THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEGUN

Raffles Place MRT station, interchange between North-South and East-West line, underground platform so packed until cannot breathe. One office worker wearing white shirt suddenly bite the neck of the person beside him. People thought what, this one drink too much Tiger at lunch, siao already. SMRT auxiliary police officer push through the crowd with baton. He radio for backup. No backup came. In four minutes, the platform where people usually kiasu push to get seat, now everyone pushing to get out.

Upstairs on the street, Shenton Way office workers scrolling phone during smoke break. One video blow up on Reddit Singapore, fifteen seconds. Showing one ah ma at Maxwell Food Centre using her metal chopstick to poke poke one fella who keep walking towards her char kway teow stall. She poke until the chopstick bend already, the fella still coming. Title say, sg auntie confirm can survive zombie apocalypse. Five hundred comments all laughing. The ah ma never reply to any comment.

6.47 PM, Minister for Home Affairs hold emergency press conference at MHA building. The situation is being managed, this is an isolated public health incident, the SAF has been activated as a precautionary measure, Singaporeans are advised to go home and stay home. 7.15 PM, MHA building dark. 8.02 PM, 995 no one pick up. Gov.sg WhatsApp channel last message still reminding people about dengue prevention.

Singapore cannot be sealed. Five and a half million people squeezed into seven hundred twenty square kilometres, one of the densest places on Earth. Every HDB flat is a vertical kampung, forty storeys of families stacked on top of each other, connected by corridors and void decks. You block one MRT station, they flow to the next through underground linkways. You close Orchard Road, they cut through Far East Plaza to Scotts Road. The island is so small that nothing is far from anything else, and that is the problem.

Geylang fell first. The narrow lorongs behind the main road, neon-lit and always alive at night, became corridors with no way out. The durian sellers at Lorong 17 threw durians at the approaching crowd. Thorns and all. Worked for about three minutes, then the smell of durian mixed with another smell entirely. The old shophouses with their narrow five-foot ways became perfect funnels, pushing everyone forward into what was waiting at the end.

Chinatown tried to close its gates. The merchants along Pagoda Street and Trengganu Street pulled down their shutters. The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple locked its massive doors. But Chinatown was built for commerce, for flow, for people to come in and spend money. Every lane connects to another lane. The heritage shophouses, beautiful and preserved, had back doors that were just plywood. Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple on South Bridge Road, became shelter for fifty people. The gopuram watched over them with its hundreds of sculpted faces. Some of those faces, by midnight, had company.

Orchard Road went dark in sections. ION Orchard first, then Paragon, then Takashimaya one by one. The Christmas lights were still up because Singapore always put them early, and they twinkled over empty escalators. In the basement food courts, the yong tau foo aunties abandoned their stations. The soup still boiled. Lucky Plaza, the Filipino workers' weekend haven, was full tonight because everyone had run inside. The building held longer than most. They barricaded every entrance and sang hymns in Tagalog. When the glass finally broke, the singing stopped mid-verse.

Marina Bay Sands still stood with its three towers and infinity pool, lit up like a cruise ship that would never sail. The casino was still running because the automated roulette tables did not need a croupier. The ball spun and landed on black, again and again, for an audience of empty chairs. Across the bay, the Merlion still spouted water from its mouth, aimed at a skyline that was going dark building by building.

HDB estates all across the island became vertical battlegrounds. In Toa Payoh, residents welded the staircase gates shut between floors. In Tampines, a group of NSmen organized a defensive perimeter around Block 201 using SAR21 training replicas and actual parangs from the provision shop. In Bedok, an entire void deck became a triage centre until someone they were helping sat up from the makeshift stretcher. Bukit Merah, Ang Mo Kio, Yishun. Yishun, everyone expected.

The Changi Airport control tower light still blinked. No planes were coming. No planes were leaving. The Jewel Changi waterfall still cascaded forty metres into the indoor forest, illuminated and beautiful and completely pointless.

From the top of Marina Bay Sands, Singapore looked like a circuit board losing power. One light, then another, then another.

Five and a half million mouths, open. To bite.

7 roles. 28 days. Zero margin for error.

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