been monstrous and unremitting. Even with her window and Tad’s window open a quarter of the way, the temperature inside must have reached 100 degrees, maybe more. It was the way your car got when you left it in the sun, that was all. Except, under normal circumstances, what you did when your car got like that was you unrolled all the windows, pulled the knobs that opened the air-ducts, and got rolling. Let’s get rolling—what a sweet sound those words had!
She licked her lips.
For short periods she had unrolled the windows all the way, creating a mild draft, but she was afraid to leave them that way. She might doze off. The heat scared her—it scared her for herself and even more for Tad, what it might be taking out of him—but it didn’t scare her as badly as the face of the dog, slavering foam and staring at her with its sullen red eyes.
The last time she had unrolled the windows all the way was when Cujo had disappeared into the shadows of the barn-garage. But now Cujo was back.
He sat in the lengthening shadow of the big barn, his head lowered, staring at the blue Pinto. The ground between his front paws was muddy from his slaver. Every now and then he would growl and snap at empty air, as if he might be hallucinating.
How long? How long before he dies?
She was a rational woman. She did not believe in monsters from closets; she believed in things she could see and touch. There was nothing supernatural about the slobbering wreck of a Saint Bernard sitting in the shade of a barn; he was merely a sick animal that had been bitten by a rabid fox or skunk or something. He wasn’t out to get her personally. He wasn’t the Reverend Dimmesdale or Moby Dog. He was not four-footed Fate.
But . . . she had just about decided to make a run for the back door of the enclosed Camber porch when Cujo had come rolling and staggering out of the darkness inside the barn.
Tad. Tad was the thing. She had to get him out of this. No more fucking around. He wasn’t answering very coherently any more. He seemed to be in touch only with the peaks of reality. The glazed way his eyes rolled toward her when she spoke to him, like the eyes of a fighter who has been struck and struck and struck, a fighter who has lost his coherence along with his mouthguard and is waiting only for the final flurry of punches to drop him insensible to the canvas—those things terrified her and roused all her motherhood. Tad was the thing. If she had been alone, she would have gone for that door long ago. It was Tad who had held her back, because her mind kept circling back to the thought of the dog pulling her down, and of Tad in the car alone.
Still, until Cujo had returned fifteen minutes ago, she had been preparing herself to go for the door. She played it over and over in her mind like a home movie, did it until it seemed to one part of her mind as if it had already happened. She would shake Tad fully awake, slap him awake if she had to. Tell him he was not to leave the car and follow her—under no circumstances, no matter what happens. She would run from the car to the porch door. Try the knob. If it was unlocked, well and fine. But she was prepared for the very real possibility that it was locked. She had taken off her shirt and now sat behind the wheel in her white cotton bra, the shirt in her lap. When she went, she would go with the shirt wrapped around her hand. Far from perfect protection, but better than none at all. She would smash in the pane of glass nearest the doorknob, reach through, and let herself onto the little back porch. And if the inner door was locked, she would cope with that too. Somehow.
But Cujo had come back out, and that took away her edge.
Never mind. He’ll go back in. He has before.
But will he? her mind chattered. It’s all too perfect, isn’t it? The Cambers are gone, and they remembered to shut off their mail like good citizens; Vic is gone, and the chances are slim that he’ll call before tomorrow night, because we just can’t afford long distance