Yin opened his eyes. Darkness. Pitch black darkness that engulfed his every direction. With the familiar sounds of wailing and groaning, human bodies succumbing to their base needs grew in desperation. Still, the only thing that had yet to change was the sound of the never-ending storm. Rain falling on the roof and windows, thunder booming in the distance. It was as if something had placed a curse on them. One that had locked away their freedom and was bent on driving the people inside to nothing short of madness.
"Yin? Are you still there?" He heard a familiar older voice call out to him.
"Yeah. How're you holding up, Uncle Heith?" Yin said evenly.
"Not bad. I'm doing just fine."
'He's bad at lying.'
Yin signed silently and realized. No, it wasn't only him after all. Hunger was the only problem they could solve.
He counted around twelve people. Him, his uncle, his mother and father which he did not know where they were, and the other family members in the darkness of the steel cage.
***
Yin opened his eyes again. The familiar scenery of pitch black entered his eyes. Eleven. He counted eleven people in the darkness.
'... What?'
Surely he had miscounted. Before he could form another thought, his stomach growled. Painfully. Hungrily. But he dismissed it and went back to his initial thoughts.
'One, two, three…'
"Eleven." He mistakenly said the final count out loud. He felt a body shift next to him, as if startled yet surprised.
"Eleven? Yin, what does that mean?" His uncle, Heith gently tapped onto his shoulder.
"What does Eleven mean, Yin?" His voice sounded hoarse, as it had never felt a droplet of water or food in an eternity. It had been an eternity, not that Yin could even keep time in his mind. It wasn't worth it to remember such a useless subject right now.
"Nothing, Uncle Heith. Go back to sleep." Yin said calmly. His eyes and mind strained to remember the silhouettes of the people in the darkness with him.
His uncle nodded, his movements dying down as he went back to sleep. Sleep was the perfect thing to pass the never-ending darkness and time. Yin felt his eyes grow dry. He closed his eyes.
***
Yin opened his eyes. The first thing he did before the painful ache of hunger or thirst was count the silhouettes.
'Eight. He counted eight people now. And there was a weird faint smell. Naturally, the garage smelled of steel and other various materials, but his mother had always taken perfect care of it, cleaning and making sure nothing too potent was left unnoticed. The garage smelt of iron. Yin couldn't wrap his head around as to why. But the pain hit him. Hard. Harder. He groaned silently and looked out the window frame. Darkness. Black clouds swarming the colorless skies. Clear droplets of rain pelted the window sills as if under a waterfall. Thunder shook the air. The only source of light was through the window which Yin and his uncle sat near on the monochrome couch. He saw it. Or rather, he saw them.
'What in the hell is that…'
He tried to refuse puking immediately. In the furthest corner of the steel box, his garage, he saw a group of people. Humans bloodied atop the tables. He couldn't quite tell, but it looked as if they were torn limb from limb and… They were missing their lower jaws.
'Why? To not alert others? Why? What that hell is happening… No. Who did this?'
He tried not to move, keeping his body stiff as if pretending to be fast asleep. His uncle shifted and woke up. The familiar sound of stomach pain courses through him.
"Yin? Are you awake?" His uncle asked, sounding a bit worried. He sat up and shook the young man's shoulders.
Pretending to just wake up, Yin taps his uncle's hands. The older man lets out a tentative sigh of relief as he lets go. However, he turns his head to the smell of iron.
"Yin? What happened? What is that?" Heith said, sounding worried underneath his calm demeanor.
Yin couldn't look. He turned his gaze to the corner and heard it. The wet sound of teeth biting into flesh. The sound of bone crunching. Blood spilling and dripping onto the floor. He saw a group of silhouettes hunched over the corpses of human relatives. That was the last straw. Yin hunched over the monochrome couch and threw up, forcing his stomach pain to be in even more pain. The sound of vomit splattering across the rugged gray floor made the hungry shadows turn their gazes to that source of the sound… To him.
'Shit.' Was the only word Yin could think of. Not because he had just exposed that he wasn't asleep, but the fact he also exposed his area and where he and his uncle were. He grabbed onto his uncle's arm, wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, and stood up with his uncle. The older man was startled, but nonetheless remained silent and stood up with Yin.
"What? What do we do?" He said, his voice full of trust. Even though they both had gone… whatever time meant without food, water, or exercise. His voice still sounded so determined.
Yin bit down on his lip, hard. Enough to make it bleed. He was thinking. How? How can two people, who were hungry, thirsty, and sore from resting win against whatever those silhouettes were. Because he knew, deep down, those were not humans anymore. Only hollow remnants of them.
"I don't know, Uncle Heith… But we will probably fight. Fight with any means necessary." Yin said coldly, his eyes following the approaching silhouettes.
The older man looked down at Yin, before nodding and forgetting any sort of pain he had held in for the eternity they spent in the steel cage. "Alright. I'll protect you."