Chapter Twelve - Fast and Furious

Tyler grinned at John, slapping the side of the car enthusiastically. His fingers left sweaty imprints on the yellow metal. "You with me, Johnny?"

"Huh?" Sheppard blinked dumbly, and looked down at the car. Silver wheels, a new paint job, and sleek curves hiding an impossibly powerful engine. "Yeah."

"Because you spaced out for a second there."

"Sorry."

Tyler Edwards, older than the seventeen year old Sheppard by three years, although his ID said five. Tall and beefy, with a flush of bleached blonde hair that contrasted sharply with his oddly pink skin. Sheppard's father disapproved of the boy, and had banned his son from seeing him - which was exactly the reason why John found himself at the freeway.

He didn't even like Tyler. The boy was obnoxious, rude, arrogant, and stupid. He'd gained his college place through his one talent, football, and upon graduation would be appointed into an overpaid managerial position with his father's firm, paid for demeaning everyone beneath him. He was dead before he was thirty, killed in a speed boat accident whilst holidaying in Miami.

Tyler grinned, slapped the roof of the car a second time, and then dropped smoothly into the driver's seat.

The freeway was empty. It had been completed a week previously, but it was another two before its grand opening. The smooth, unmarked concrete stretched out before John, bordered on either side by a slope of fresh green turf, hiding the track from the view of any passing cop car. Security was non-existent, but even driving through the plastic fencing gave Sheppard a small thrill.

"Johnny."

Eric McGinley, Sheppard's best friend at the time, if John could have called what they had friendship. Eric was the same age as John, and with the same reckless desire for excitement. They hung out together, the two of them amidst a group of the same, meeting up to compare cars or to try and sneak into clubs.

Tyler, as the oldest, was the leader, but there was tension between him and Sheppard. John had grown into his height, and wore his body with new confidence, impressing girls easily with his boyish smile and teasing flirtation. Tyler relied on his money, and resented the younger boy's careless attraction to the fairer sex.

John knew this, but it hadn't stopped him from pushing his luck. It was at one of the clubs, loitering by a table with the girl Tyler had been watching all night, that he'd stepped over the line. The group had been looking to him, laughing at his jokes, listening to his exaggerated tales of conquests, and for a brief moment, he had stolen Tyler's place.

In a way, he'd been relieved at the challenge. John wasn't stupid; in an all-out fight, he'd have been the loser, crushed by Tyler's weight and strength. But speed - that, he excelled at.

The car, a sleek, beautiful red, was the end result of months of part time work, and the sacrifice of his grades. Sheppard had earned every cent himself when his father, agreeing to the purchase, had shown him a catalogue of family friendly, safe vehicles.

"You getting in or what?"

Eric was in the passenger side of John's car, a grin on his face. He slapped the driver's seat and waited impatiently as a dazed Sheppard got in.

"Tyler's such an idiot. Like he can beat you on the road."

"Yeah." Sheppard tried to look casual as he glanced behind him to the empty back seat, then turned to peer through the low windscreen.

"You looking for someone?"

There was a small gaggle of people stood on the verge beside the road. He recognized most of them, and could remember the names of half; old friends and faces he had forgotten. They looked towards the two cars eagerly, several of the boys shouting insults and dares.

Sheppard had no chance to wonder where his teammates were. Eric tossed him the car keys. Caught by surprise, John fumbled the catch and they fell into his lap.

"Nervous, Johnny?"

"Me?" his younger self replied cockily. "Never."

And it was all too easy to fall into familiar patterns. The over confident, stubborn, arrogant Johnny Sheppard, desperate to prove himself. Tatty jeans and scuffed leather jacket, messy, dark hair threatening to fall over his eyes.

He brushed back an errant strand with one hair. When a younger John had threatened to shave it close, his mother had run her fingers through it, and told him she liked it long. Then she'd died, and he'd kept the length, a concession to her memory.

His father hated it, of course. Told him that if he wanted to join the military, he needed to lose the vanity. It was simpler for his father to blame invented failures than to acknowledge his son's grief, or his own.

Unable to stop himself, John's hand lifted the keys to the ignition and turned. The engine roared to life eagerly, more enthusiastic about the race than its driver. Eric howled in pleasure, leaning out of the passenger window and hollering to the girls standing on the verge: "You take a good look, ladies!"

Two of them blew exaggerated, stage school kisses towards the car, then turned to each other and giggled. Eric grinned appreciatively before turning back to John, nodding at the audience.

"I think they like us."

"Me," the younger Sheppard corrected. "They like me, Eric. Don't delude yourself."

"Hey, you and Tyler aren't the only studs."

"Please, McGinley. Control yourself. Remember who's driving." John depressed the accelerator with one foot by a fraction, and felt the car hum beneath him.

In the opposite lane, Tyler had his car purring, and was now leaning out of his window soaking up some love from an adoring blonde. Seeing Sheppard was ready, he slapped the girl across the back of her short skirt and pulled back into position, both hands on the wheel.

Without moving his body, he turned his head and eyed John. "You ready, Johnny?"

There was a threat beneath the false warmth, a coldness and malice that was not missed by either John or Eric. Temporarily lost for words, Sheppard was saved by a growl from Eric.

"Let's make this a good game, Edwards."

The words cut through the memory sharply. As though waking suddenly from a deep sleep, Sheppard started, his body tensing and his eyes looking forward past the windscreen to the crowd. He still couldn't see the others, but at the far end of the track he could make out the distant silhouettes of more onlookers, those who had chosen to wait out at the finishing line.

He thought back to how this had ended. Tyler had cheated, but so had he, using sneaky quick turns and slides to the left in an attempt to force the other boy to swerve, or slow down. The cordoned off road was less than two miles long, but an unfinished intersection at either end created a loop around which the boys had to make five passes. It was on the fifth and final pass that Tyler would make his mistake. Attempting a tricky maneuver that involved a sudden, sharp turn of the wheels into the other lane whilst on the intersection, his car would skid on an unexpectedly slippery patch of tarmac and slide into the side of Sheppard's. With both vehicles separated from the road, John remembered a brief period of dizzying colors and the squealing of tires before a sharp, sudden jolt had thrown him forward in his seat, leaving bruises across his chest that would not fade for weeks. The soft grass of the verge had saved both boys from serious injury, but not John from a tense stand-off with his father.

"Hey, you want him to gain the lead or what?"

Sheppard blinked, turning his attention back to the present. Despite his consciousness vacationing, his body had apparently acted of its own will, responding to the scream of 'Go!' from Mark Dealer, stood on the sidelines. The two cars were rattling along the freeway at increasing speed, Tyler effortlessly taking the lead. Sheppard could feel the thrum of the engine, the vibrations moving through the steering wheel clutched in his hands, up through his arms to reverberate around his chest. Unbidden, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator, his hand moving the gears obediently.

Eric whooped, leaning out of the window to feel the rushing wind. "This is more like it! Get the speed up, man. If he wins we'll never live it down."

The crash had totaled one side of John's beautiful car, making it impossible to hide the incident from his father. After returning home, two stern looking cops in tow, Sheppard had prepared himself for arguments, another yelling match. He had been left to wait in the front room whilst his father took the officers into the kitchen. He had pressed himself to the door to hear and had only caught snatches of soft voices. Twenty minutes later his father said goodbye to the cops, then turned from the front door to his son.

"Do you want some dinner?"

John had blinked stupidly at his father, astonished by the question. "Dad?"

"I imagine you're hungry. There's some chicken salad in the fridge and the remains of the casserole from Wednesday. I'm going to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow." And then his father had moved away, to the staircase, leaving his confused son stood in the hallway.

Sheppard could still remember the sadness in his father's eyes, and the sense of incredible shame and guilt.

"Come on, Johnny! We're almost level. Let's open her up, see what she can really do!"

The car engine revved noisily, drowning out the rest of Eric's delight. Sheppard could see Tyler's car only meters away, and to their left, and he forced his own vehicle to go faster, to pull up alongside the older boy. He could see Tyler in the driver's seat, glancing towards his opponent quickly, and he glimpsed worry, and anger.

After the crash Sheppard had quietly sold the car to a nearby auto repair shop, for half the money he had originally paid for it less the amount needed to fix the damage. He had bought a second hand, gas friendly replacement that he hated. He returned to college, improved his grades, and spent another year living with the silent specter of his father before moving out into a place of his own.

Both cars had smoothly navigated the first turn, although Tyler's larger, bulkier vehicle had lost its speed at the intersection and now Sheppard was pulling into the front. The thrill of the memory was beginning to affect him; nothing could beat the adrenaline rush of an F16 at full throttle, or the unexpected grace of a puddle jumper, but for pure, raw power, a car chase appealed to the teenage John he had buried for so long. The vehicle roared under his touch, the wheels obeying every wrench of his hands, gas burning away and leaving streaks on the new tarmac. Eric's enthusiasm was infectious; John grinned, leaning forward in his seat as though willing the car to go faster, to increase those precious few inches between himself and Tyler. Not to just win, but to beat him, to taste satisfied glory.

He was already at the second intersection, pulling the wheel to the far right to drag the tires into a sharp turn, the effort tearing at the muscles in his arms. It was then that he made his mistake. At such a speed even John's nimbler vehicle couldn't cope with the turn, failing to follow the road and instead heading for the opposite embankment. Desperately John yanked the steering wheel further around to the right, struggling to pull the car back into the turn but despite his efforts the tires slipped on an unexpected oily patch of tarmac and skidded. Having lost control of the car all Sheppard could do was watch the side of Tyler's car speed closer until…

In the brief second before the crunch, Sheppard heard somebody scream. He thought it sounded like Ford.

The front of the car clipped the side of Tyler's, sending the other boy careening into the verge. The vehicle seemed to groan, the force and angle of the collision sending the car into a roll, landing roof first onto the ground with an ear-splitting peal of thunder. Sheppard felt every bone in his body rattle, pain bursting across his chest from where the belt strapped him into his seat, his head jolted so hard he heard his neck crack. The car juddered as velocity dragged it across the tarmac, slowing, then finally stopping, bumping into the low metal barrier of the road.

For several moments the only sound was Sheppard's own heavy panting.

He seemed miraculously uninjured, aside from some aches from his abused ribs. He flexed his fingers experimentally, then his toes, satisfying himself that he was unharmed, then tried to peer through the front window. The windscreen had cracked through the force of the car's landing, and Sheppard could see the ground above him, and the brilliant blue sky below.

"Sir."

The voice beside him was croaky, its owner breathing with harsh, stuttered gasps. Carefully Sheppard turned his head to look towards Eric…

To find Ford sat in his place.

The young lieutenant was ashen, suspended upside down in the car by the seat belt still secured around his chest. He was wearing the thin t-shirt and jeans Eric had been sporting a few moments earlier, and Sheppard could see an odd, sharp bump of ribs through the thin cloth. Aiden was struggling to catch his breath, and as he uttered another soft, gurgling: "Major," Sheppard glimpsed blood staining his teeth.

"Oh crap." John fumbled at his own belt, desperation causing his fingers to fumble. "Lieutenant, stay still, okay? I'm gonna get us both out of here."

"You…." Ford closed his eyes tightly, his face taut with pain. "You crashed."

Sheppard hesitated, his breath catching over the accusation in Aiden's voice. "It was an accident."

"No." The younger man dragged another, strangled gasp of air into his lungs, blood tricking into his hair. "You… screwed up." Another gasp, and then he added unnervingly: "Sir."

"No." Sheppard tugged hard on the seatbelt catch but the force of the impact seemed to have jammed the metal. "This wasn't how this went! Eric didn't…" He stumbled over the words, clamped his mouth over the unspoken 'die' and corrected: "he wasn't badly hurt."

"Major…"

"It was a couple of scratches, a dent in the car!" He was yelling now, fear and frustration fuelling his rage, ripping at the seatbelt futilely and shouting at the game around him. "He walked away from it, we both did, you hear me?"

"Your fault." Aiden coughed, broken ribs pressing against his t-shirt. "He was right."

Sheppard didn't ask who, didn't need to. Temporarily giving up with the belt he tried pushing himself over to the open window, screaming for help across the tarmac. But he couldn't see the crowd, he couldn't see Tyler's car in the verge, he could only see the blue sky and hear the dying breaths of his second, of…

"I thought…" Aiden paused, swallowing convulsively, his lips stained red.

"No," John told him, ordered him, his hands once more struggling with his seatbelt. "Just hold on, Lieutenant."

"I thought…" and Ford turned a terrible, accusing look on Sheppard, "you would… get us home."

For the briefest of seconds, Sheppard froze.

The catch suddenly gave way beneath his fingers, releasing him from the seat. Sheppard dropped suddenly, hitting his head hard against the ceiling. Darkness claimed him.