Black wind

fire-belching-” Sandy tried to declare before being cut off.
    “Yes, indeed. Cajun chili du jour,” Fowler grinned, while scraping the lumpy brown contents of a large tin can into the heated pot.
    “As they say in N’Awlins,” Sarah said with a laugh, “Laisse^ k bon temps rouler.”
    Ed Stimson peered intently at a weather radar monitor watching a slight buildup of white electronic clouds fuzz up the upper portion of the green screen. It was a moderate storm front, some two hundred miles to the southwest, that Stimson accurately predicted would douse their island with several days of soggy weather. His concentration was interrupted by a rapping sound overhead. Barnes was still up on the tin roof fooling with the anemometer.
    Static-filled chatter suddenly blared through the hut from a radio set mounted on a corner wall. Nearby fishing boats, their captains yakking about the weather, constituted most of the garbled radio traffic received on the island. Stimson did his best to tune out the meaningless chatter and, at first, failed to detect the odd whooshing sound. It was a low resonance emanating from outside. Then the radio fell silent for a moment and he could clearly hear a rushing sound in the distance, something similar to a jet aircraft. For several long seconds, the odd noise continued, seeming to diminish slightly in intensity before ending altogether in a loud crack.
    Thinking it might be thunder, Stimson adjusted the scale view on his weather radar to a twenty-mile range. The monitor showed only a light scattering of clouds in the immediate vicinity, with nothing resembling thunderheads. Must be the Air Force up to some tricks, he figured, recalling the heavy air traffic in the Alaskan skies during the days of the Cold War.
    His thoughts were broken by a crying wail outside the door from the pet husky named Max.
    “What is it, Max?” Stimson called out while opening the door to the hut.
    The Siberian husky let out a death-shrieking howl as it 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.
    “Jesus! 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 hand grasp on the ladder’s rung.
    “Mike, 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.
    Four 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 mid flight 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.
    “Come 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