blood was up. Her eyes seemed to move effortlessly and perfectly in their bed of moisture. Her kidneys were heavy but not unpleasantly so. This was it; this was for keeps. The thought that it was her life she was putting on the line, her very own real life, had a heavy, silent fascination. like a great weight which has reached the outermost degree of its angle of repose. She swung the car door shut—clunk.
She waited, scenting the air like an animal. There was nothing. The maw of Joe Camber’s barn-garage was dark and silent The chrome of the Pinto’s front bumper twinkled dimly. Faintly, the Dixieland music played on, fast and brassy and cheerful. She bent down, expecting her knees to pop, but they didn’t. She picked up a handful of the loose gravel. One by one she began to toss the stones over the Pinto’s hood at the place she couldn’t see.
The first small stone landed in front of Cujo’s nose, clicked off more stones, and then lay still. Cujo twitched a little. His tongue hung out. He seemed to be grinning. The second stone struck beyond him. The third struck his shoulder. He didn’t move. THE WOMAN was still trying to draw him out.
Donna stood by the car, frowning. She had heard the first stone click off the gravel, also the second. But the third . . . it was as if it had never come down. There had been no minor click. What did that mean?
Suddenly she didn’t want to run for the porch door until she could see that there was nothing lurking in front of the car. Then, yes. Okay. But . . . just to make sure.
She took one step. Two. Three.
Cujo got ready. His eyes glowed in the darkness.
Four steps from the door of the car. Her heart was a drum in her chest.
Now Cujo could see THE WOMAN’S hips and thighs: In a moment she would see him. Good. He wanted her to see him.
Five steps from the door.
Donna turned her head. Her neck creaked like the spring on an old screen door. She felt a premonition, a sense of low sureness. She turned her head, looking for Cujo. Cujo was there. He had been there all the time, crouched low, hiding from her, waiting for her, laying back in the tall bushes.
Their eyes locked for a moment—Donna’s wide blue ones, Cujo’s muddy red ones. For a moment she was looking out of his eyes, seeing herself, seeing THE WOMAN—Was he seeing himself through hers?
Then he sprang at her.
There was no paralysis this time. She threw herself backward, fumbling behind her for the doorhandle. He was snarling and grinning, and the drool ran out between his teeth in thick strings. He landed where she had been and skidded stiff-legged in the gravel, giving her a precious extra second.
Her thumb found the door button below the handle and depressed it. She pulled. The door was stuck. The door wouldn’t open. Cujo leaped at her.
It was as if someone had slung a medicine ball right into the soft, vulnerable flesh of her breasts. She could feel them push out toward her ribs—it hurt—and then she had the dog by the throat, her fingers sinking into its heavy, rough fur, trying to hold it away from her. She could hear the quickening sob of her respiration. Starlight ran across Cujo’s mad eyes in dull semicircles. His teeth were snapping only inches from her face and she could smell a dead world on his breath, terminal sickness, senseless murder. She thought crazily of the drain backing up just before her mother’s party, spurting green goo all over the ceiling.
Somehow, using all her strength, she was able to fling him away when his back feet left the ground in another lunge at her throat. She beat helplessly behind her for the door button. She found it, but before she could even push it in, Cujo came again. She kicked out at him, and the sole of her sandal struck his muzzle, already badly lacerated in his earlier kamikaze charges at the door. The dog sprawled back on his haunches, howling out his pain and his fury.
She found the button set in the doorhandle again, knowing perfectly well that it was her last chance, Tad’s last chance. She pushed it in and pulled with all her might as the dog came again, some creature from hell that would come and come and come until she was dead