Chapter 4: The Media Storm

By the fourth week, Jakarta was no longer a city of traffic and noise. It was a city of sirens, screams, and the endless scratching of claws against steel gates.

The media tried to keep up, but the stories poured in faster than they could verify. Grainy phone clips showed entire corridors of Fatmawati Hospital filled with staggering figures, their arms twitching, their mouths dripping blood. A drone shot taken above Manggarai revealed hundreds of people running across the train tracks, chased by a swarm of the infected who climbed fences with animal speed.

On national TV, anchors fought to keep calm. One young presenter trembled as she read off the prompter, insisting that the outbreak was “under investigation.” Mid-sentence, the feed cut to footage of soldiers firing live rounds into a crowd of civilians at Pasar Senen. Official statements no longer matched what people could see with their own eyes.

And then came the broadcast that changed everything.

Agus sat in the dim glow of the newsroom, sweat soaking his shirt. His colleagues argued around him. Some wanted to stick to the government line. Others wanted to flee. Agus replayed the footage of the health minister’s lips again and again. He had memorized it now. “All going to plan.”

He decided the public needed to hear the truth. When the red light on the camera blinked, Agus looked straight through the lens and spoke.

“This is not rabies. This is not a natural outbreak. I have evidence that government officials knew this was coming. I have seen them say it. ‘All going to plan.’ Jakarta has been sacrificed.”

The studio erupted in chaos. The producers screamed to cut the feed. The control room froze. But the words had already gone live, carried into thousands of living rooms. For a brief, fragile moment, Jakarta held its breath.

Then panic exploded.

Families poured into the streets. Toll roads jammed with cars, motorbikes, and trucks overloaded with furniture. The wealthy tried to buy their way onto flights at Soekarno-Hatta, but the runways were already crawling with infected. Social media became a battlefield. Some users swore Agus was right, that the government had unleashed the virus to control Jakarta’s population. Others accused him of fabricating evidence. Hashtags about “Jakarta Zombies” and “Cat Conspiracy” trended worldwide.

The government responded within hours. The newsroom where Agus worked was raided. Soldiers stormed the building, confiscating footage and equipment. Colleagues were dragged into trucks. Agus barely escaped, slipping through a back alley as helicopters thundered overhead. By nightfall, his face was on wanted posters across the city.

Meanwhile, the infection was no longer confined to hospitals. It had spread into mosques, schools, and commuter trains. Entire MRT cars filled with bodies that twitched back to life before horrified passengers could escape. One video showed an ojek rider pinned beneath his motorbike while three infected tore into him. The scream cut off abruptly, replaced by the sound of feeding.

The news cycle no longer reported stories. It broadcasted the collapse of a city in real time. Live feeds from drones showed soldiers firing into crowds in Monas Square. Helicopters circled above flooded streets in Pluit, searchlights revealing swarms of infected moving through waist-deep water. A final broadcast from MetroTV showed an anchor choking back tears as she admitted the station was shutting down.

Agus watched it all from a hidden flat in Glodok. His phone buzzed with messages from strangers begging him for more information, more truth. He had nothing left to give. The city was falling faster than he could write.

Outside his window, the skyline burned. The TV towers of Senayan glowed orange against the night, flames licking the sky. The voices of the infected rose like a chorus. It sounded almost like prayer, but it was hunger. Always hunger.

The media had become irrelevant. The city no longer needed stories. It was living the apocalypse, second by second.

And in the middle of it, Agus knew one thing for certain. The infection had never been an accident.

It was designed.