Chapter 5: The Government Response

The government declared martial law at dawn.

Jakarta woke to the rumble of armored vehicles on Sudirman Avenue. Columns of soldiers in gas masks and black body armor moved through the streets, rifles raised. Helicopters thundered above, sweeping the skyline with searchlights. The president spoke from an undisclosed location, his face projected on every surviving channel. He called the outbreak a “national security threat” and promised order would be restored.

For the people still trapped in the city, the words meant nothing.

In Menteng, soldiers stormed apartment blocks, dragging out families with infected members. Those who resisted were shot in the stairwells. In Senen, entire markets were burned to the ground in an attempt to wipe out swarms of infected cats that darted between stalls. Residents wailed as their livelihoods went up in flames.

Everywhere the soldiers went, cameras followed. The footage was chaotic. Streets filled with smoke. Gunfire echoing in narrow alleys. Trucks overflowing with cages of cats, the animals clawing and yowling as they were hauled away. Officials on television described these actions as “containment.” To survivors on the ground, it looked like extermination.

Agus, hiding in Glodok, intercepted military radio chatter through a hacked receiver. The words chilled him. The army was not only tasked with fighting the infected. They were ordered to silence anyone spreading “misinformation.” His name was mentioned more than once. He realized the soldiers outside his window were not just hunting zombies. They were hunting him.

The military’s methods grew harsher. Checkpoints lined every major road. Civilians were stopped, searched, and questioned. Anyone with a fever was dragged away. Some trucks carried the sick to “quarantine camps” on the outskirts. Few who went in ever returned. Rumors spread of mass graves outside Bekasi. The government denied it, but satellite images told a different story: blackened pits, smoke curling into the sky.

Despite the brutality, the infection could not be stopped. The density of Jakarta was its weapon. The virus leapt from alley to alley, house to house, mosque to mosque. One infected could turn a neighborhood in a night. Soldiers sprayed bullets into crowds, but every shot drew more infected. When a convoy stalled in the traffic-choked roads of Kemayoran, hundreds of soldiers were overrun. Videos showed men in uniform dragged screaming into swarms of teeth and claws.

Panic spread through the ranks. Some soldiers refused to follow orders. Others abandoned their posts, fleeing with their families into the countryside. The chain of command fractured. Helicopters circled above but never landed, too afraid of being mobbed on the ground. The city was slipping away.

Through it all, the cats remained everywhere. No longer scattered, no longer hiding. They gathered in packs around mosques and food stalls, their eyes glowing in the firelight. Soldiers fired into them, but more always appeared, slinking from alleys, climbing from drains, waiting to bite and scratch again.

Agus filmed what he could from the shadows. He recorded soldiers torching entire blocks in Pluit, families begging for mercy, children screaming as their parents were dragged away. He uploaded the clips whenever the internet flickered to life. Each time, his videos went viral, confirming the suspicions of millions: the government was not saving Jakarta. The government was cleansing it.

By nightfall, the city’s power grid faltered. Lights died across skyscrapers, plunging entire districts into darkness. The infected howled through the streets, their cries echoing between the towers. Searchlights swept across rivers of people fleeing toward Ancol and Muara Angke, desperate for boats, desperate for escape.

The government still claimed control. The military still fought in the streets. But for the ordinary people of Jakarta, survival no longer meant obeying orders. It meant finding a way out before the city itself devoured them.