white line painted on the western horizon. It looked no thicker than the white stripe painted down the center of the highway. That would be gone soon enough. Crickets sang in the high grass to the right of the driveway, making a mindlessly cheerful rickety-rickety sound.
Cujo was still in the barn. Sleeping? she wondered. Eating?
That made her remember that she had packed them some food. She crawled between the two front buckets and got the Snoopy lunchbox and her own brown bag. Her Thermos had rolled all the way to the back, probably when the car had started to buck and jerk coming up the road. She had to stretch, her blouse coming untucked, before she could hook it with her fingers. Tad, who had been in a half doze, stirred awake. His voice was immediately filled with a sharp fright that made her hate the damned dog even more.
“Mommy? Mommy? What are you—”
“Just getting the food,” she soothed him. “And my Thermos—see?”
“Okay.” He settled back into his seat and put his thumb in his mouth again.
She shook the big Thermos gently beside her ear, listening for the grating sound of broken glass. She only heard milk swishing around inside. That was something, anyhow.
“Tad? You want to eat?”
“I want to take a nap,” he said around his thumb, not opening his eyes.
“You gotta feed the machine, chum,” she said.
He didn’t even smile “Not hungry. Sleepy.”
She looked at him, troubled, and decided it would be wrong to force the issue any further. Sleep was Tad’s natural weapon—maybe his only one—and it was already half an hour past his regular bedtime. Of course, if they had been home, he would have had a glass of milk and a couple of cookies before brushing his teeth . . . and a story, one of his Mercer Mayer books, maybe . . . and . . .
She felt the hot sting of tears and tried to push all those thoughts away. She opened her Thermos with shaky hands and poured herself half a cup of milk. She set it on the dashboard and took one of the figbars. After one bite she realized she was absolutely ravenous. She ate three more figbars, drank some milk, popped four or five of the green olives, then drained her cup. She burped gently . . . and then looked more sharply at the barn.
There was a darker shadow in front of it now. Except it wasn’t just a shadow. It was the dog. It was Cujo.
He’s standing watch over us.
No, she didn’t believe that. Nor did she believe she had seen a vision of Cujo in a pile of blankets stacked in her son’s closet. She didn’t . . . except . . . except part of her did. But that part wasn’t in her mind.
She glanced up into the rearview mirror at where the road was. It was too dark now to see it, but she knew it was there, just as she knew that nobody was going to go by. When they had come out that other time with Vic’s Jag, all three of them (the dog was nice then, her brain muttered, the Tadder patted him and laughed, remember?), laughing it up and having a great old time, Vic had told her that until five years ago the Castle Rock Dump had been out at the end of Town Road No. 3. Then the new waste treatment plant had gone into operation on the other side of town, and now, a quarter of a mile beyond the Camber place, the road simply ended at a place where a heavy chain was strung across it. The sign which hung from the chain read NO TRESPASSING DUMP CLOSED. Beyond Cambers’, there was just no place to go.
Donna wondered if maybe some people in search of a really private place to go parking might not ride by, but she couldn’t imagine that even the horniest of local kids would want to neck at the old town dump. At any rate, no one had passed yet.
The white line on the western horizon had faded to a bare afterglow now . . . and she was afraid that even that was mostly wishful thinking. There was no moon.
Incredibly, she felt drowsy herself. Maybe sleep was her natural weapon, too. And what else was there to do? The dog was still out there (at least she thought it was; the darkness had gotten just deep enough to make it hard