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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmBut none of those things happened.40All of them—the droning Orinco truck, the fingers that just touched the back of Cage’s jumper and thenslid off, Rachel preparing to go to the viewing in her housecoat, Ellie carrying Gage’s picture andputting his chair next to her bed, Steve Masterton’s tears, the fight with Irwin Goldman, Jud Crandall’sterrible story of Timmy Baterman—all of them existed only in Louis Creed’s mind during the fewseconds that passed while he racedhis laughing son to the road. Behind him, Rachel screamed again—Gage, come back, don’t RUN!—but Louis did not waste his breath. It was going to be close, veryclose, and yes, one of those things really happened: from somewhere up the road he could hear the droneof the oncoming truck and somewhere inside a memory circuit opened and he could hear Jud Crandallspeaking to Rachel on that very first day in Ludlow: You want to watch em around the road, MissusGreed. It’s a bad road for kids and pets.Now Gage was running down the gentle slope of lawn that merged with the soft shoulder of Route 15,his husky little legs pumping, and by all the rights of the world he should have fallen over sprawling buthe just kept going and now the sound of the truck was very loud indeed, it was that low, snoring soundthat Louis sometimes heard from his bed as he floated just beyond the rim of sleep. Then it seemed acomforting sound, but now it terrified him.Oh my dear God oh my dear Jesus let me catch him don’t let him get into the road!Louis put on a final burst of speed and leaped, throwing himself out straight and parallel to the groundlike a football player about to make a tackle; he could see his shadow tracking along on the grass belowhim in the lowest periphery of his vision, and he thought of the kite, the Vulture, printing its shadow allthe way across Mrs. Vinton’s field, and just as Gage’s forward motion carried him into the road, Louis’sfingers brushed the back of his jacket. . . and then snagged it.He yanked Gage backward and landed on the ground at the same instant, crashing his face into the roughgravel of the shoulder, giving himself a bloody nose. His balls signaled a much more serious flash of pain—Ohhh, if l’d’a known I was gonna be playing football, I woulda worn my jock—but both the pain inhis nose and the driving agony in his testes were lost in the swelling relief of hearing Gage’s wail of painand outrage as his bottom landed on the shoulder and he fell over backward onto the edge of the lawn,thumping his head. A moment later his wails were drowned by the roar of the passing truck and thealmost regal blat of its air horn.Louis managed to get up in spite of the lead ball sitting in his lower stomach and cradled his son in hisarms. A moment laterfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (220 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM