The night seemed to drag on forever. It must’ve been late but I was still wide awake.

I was shaking uncontrollably and this time it wasn’t because I was soaking wet. This time it was because I just found out that one of the people responsible for the Oz virus and all the death and destruction and chaos was in this very building.

I was not handling this confronting fact very well. I continued to shake. I looked at the others sleeping. How did they do it? How did they just switch off?

I didn’t know what to do. My body needed sleep but it wasn’t shutting down. It’s like my brain wasn’t listening. I suddenly remembered the morphine pill the crazy doctor upstairs gave me. The container was still in my pocket. I took it out and tried to read the writing on the label.

I popped the lid and put the tiny pill in the palm of my hand. I wondered if it would stop me from shaking. I wondered if it could make me forget about the virus, the destruction, the death. I tried to remember everything the doctor had told me about it when he was rambling off all those facts earlier. I remember he said something about how it was highly potent and highly addictive. I remember he also said the word morphine was derived from Morpheus, the god of dreams, who was the son of Hypnos, god of sleep.

How could one little pill be so strong? How could it be so addictive?

I continued to shake uncontrollably. Next to me the others were sleeping and snoring. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to be sleeping and snoring. I wanted Morpheus and Hypnos to come and take me away. To send me to sleep and show me dreams where I’m lying on a beach on an island in the pacific. I wanted to hear the waves roll up the white sand. I wanted to feel the sun kiss and burn my skin.

I wanted to forget everything I had seen today.

I raided the mini bar and found a bottle of water that according to the price list cost eight dollars. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth. I placed the pill on the end of my tongue and washed it down.

Outside, fat, heavy rain was falling and pelting the window. Another flash of lightning lit up the night sky, followed by some more thunder. It suddenly dawned on me then that maybe the lightning and the thunder were more bombs and explosions. It was a frightening thought. I tried to imagine what Sydney would look like in the morning, if it would ever recover from this attack. But I forced myself to clear my head. I needed to sleep. Kenji said we had to make big, important decisions tomorrow. I guess he was talking about our survival. Like whether we should make a run for it or hide out here for a few more days.

If we were smart and planned ahead, we would have a greater chance of survival. If we made poor decisions it could cost us our lives. Up until this point, I think we had been lucky. And that scared me. Sooner or later our luck was bound to run out.

I drank the rest of the eight dollar water and suddenly felt the effects of the morphine starting to kick in. It hit hard. I began to feel light headed. I don’t know why, but instead of getting into my comfy bed, I decided to lie down on the floor to stretch my back out. A few minutes later my mind seemed to slow. All thoughts of the death and carnage and wondering if this really was a zombie apocalypse melted away. Suddenly I thought everything was going to be all right. Even when I started sinking deeper and deeper into the carpet, I knew everything was going to be fine. My mind was finally empty of bad thoughts.

I remembered this one time when I snuck into Kenji’s house late one night for a movie marathon session. I had to sneak in a lot because his parents really didn’t like me and they didn’t like that we spent so much time together. Maybe because they thought Kenji should be with a Japanese girl or something. Anyway, he wanted me to watch this movie called ‘Yojimbo’. It was an old Akira Kurasawa movie. It was the movie that ‘The Bodyguard’ was based on. I’d made him watch it a million times so now he was making me watch the original version. But there was a problem. The only copy he had was on a shelf in his dad’s study. And his dad’s study was strictly off limits. We went to look for it anyway. I remember I was nervous, maybe even a little scared. If his dad found us in his personal office he would’ve killed me. I remember I found this ancient looking scroll on his desk. The writing was all in Japanese. I asked Kenji what it meant.

“It’s the book of emptiness,” he said.

“The what?”

“It’s the belief that our minds should be empty. A cup is made from clay or glass. But it’s the emptiness of the cup we desire.”

“Oh, like in The Bodyguard when Kevin Costner is in the snow at night and he closes his eyes to try and shoot the bad guy.”

“Exactly.”

That moment in Kenji’s dad’s study has always stuck with me. And just then I felt like I was that emptiness he was talking about. I felt like I was that cup. I was Kevin Costner, kneeling in the snow with my eyes closed.

Somewhere in the distance I could hear Morpheus and Hypnos calling to me. They wanted to recite the Iliad while we sat around a campfire. They wanted to discuss why the gods amused themselves by interfering with the lives of mortals.

The morphine was pumping through my veins and around my body. According to the crazy doctor, no other narcotic analgesic is more effective or superior than morphine. I will vouch for that. I will testify. Praise the gods.

As the morphine went to work directly on my central nervous system, I could feel myself slipping into the black hole of sleep and unconsciousness. I felt like I was sinking and falling. And it felt good.

Just before blackness consumed everything, Kenji walked into the room. He leant over me and tried to tell me something. He whispered into my ear, “Tomorrow, they’re going to nuke Melbourne.”

My eyes were closed and I felt like I was wrapped up in an invisible electric blanket that was turned way up on the highest setting. It sounded like he said they were going to drop a nuclear bomb on Melbourne. But I couldn’t be sure. Because at that point I was lying on a beach in the pacific and the water was gently rolling up the white sand. The sun was tanning and burning my skin.