'They should have known!' Jim's pacing the yacht where it's moored in Port Phillip Bay. We're about to sail across the Bass Strait to Tasmania, hoping for sanctuary. They'd cautiously shut their borders two weeks ago, waiting for things to play out.

'First the goddamn rabbits.' He's ranting about oryctolagus cuniculus, bred for hunting in the mid 1800s ended up with a devastating plague that took 700 years in Britain but only fifty here, in an area twenty five times the size. No mammal had spread faster anywhere.

^{Image Via National Museum of Australia}

I'm securing below, hearing onshore explosions - gas tanks, perhaps. The air is filled with acrid smoke. When I was a kid I was caught in bushfire and it rained burning gum leaves. This is worse. Remnants of Melbourne are falling all over the bay. I worry he'll be hit by something but when Jim starts like this I just have to let him fizz himself out.

'Then the fucking prickly pear. Did you know people were just walking off their land because it was useless? Millions of acres. Botanical fucking warfare.' There's nothing I can say to stop his fury.

Image Source National Museum Australia

I tried ringing my sister this morning and she was already speaking so fast I couldn't make out what she was saying. I didn't cry. She wasn't the first to succumb to coffea insanica. I didn't want to think about her bloodshot eyes and trembling hands before she went bonkers too, racing about the city naked, smashing windows, throwing petrol bombs, driving her car into a wall or worse. And believe me, that week I'd seen way, way worse.

'And the cane toads!! Honestly this country!'. We used to chase cane toads with the car at night in Queensland. It was a national sport.

'If we could have just drunk bloody tea like civilised people, we wouldn't be in this nightmare.' I can hear the halliards shrieking in the wind. I wish he'd shut up. Does he think the telling of it would turn back time? 'If they didn't import coffea insanica, we might have had a fighting chance to be the last country that wasn't going down the gurgler. I mean, could we have just drunk less coffee? We had our own plantations. Jesus Christ. A cup on weekends would have set us right. But on tap? They're like smack addicts'. By they, he meant the 75 percent of Aussies who drank at least a cup of coffee a day. And as soon as thethey told people it was in short supply due to the insect plagues that swept across most of the world in '24, people panicked and wanted more. Coffee became the new toilet paper.

'I mean, coffee insanica? Could they not tell by the name?' The sails are flapping madly in the wind. If we didn't have to wait for his daughter, we'd already be gone. My eyes scan the water looking for the tender. She should have been here by now. I close my eyes for a moment and hold tight to the bench. I want to scream at Jim to shut up. 'Who's pockets were being lined here? What bribes did they take? Did they even test it first?' he shouts.

Of course they hadn't. Within two years the first crop was being roasted and bagged. The first week it hit the cafes the queues were unbelievable. Jim and me, we'd laughed. We'd kicked the habit when coffee was unobtainable, quite liked the feeling of calm and vowed off the stuff. We weren't the only ones - in fact, the bay was full of people on all sorts of vessels that were still compus mentis.

'Jim!' I scream. 'They can fucking swim!'. I can see them jumping off the pier. It's like a macabre summer scene. You'd think it was joyous fun until you refocussed and realized it was a horde of infected. When they started jumping off buildings last week, I'd called my folks and told them not to do their Saturday morning coffee date with their mates. If they'd got the message, locked the doors and stayed put maybe they'd be okay. They only drunk caffeine on weekends as a treat, and their place was isolated, so perhaps they'd be okay.

Jim starts pulling up anchor. She's not coming and he's at last understood that. You'd think that'd shut him up but he's still ranting. Something about feral cats and camels. I can hear the chain scrape on the side. Start the engine, for goodness sake, I'm thinking. Stop pissing about with the sails. I can sail it myself but there's no reason he can't talk and get us moving at the same time whilst I get the lower deck ship shape, so to speak.

Through the porthole I can I can just see Phyllis and George some five hundred metres away, the infected are climbing up their ladder which they stupidly didn't pull from the water. Like us, they'd been wary of the coffee plantations. As I watch them be torn apart by two wet madmen, I can't help but think of them walking their groodle along the esplanade on weekends before stopping for a cafe latte in the sunshine. I liked them. They were like us, once. Now they're fish food.

'Babe!' I scream. The yacht is moving now, and fast, but something's wrong. I hear thumping across the deck, a shout, then a muffled groan and a loud splash. I can't hear his voice.

Except for the wind, it's very quiet.

I put the kettle on. It's a couple of hours til the yacht sails through the heads and out of Melbourne waters, and onwards to Tasmania. Perhaps a sleep would do me good.

But first, a solid cup of chamomile tea.