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smell of the sea filled his nostrils. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean and ruffled through the leaves. The skyline canvas was streaked with purple clouds, and he wondered if a system was moving through. He imagined that many of the people down on the Cooke’s terminal were quite upset at not having caught their ferry back into Portland. Many of them most likely had hotel reservations in town or had loved ones waiting for them on the mainland. The same was true for those people at the Portland terminal waiting to come over to Cooke’s. Hopefully, this threat amounted to nothing, and life on the island could soon return to normal.
    And yet something inside told him that this was no idle threat.
    Tag nodded to the people walking down the hill as he made his way up the private street to his house. Luckily, his was the only house on this road. Surprisingly, they seemed not in the least dismayed by the sight of a man in uniform walking with a backpack. After 9/11 it seemed in step with the times. He pulled up to his front lawn and noticed that all the lights had been turned off, meaning that Monica and Taylor had already left for the festival. His wife’s car was nowhere in sight and not even in the garage. He walked up the path and let himself in the front door, immediately spotting his wife’s leather bag sitting on the coffee table. Knowing how forgetful she’d been lately, he was sure she’d left her phone inside it. He had to constantly remind her to take whatever she needed before she left the house. Today her scatterbrained tendencies might have saved her life. Who knew if RF transmissions could actually stimulate targeted brain cells? He didn’t want to take any chances no matter how crazy or implausible the idea seemed. He rooted around inside her bag until he found her cell phone and then proceeded to remove the battery and toss them in the woods far behind the house.
    He went down to the basement and checked on his stash of supplies locked in the closet of one of the outer rooms. The basement space was his one regret. Though he had a good deal of supplies, food and water stored away, and a good many weapons locked in a gun safe, he hadn’t found the time yet to make it a safe room in case of an emergency. He only hoped it wasn’t too late.
    Once he’d inventoried his supplies, he took one of the pistols with him and headed upstairs to the bedroom, where he changed into something more casual: shorts, a polo shirt, and boat shoes. He returned downstairs and took two sandwiches out of the refrigerator, wolfed them down, and then headed out to the garage, where the golf cart sat. They usually took one car on the ferry and parked the other one on the Portland side, and then used the golf cart to get around Cooke’s while they vacationed on the island.
    He felt oddly calm, considering the dire circumstances facing him and his family. It almost seemed as if nothing on the island had changed. He started the golf cart and headed down the street, proceeding toward the center of town. The closer he got, the more people he saw milling about the streets and filing in and out of the local bars, shops and restaurants. Art Fest was most definitely in full bloom. Street vendors, musicians, balloon-twisting clowns, face painters, hot dog carts, pretzel peddlers and artist booths lined the sidewalks. A large crowd loitered around the streets and parks, and police barriers had blocked it off from vehicular traffic. Tag parked the golf cart on one of the side streets and headed toward the community center, where his wife had her glass sculptures display set up. Despite all the happy faces around him, he knew that the island would quickly descend into chaos if an insidious virus spread among these citizens. The key to maintaining crowd control would be to try to keep everyone inside their home or hotel once it struck, effectively preventing the spread of the infection. The biggest question was what to do about those people who