Chapter 9: Death on the Water

The sea was supposed to save them.

From the decks of the fishing boats, survivors watched Jakarta disappear into the smoke. The city was still glowing, its towers like charred candles, the horizon smeared with fire. Waves slapped against the hulls, and for the first time in weeks, there was silence, broken only by the sound of crying children and sputtering engines.

But safety was an illusion.

The boats were overcrowded. Dozens of families pressed together on decks meant for fish, not people. The smell of saltwater mixed with sweat, urine, and blood. People prayed in hushed voices, their words carried away by the wind. Mothers rocked their children to sleep. Men kept knives close.

Then the first scream tore through the night.

A boy collapsed on the deck, convulsing, his eyes rolling back. His mother clutched him, begging for help, but the crowd recoiled. They had all seen it before in Jakarta’s hospitals. The boy’s mouth foamed, his back arched, and then he stopped moving. For a heartbeat, silence. Then his eyes snapped open, milky white, and he lunged at her throat.

Panic erupted.

The infected child bit his mother, and she fell shrieking, her blood soaking into the wooden planks. Men rushed forward, trying to throw the boy overboard, but he clawed at their faces with unnatural strength. The deck descended into chaos. Knives flashed. People screamed. Some jumped into the sea, preferring to drown than face what was coming.

On another boat nearby, a similar horror unfolded. A fisherman who had hidden a bite beneath his shirt collapsed by the engine. When he rose again, his growl was drowned out by the engine sputtering to a stop. The infected man tore into the mechanic before anyone could react, his teeth sinking into the man’s arm. Within minutes, the infection spread across the cramped deck. Survivors screamed as they were pushed into the water, their hands thrashing before vanishing beneath the waves.

The ocean became a grave.

Bodies floated in the surf, some still moving, their jaws snapping at anything that drifted near. Blood spread in crimson patches, drawing sharks from the deep. Survivors clung to pieces of wreckage, only to feel teeth on their ankles as the infected dragged them under.

On one of the largest boats, chaos gave way to brutal order. A man with a machete, once a market butcher, took command. He hacked down the infected, even as his blade split the heads of the still-living who had been bitten. Mothers screamed as their wounded children were tossed overboard. Families begged for mercy. The butcher showed none. To him, survival was all that mattered.

As dawn broke, the survivors could see each other scattered across the water. Some boats drifted aimlessly, their decks painted in blood. Others were nothing but empty hulls, rocking silently, the sea already reclaiming them.

There was no safe place. Not on land. Not on water.

The infection had followed them, carried in blood and breath. The survivors realized the ocean was not a sanctuary, but a mirror of the city they had fled. Jakarta’s nightmare had simply moved onto the waves.

And as the sun rose higher, the distant horizon revealed more boats, more people fleeing, more chances for the infection to spread. The apocalypse was not ending. It was only widening, carried now not just through Jakarta’s streets, but across the islands of Indonesia.