was covered with glass, and I found myself thinking of brooms and dustpans - and mops - as the advancing pool of blood stopped inches from me.
"Martin?" I asked hoarsely.
"Yes," he said, breathily.
"Honey, I think Karl has to have a tourniquet."
"Rory?" he asked.
"Dead," I said.
Trying not to sit up, I fumbled my belt out of its loops, and wound it around Karl's thigh. To my intense relief, Martin scooted on his elbows to the other side of the wounded man and drew the belt tight. Karl became silent, and I risked looking at his face to see he was as pale as his complexion would permit him to get.
I glanced at Martin, wanting to see if Karl's poor condition had registered with him.
I made an incoherent sound of horror. Martin was covered with blood.
My husband, the invincible and strong, the coper with crises. "Oh, honey," I said. "Oh, honey, you're hurt." Sometimes the obvious truth is the only one that fills your mind and you don't care if you sound smart or not. "Cuts from the glass," he said briefly. But he was breathing shallowly, and his color was as bad as Karl's.
Without wasting further breath, Martin reached up a cautious hand to get the telephone sitting on the counter.
From upstairs, Hayden began crying. It came over the monitor clearly. I made as if to rise, and Martin clamped a hand on my shoulder. His grip wasn't strong, but the force of his will was.
"Are you crazy?" he hissed. "Stay down!" He dialed without holding the phone to his ear. I was closer to it, and I could see that the little light, the one that comes on to illuminate the numbers so you can dial in the dark, was off. "Phone's dead," I told him, unable to control the shaking of my voice. I followed the wire with my eyes, and when it came to the jack, I saw that the phone had not been cut off outside the house, but inside; the little plastic connector had been cut off. I pointed, and Martin followed the line of my finger. For the first time since I'd met him, I saw despair in his eyes. Martin held it up to his ear to confirm what his eyes had already checked. One of the people who had been our visitors in the past two hours had done this. They'd all been in the kitchen. This was the only phone in the house.
"Where's the cell phone?" I asked.
"It's out in the Jeep."
Of course. I'd seen it there minutes before.
"We'll have to get Karl into the Jeep. We'll call the hospital on our way into town."
"You and the baby have to come." Though he seemed barely conscious, Martin crawled over to the wall and got Karl's rifle.
I couldn't remember how close the Jeep was to the front door. "Let me go check where I parked the Jeep," I told Martin, and crept on my hands and knees to the front door. I stretched up a hand and opened the door, peering around the frame to keep as much of myself covered as possible.
The Jeep was wonderfully close. I felt a surge of hope. We'd get out of here, into town, to the little Corinth hospital.
Then I noticed that the Jeep was canted oddly to one side. My heart did something painful inside my chest when I realized that two of the tires were flat, the two on the side away from the door.
I shut the front door, ran in a crouch to the stairs. They weren't visible from any windows, or at least the angle would be quite acute. I sprinted up as fast as I could, reached the top safely. I stood and panted for a few seconds, trying to get my breathing rate down to something approximately normal, then scurried into Hayden's room, which was over the kitchen. It was safest for him right where he was, I made myself admit, though my every instinct was to pick him up and take him with me. But I couldn't stand the crying. I tried popping his pacifier in his mouth. That would hold him, I hoped. I didn't want to tell Martin about the Jeep's being disabled, but I had to. He looked even worse than he had three minutes ago, and Karl, I thought, was unconscious.
Martin was still thinking clearly, though.
"Check to see if the phone's still in the Jeep," he told me, though he clearly hadn't much hope. This silent