They sat and talked it over in the tiny screening room for another hour, and when they left to go back to the hotel, both of them sweaty and exhausted, it was full dark.

'Can we go home now, Mommy?' Tad asked apathetically.

'Pretty soon, honey.'

She looked at the key in the ignition switch. Three other keys on the ring: house key, garage key, and the key that opened the Pinto's hatchback. There was a piece of leather attached to the ring with a mushroom branded on it. She had bought the keyring in Swanson's, a Bridgton department store, back in April. Back in April when she had been so disillusioned and scared, never knowing what real fear was, real fear was trying to crank your kid's window shut while a rabid dog drooled on the backs of your hands.

She reached out. She touched the leather tab. She pulled her hand back again.

The truth was this: She was afraid to try.

It was quarter past seven. The day was still bright, although the Pinto's shadow trailed out long, almost to the garage door.

Although she did not know it, her husband and his partner were still watching kinescopes of the Sharp Cereal Professor at Image-Eye in Cambridge. She didn't know why no one had answered the

SOS she had been beeping out. In a book, someone would have come. It was the heroine's reward for having thought up such a clever idea. But no one had come.

Surely the sound had carried down to the ramshackle house at the foot of the hill. Maybe they were drunk down there. Or maybe the owners of the two cars in the driveway (dooryard, her mind corrected automatically, up here they call it a dooryard) had both gone off somewhere in a third car. She wished she could see that house from here, but it was out of sight beyond the descending flank of the hill.

Finally she had given the SOS up. She was afraid that if she kept tooting the horn it would drain the Pinto's battery, which had been in since they got the car. She still believed the Pinto would start when the engine was cool enough. It always had before.

But you're afraid to try, because if it doesn't start what then?

She was reaching for the ignition again when the dog stumbled back into view. It had been lying out of sight in front of the Pinto.

Now it moved slowly toward the barn, it's head down and its tail drooping. It was staggering and weaving like a drunk near the bitter end of a long toot. Without looking back, Cujo slipped into the shadows of the building and disappeared.

She drew her hand away from the key again.

'Mommy? Aren't we going?'

'Let me think, hon,' she said.

She looked to her left, out the driver's side window. Eight running steps would take her to the back door of the Camber house. In high school she had been the star of her high school's girls' track team, and she still jogged regularly. She could beat the dog to the door and inside, she was sure of that. There would be a telephone. One call to Sheriff Bannerman's office and this horror would end. On

the other hand, if she tried cranking the engine again, it might not start ... but it would bring the dog on the run. She knew hardly anything about rabies, but she seemed to remember reading at some time or other that rabid animals were almost supernaturally sensitive to sounds. Loud noises could drive them into a frenzy.

'Mommy?'

'Shhh, Tad. Shhh!'

Eight running steps. Dig it.

Even if Cujo was lurking and watching inside the garage just out of sight, she felt sure - she knew - she could win a footrace to the back door. The telephone, yes. And ... a man like Joe Camber surely kept a gun. Maybe a whole rack of them. What pleasure it would give her to blow that fucking dog 'S head to so much oatmeal and strawberry jam!

Eight running steps.

Sure. Dig on it awhile.

And what if that door giving on the porch was locked? Worth the risk?

Her heart thudded heavily in her breast as she weighed the chances. If she had been alone, that would have been one thing.

But suppose the door was locked? She could beat the dog to the door, but not to the door and then back to the car. Not if it came running, not if it charged her as it had done before. And what would Tad do? What if Tad saw his mother being savaged by a two-hundred-pound mad dog, being ripped and bitten, being pulled open

No. They were safe here.

Try the engine again!

She reached for the ignition, and part of her mind clamored that it would he safer to wait longer, until the engine was perfectly cool Perfectly cool? They had been here three hours or more already.

She grasped the key and turned it.

The engine cranked briefly once, twice, three times - and then caught with a roar.

'Oh, thank God!' she cried.

'Mommy?' Tad asked shrilly. 'Are we going? Are we going?'

'We're going,' she said grimly, and threw the transmission into reverse. Cujo lunged out of the barn ... and then just stood there, watching. 'Fuck you dog!' she yelled at it triumphantly.

She touched the gas pedal. The Pinto rolled back perhaps two feet -

and stalled.

'No!' she screamed as the red idiot lights came on again. Cujo had taken another two steps when the engine cut out, but now he only stood there silent, his head down. Watching me, the thought occurred again. His shadow trailed out behind him, as clear as a silhouette cut out of black crepe paper.

Donna fumbled for the ignition switch and turned it from ON to START. The motor began to rum over again, but this time it didn't catch. She could hear a harsh panting sound in her own ears and didn't realize for several seconds that she was making the sound herself - in some vauge way she had the idea that it must be the dog. She ground the starter, grimacing horribly, ;wearing at it, oblivious of Tad, using words she had hardly known she knew.

And A the time Cujo stood there, trailing his shadow from his heels like some surreal funeral drape, watching.

At last he lay down in the driveway, as if deciding there was no chance for them to escape. She hated it more than she had when it had tried to force its way in through Tad's window.

'Mommy ... Mommy ... Mommy!'

From far away. Unimportant. What was important now was this goddamned sonofabitching little car. It was going to start. She was going to make it start by pure ... force... of will!

She had no idea how long, in real time, she sat hunched over the wheel with her hair hanging in her eyes, futilely grinding the starter. What at last broke through to her was not Tad's cries - they had trailed off to whimpers - but the sound of the engine. It would crank briskly for five seconds, then lag off, then crank briskly for another five, then lag off again. A longer lag each time, it seemed.

She was killing the battery.

She stopped.

She came out of it a little at a time, like a woman coming out of a faint. She remembered a bout of gastroenteritis she'd had in college

- everything inside her had either come up by the elevator or dropped down the chute - and near the end of it she had grayed out in one of the dorm toilet stalls. Coming back had been like this, as if you were the same but some invisible painter was adding color to the world, bringing it first up to full and then to overfull. Colors shrieked at you. Everything looked plastic and phony, like a display in a department store window -SWING INTO SPRING, perhaps, or READY FOR THE FIRST KICKOFF.

Tad was cringing away from her, his eyes squeezed shut, the thumb of one hand in his mouth. The other hand was pressed against his hip pocket, where the Monster Words were. His respiration was shallow and rapid.