and saw he was sleeping soundly, his thumb hooked into his mouth.

Never mind the dog the mail's coming. The mail's the importantthing.

And suddenly the significance of the package hung over the mailbox door came to her, hit her like an arrow fired up from her subconscious mind, an idea she had not quite been able to get hold of before. Perhaps because it was so big, so simple, so elementary-my-dear-Watson. Yesterday was Monday and the mail had come.

The J. C. Whitney package for Joe Camber was ample proof of that.

Today was Tuesday and the mail would come again.

Tears of relief began to roll down her not-yet-dry cheeks. She actually had to restrain herself from shaking Tad awake and telling him it was going to be all right, that by two o'clock this afternoon at the lastest - and more probably by ten or eleven in the morning, if the mail delivery out here was as prompt as it was most other places in town -this nightmare would end.

The mailman would come even if he had no mail for the Cambers, that was the beauty of it. It would be his job to see if the flag was up, signifying outgoing mail. He would have to come up here, to his last stop on Town Road No. 3, to check that out, and today he was going to be greeted by a woman who was semi-hysterical with relief.

She eyed Tad's lunchbox and thought of the food inside. She thought of herself carefully saving some of it aside, in case ... well, in case. Now it didn't matter so much, although Tad was likely to be hungry in the morning. She ate the rest of the cucumber slices.

Tad didn't care for cucumbers much anyway. It would be an odd breakfast for him, she thought, smiling. Figbars, olives, and a Slim Jim or two.

Munching the last two or three cucumber slices, she realized it was the coincidences that had scared her the most. That series of coincidences, utterly random but mimicking a kind of sentient fate, had been what seemed to make the dog so horribly purposeful, so

... so out to get her personally. Vic being gone for ten days, that was coincidence number one. Vic calling early today, that was coincidence number two. If he hadn't got them then, he would have tried later, kept trying, and begun to wonder where they were. The fact that all three of the Cambers were gone, at least for overnight, the way it looked now. That was number three. Mother, son, and father. All gone. But they had left their dog. Oh yes. They had A sudden horrible thought occurred to her, freezing her jaws on the last bite of cucumber. She tried to thrust it away. but it came back.

It wouldn't go away because it had its own gargoyle-like logic.

What if they were all dead in the barn?

The image rose behind her eyes in an instant. It had the unhealthy vividness of those waking visions which sometimes come in the morning's small hours. The three bodies tumbled about like badly made toys on the floor in there, the sawdust around them stained red, their dusty eyes staring up into the blackness where barnswallows cooed and fluttered, their clothing ripped and chewed, parts of them

Oh that's crazy, that's

Maybe he had gotten the boy first. The other two are in the kitchen, or maybe upstairs having a quickie, they hear screams.

they rush out

(stop it won't you stop it)

- they rush out but the boy is already dead, the dog has tom his throat out, and while they're still stunned by the death of their son, the Saint Bernard comes lurching out of the shadows, old and terrible engine of destruction, yes, the old monster comes from the

shadows, rabid and snarling. He goes for the woman first and the man tries to save her

(no, be would have gotten his gun or brained it with a wrench orsomething and where's the cad There was a car here before theyall went off on a family trip - do you bear me FAMILY TRIP - took the car left the truck)

Then why had no one come to feed the dog?

That was the logic of the thing, part of what frightened her. Why hadn't anyone come to feed the dog? Because if you were going to be away for a day or for a couple of days. you made an arrangement with somebody. They fed your dog for you, and then when they were gone, you fed their cat for them, or their fish, or their parakeet, or whatever. So where

And the dog kept going back into the barn.

Was it eating in there?

That's the answer, her mind told her, relieved. He didn't have anyone to feed the dog, so he poured it a tray of food. Gaines Meal, or something.

But then she stuck upon what Joe Camber himself had stuck upon earlier on that long, long day. A big dog would gobble it all at once and then go hungry. Surely it would be better to get a friend to feed the dog if you were going to be gone. On the other hand, maybe they had been held- up. Maybe there really had been a family reunion, and Camber had gotten drunk and passed out. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe anything.

Is the dog eating in the barn?

(what is it eating in there? Gaines Meal? or people?) She spat the last of the cucumber into her cupped hand and felt her stomach roll, wanting to send up what she had already eaten. She

set her will upon keeping it down, and because she could be very determined when she wanted to, she did keep it down. They had left the dog some food and had gone off in the car. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that. The rest of it was nothing but a bad case of the willies.

But that image of death kept trying to creep back in. The dominant image was the bloody sawdust, sawdust which had gone the dark color of natural-casing franks.

Stop. Think about the mail, if you have to think about anything.

Think about tomorrow. Think about being safe.

There was a soft, scuffling, scratching noise on her side of the car.

She didn't want to look but was helpless to stop herself. Her head began to turn as if forced by invisible yet powerful hands. She could hear the low creak of the tendons in her neck. Cujo was there, looking in at her. His face was less than six inches from her own. Only the Saf-T-Glas of the driver's side window separated them. Those red, bleary eyes stared into hers. The dog's muzzle looked as if it had been badly lathered with shaving cream that had been left to dry.

Cujo was grinning at her.

She felt a scream building in her chest, coming up in her throat like iron, because she could feel the dog thinking at her, telling her I'm going to get you, babe. I'm going to get you, kiddo. Think about the mailman all you want to. I'll kill him too if I have to, the way I killed all three of the Cambers, the way I'm going to kill you and your son. You might as well get used to the idea. You might as well The scream, coming up her throat. It was a live thing struggling to get out, and everything was coming on her at once: Tad having to pee, she had unrolled his window four inches and held him up so he could do it out the window, watching all the time for the dog, and for a long time he hadn't been able to go and her arms had

begun to ache; then the dream, then the images of death, and now this

The dog was grinning in at her; he was grinning in at her, Cujo was his name, and his bite was death.

The scream had to come

(but Tad's) or she would go mad.

(sleeping)

She locked her jaws against the scream the way she had locked her throat against the urge to vomit a few moments ago. She struggled with it, she fought it. And at last her heart began to slow down and she knew she had it licked.

She smiled at the dog and raised both of her middle fingers from closed fists. She held them against the glass, which was now slightly fogged on the outside with Cujo's breath. 'Go get fucked,'

she whispered.

After what seemed an endless time, the dog put its forepaws down and went back into the barn. Her mind turned down the same dark track again

(what's it eating in there?)

and then she slammed a door shut somewhere in her mind.

But there would be no more sleep, not for a long time, and it was so long until dawn. She sat upright behind the wheel, trembling, telling herself over and over again that it was ridiculous, really ridiculous, to feel that the dog was some kind of a hideous revenant which had escaped from Tad's closet, or that it knew more about the situation than she did.

Vic jerked awake in total darkness, rapid breath as dry as salt in his throat. His heart was triphammering in his chest, and he was totally