It took Frank King a dozen seconds or so to fight through his disorientation and understand his current situation. The crash and, subsequently, the explosion of the airbag into his face had knocked him out for a moment. Adding to that, the car he'd been driving was being riddled by bullets shot by the men who'd been pursuing him for nearly an hour.

"[i]Jennifer! Jennifer! Keep your head down![/i]" he hollered as he fought to release his seat belt. He searched for the now missing pistol he'd previously had secured under his right thigh, eventually finding it on the floorboard under the brake pedal. As he fought to retrieve it, he ordered, "[i]Jennifer, keep you head down. Get down into the floorboards!"

When he heard no response from the woman in the backseat, Frank suddenly feared that she might have been harmed or even killed by the crash or barrage of gunfire. He turned to look, finding the rear driver's side door open and both Jennifer and little Robert already outside the car.
  
He ducked again as more bullets hit the vehicle. Fighting to get the damaged door open, Frank extended the pistol out before him and fired off a half dozen shots. He leapt out, sliding down the bank of the ditch until he reached the bottom, then turned to find Jennifer. She had curled around the back of the car and was hiding, fear and desperation in her expression.

"[i]We'll be okay! We'll get out of this![/i]" he told her. "[i]They're not going to hurt us.[/i]"

Despite how this might have looked to an outside observer -- say, a woman hiding nearby in the woods -- the men pursuing Frank and Jennifer had no intentions of killing them. The barrage of bullets had initially and [i]successfully[/i] been intended to bring the car to a stop, and the continuation of the barrage was simply to keep the pair at bay.

As proof of this assumption of his, Frank heard the leader of their pursuers holler, "[i]All we want is the woman and the child! Give'em up, and we'll let you leave with all the stuff you stole from us.[/i]"

Frank responded, "[i]They're my family! My wife and child![/i]"

That wasn't entirely true, of course. Frank had only met Jennifer six or seven months ago, while living with a community of [i]Immunes[/i] outside Sheridan, Wyoming. Neither of them had liked the living situation there, but liking each other just fine, they'd decided to stay together when Frank said he was heading north for Canada. 

Just as Jennifer wasn't Frank's wife, the infant wasn't Jennifer's child either. Baby Robert's parents had both died of the I-55 virus just weeks after his birth, and Jennifer had assumed care for the baby. She'd expected it to die soon enough as well, but -- like she herself -- Robert had turned out to be immune to the virus that was killing off most of humanity.

"[i]They're Immunes![/i]" the man in the truck called. "[i]They're what we need to start over.[/i]"

"[i]You're not taking my wife and kid![/i]"

Frank rose to take some more shots at his pursuers. The pistol's slide remained back after the last shot, indicating that it was empty. Frank stared at it for a moment before tossing it away in frustration. He slid down again for cover, then moved to wrap his arms around the woman who, in turn, had her arms around the child.

The gunfight was over, he thought to himself, which was good news. The bad news was that the men would now take Jennifer and Robert and, likely, kill him on the spot. He dreaded the idea of Jennifer going back to that compound from which they'd fled. She would be subjected to forced pregnancy over the years to come, the thinking being that if she was an Immune, her offspring by other Immune men might be as well. 

As he waited to be captured, though, Frank heard a gunshot from too far away to be from their pursuers. He heard panicked voices, then another gunshot, and poked his head out to see what was happening. Just then, a third shot sounded across the open ground surrounding the crash seen, its origins apparently from the nearby woods. Frank saw one of the men jerk and collapse, joining another body already on the ground near it.

Then, for the longest time, there was silence. He looked for the remaining men but from where he and Jennifer hid, he could see no one. He scoured the woods for the shooter, again finding no one. 

Then, his attention was pulled away as Jennifer said softly, "Frank, I ... I think something's wrong."

He looked to the woman with whom he'd fallen in love and found her face white, her eyes unfocused, and her head tilting to and fro. He suddenly realized that the arm he'd wrapped around her felt wet, and pulling it out to view it, he found it red with blood. 

"Oh, Jesus, no, fuck no," he murmured in panic.

Jennifer's backside was stained with blood from a gun wound neither of them had realized she'd suffered during her exit from the car. Frank took Robert from Jennifer's arms and set him carefully down, then pulled her blouse up to reveal the wound. Blood was pumping from the bullet hole low near her kidney. He tried to stem the loss with pressure, but other than that there was little he could do for her. It didn't take a doctor to know that she was in her last moments of life.

Gunfire resumed, first from a new location in the woods and then from the pickup truck as the last two compound men fought for their lives. Frank rolled Jennifer to look into her eyes, only to find them already closed. He felt for a pulse and found it weak, nearly nonexistent.

An explosion drew his attention away, and when he looked back to Jennifer again, she was gone. Frank lost track of what was happening around him until a woman stood over him with a pistol pointed at him.

"[i]Run away or move closer to me, and I'll kill all three of you, including the kid![/i]"

Frank just stared at the woman for a long moment before raising his free and bloodied hand up into the air. He said simply, "She's already dead."

Laying Jennifer back carefully against the ditch's bank, Frank retrieved little Robert, stood, and looked around to gauge the current situation. Carefully and slowly, he climbed up the ditch's bank to the pavement and looked toward what remained of the pickup truck. Even though it was entirely engulfed in flames, it was still more or less intact, not entirely devastated like the automobile explosions of Hollywood movies. Bodies surrounded it on all sides, not a one of them showing any signs of life.

He looked back to the woman with the gun. She looked to be in her mid- to late-20s. She was pretty, beautiful even. She looked serious, too. She had, of course, just killed six or seven men and blown their vehicle to smithereens. That qualified as serious to Frank.

Unsure exactly of his new situation, he asked simply, "So ... what's next?"