Chapter 2: Rising Panic

The streets of Jakarta began to feel different.

In the markets of Tanah Abang, vendors noticed the cats first. They no longer skulked under stalls for scraps of ikan asin. They appeared in clusters, sitting motionless, tails twitching in unison. When children tried to shoo them, the cats did not scatter. They lunged. A fish seller staggered back with a bloody arm after one latched onto his wrist and refused to let go. Customers screamed and bolted through the crowded lanes.

On TikTok, videos spread faster than the virus itself. Clips showed cats circling bus stops, climbing onto ojeks, chasing pedestrians down alleys. One viral video showed a cat leaping straight through the open window of a bajaj and mauling the driver. The man stumbled out with half his ear torn away, shrieking as bystanders fled. Within hours, the clip racked up millions of views.

Hospitals were already overwhelmed. Menteng, Fatmawati, and Cipto Mangunkusumo had sealed off wards, locking infected patients behind steel doors. Yet new cases arrived every hour. Some were claw marks. Some were bites. Others could not even remember how the scratches appeared. What the doctors feared most were the patterns. Families infected together. Classrooms of children rushed in at once. The city was feeding the disease without realizing it.

The government hesitated. For days, officials assured the public it was a “contained rabies outbreak.” A press conference aired on TVRI, where a health minister insisted everything was under control. Behind him, cameras caught a moment he thought went unseen. His lips formed words he never said aloud. A sharp-eyed reporter named Agus replayed the footage again and again. He read the phrase with growing horror.

“All going to plan.”

Agus shared the clip with colleagues at the newsroom. Some laughed it off. Others shook their heads. But a few whispered about an old rumor. Jakarta was bursting at the seams with people. Millions in slums, millions in high-rises, millions with no space left to grow. What if the outbreak was not an accident? What if someone had chosen the cats as carriers?

When the military finally rolled into neighborhoods, panic boiled over. Armored trucks crawled through Kemang and Senen, soldiers spilling out with nets and cages. They fired tranquilizer darts into alleys, dragging cats into steel boxes. News cameras captured the chaos: children crying as their pets were taken, activists screaming as soldiers shoved them back with rifles, old women clutching cats to their chests and refusing to let go.

The message was meant to calm the public. It had the opposite effect. The roundups confirmed the fear that cats were the source. People locked their doors at night and swore they heard scratching at their windows. Social media exploded with hashtags about “Jakarta Zombies.” Some posts were jokes. Most were not.

By the end of the week, the city began to split into two kinds of people. Those who still believed it was under control, and those who hoarded supplies, boarded up their apartments, and waited for the next scream to come from the hallway.

Agus watched the panic unfold from his office, surrounded by half-empty coffee cups and piles of notes. He was convinced now. The government had known all along. The infection was not only spreading. It was being allowed to spread.

The streets below his window erupted in sirens. Another convoy rolled past, soldiers dragging cages full of hissing, thrashing cats. The animals’ eyes glowed in the red-blue flash of the lights, unblinking, furious.

Jakarta was no longer the city he had known. It was becoming something else.

Something hungry.