Cujo

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 or it was. It was the wrong angle for her arm; her muscles were working at cross-purposes, and she felt an agonizing flare of pain in her back above her right shoulderblade as something sprained. But the door opened. She had just time to fall back into the bucket seat, and then the dog was on her again.

Tad woke up. He saw his mother being driven back toward the Pinto's center console; there was something in his mother's lap, some terrible, hairy thing with red eyes and he knew what it was, oh yes, it was the thing from his closet, the thing that had promised to come a little closer and a little closer until it finally arrived right by your bed, Tad, and yes, here it was, all right, here it was. The Monster Words had failed; the monster was here, now, and it was murdering his mommy. He began to scream, his hands clapped over his eyes.

Its snapping jaws were inches from the bare flesh of her midriff. She held it off as best she could, only faintly aware of her son's screams behind her. Cujo's eyes were locked on her. Incredibly, his tail was wagging. His back legs worked at the gravel, trying to get a footing solid enough to allow him to jump right in, but the gravel kept splurting out from under his driving rear paws.

He lunged forward, her hands slipped, and suddenly he was biting her, biting her bare stomach just below the white cotton cups of her bra, digging for her entrails

Donna uttered a low, feral cry of pain and shoved with both hands as hard as she could. Now she was sitting up again, blood trickling down to the waistband of her pants. She held Cujo with her left hand. Her right hand groped for the Pinto's doorhandle and found it. She began to slam the door against the dog. Each time she swept it forward into Cujo's ribs, there was a heavy whopping sound, like a heavy rug beater striking a carpet hung over a clothesline. Each time the door hit him, Cujo would grunt, snorting his warm, foggy breath over her.

He drew back a little to spring. She timed it and brought the door toward her again, using all of her failing strength. This time the door closed on his neck and head, and she heard a crunching sound. Cujo howled his pain and she thought, He must draw back now, he must, he MUST, but Cujo drove forward instead and his jaws closed on her lower thigh, just above her knee, and with one quick ripping motion he pulled a chunk out of her. Donna shrieked.

She slammed the door on Cujo's head again and again, her screams melting into Tad's, melting into a gray shockworld as Cujo worked on her leg, turning it into something else, something that was red and muddy and churned up. The dog's head was plastered with thick, sticky blood, as black as insect blood in the chancey starlight. Little by little he was forcing his way in again; her strength was on the ebb now.

She pulled the door to one final time, her head thrown back, her mouth drawn open in a quivering circle, her face a livid, moving blur in the darkness. It really was the last time; there was just no more left.

But suddenly Cujo had had enough.

He drew back, whining, staggered away, and suddenly fell over on the gravel, trembling, legs scratching weakly at nothing. He began to dig at his wounded head with his right forepaw.

Donna slammed the door shut and lay back, sobbing weakly.

'Mommy - Mommy - Mommy

'Tad ... okay . .

'Mommy!'

' ... Okay.

Hands: his on her, fluttering and birdlike; hers on Tad's face, touching, trying to reassure, then falling back.

'Mommy ... home.. . please ... Daddy and home ... Daddy and home...'

'Sure, Tad we will ... we will, honest to God, I'll get you there ... we will . . .'

No sense in the words. It was all right. She could feel herself fading back, fading into that gray shockworld, those mists in herself which she had never suspected until now. Tad's words took on a deep chaining sound, words in an echo chamber. But it was all right. It was

No. It wasn't all right.

Because the dog had bitten her

- and the dog was rabid.

Holly told her sister not to he foolish, to just dial her call direct, but Charity insisted on calling the operator and having it billed to her home number. Taking handouts, even a little thing like an after-six long-distance call, wasn't her way.

The operator got her directory assistance for Maine and Charity asked for Alva Thornton's number in Castle Rock. A few moments later, Alva's phone was ringing.

'Hello, Thornton's Egg Farms.

'Hi, Bessie?'

'Ayuh, 'tis.'

'This is Charity Camber. I'm calling from Connecticut. Is Alva right around handy?'

Brett sat on the sofa, pretending to read a book.

'Gee, Charity, he ain't. He's got his bowling league t'night. They're all over to the Pondicherry Lanes in Bridgton. Somethin wrong?'

Charity had carefully and consciously decided what she was going to say. The situation was a bit delicate. Like almost every other married woman in Castle Rock (and that was not to necessarily let out the single ones), Bessie loved to talk, and if she found out that Joe Camber had gone shooting off somewhere without his wife's knowledge as soon as Charity and Brett had left to visit her sister in Connecticut... why, that would be something to talk about on the party line, wouldn't it?

'No, except that Brett and I got a little worried about the dog.'

'Your Saint Bernard?'

'Ayuh, Cujo. Brett and I are down here visiting my sister while Joe's in Portsmouth on business. 'This was a barefaced be, but a safe one; Joe did occasionally go to Portsmouth to buy parts (there was no sales tax) and to the car auctions. 'I just wanted to make sure he got someone to feed the dog. You know how men are.'

'Well, Joe was over here yesterday or the day before, I think,' Bessie said doubtfully. Actually, it had been the previous Thursday. Bessie Thornton was not a terribly bright woman (her great-aunt, the late Evvie Chalmers, had been fond of screaming to anyone who would listen that Bessie 'wouldn't never pass none of those IQ tests, but she's goodhearted'), her life on Alva's chicken farm was a hard one, and she lived most fully during her 'stories'- As the World Turns, The Doctors, and All My Children (she had tried The Young and the Restless but considered it 'too racy by half'). She tended to be fuzzy on those parts of the real world that did not bear on feeding and watering the chickens, adjusting their piped-in music, candling and sorting eggs, washing floors and clothes, doing dishes, selling eggs, tending the garden. And in the winter, of course, she could have told a questioner the exact date of the next meeting of the Castle Rock SnoDevils, the snowmobile club she and Alva belonged to.

Joe had come over on that day with a tractor tire he had repaired for Alva. Joe had done the job free of charge since the Cambers got all their eggs from the Thorntons at half price. Alva also harrowed Joe's small patch of garden each April, and so Joe was glad to patch the tire. It was the way country people got along.