Chapter 7: The Last Safe Havens

By the second week, Jakarta was no longer a city. It was a maze of shadows and silence, broken only by the guttural howls of the infected.

Those who survived the first wave of chaos sealed themselves inside apartments, mosques, schools, and abandoned offices. In Sudirman, entire high-rise towers became vertical tombs. Families dragged refrigerators against doors. Windows were covered with curtains and plywood. Elevators stopped working, leaving stairwells dark and dangerous. Each night, residents crouched in silence, straining to hear whether the sound outside was just the wind or claws scratching along the hallway.

In Kalibata, a mosque became a refuge. Dozens packed the prayer hall, sleeping shoulder to shoulder on prayer rugs. Imams recited verses by candlelight, their voices trembling, not from fear of God but from the groans of the infected echoing in the street. Shoes were piled against the door to muffle the sound of movement inside. The faithful prayed for deliverance, but when one man began coughing blood during dawn prayer, panic erupted. Before sunrise, the mosque’s doors were broken from within.

Apartments were no better.

In Grogol, the residents of a tower block thought they had safety twenty floors above the ground. They rationed instant noodles, boiled water in rice cookers plugged into dwindling power sockets, and whispered strategies for escape. Children were told to play quietly. No one opened the door for anyone. But hunger was a weapon stronger than fear. By the tenth day, neighbors knocked on each other’s doors not for help, but for food. Trust collapsed faster than the power grid.

Everywhere, the infected hunted by sound and scent. Their jerky movements carried them up stairwells, through corridors, into the smallest rooms. A single scream from one apartment would draw dozens within minutes. Survivors learned to bite down on their own hands when pain or terror tried to force a cry from their throats.

Social media, once a lifeline of warnings and survivor maps, went black. Phones became useless bricks. Television channels played only the same frozen news ticker, looping endlessly: Stay Inside. Await Instructions. But there were no instructions. The government had fallen quiet. Only the infected spoke now, their cries weaving through alleyways like the calls of wild dogs.

Some thought the army would return. They imagined helicopters landing on rooftops, or convoys rolling in with food and medicine. Instead, the only soldiers they saw were those who had been bitten, staggering with the same hollow eyes as the rest.

Survivors clung to small rituals. Mothers sang lullabies to children in whispers. Men brewed coffee in cracked mugs, sipping in silence as if routine could hold back the tide of madness. At night, some sat by the windows and looked toward the coast, watching the faint glow of fires burning across the water. Boats still moved there. People were still trying to escape.

But for those trapped inland, the sea might as well have been the moon.

Jakarta’s safe havens were not safe at all. They were waiting rooms, each filled with the ticking of hunger, fear, and infection. One by one, the lights in the city blinked out. And in the darkness, the dead owned the streets.