Cujo didn't move.

She licked her lips, which felt almost as puffy as Tad's looked.

She brushed his hair off his forehead and said softly, 'How you going, Tadder?'

'Shhh,' Tad muttered distractedly. 'The ducks . .

She gave him a shake. 'Tad? Honey? You okay? Talk to me!'

His eyes opened a little at a time. He looked around, a small boy who was puzzled and hot and dreadfully tired. 'Mommy? Can't we go home? I'm so hot...'

'We'll go home,' she soothed.

'When, Mom? When?' He began to cry helplessly.

Oh Tad, save your moisture, she thought. You may need it. Crazy thing to have to be thinking. But the entire situation was ridiculous to the point of lunacy, wasn't it? The idea of a small boy dying of dehydration

(stop it be is NOT dying)

less than seven miles from the nearest good-sized town was crazy.

But the situation is what it is, she reminded herself roughly. And don't you think anything else, sister. It's like a war on a miniaturized scale, so everything that looked small before looks big now. The smallest puff of air through the quarter-open windows was a zephyr. The distance to the back porch was half a mile across no-man's-land. And if you want to believe the dog is Fate, or the Ghost of Sins Remembered, or even the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, then believe it. In this curiously scaled-down

situation - this life-or-death situation -even having to go to the bathroom became a skirmish.

We're going to get out of it. No dog is going to do this to my son.

'When, Mommy?' He looked up at her, his eyes wet, his face as pale as cheese.

'Soon,' she said grimly. 'Very soon.' She brushed his hair back and held him against her. She looked out Tad's window and again her eyes fixed on that* thing lying in the high grass, that old friction-taped baseball bat.

I'd like to bash your bead in with it.

Inside the house, the phone began to ring.

She jerked her head around, suddenly wild with hope.

'Is it for us, Mommy? Is the phone for us?'

She didn't answer him. She didn't know who it was for. But, if they were lucky - and their luck was due to change soon, wasn't it? - it would be from someone with cause to be suspicious that no one was answering the phone at the Cambers'. Someone who would come out and check around.

Cujo's head had come up. His head cocked to one side, and for a moment he bore an insane resemblance to Nipper, the RCA dog with his ear to the gramophone horn. He got shakily to his feet and started toward the house and the sound of the ringing telephone.

'Maybe the doggy's going to answer the telephone,' Tad said.

'Maybe -'

With a speed and agility that was terrifying, the big dog changed direction and came at the car. The awkward stagger was gone now.

as if it had been nothing but a sly act all along. It was roaring and bellowing rather than barking. Its red eyes burned. It struck the car with a hard, dull crunch and rebounded - with stunned eyes, Donna

saw that the side of her door was actually bowed in a bit. It must be dead, she thought hysterically, bashed its sick brains in spinal fusion deep concussion must have - must have MUST HAVE

Cujo got back up. His muzzle was bloody. His eyes seemed wandering, vacuous again. Inside the house the phone rang on and on. The dog made as if to walk away, suddenly snapped viciously at its own flank as if stung, whirled, and sprang at Donna's window. It struck right in front of Donna's face with another tremendous dull thud. Blood sprayed across the Glass, and a long silver crack appeared. Tad shrieked and clapped his hands to his face, pulling his cheeks down, harrowing them with his fingernails.

The dog leaped again. Ropes of foam runnered back from his bleeding muzzle. She could see his teeth, heavy as old yellow ivory. His claws clicked on the glass. A cut between his eyes was streaming blood. His eyes were fixed on hers; dumb, dull eyes, but not without - she would have sworn it not without some knowledge. Some malign knowledge.

'Get out of here!' she screamed at it.

Cujo threw himself against the side of the car below her window again. And again. And again. Now her door was badly dented inward. Each time the dog's two-hundred-pound bulk struck the Pinto, it rocked on its springs. Each time she heard that heavy, toneless thud, she felt sure it must have killed itself, at least knocked itself unconscious. And each time it trotted back toward the house, whirled and charged the car again. Cujo's face was a mask of blood and matted fur from which his eyes, once a kind, mild brown, peered with stupid fury.

She looked at Tad and saw that he had gone into a shock reaction, curling himself up into a tight, fetal ball in his bucket seat, his hands laced together at the nape of his neck, his chest hitching.

Maybe that's best. Maybe

Inside the house the phone stopped ringing. Cujo, in the act of whirling around for another charge, paused. He cocked his head again in that curious, evocative gesture. Donna held her breath.

The silence seemed very big. Cujo sat down, raised his horribly mangled nose toward the sky, and howled once such a dark and lonesome sound and she shivered, no longer hot but as cold as a crypt. In that instant she knew - she did not feel or just think - she knew that the dog was something more than just a dog.

The moment passed. Cujo got to his feet, very slowly and wearily, and walked around to the front of the Pinto. She supposed he had lain down there - she could no longer see his tail. Nevertheless she held herself tensed for a few moments longer, mentally ready in case the dog should spring up onto the hood as it had done before.

It hadn't. There was nothing but silence.

She gathered Tad into her arms and began to croon to him.

When Brett had at last given up and come out of the telephone booth, Charity took his hand and led him into Caldor's coffee shop.

They had come to Caldor's to look at matching tablecloths and curtains.

Holly was waiting for them, sipping the last of an ice-cream soda.

'Nothing wrong, is there?' she asked.

'Nothing too serious,' Charity said, and ruffled his hair. 'He's worried about his dog. Aren't you, Brett?'

Brett shrugged - nodded miserably.

'You go on ahead, if you want,' Charity said to her. 'We'll catch up.'

'All right. I'll be downstairs.'

Holly finished her soda and said, 'I bet your pooch is just fine, Brett.'

Brett smiled at her as best he could but didn't reply. They watched Holly walk away, smart in her dark burgundy dress and cork-soled sandals, smart in a way Charity knew she would never be able to duplicate. Maybe once, but not now. Holly had left her two with a sitter, and they had come into Bridgeport around noon. Holly had bought them a nice lunch paying with a Diners Club card - and since then they had been shopping. But Brett had been quiet and withdrawn, worrying about Cujo. Charity didn't feel much like shopping herself; it was hot, and she was still a little unnerved by Brett's sleepwalking that morning. Finally she had suggested that he try calling home from one of the booths around the corner from the snack bar ... but the results had been precisely those of which she had been afraid.

The waitress came. Charity ordered coffee, milk, and two Danish pastries.

'Brett,' she said 'when I told your father I wanted us to go on this trip, he was against it'