'Well, I wouldn't turn down an Egg McMuffin if someone threw it my way.'
Tad groaned, and that made them both laugh again. In the yard, Cujo had pricked up his ears. He growled at the sound of their laughter. For a moment he made as if to get to his feet, perhaps to charge the car again; then he settled wearily back on his haunches, head drooping.
Donna felt that irrational lift in her spirits that almost always comes with daybreak. Surely it would be over soon; surely they had passed the worst. All the luck had been against them, but sooner or later even the worst luck changes.
Tad seemed almost his old self. Too pale, badly used, terribly tired in spite of his sleep, but still indubitably the Tadder. She hugged him, and he hugged her back. The pain in her belly had subsided somewhat, although the scrapes and gouges there had a puffy, inflamed look. Her leg was worse, but she found she was able to flex it, although it hurt to do so and the bleeding started again. She would have a scar.
The two of them talked for the next forty minutes or so. Donna, hunting for a way to keep Tad alert and to also pass the time for both of them, suggested Twenty Questions. Tad agreed eagerly. He had never been able to get enough of the game; the only problem had always been getting one or the other of his parents to play it with him. They were on their fourth game when the convulsion struck.
Donna had guessed some five questions ago that the subject of the interrogation was Fred Redding, one of Tad's daycamp chums, but had been spinning things out.'
'Does he have red hair?' she asked.
'No, he's . . . he's ... he's . . .'
Suddenly Tad was struggling to catch his breath. It came and went in gasping, tearing whoops that caused fear to leap up her throat in a sour, coppery-tasting rush.
'Tad? Tad?'
Tad gasped. He clawed at his throat, leaving red lines there. His eyes rolled up, showing only the bottoms of the irises and the silvery whites.
'Tad!'
She grabbed him, shook him. His Adam's apple went up and down rapidly, like a mechanical bear on a stick. His hands began to flop aimlessly about, and then they rose to his throat again and tore at it. He began to make animal choking sounds.
For a moment Donna entirely forgot where she was. She grabbed for the doorhandle, pulled it up, and shoved the door of the Pinto open, as if this had happened while she was in the supermarket parking lot and there was help close by. Cujo was on his feet in an instant. He leaped at the car before the door was more than half open, perhaps saving her from being savaged at that instant. He struck the opening door, fell back, and then came again, snarling thickly. Loose excrement poured onto the crushed gravel of the driveway.
Screaming, she yanked the door closed. Cujo leaped at the side of the car again, bashing the dent in a little deeper. He reeled back, then sprang at the window, thudding off it with a dull cracking sound. The silver crack running through the glass suddenly
developed half a dozen tributaries. He leaped at it again and the Saf-T-Glas starred inward, still holding together but sagging now.
The outside world was suddenly a milky blur.
If he comes again…
Instead, Cujo withdrew, waiting to see what she would do next.
She turned to her son.
Tad's entire body was jerking, as if with epilepsy. His back was bowed. His buttocks came out of the seat, thumped back, rose again, thumped back. His face was taking on a bluish color. The veins in his temples stood out prominently. She had been a candy-striper for three years, her last two in high school and the summer following her freshman year at college, and she knew what was happening here. He had not swallowed his tongue; outside of the more purple mystery novels, that was impossible. But his tongue had slid down his throat and was now blocking his windpipe. He was choking to death in front of her eyes.
She grabbed his chin in her left hand and yanked his mouth open.
Panic made her rough, and she heard the tendons in his jaw creak.
Her probing fingers found the tip of his tongue incredibly far back, almost to where his wisdom teeth would be if they every grew out.
She tried to grip it and couldn't; it was as wet and slippery as a baby eel. She tried to tweeze it between her thumb and forefinger, only faintly aware of the lunatic race of her heart. I think I’m losing him, she thought. Oh my dear God, I think I’m losing my son.
Now his teeth suddenly clashed down, drawing blood from her probing fingers and from his own cracked and blistered lips. Blood ran down his chin. She was hardly aware of the pain. Tad's feet began to rattle a mad tattoo against the floormat of the Pinto. She groped for the tip of his tongue desperately. She had it... and it slipped through her fingers again.
(the dog the goddamned dog it's his fault goddam dog goddamhellhound I'LL KILL YOU I SWEAR TO GOD)
Tad's teeth clamped down on her fingers again, and then she had his tongue again and this time she did not hesitate: she dug her fingernails into its spongy top and underside and pulled it forward like a woman pulling a windowshade down; at the same time she put her other hand under his chin and tipped his head back, creating the maximum airway. Tad began to gasp again - a harsh, rattling sound, like the breathing of an old man with emphysema.
Then he began to whoop.
She slapped him. She didn't know what else to do, so she did that.
Tad uttered one final tearing gasp, and then his breathing waled into a rapid pant. She was panting herself. Waves of dizziness rushed over her. She had twisted her bad leg somehow, and there was the warm wetness of fresh bleeding.
'Tad!' She swallowed harshly. 'Tad, can you hear me?'
His head nodded. A little. His eyes remained closed.
'Take it as easy as you can. I want you to relax.'
... want to go home ... Mommy ... the monster. .
'Shhh, Tadder. Don't talk, and don't think about monsters. Here.'
The Monster Words had fallen to the floor. She picked the yellow paper up and put it in his hand. Tad gripped it with panicky tightness. 'Now concentrate on breathing slowly and regularly, Tad. That's the way to get home. Slow and regular breaths.'
Her eyes wandered past him and once again she saw the splintery bat, its handle wrapped in friction tape, lying in the high weeds at the right side of the driveway.
'Just take it easy, Tadder, can you try to do that?'
Tad nodded a little without opening his eyes.
