When the ambulance driver told him that George Bannerman was dead, Roscoe began to cry. Two other policemen advanced on Donna. There was another struggle, short and furious, and Donna Trenton was finally pulled away from her son by four sweating, straining men. She nearly broke free again and Roscoe Fisher, still crying, joined them. She screamed soundlessly, whipping her head from side to side. Another syringe was produced, and she was injected successfully this time.
A stretcher came down from the ambulance, and the orderlies wheeled it over to where Tad lay on the grass. Tad, still dead, was put on it. A sheet was pulled up over his head. At the sight of this, Donna redoubled her struggles. She freed one hand and began to flail about wildly with it. Then, suddenly, she was free.
'Donna,' Vic said. He got to his feet. 'Honey, it's over. Honey, please. Let go, let go.'
She did not go for the stretcher that her son lay on. She went for the baseball bat. She picked it up and began to bludgeon the dog again. The flies rose in a shiny green-black cloud. The sound of the ball bat making contact was heavy and terrible, a butcher-shop sound. Cujo's body jumped a little each time she struck it.
The cops began to move forward.
'No,' one of the orderlies said quietly, and a few moments later Donna simply collapsed. Brett Camber's bat rolled away from her relaxing hand.
The ambulance left five minutes or so later, siren howling. Vic had been offered a shot ~'to calm your nerves, Mr. Trenton' -and although he felt utterly tranquilized already, he had accepted the shot to be polite. He picked up the cellophane the orderly had stripped from the syrette and examined the word UPJOHN printed on it carefully. 'We ran an advertising campaign for these guys once,' he told the orderly.
'That so?' the orderly asked cautiously. He was a fairly young man and he felt that he might throw up sometime soon. He had never seen such a mess in his life.
One of the police cars was standing by to take Vic to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton.
'Can you wait a minute?' he asked.
The two cops nodded. They were also staring at Vic Trenton in a very cautious way, as if whatever he had might be catching.
He opened both doors of the Pinto. He had to tug long and hard at Donna's; the dog had dented it in a way he wouldn't have believed.
Her purse was in there. Her shirt. The shirt had a jagged tear in it, as if maybe the dog had taken a chomp out of it. There was some empty Slim Jim wrappers on the dashboard and Tad's Thermos bottle, smelling of sour milk. Tad's Snoopy lunchbox. His heart gave a heavy, horrid wrench at the sight of that, and he wouldn't allow himself to think of what that meant in terms of the future - if there was any future after this terrible hot day. He found one of Tad's sneakers.
Tadder, he thought. Oh Tadder.
The strength went out of his legs and he sat down heavily on the passenger scat, looking between his legs at the strip of chrome at the bottom of the doorframe. Why? Why had something like this been allowed to happen? How could so many events have conspired together?
His head was suddenly throbbing violently. His nose closed with tears and his sinuses began to pound. He snorted the tears back and passed a hand over his face. It occurred to him that, counting Tad, Cujo had been responsible for the deaths of at least three people, more than that if the Cambers were discovered to be among his victims. Did the cop he had covered with the blanket have a wife and children? Probably.
If I'd gotten here even an hour earlier. If I hadn't gone to sleep His mind cried: I was so sure it was Kemp! So sure!
If I'd gotten here just fifteen minutes earlier, would that have beenenough? If I hadn't talked to Roger so long, would Tad be alivenow? When did he die? Did it really happen at all? And how am Isupposed to deal with it for the rest of my life without going mad?
What's going to happen to Donna?
Another police car pulled up. One of the cops got out of it and conferred with one of the cops waiting for Vic. The latter stepped forward and said quietly. 'I think we ought to go, Mr.. Trenton.
Quentin here says there are reporters on the way. You don't want to talk to any reporters just now.'
'No,' Vic agreed, and started to get up. As he did, he saw a bit of yellow at the very bottom of his field of vision. A bit of paper poking out from under Tad's seat. He pulled it out and saw it was the Monster Words he had written to case Tad's mind at bedtime.
The sheet was crumpled and ripped in two places and badly stained with sweat; along the deep creases it was nearly transparent.
Monsters, stay out of this room!
You have no business here.
No monsters under Tad's bed!
You can't fit under there.
No monsters hiding in Tad's closet!
It's too small in there.
No monsters outside of Tad's window!
You can't hold on out there.
No vampires, no werewolves, no things that bite.
You have no business here.
Nothing will touch Tad, or hurt Tad, all this ni---
He could read no more. He crumpled the sheet of paper up and threw it at the dead dog's body. The paper was a sentimental lie, it's sentiments as inconstant as the color in that stupid runny-dyed cereal. It was all a lie. The world was full of monsters, and they were all allowed to bite the innocent and the unwary.
He let himself be led to the police car. They drove him away, as George Bannerman and Tad Trenton and Donna Trenton had been driven away before him. After a while, a veterinarian came in a panel truck. She looked at the dead dog, then donned long rubber gloves and brought out a circular bone saw. The cops, realizing what she was going to do, turned away.
The vet cut off the Saint Bernard's head and put it in a large white plastic garbage bag. Later that day it was forwarded to the State Commissioner of Animals, where the brain would be tested for rabies.
So Cujo was gone, too.
It was quarter to four that afternoon when Holly called Charity to the telephone. Holly looked mildly worried. 'It sounds like somebody official,' she said. About an hour earlier, Brett had given in to Jim Junior's endless supplications and had accompanied his young cousin down to the playground at the Stratford Community Center.
Since then the house had been silent except for the women's voices as they talked over old times - the good old times, Charity amended slightly. The time Daddy had fallen off the haytruck and gone into a great big cowflop in Back Field (but no mention of the times he had beaten them until they couldn't sit down in payment for some real or imagined transgression); the time they had snuck into the old Met Theater in Lisbon Falls to see Elvis in Love Me Tender (but not the time Momma had had her credit cut off at the Red & White and had backed out of the grocery in tears, leaving a full basket of provisions behind and everybody watching); how Red Timmins from up the road was always trying to kiss Holly on their walk back from school (but not how Red had lost an arm when his tractor turned turtle on him in August of 1962). The two of them had discovered it was all right to open the closets ... as long as you didn't poke too far back in them. Because things might still be lurking there, ready to bite.
