his butt. She crouched over Tad. She put his hands above his head. She opened his mouth, pinched his nostrils shut, and breathed her voiceless breath into her son’s lungs.
In the driveway, the somnolent summer flies had found the corpse of Cujo and that of Sheriff George Bannerman, husband to Victoria, father to Katrina. They had no preference between the dog and the man. They were democratic flies. The sun blared triumphantly down. It was ten minutes of one now, and the fields shimmered and danced with silent summer. The sky was faded blue denim. Aunt Evvie’s prediction had come true.
She breathed for her son. She breathed. She breathed. Her son was not dead; she had not gone through this hell for her son to be dead, and it simply would not be.
It would not be.
She breathed. She breathed. She breathed for her son.
She was still doing it when the ambulance pulled into the driveway twenty minutes later. She would not let Vic near the boy. When he came near, she bared her teeth and growled soundlessly at him.
Stunned with grief nearly to the point of distraction, deeply sure at the final bedrock level of his consciousness that none of this could be happening, he broke into Camber’s house by way of the porch door at which Donna had stared so long and hard. The inner door beyond it had not been locked. He used the telephone.
When he came- outside again, Donna was still administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to their dead son. He started toward her and then swerved away. He went to the Pinto instead and opened the hatchback again. Heat roared out at him like an invisible lion. Had they existed in there Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday and until noon of today ? It was impossible to believe they had.
Underneath the hatchback’s floor, where the spare tire was, he found an old blanket He shook it out and put it over Bannerman’s mutilated body. He sat down on the grass then, and stared out at Town Road No. 3 and the dusty pines beyond. His mind Seated serenely away.
The ambulance driver and the two orderlies loaded Bannerman’s body into the Castle Rock Rescue Unit. They approached Donna. Donna bared her teeth at them. Her parched lips formed the words He’s alive! Alive! When one of the orderlies tried to pull her gently to her feet and lead her away, she bit him. Later this orderly would need to go to the hospital himself for anti-rabies treatment. The other orderly came to help. She fought them.
They stood away warily. Vic still sat on the lawn, his chin propped in his hands, looking across the road.
The Rescue Unit driver brought a syringe. There was a struggle. The syringe was broken. Tad lay on the grass, still dead. His patch of shade was a little bigger now.
Two more police cars arrived. Roscoe Fisher was in one of them. When the ambulance driver told him that George Bannerman was dead, Roscoe began to cry. The other policemen advanced on Donna. There was another struggle, short and furious, and Donna Trenton was finally pulled away from her son by four sweating, straining men. She nearly broke free again and Roscoe Fisher, still crying, joined them. She screamed soundlessly, whipping her head from side to side. Another syringe was produced, and she was injected successfully this time.
A stretcher came down from the ambulance, and the orderlies wheeled it over to where Tad lay on the grass. Tad, still dead, was put on it. A sheet was pulled up over his head. At the sight of this, Donna redoubled her struggles. She freed one hand and began to Sail about wildly with it. Then, suddenly, she was free.
“Donna,” Vie said. He got to his feet “Honey, it’s over. Honey, please. Let go, let go.”
She did not go for the stretcher that her son lay on. She went for the baseball bat. She picked it up and began to bludgeon the dog again. The flies rose in a shiny green-black cloud. The sound of the ball bat making contact was heavy and terrible, a butcher-shop sound. Cujo’s body jumped a little each time she struck it.
The cops began to move forward.
“No,” one of the orderlies said quietly, and a few moments later Donna simply collapsed. Brett Camber’s bat rolled away from her relaxing hand.
The ambulance left five minutes or so later, siren howling. Vic had been offered a shot—“to calm your nerves, Mr. Trenton”—and although