn't hurt," Brandon said, shaking his head. "Well, except for some cuts and bruises. You know, the usual."
"Then there was the time he fell off the roof," Sandy recalled.
"Yeah, because I was getting your kite down! You decided you hated heights after the tree-house thing and you were crying about the kite!"
"Boys," Carrie said, with a snicker.
"Woah!" Sandy suddenly exclaimed, as another car came up on the left, apparently passing them.
"Easy," Kenshin said, "He's just going by ..."
The car swung towards Sandy. Sandy swore and swerved away from it, coming perilously close to the edge of the road.
"Hold your ground!" Kenshin said, alarmed, as the other car -- a big SUV of some sort -- crowded them.
"Fuck!" Sandy flinched from the other vehicle.
"Who the fuck ... that's Michael driving!" Brandon exclaimed, peering past Kenshin and Sandy. "Son of a bitch!"
"Hold your ground! Hold your ground!" Kenshin ordered, "Don't let him push you onto the shoulder ..."
Michael was playing chicken with them, Kenshin realized. Unfortunately, Sandy didn't have the experience to not react to the other driver's aggression. When Michael swung again into his lane Sandy swerved away. The truck's right side tires caught the soft shoulder with an alarming rattle of gravel and heavy vibration.
"SHIT!" Sandy spun the wheel, overcorrected, and lurched into the SUV's passenger side door. There was a terrible grinding of metal on metal. Sandy reacted by swerving hard away from the other vehicle ... right towards the ravine on the passenger side.
"Sandy, no!" Kenshin lunged for the wheel, but too late. Everything had happened in a split second, though it had felt longer.
The truck's right front wheel went over the edge. With a sickening lurch it flipped over. There were screams. Glass shattered. Something hit Kenshin in the head, hard enough that his vision went black. He was aware of spinning and crunching and multiple impacts from various angles.
The truck finally crunched against a tree on the driver's side, behind the driver's door. It bounced off the tree and skidded to halt with one dizzying last 180 degree spin. Kenshin sat there for a moment, stunned. Only when Sandy said, very distinctly, "Shit," did he start moving.
"Everyone okay?"
"Fucking stupid question," Shannon said, from behind him.
"Carrie? Brandon? Talk to me," Kenshin unbuckled his seat belt. He wasn't hurt, though he figured he'd be sore in the morning, Immortal or not.
"Owe," Brandon said.
"What hurts?" Kenshin demanded.
"Everything. I wrenched my back."
Brandon sounded coherent. Kenshin was more worried about Carrie, who hadn't said a word.
"Carrie?" Kenshin rose up onto his knees on the seat and peered back at her.
"She's fucked up," Shannon said, sounding vaguely detached. Kenshin knew that feeling; he'd experienced it before. Shannon would probably have a screaming breakdown later. Kenshin was, in truth, in close to the same mood because 'fucked up' was a good description of Carrie.
A tree had stopped the truck. It had also shoved the door in a couple of feet. Carrie's leg was obviously broken, in a shards of femur visible flavor of 'shattered.' Blood poured from a severed artery, pulsing in time with each beat of her heart.
She also had broken ribs, to judge by the red bubbles and froth around her nose and mouth and her very rapid breathing. So much blood, Kenshin realized. Too much blood.
I hate the smell of blood.
He realized he was hyperventilating, and forced himself to calm down. Carrie is going to die, he realized. Like it or not, she will Immortal in moments.
He asked Sandy, without taking his eyes from Carrie, "Are you hurt?"
Sandy said, "My arm hurts ... What's wrong with Carrie?"
"We've got to get an ambulance for her!" Shannon screamed. There was the panic Kenshin had been expecting. "She's bleeding! Oh, god, she's bleeding!"
"She is very badly hurt," Kenshin said, thinking hard. "Sandy, will your door open?"
Sandy had to shove it with both feet, but it opened. Most of the damage had been to Carrie's door. Sandy scrambled out, and Kenshin managed to get the rear door open by prying it with the tire iron -- that had been what had conked him in the head; it had ended up in the front seat. But by the time he got to her, she was no longer breathing.
"Fuck! We have to do CPR!" Shannon waved his arms in the air. His expression was very wild.
Brandon, eyes somehow ancient and knowing, took in the blood on the back seat, the blood on Carrie, and her injuries, and said, "We can try, but her chest is trashed."
"She's dead," Kenshin said, very quietly. He knew death with intimate acquaintance, and CPR was going to do absolutely nothing for someone whose chest felt like an armload of broken twigs when he scooped her up.
She was heavy, but he was running on adrenaline. He staggered with her to a level spot of ground. There, he set her down, then pulled her head and shoulders into his lap, wrapped his arms around her, and said, "Shannon, go check on Brandon, will you? I think he's okay, but he may have gotten hit by that tire iron too."
"She can't be dead!" Shannon wailed.
Brandon, balancing himself on the twisted wreckage of the truck, with only one crutch in his hand, appeared. Kenshin hadn't even noticed him getting out of the truck. He said, "Oh, man, Kenshin, I'm sorry."
Kenshin looked over the three of them. Brandon didn't look hurt at all except for a few scrapes and bruises. Shannon had a bloody cut over one eye and a deep gash on his arm, but again, was not in bad shape. Sandy was holding his arm like it hurt; Kenshin was afraid it was broken and he was only now beginning to really feel it. But none of them appeared mortally wounded.
"My fault ..." Sandy moaned.
"My friends," Kenshin said quietly, "You're going to see something that defies explanation by science in just a moment. May I ask that you keep this quiet?"
This request simply earned him confused looks from two of them. Sandy sank to his knees and started crying. "I'm never going to drive again. Damnit! Damnit! Can't we do something?"
Shannon appeared to be a lot calmer than Sandy now. Kenshin caught his eyes. "Will you grab her foot and pull it out straight?" Kenshin wasn't sure how the rules worked for broken bones. Would a leg that deformed heal straight? He did not want to take a chance.
"Umm ..."
"Please," Kenshin said. He improvised, "I can't bear looking at it."
Shannon bit his lip, then grabbed Carrie's leg by the ankle and pulled until the femur was more or less straight. Then he slumped down on the ground next to Kenshin. "I think I'm going to be sick."
Kenshin bowed his head over Carrie, and brushed his knuckles against her cheek. He wondered how long it would take her to return to life. If she woke before the authorities arrived he might yet salvage this mess.
Brandon lowered himself heavily to the ground next to his brother. He wrapped both arms around Sandy's shoulders. Sandy burst into tears and buried his face in his brother's shoulder; the two of them sat there -- both of them were crying. Kenshin glanced at them, wanting to offer them comfort, but not entirely sure what to say. Carrie's Immortality would be much better witnessed then seen. His words would sound foolish and crazy until they witnessed her revive.
No other cars appeared to be stopping. He glanced up at the road, and realized they'd traveled far enough from the pavement that the truck couldn't even be seen.
Under his hands, there was a flicker of movement. Her ribs were starting to knit together. He wondered again if that horribly shattered femur would have reformed perfectly straight on its own. The fracture was compound, and he could still see bone through a deep gash in her leg ... but sudden the leg moved, and light flared, and that wound disappeared as flesh flowed back together. There was no scar.
Shannon had seen. He looked up at Kenshin and mouthed, "What?" then, said louder, "What?!"
Kenshin hugged Carrie harder, smoothing blood-matted hair away from her face. Shannon demanded, "What are you doing?"
His words made Sandy and Brandon both look up in time to see the deformed lines of her chest smooth out of their own motion as ribs healed back together. I suppose I didn't need to gross Shannon out, Kenshin thought, with grim amusement. He'd never watched another Immortal heal like this before.
Sandy's eyes flickered down to her leg and he noted the wound was gone. "What in the hell ...?"
"Nothing from hell," Kenshin said, quietly. "What you are seeing -- I cannot explain it, though I was expecting it. Carrie is Immortal."
She took a deep, ragged breath and twitched hard.
"Immortal?" Shannon said, "What the fuck?"
"Immortals ... we cannot die, unless we lose our heads." Kenshin explained, briefly. "Otherwise, we will live forever. It's magic, perhaps, though the source of it is not known even to the oldest of us -- and I have known Immortals aged thousands of years. At the heart of it, however, we are no more nor less human than you three."
Carrie gasped again, then groaned, and put a hand to her head. He felt the flare of another Immortal's powerful ki at the same time. He stroked her hair and said, "Carrie-dono? How are you feeling?"
"Head hurts," she said, thickly. "God, my head hurts."
Sandy said, alarmed and incredulous, "Carrie! Hold still, you shouldn't move ..."
"She's fine." Kenshin was surprised at how quickly she had healed. It had always taken him much longer. Then again, I was generally resisting the process because I liked seeing my loved ones in the afterlife before reality yanked me back. And I've always denied what I am, hated it, fought it on some level.
Carrie said, thickly, "Was anyone else hurt?"
"Sandy's shoulder is broken, I think," Brandon said.
Kenshin glanced at the brothers. That explained why Sandy was holding his arm so close to his chest and why it looked wrong. Sandy was now tight-lipped with pain, eyes narrowed, complexion far too pale. Now that he looked at it closely, Kenshin suspected dislocated rather than, or in addition to, broken. Hard to tell without modern x-rays, though. He needed to get the kid to a hospital.
His truck wasn't going anywhere, ever again; they would need to involve others. And the law dictated that he call the cops. Besides, Sandy could be hurt worse than he looked -- he wanted to get him to the hospital quickly, which meant a 911 call. Conscious of the need to make things look good for the authorities, he said, "Shannon, when the police ask, tell them you were seated where Carrie was. Can everyone remember that?"
Shannon blinked, then glanced at his gashed arm -- blood was trickling between his fingers -- and nodded. That would explain the blood on the seat in the truck, Kenshin hoped. He know from vast personal experience just how much even a small amount of blood would cover. Hopefully the police wouldn't look too closely at the volume.
Given the state of that door, Shannon's survival with only minor injuries would be seen as a small miracle, but Kenshin knew that paramedics were used to seeing people walk away from horrendous crashes and be killed in minor ones. Sometimes it was just luck.
"C'mon, Carrie, there's water in the bottom of this ravine. We need to wash the blood off you," Kenshin said, urging her to stand up. The others stared in absolute shock as she rose carefully.
He caught her hand in his and led her towards the creek he could hear trickling below. "I died, didn't I?"
"Aa, you did," he said, gently.
"I can ... I can feel you. In my head."
"You always will be able to, now." He shrugged out of his shirt, soaked it in the water, and handed it to her. "I'm sorry, Carrie. If I had done things differently this might not have happened this way."
"Not your fault." She wiped at the blood.
"Did anyone call 911?"
"No, and I wanted to make sure things were okay for the authorities before I suggested it." Kenshin said. "I think they're all in shock."
"Your sword?"
"In the duffle bag under the back seat," Kenshin said. "Yeah, I need to get it. Are you feeling a little better?"
She nodded, "I feel ... I don't hurt. Just dizzy."
"That's just the blood loss. You'll feel better after a good meal and a little bit of time." He rested a hand on her arm. "I'm sorry, Carrie. I feel like I failed you."
She hugged him, a quick squeeze. "It had to happen sooner or later, Kenshin. And it's Michael's fault. I swear I'm going to beat the shit out of that man when I get my hands on him. He's got it coming."
You'll have to wait in line, Kenshin thought, angrily.
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