"You can’t think like that. It’ll drive you insane. You have to stay positive."
After our talk we were silent for awhile. I tried to drift off to sleep but I couldn’t.
A few minutes later Kenji and Jack had finally finished eating.
We decided that we should try and get some sleep in the security room. There weren't any beds but at least we would be able to keep an eye on everything. It sounded like a good plan but when we got back to the security room all the cameras and computers had turned off.
"Did they turn off by themselves?" Maria asked.
"Maybe it's got an auto shut down function or something?" Kim offered.
The feeling of paranoia was back. We decided that we should find a hotel room upstairs to get a decent night sleep.
Kenji made sure we found one close to a stairwell on the first floor so we could also leave in a hurry if we needed to. We found a room that was joined to the one next door. Besides Jack and Maria who had been sharing a bed all week while Maria’s parents were away, we all got a bed to ourselves.
In a matter of minutes everyone was asleep. Except for me. I was wide awake. To make matters worse, every now and then a helicopter would fly over the building or nearby and scare the hell out of me. I wanted to wake Kenji up a few times, tell him to get the shotgun ready or something. But I let him sleep. I kept telling myself that we were safe for the time being, that we were hidden and no one knew we were here.
I was trying to stay positive but it wasn’t working. After awhile I began to think about all the bad stuff that had happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the carnage and all those innocent people trapped in the tunnel and on the bridge. I felt like I shouldn’t be alive, like I had no right to have survived when so many people died that very day. I wanted to believe my mother had made it to safety before anything bad happened to her but there was no convincing myself.
I think in the end I was just too scared to sleep.
Chapter 27
In hindsight it was a pretty stupid thing to do, to go off by myself. But I couldn't sleep, I wasn't thinking straight. I slid out of bed in the middle of the night, careful not to wake anyone. Not that I had to be careful. They were all well and truly passed out. A jet could’ve flown right by the window and they would’ve slept through it. The handgun Kenji had found was on the bedside table next to Kim. I decided to take it with me, just in case.
The stairwell was right next to our room so I began to climb. I wanted to get to the roof, to see if I could see the ruins of the bridge. I don’t know why I wanted to see it. Maybe I was hoping the bridge would somehow still be there, that everything I had seen, the massacre and all the explosions was just a dream. Maybe I was in denial.
I made it to the top of the stairs but the door to the roof was locked. I decided to check out the penthouse instead because I figured it probably had views of the entire harbor as well. But as soon as I entered the penthouse suite goose bumps formed on my skin and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I froze. Every muscle in my body was tensed.
It was totally dark but I could hear breathing. It wasn't my own. It was deep, heavy.
I reached for the gun tucked in my pants and flicked the safety switch off. I held my breath.
"A muse for a flame that would ascend the brightest heavens of invention."
I swung the gun around to where the voice came from. A match was struck and a dim orange light flickered to life and illuminated a man sitting on a couch all by himself. He put the match to the end of a cigarette in his mouth and inhaled.
"Nice night for a walk," he said.
He didn’t react to the gun. He didn't seem to care. He leant his head back and exhaled.
"You want a smoke?" he asked.
"No thanks." I said.
He grunted. "No one smokes anymore. Socially unacceptable it is. Gone the way of the mistress it has."
His eyes were fixed on the little orange flame in his hand. At the time I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to run away or shoot the gun or yell out for help.
"So?" he said. "What brings you here, if you don't mind me asking? And why are you all by yourself?"
"Couldn’t sleep," I said still unsure of what to do.
"It's dangerous in the city. Especially at night. Even if you do have a gun."
He reached for something in the top pocket of his shirt. It was a small pill bottle. He tossed it over to me. "This will help you sleep," he said. "Helps me when I can't turn off my brain."
"What is it?"
"It's morphine."
Alarm bells started ringing somewhere in a distant corner of my mind. Who carries morphine around in their pocket and offers it to random people? "I don't take drugs from strangers," I said.
The man laughed out loud, like what I said was genuinely funny. He then started rambling off a whole bunch of facts about the drug.
"Morphine is an opiate," he said. "A German physicist first discovered it in 1804 but it was not widely used until 1854 when the hypodermic needled was developed. The word morphine is derived from Morpheus the god of dreams in Greek mythology. He is the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Morphine is a highly potent analgesic drug and acts directly on the central nervous system to relieve pain. No other narcotic analgesic is more effective or superior in the management of severe pain. It also gives a feeling of euphoria, relaxation and sedation. On the downside it is highly addictive. Each hit will only last about four to six hours. So tolerance develops rapidly. Physical dependence develops rapidly. And psychological dependence develops very, very rapidly."
The match in his hand had nearly burnt down to his fingers.
"How do you know all of that?" I asked.
"I’m a doctor," he answered as he leant forward and dropped the match into a glass of water or maybe scotch. The match sizzled as the flame was extinguished. Once again it was dark.
"Where did you get that gun?" he asked me.
"From a cop."
"You ever fired a gun before?"
"Yeah."
"You ever killed a man?"
"Yeah."
The man laughed again. "I guess I better be nice to you."
He struck another match and stared at the flame. The cigarette burned steadily in his mouth. The ash lengthened. He took one long draw, exhaled the smoke out his nose and then threw the rest of the cigarette away. "I’ll start by not smoking around you. I know how non-smokers hate it when you smoke around them. Especially when you’re eating. And even though you’re not eating I still thought I’d put it out. Just to be nice. I used to be a non-smoker myself, you know."
"Thanks," I said.
"Not a problem."
The weird thing was he didn’t look at me. Not once. He just stared at the orange flame of the match in his hands. He was obsessed.
"So what are you doing here?" I asked him back.
He blew on the tiny flame but not hard enough to blow it out. "This is my humble abode."
The penthouse suite of a casino? "It’s nice," I said. "I love what you’ve done with the interior decorations. It doesn’t even feel like a hotel room."
He laughed again and snuffed out the flame with a short, sharp breath. He then continued to blow on the burnt end of the match so the embers glowed. "Blow and you can extinguish a flame. Blow and you can fuel a flame."
He took another match and held the head of it against the glowing burnt one. It heated up and sparked and ignited. The tiny orange flame danced and flickered and was reflected in the black pupils of his eyes. The man was definitely obsessed.
"Once upon a time," he said. "I wanted the big house, the penthouse apartment like this one. I wanted to drive a Ferrari and cruise around in a bright pink Rolls Royce. Everyone wants that. Well maybe not a bright pink Rolls Royce but everyone wants money. At least enough so they don’t have to worry about paying bills or paying the mortgage or saving for a rainy day. You ever bought some groceries not knowing whether you had enough money in your account to pay the bill? Money can solve that problem. No more stress. No more fighting or arguing over money and what we can afford and what we can’t afford."
I looked at the man looking at the flame in his hand and I wondered if he was talking about himself.
"But money doesn’t really mean a thing when you think about it. When you think big picture, money isn’t even an issue."
"Yeah," I said. "Especially when a virus starts killing everyone and turning them into psychos and the military conducts a clinic on how to execute a massacre."
"Do you know anything about loss?" he asked.
Like a reflex, a lump formed in my throat. I thought about my father, my mother. I thought about Kenji.
Did I know anything about loss? "Unfortunately."
"I lost everything," he said "And I mean everything. I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about my life. My soul. I lost it. And believe me, when you lose your soul. When you say goodbye to that concept or whatever it is, you can never, ever get it back."
I lowered the gun and swallowed the lump in my throat. "What happened?"
He shook his head. "I’m not even really sure. My life had turned into a monotonous routine. One failure after the next. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was too damn late. Until I had already sold my soul to the devil."
"It must’ve been hard."
"It was easy, actually. All too easy."
I switched the safety on and tucked the gun back in my pants and the man lit another match. "What did you do?" I asked.
He stared at the tiny orange flame of the match. It continued to dance. It was hypnotic.
"I created the Oz Virus."
Chapter 28
Distant thunder rolled through the city.
A flash of lightning lit up the room and I counted the seconds in my head to gauge how far away the lightning was. I counted to three. Thunder crackled and rolled and echoed through the city. Did three seconds equal three miles?
The man was sitting there in the dark with a lit match in his hand. He just claimed that he created the Oz Virus. Why would anyone say that?
"Excuse me?" I asked in disbelief. "You created the Oz Virus?"
He nodded his head slowly.
"Why? Why would you do such a thing?"
"I told you. I sold my soul to the devil."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means I worked on the project from day one," he said. "It was just me and two other doctors. They called us the 'holy trinity'. I think some people thought we were miracle workers. At some point I started to believe the hype. At the very least I thought I was going to save lives. I thought what we were doing was for the greater good."
More thunder rolled and echoed and vibrated through the city and I couldn't quite make out what he said. It sounded like he said it was for the greater good. But I couldn't be sure.
I was just about to ask him what he said when someone turned the lights on. It was Kenji. He had the shotgun pointed directly at the man sitting on the couch.
"Step back, Rebecca."
I was relieved to see him but was also worried he was about to fire the shotgun. I had a feeling that this guy, as crazy as he seemed, knew something. "It’s OK," I said to Kenji.
"Is it?" he replied.
"Yeah. Well, sort of. How did you even know I was here?"
"Kim woke up and saw that you were gone," Kenji said as he kept his eyes fixed on the man sitting on the couch. "Then she realized her gun was missing. I went to find you. I heard your voices. What’s going on here?"
I nodded my head towards the crazy man. "He just said that he created the Oz Virus."
Kenji seemed to lose his composure. He lowered the gun slightly while the implications of what he just heard ticked over in his head. "Is that true?" he asked.
The man blew out the match in his hand. He picked up a bottle of scotch that was sitting on the coffee table and took a swig. "You look like a soldier who has seen some things," he said ignoring Kenji’s question. "Let me guess, you served in Afghanistan?"
Kenji furrowed his brow.
"And you were only recently called into Woomera as part of the containment crew. Shoot to kill were your orders, am I right?"
Kenji raised the shotgun back up. "How do you know that?"
"I can tell by the look in your eyes."
"Excuse me?"
"Your eyes are the gateway to your soul. If you look a man in the eyes, I mean really look him in the eyes, you can find out everything you need to know about him."
"Is that right? So you know everything about me, huh?"
The man was looking directly at Kenji. "That’s right."
"And what do you know?"
"Right now your eyes are telling me that you’ve seen things no man should ever have seen, that you’ve done things no man should ever have done."
Kenji was in a trance, like he was being hypnotized by a sorcerer who was reading his mind and predicting his future or something.
"Your eyes are telling me you’re smart, that you were smart enough to run, smart enough to stay alive when everyone else died."
