They came to Barangay San Roque hunting rebels.
Before sunset, they will be begging the sick to stay tied down.
Corporal JC Saavedra is a reservist with too much imagination, too little combat experience, and one dangerous weakness: he cannot stop noticing Corporal Dona "Doc" Salisipan, the medic who has no time for his feelings while men are bleeding around her.
Under the command of Master Sergeant Jeoffrey "Highblood" Capulso, their squad enters the coconut groves of rural Masbate after a firefight with a fleeing rebel cell. The mission should be simple: secure the area, recover missing personnel, treat the wounded, and hold the barangay until reinforcements arrive.
Then they capture a wounded rebel.
He is feverish. Starving. Terrified of the dark.
And he begs them to restrain him before sundown.
San Roque is hiding more than rebel sympathizers. Behind locked doors and polite lies, families are concealing loved ones who have begun to change. The sick still speak. They still cry. They still recognize their children, their spouses, and the soldiers trying to save them.
They are also getting hungry.
The locals have a name for it: Yanggaw.
It is not an outbreak command understands. It is a hunger that wears a familiar face. A shame hidden inside family homes. A voice in the dark that sounds exactly like someone worth risking your life to rescue.
As night falls, the afflicted become faster, stronger, and harder to call enemies. Every rule the squad trusts begins to fail. Treat the wounded. Protect civilians. Obey orders. Do not fire unless the threat is clear.
But how do you protect a family from the person they refuse to abandon?
How do you quarantine a village when the hungry know every name, every doorway, and every voice that can make a guard step closer?
And what happens when the woman JC would die to save starts calling for him from somewhere she cannot possibly be?
Trapped between armed rebels, terrified civilians, failing communications, and a supernatural hunger spreading through blood, silence, and love, Capulso's squad must survive one catastrophic night without becoming the monsters they are ordered to contain.
Fast, brutal, darkly funny, and steeped in Filipino folk horror, Yanggaw: Soft Quarantine is a military supernatural thriller about the terrible price of mercy when the infected are still alive, still recognizable, and still begging you not to let them out.
In San Roque, quarantine is not cruelty.
It is the last kindness the living have left.
About the Author :
Jayson R. Valencia is a Senior Software Engineer who trades logic for nightmares after hours. A pioneer of the New Asian Gothic, he is the mind behind Tales of Haunted Japan, Tales of Filipino Terror, and the atmospheric novel Malipayon. His narrative architecture is so expansive it requires multiple masks: he also publishes visceral, experimental horror under the aliases Li Mei Tan (The Orchard That Eats Its Own) and the mononym Rodrigo (The First Carving). Whether crafting clean code or dark tales, Jayson builds systems you cannot escape.
