THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEGUN

The Half Way Tree Transport Centre was the first to go. A JUTC bus pulled in from Spanish Town, packed tight as always, people standing hip to hip in the aisle. Somebody bit somebody. The rest thought it was a madman, a crackhead, one of those things that happen on the bus and you just look through the window and mind your business. The security guard at the centre reached for his baton. He never got to swing it. When the bus emptied out, what came through the doors moved slow but never stopped moving.

Up on the surface, Knutsford Boulevard was still buzzing. The office workers were spilling out of New Kingston towers with their lunch bags and their earphones. A yute in Cross Roads filmed a woman walking down Hope Road with her nurse uniform soaked red, arms stiff, jaw hanging loose. Him put it on Twitter with the caption: "Yo this nurse drink too much white rum and a walk like duppy." Twenty thousand retweets in five minutes. The video cut when the woman lunged at a jerk chicken vendor right in front of the Bob Marley Museum.

At 6:47 PM the Prime Minister appeared on TVJ from Jamaica House. He spoke of an isolated public health incident, assured the nation that the Jamaica Defence Force and the Jamaica Constabulary Force had the situation contained, and asked citizens to remain calm. A journalist from the Gleaner asked about the videos circulating online. She was told not to spread unverified information. By 7:15 PM Jamaica House went dark. By 8:02 PM the 119 emergency line played a busy signal that looped forever. Jamaica, where the government always has a plan but never has the budget, had neither.

Containing Kingston is a geography lesson in failure. The city sits between the Blue Mountains to the north and the harbour to the south, hemmed in by hills and water. But the garrison communities, Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens, Denham Town, Trench Town, they are concrete mazes with one road in and zinc fences everywhere. No map covers every lane. No helicopter sees through the zinc roofs. The gullies that cut through the city, those concrete drains that flood every hurricane season, became highways for the infected, moving unseen beneath the streets.

Downtown Kingston fell with its history. The Ward Theatre, the Parade, the old pirate city turned capital. The higglers of Coronation Market fought with machetes and the same toughness that built their stalls from nothing every morning. Miss Ivy, the ackee and saltfish lady from aisle three, split two skulls with a Dutch pot before they dragged her down between the yam barrels. The blood mixed with the melted ice from the fish section. The smell was harbour and iron.

Tivoli Gardens and the western garrisons went to war the way they always went to war. The dons called the shots. The youth them grabbed whatever was in reach. Gunfire echoed off the zinc fences until the ammunition ran dry, and then it was machetes, then pipes, then fists. The murals of fallen soldiers and political heroes on the concrete walls got a new coat of red. They held longer than anyone outside expected. They had been under siege before.

New Kingston, the glass tower district, thought money was a barricade. The security guards at the Pegasus Hotel locked the lobby. The bankers at the JMMB tower sealed the parking garage. The infected came up through the underground levels like water rising. A BMW X5 crashed into the fountain at Emancipation Park. Two bronze statues of naked freedom stood over a park filling with bodies that moved without breathing.

August Town held on with spirit and fire. The community that sits where the Hope River meets the city burned barricades at every entrance. The Rastaman them chanted psalms and swung cutlasses. The drums of Nyabinghi echoed off the Blue Mountain foothills all night, steady and deep, until the chanting turned to screaming and the screaming turned to silence.

Trench Town fought with music still playing. Somebody left a speaker blasting Bob Marley from a zinc rooftop on First Street. "Redemption Song" echoed over the gunshots and the groaning. The birthplace of reggae and ska and rocksteady, where every lane has a legend, filled up with something that had no rhythm and no soul.

At three in the morning the Blue Mountains were just a black wall against the stars. Kingston Harbour reflected the city lights like it always did, pretty from a distance, ugly up close. The container ships sat at anchor. The cranes stood still. The lighthouse at Port Royal, the old pirate haven that sank into the sea three hundred years ago, still blinked its warning to ships that would never dock.

Dawn broke hot and heavy. The roosters did not crow. Six hundred thousand mouths open under the Caribbean sun. To bite.

7 roles. 28 days. Zero margin for error.

• 👑
  Leader
• 🏃
  Scout
• 🛡️
  Tank
• 💉
  Medic
• 🍳
  Cook
• 🔧
  Tech Expert
• 💀
  Bait