Cujo

from. But he would kill them A. He would

He woke suddenly, his head lifting from his paws, his head cocking.

A car was coming.

To his hellishly alert cars, the sound of the approaching car was dreadful, insupportable; it was the sound of some great stinging insect coming to fill him with poison.

He lurched to his feet, whining. All his joints seemed filled with crushed glass. He looked at the dead car. Inside, he could see the unmoving outline of THE WOMAN'S head. Before, Cujo had been able to look right through the glass and see her, but THE WOMAN had done something to the glass that made it hard to see. It didn't matter what she did to the windows. She couldn't get out. Nor THE Boy, either.

The drone was closer now. The car was coming up the hill, but ... was it a car? Or a giant bee or wasp come to batten on him, to sting him, to make his pain even worse?

Better wait and see.

Cujo slunk under the porch, where he had often spent hot summer days in the past. It was drifted sleep with the decaying autumn leaves of other years, leaves which released a smell he had thought incredibly sweet and pleasant in those same other years. Now the smell seemed immense and cloying, suffocating and well-nigh unbearable. He growled at the smell and began to slobber foam again. If a dog could kill a scent, Cujo would have killed this one.

The drone was very close now. And then a car was turning into the driveway. A car with blue sides and a white roof and lights on the top.

'Me one thing George Bannerman had been least prepared to me when he turned into Joe Camber's dooryard was the Pinto belonging to the missing woman. He was not a stupid man, and while he would have been impatient with Andy Masen's point-topoint kind of logic (he had dealt with the horror of Frank Dodd and understood that sometimes there was no logic),he arrived at his own mostly solid conclusions in much the same way, if on a more subconscious level. And he agreed with Masen's belief that it was highly unlikely the Trenton woman and her son would be here. But the car was here, anyway.

Bannerman grabbed for the mike hung under his dashboard and then decided to check the car first. From this angle, directly behind the Pinto, it was impossible to see if anyone was in there or not. The backs of the bucket seats were a bit too high, and both Tad and Donna had slumped down in their sleep.

Bannerman got out of the cruiser and slammed the door behind him. Before he had gotten two steps, he saw the entire driver's side window was a buckled mass of shatter-shot cracks. His heart began to beat harder, and his hand went to the butt of his .38 Police Special.

Cujo stared out at THE MAN from the blue car with rising hate. It was this MAN who had caused all his pain; he felt sure of it. THE MAN had caused the pain in his joints and the high, rotten singing in his head; it was THE MAN's fault that the drift of old leaves here beneath the porch now smelled putrescent; it was THE MAN's fault that he could not look at water without whining and shrinking away and wanting to kill it in spite of his great thirst.

A growl began somewhere deep in his heavy chest as his legs coded beneath him. He could smell THE MAN his oil of sweat and excitement, the heavy meat set against his bones. The growl deepened, then rose to a great and shattering cry of fury. He sprang out from beneath the porch and charged at this awful MAN who had caused his pain.

During that first crucial moment, Bannerman didn't even hear Cujo's low, rising growl. He had approached the Pinto closely enough to see a mass of hair lying against the driver's side window. His first thought was that the woman must have been shot to death, but where was the bullet hole? The glass looked as if it had been bludgeoned, not shot.

Then he saw the head move. Not much - only slightly - but it had moved. The woman was alive. He stepped forward . . and that was when Cujo's roar, followed by a volley of snarling barks came. His first thought.

(Rusty?) was of his Irish setter, but he'd had Rusty put down four years ago, not long after the Frank Dodd thing. And Rusty had never sounded like this, and for a second crucial moment, Bannerman was frozen in his tracks with a terribly, atavistic horror He turned then, pulling his gun, and caught just a blurred glimpse of a dog - an incredibly big dog - launching itself into the air at him. It struck him chest-high, driving him against the Pinto's hatchback. He grunted. His right hand was driven up and his wrist struck the chrome guttering of the hatchback hard. His gun went flying. It whirled over the top of the car, butt-for-barrel and buttfor- barrel, to land in the high weeds on the other side of the driveway.

The dog was biting him, and as Bannerman saw the first flowers of blood open on the front of his light blue shirt, he suddenly understood everything. They'd come here, their car had seized up ... and the dog had been here. The dog hadn't been in Masen's neat little point-to-point analysis.

Bannerman grappled with it, trying to get his hands under the dog's muzzle and bring it up and out of his belly. There was a sudden deep and numbing pain down there. His shirt was in tatters down there. Blood was pouring over his pants in a freshet. He lurched forward and the dog drove him back with frightening force, drove him back against the Pinto with a thud that rocked the little car on its springs.

He found himself trying to remember if he and his wife had made love last night.

Crazy thing to be thinking. Crazy

The dog bored in again. Bannerman tried to dodge away but the dog anticipated him, it was grinning at him, and suddenly there was more pain that he had ever felt in his life. It galvanized him. Screaming, he got both hands under the dog's muzzle again and yanked it up. For a moment, staring into those dark, crazed eyes, a swoony kind of horror came over him and he thought: Hello, Frank. It's you, isn't it? Was bell too hot for you?

Then Cujo was snapping at his fingers, tearing them, laying them open. Bannerman forgot about Frank Dodd. He forgot about everything but trying to save his life. He tried to get his knee up, between him and the dog, and found he couldn't. When he tried to raise his knee, the pain in his lower belly flared to a sheeting agony.

What's he done to me down there? Oh my God, what's he done? Vicky, Vicky

Then the driver's side door of the Pinto opened. It was the woman. He had looked at the family portrait Steve Kemp had stepped on and had seen a pretty, neatly coiffed woman, the sort you look at twice on the street, the second look being mildly speculative. You saw a woman like that and you thought that her husband was lucky to have her in the kip.

This woman was a ruin. The dog had been at her as well. Her belly was streaked with dried blood. One leg of her jeans had been chewed away, and there was a sopping bandage just over her knee. But her face was the worst; it was like a hideous baked apple. Her forehead had blistered and peeled. Her lips were cracked and suppurating. Her eyes were sunken in deep purple pouches of flesh.

The dog left Bannerman in a flash and advanced on the woman, stiff-legged and growling. She retreated into the car and slammed the door.

(cruiser now got to call in got to call this in)

He turned and ran back to the cruiser. The dog chased him but he outran it. He slammed the door, grabbed the mike, and called for help, Code 3, officer needs assistance. Help came. The dog was shot. They were all saved.

All of this happened in just three seconds, and only in George Bannerman's mind. As he turned to go back to his police cruiser, his legs gave out and spilled him into the driveway.

(Oh Vicky what's be done to me down there?)