Get rolling where?
Camber's Garage, his mind answered immediately.
But that was stupid, wasn't it? Masen had sent Sheriff Bannerman up there with instructions to report immediately if anything was wrong and the cop hadn't reported back so that meant (that the monster got him)
Well, it wouldn't hurt to go up there, would it? And it was something to do.
He started the jag up and headed down the hill toward Route 117, still not entirely sure if he was going to turn left toward I-95 and Scarborough or right toward Town Road No. 3.
He paused at the stop sign until someone in back gave him the horn. Then, abruptly, he turned right. It wouldn't hurt to take a quick run up to Joe Camber's. He could be there in fifteen minutes.
He checked his watch and saw that it was twenty past twelve.
The time had come, and Donna knew it.
The time might also have gone, but she would have to live with that - and perhaps die with it. No one was going to come. There was going to be no knight on a silver steed riding up Town Road No. 3 - Travis McGee was apparently otherwise engaged.
Tad was dying.
She made herself repeat it aloud in a husky, choked whisper: 'Tad's dying.'
She had not been able to create any breeze through the car this morning. Her window would no longer go down, and Tad's window let in nothing but more heat. The one time she had tried to unroll it more than a quarter of the way, Cujo had left his place in the shade of the garage and had come around to Tad's side as fast as he could, growling eagerly.
The sweat had now stopped rolling down Tad's face and neck.
There was no more sweat left. His skin was dry and hot. His tongue, swelled and dead-looking, protruded over his bottom lip.
His breathing had grown so faint that she could barely hear it.
Twice she had had to put her head against his chest to make sure that he still breathed at all.
Her condition was bad. The car was a blast furnace. The metalwork was now too hot to touch, and so was the plastic wheel.
Her leg was a steady, throbbing ache, and she no longer doubted that the dog's bite had infected her with something. Perhaps it was too early for rabies - she prayed to God it was - but the bites were red and inflamed.
Cujo was not in much better shape. The big dog seemed to have shrunk inside his matted and blood-streaked coat. His eyes were hazy and nearly vacant, the eyes of an old man stricken with cataracts. Like some old engine of destruction, now gradually beating itself to death but still terribly dangerous, he kept his watch. He was no longer foaming; his muzzle was a dried and lacerated horror. It looked like a gouged chunk of igneous rock that had been coughed out of the hotbed of an old volcano.
The old monster, she thought incoherently, keeps his watch still.
Had this terrible vigil been only a matter of hours, or had it been her whole life? Surely everything that had gone before had been a
dream, little more than a short wait in the wings? The mother who had seemed to be disgusted and repulsed by all those around her, the well-meaning but ineffectual father, the schools, the friends, the dates and dances - they were all a dream to her now, as youth must seem to the old. Nothing mattered, nothing was but this silent and sunstruck dooryard where death had been dealt and yet more death waited in the cards, as sure as aces and eights. The old monster kept his watch still, and her son was slipping, slipping, slipping away
The baseball bat. That was all that remained to her now.
The baseball bat and maybe, if she could get there, something in the dead man's police car. Something like a shotgun.
She began to lift Tad into the back, grunting and puffing, fighting the waves of dizziness that made her sight gray over. Finally he was in the hatchback, as silent and still as a sack of grain.'
She looked out of his window, saw the baseball bat lying in the high grass, and opened the door.
In the dark mouth of the garage, Cujo stood up and began to advance slowly, head lowered, down the crushed gravel toward her.
It was twelve thirty when Donna Trenton stepped out of her Pinto for the last time.
Vic turned off the Maple Sugar Road and onto Town Road No. 3
just as his wife was going for Brett Camber's old Hillerich & Bradsby in the weeds. He was driving fast, intent on getting up to Camber's so he could turn around and go to Scarborough, some fifty miles away. Perversely, as soon as he had made his decision to come out here first, his mind began dolefully telling him that he was on a wild goosechase. On the whole, he had never felt so impotent in his life.
He was moving the jag along at better than sixty, so intent on the road that he was past Gary Pervier's before he realized that Joe Camber's station wagon had been parked there. He slammed on the jag's brakes, burning twenty feet of rubber. The jag's nose dipped toward the road. The cop might have gone up to Camber's and found nobody home because Camber was down here.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the road was empty, and backed up quickly. He wheeled the jag into Pervier's driveway and got out.
His feelings were remarkably like those of Joe Camber himself when, two days before, Joe had discovered the splatters of blood (only now these were dried and maroon-colored) and the smashed bottom panel of the screen door. A foul, metallic taste flooded Vic's mouth. This was all a part of it. Somehow it was all a part of Tad's and Donna's disappearance.
He let himself in and the smell hit him at once - be bloated, green smell of corruption. It had been a hot two days. There was something halfway down the hall that looked Iike a knocked-over endtable, except that Vic was mortally sure that it wasn't an endtable. Because of the smell. He went down to the thing in the hall and it wasn't an endtable. It was a man. The man appeared to have had his throat cut with an extremely dull blade.
Vic stepped back. A dry gagging sound came from his throat. The telephone. He had to call someone about this.
He started for the kitchen and then stopped. Suddenly everything came together in his mind. Them was an instant of crushing revelation; it was like two half pictures coming together to make a three-dimensional whole.
The dog. The dog had done this.
The Pinto was at Joe Camber's. The Pinto had been there all along.
The Pinto and
'Oh my God, Donna -'
