Red Mist Jakarta: Second Chance

The Red Mist Descends

"Ageng, shut up and hold your breath," Budi snapped, his hand gripping the cold steel grip of his newly acquired SS2-V1 rifle.

The darkness in the penthouse was thick, smelling of wet concrete, dust, and ozone.

"Is it a blackout? The whole city went dark, Budi! My phone has no signal!" Ageng’s voice was high-pitched, vibrating with panic.

"Of course the signal's gone. The cell towers are the first to get overwhelmed when everyone starts calling their moms to say goodbye."

A heavy, mechanical thrum vibrated through the floorboards. The emergency LED strips along the baseboards flickered, casting a sterile blue glow over the unfinished penthouse.

"See? Phoenix Logistics always has backup power," Budi said, checking the rifle's chamber. "Now, where is your family?"

"They were coming up the service lift! Oh god, if the power cut while they were in there—"

The service elevator chimed, its heavy steel doors sliding open.

A sharp, loud voice cut through the hum of the generator. "Ageng! What kind of cheap, garbage building is this? The elevator stopped for three whole minutes! I thought I was going to suffocate in there with your son's flatulence!"

Tuti, Ageng’s wife, stepped out, carrying two massive, reusable grocery bags and a giant Tupperware container. Behind her, Wawan, a heavy-set teenager, shuffled out, his eyes glued to a Nintendo Switch that was currently displaying a red connection error.

"Mom, I lost my rank," Wawan groaned. "The server disconnected right when I was about to get a savage."

"Shut up about your game, Wawan! Ageng, why is it so dark? And why does your boss look like he’s about to rob a bank?" Tuti pointed a menacing finger at Budi’s tactical vest and assault rifle.

"Uh, honey, this is Mr. Budi," Ageng stammered, frantically waving his hands. "He’s... highly eccentric. And he’s paying us triple."

Tuti’s expression instantly softened. "Oh! Mr. Budi! So nice to meet you. I brought rendang. It’s still warm. You like spicy food?"

"I love rendang, Mrs. Ageng, but right now, we have a slightly bigger issue than lunch," Budi said, gesturing to the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"What issue?" Tuti squinted at the window. "Is that... fog? Since when does Jakarta get fog? It looks like a cheap horror movie."

A thick, swirling crimson vapor was rolling off the Java Sea, creeping over the docks of North Jakarta and pouring into the streets of the Sudirman Central Business District. It devoured the streetlamps, turning the faint glows into eerie, blood-red halos.

Budi turned to his bank of monitors. The screens flickered, powered by his independent satellite connection.

"Gery, you online?" Budi muttered into his earpiece.

"I'm here, man, but barely!" Gery’s voice crackled through the speakers, sounding hyperventilated. "The whole northern district is a bloodbath! Budi, the red mist... it's not just gas. It’s got some kind of biological catalyst. I’m looking at the public transit feeds. People are inhaling it and... oh my god, they’re not just biting. They’re jumping!"

"Jumping?" Ageng asked, leaning over the console. "What do you mean, jumping? Like, parkour?"

"No, like grasshoppers!" Gery screamed. "Look at camera forty-two! The Sudirman underpass!"

Budi clicked a window. On the screen, the red mist had fully engulfed the crowded street. Headlights of stalled cars cut through the crimson haze. Suddenly, a man in a business suit sprinted into the frame, his face covered in dark, bulging veins. With a sickening, jerky motion, he bent his knees and launched himself straight up, landing on the roof of a double-decker bus with a metallic crunch.

"Holy crap!" Wawan gasped, his eyes wide. "He didn't even use a double jump! That's cheating!"

"He’s not cheating, kid. He’s infected," Budi said coldly. "The virus hyper-stimulates the muscular system. They don't feel pain, they don't fatigue, and their tendons are dialed up to eleven. They are the Jumping Dead."

"Aduuuuh, my house!" Tuti wailed suddenly, clutching her cheeks. "Ageng, did you lock the back door of our house in Bekasi? What if one of those hopping maniacs gets into my kitchen? I left my favorite Teflon pan on the counter!"

"Tuti, our house is forty kilometers away, and people are eating each other!" Ageng yelled. "Who cares about the pan?!"

"It’s an imported Korean pan, Ageng! It cost me five hundred thousand rupiah!"

"Quiet, both of you," Budi ordered, his voice cutting through the panic like a blade. "Watch the monitors."

On the screen, the scene was escalating with terrifying speed. The infected were leaping from car to car, smashing through windshields with their bare heads, dragging screaming drivers into the red-tinted darkness. A group of three infected leaped simultaneously toward a police barricade, sailing clear over the concrete barriers and landing directly on the officers.

"The police are running," Ageng whispered, his face pale. "They’re not even shooting. They’re just running."

"You can't shoot what you can't hit," Budi said. "They move too fast, too erratically. A standard police issue revolver is just a noisy paperweight against a horde that hops like giant locusts."

"Mr. Budi," Tuti said, her voice trembling slightly but still possessing a strange, practical edge. "Are those windows of yours really strong? Because one of those jumper people is looking right at our building from the overpass down there."

Budi looked down. Fifty-two stories below, the street was a chaotic swirling vortex of red mist and burning cars. He couldn't see individual faces, but the collective, guttural roar of thousands of infected was rising, a vibration that shook the thick glass.

"We have ballistic-grade polycarbonate overlays, Mrs. Ageng. And the steel shutters are about to go down," Budi said. He reached for a heavy control panel on the wall. "Ageng, help me secure the service entrance. We need to lock the manual deadbolts."

"On it, boss!" Ageng scrambled after Budi, his boots scraping on the concrete.

As they reached the heavy, reinforced steel door, a muffled, wet thud echoed from the outside corridor.

Thud. Thud.

"What was that?" Ageng froze, his hands hovering over the heavy iron deadbolt. "The elevator is locked down, right?"

"The elevator is," Budi said, raising his rifle and aiming it at the door. "But the fire stairs aren't. And some of them might have followed the noise of your family's arrival."

"Oh, great. Fantastic," Ageng hissed. "Tuti! I told you to stop complaining so loudly! Your voice has a three-kilometer range!"

"Oh, so now it's my fault?" Tuti yelled from the kitchen area. "If you had bought a car with working air conditioning, we wouldn't have had to take the loud bus!"

"Both of you, shut up!" Budi whispered. "Listen."

Behind the steel door, a horrifying sound began. It was a rapid, wet clicking, followed by a violent scratching against the reinforced steel, like metal claws on a chalkboard.

"They’re trying to bite through the steel," Budi muttered. "Stupid beasts. No intellect, just raw instinct."

"Should we shoot?" Ageng whimpered, clutching a heavy metal pipe he'd picked up from the construction debris.

"No. Don't waste the ammo. The door can hold against a tank. Let them wear their teeth down to the gums."

Budi walked back to the command center, his steps deliberate and calm. He felt a strange, cold thrill. In his past life, he had been one of the screaming bodies in the streets, running blindly until the poison or the infected claimed him. Now, he was a king in a concrete castle, watching the world burn from a safe distance.

"Gery, what's the status of the city grid?" Budi asked into his comms.

"Dead. Totally dead," Gery’s voice was fading, filled with static. "Even the military's secure lines are dropping. Budi, I'm... I'm seeing the mist rise up the sides of the towers. It's climbing. It's like the air itself is turning into blood. If you have those HEPA filters, turn them on now!"

Budi flicked a switch. A low, powerful hum resonated from the ceiling as the heavy-duty filtration system activated, drawing in air and scrubbing it clean.

"Filters are active," Budi said. "Gery, get to your secure room. Don't look out the window."

"Too late... they're on my roof... they're hopping on the sat-dishes... Budi, if I don't make it, tell my anime figure collection that I loved them—"

The line went dead with a harsh, high-pitched screech.

"Gery? Gery, copy," Budi static-called. Only white noise responded.

"Is your friend okay?" Wawan asked, not looking up from his Switch, though his fingers had stopped moving.

"He's probably a jumper now," Budi said flatly. "Or food."

Tuti gasped, quickly crossing herself. "Lord have mercy. He was such a helpful boy. He helped me d******d my coupon apps last month."

Suddenly, the ground shook. A massive, echoing explosion rumbled through the city.

Budi ran back to the window. In the distance, a major bridge crossing the canal had detonated, sending a massive plume of fire into the red sky. The military had blown the bridge to stop the horde, but even through the fire, Budi could see dark shapes leaping across the gap, silhouetted against the flames like flying demons.

"They're crossing," Budi whispered. "The quarantine failed before it even began."

"Mr. Budi!" Ageng called out, pointing toward the sky. "Do you hear that?"

Above the roar of the burning city, a rhythmic, mechanical thumping grew louder, vibrating through the glass of the penthouse.

Chop-chop-chop-chop.

A bright, blinding searchlight cut through the red mist, sweeping across the face of Kencana Heights.

"A helicopter?" Tuti squinted. "Are they here to rescue us? Oh, thank goodness! I need to pack the rendang!"

"That's not a rescue chopper," Budi said, his eyes narrowing as the helicopter hovered just fifty meters away, its searchlight illuminating the penthouse interior.

Through the glaring light, Budi could make out the sleek, black fuselage of a luxury corporate helicopter. Painted on the side in gold lettering was a logo he knew all too well: Adiwangsa Holdings.

"Adiwangsa," Budi growled, a sharp, bitter smile spreading across his face.

On the radio, a crackling, desperate voice broke through the emergency channel Budi had kept open.

"Budi! Budi, you bastard, I know you're in there!" Mr. Adiwangsa’s voice was no longer a silken purr. It was a panicked, terrified shriek, competing with the roar of the helicopter's engine. "The streets are gone! The docks are gone! They're leaping onto the landing pads! Let me land on your roof! I'll give you another billion! Two billion! Just open the roof access!"

Budi picked up his radio, his finger slowly pressing the talk button. He looked out at the billionaire, who was frantically waving from the helicopter's window, his face pale with mortal terror.

"Sorry, Mr. Adiwangsa," Budi said, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. "But as you said... my rates for high-risk disaster management just went up. And unfortunately, we're currently at maximum capacity."

"You psychotic piece of trash!" Adiwangsa screamed. "There are things climbing up the building's exterior! They're leaping from the balconies! If you don't let me land, we're going to crash!"

Suddenly, a massive dark shape launched itself from the 45th floor of the adjacent tower, soaring through the red mist like a missile, heading straight toward the helicopter's rotor blades.