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turned, shaking, toward his master in the doorway. Stimson was shocked to see the dog’s eyes glazed in a vacant stare while thick white foam oozed from his mouth. The dog stood teetering back and forth for a moment, then keeled over on its side, hitting the ground with a thud.
    â€œJesus! Mike, get down here quick,” Stimson yelled to his partner.
    Barnes was already climbing down the ladder from the roof but was having a hard time catching the rungs with his feet. Nearing the ground, he missed the last rung with his left foot altogether and lurched to the ground, staying semierect only by a hearty handgrasp on the ladder’s rung.
    â€œMike, the dog just . . . are you okay?” Stimson asked, realizing something was not right. Running to his partner’s side, he found Barnes in a state of labored breathing, and his eyes were nearly as glassy as Max’s. Throwing his arm around the younger man’s shoulder, Stimson half carried, half dragged Barnes into the shack and set him down in a chair.
    Barnes bent over and retched violently, then sat upright, clinging to Stimson’s arm for support. Gasping in a hoarse voice, he whispered, “There’s something in the air.”
    No sooner had the words left his mouth when his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell over stone dead.
    Stimson stood up in a state of shock, then found that the room was spinning like a top before his eyes. A throbbing pain racked his head while the grip of an iron vise suddenly began squeezing the air out of his lungs. Staggering to the radio, he tried to let out a brief cry for help but was unsure whether his lips could move because of numbness to his face. A burst of heat flared internally, like an invisible fire was consuming his organs. Choking for air and losing all sense of vision, he staggered and fell hard to the floor, dead before he hit the ground.
    *  *  *
    F OUR MILES EAST of the Coast Guard station, the three CDC scientists were just finishing their lunch when the invisible wave of death struck. Sarah was the first to detect something wrong when a pair of birds flying overhead suddenly stopped in midflight as if they had struck an invisible wall and then fell to the ground wriggling. Sandy fell victim first, clutching her stomach and doubling over in agony.
    â€œCome now, my chili wasn’t that bad,” Fowler joked before he, too, became light-headed and nauseous.
    Sarah stood and took a few steps toward the cooler to retrieve some bottled water when fire shot through her legs and her thigh muscles began to spasm.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” Fowler gasped as he tried to comfort Sandy before staggering to the ground in distress.
    For Sarah, time seemed to slow as her senses became dulled. Sluggishly, she dropped to the ground as her muscles weakened and refused to obey the commands sent by her brain. Her lungs seemed to constrict upon themselves, making each breath a painful stab of agony. A thumping noise began to ring through her ears as she fell prone on her back and stared blurry-eyed at the gray sky above. She felt the blades of grass dance and rustle against her body, but she was frozen, unable to move.
    Gradually, a fog enveloped her mind and a field of blackness began to encroach the edges of her vision. But a sudden intrusion jarred her senses momentarily. Into the sea of gray popped an apparition, a strange ghost with a tuft of black hair over a rubbery face that seemed to melt away like plastic. She felt the alien gaze upon her with frightening giant, three-inch-wide crystal eyes. But there appeared to be another set of eyes beyond the crystal lenses, gazing intently at her with a sense of grace and warmth. A pair of deep, opaline green eyes. Then everything turned to black.

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    S ARAH OPENED HER EYES to a gray canopy above her, only this one was flat and without clouds. Shaking off the blurriness, her eyes slowly regained focus and she could see