every night. And if he does call, he’ll call early. When he doesn’t get any answer he’ll assume we went out to catch some chow at Mario’s or maybe a couple of ice creams at the Tastee Freeze. And he won’t call later because he’ll think we’re asleep. He’ll call tomorrow instead. Considerate Vic. Yes, it’s all just too perfect. Wasn’t there a dog in the front of the boat in that story about the boatman on the River Charon? The boatman’s dog. Just call me Cujo. All out for the Valley of Death.
Go in, she silently willed the dog. Go back in the barn, damn you.
Cujo didn’t move.
She licked her lips, which felt almost as puffy as Tad’s looked.
She brushed his hair off his forehead and said softly, “How you goin, Tadder?”
“Shhh,” Tad muttered distractedly. “The ducks . . .”
She gave him a shake. “Tad? Honey? You okay? Talk to me!”
His eyes opened a little at a time. He looked around, a small boy who was puzzled and hot and dreadfully tired. “Mommy? Can’t we go home? I’m so hot . . .”
“We’ll go home,” she soothed.
“When, Mom? When?” He began to cry helplessly.
Oh Tad, save your moisture, she thought. You may need it. Crazy thing to have to be thinking. But the entire situation was ridiculous to the point of lunacy, wasn’t it? The idea of a small boy dying of dehydration
(stop it he is NOT dying)
less than seven miles from the nearest good-sized town was crazy.
But the situation is what it is, she reminded herself roughly. And don’t you think anything else, sister. It’s like a war on a miniaturized scale, so everything that looked small before looks big now. The smallest puff of air through the quarter-open windows was a zephyr. The distance to the back porch was half a mile across no-man’s-land. And if you want to believe the dog is Fate, or the Ghost of Sins Remembered, or even the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, then believe it. In this curiously scaled-down situation—this life-or-death situation—even having to go to the bathroom became a skirmish.
We’re going to get out of it. No dog is going to do this to my son.
“When, Mommy?” He looked up to her, his eyes wet, his face as pale as cheese.
“Soon,” she said grimly. “Very soon.” She brushed his hair back and held him against her. She looked out Tad’s window and again her eyes fixed on that thing lying in the high grass, that old friction-taped baseball bat.
I’d like to bash your head in with it.
Inside the house, the phone began to ring.
She jerked her head around, suddenly wild with hope.
“Is it for us, Mommy? Is the phone for us?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know who it was for. But if they were lucky—and their luck was due to change soon, wasn’t it?—it would be from someone with cause to be suspicious that no one was answering the phone at the Cambers’. Someone who would come out and check around.
Cujo’s head had come up. His head cocked to one side, and for a moment he bore an insane resemblance to Nipper, the RCA dog with his ear to the gramophone horn. He got shakily to his feet and started toward the house and the sound of the ringing telephone.
“Maybe the doggy’s going to answer the telephone,” Tad said. “Maybe—”
With a speed and agility that was terrifying, the big dog changed direction and came at the car. The awkward stagger was gone now, as if it had been nothing but a sly act all along. It was roaring and bellowing rather than barking. Its red eyes burned. It struck the car with a hard, dull crunch and rebounded—with stunned eyes, Donna saw that the side of her door was actually bowed in a bit. It must be dead, she thought hysterically, bashed its sick brains in spinal fusion deep concussion must have must have MUST HAVE—
Cujo got back up. His muzzle was bloody. His eyes seemed wandering, vacuous again. Inside the house the phone rang on and on. The dog made as if to walk away, suddenly snapped viciously at its own flank as if stung, whirled, and sprang at Donna’s window. It struck right in front of Donna’s face with another tremendous dull thud. Blood sprayed across the glass, and a long silver crack appeared. Tad shrieked and clapped his hands to his face, pulling his cheeks down, harrowing them with his fingernails.
The dog leaped again. Ropes of foam