"Re-wrap," he said. "Fresh tape on shins and forearms. Don’t leave skin showing at joints."
Duct tape hissed. Cardboard creaked as it bent to armor. Baking sheets found forearms; pipes and hamrs were tested with short, nervous swings. Murata wound his tape like a craftsman, pressing each lap to set the glue. Takuya slapped a heavy claw hamr into his palm until it felt like an extension of his mood.
Kenji taped the bridge of his glasses so they wouldn’t slip. He caught Riku’s eye and flushed. "It... helps."
"Smart," Riku said, and moved on.
Miko worked the line with a pouch of iodine and gauze, dotting scrapes from the day before. Suzune tied Hana’s hair into a knot and shepherded her toward the inner ring of the basent, where folding shelves made a corral for the noncombatants. Ichika handed out rags to tie around necks beneath cardboard collars, extra padding against claws.
Riku hopped onto the custor service counter and held up the small radios they’d scavenged.
"Call signs. I’m One. Murata Two. Miko Three. Takuya Four. Kenji Five. Pairs use A and B. Keep transmissions short. If you panic, breathe, then speak. Radios don’t stop teeth."
A few strained smiles. It sounded like a unit.
"Second floor—quick check. Third—confirm our lanes. Then we take the fourth. Hardware and the internal garage. We do not open any roll-up to the street. We hold what we take."
He climbed down. "Two-by-two. Up."
They cleared the second floor like a drill—wedges checked, one crawler dispatched before it could drag itself free, displays reset to keep lanes clean. Even their breathing sounded steadier.
Third floor was déjà vu made warr by rot. They dragged yesterday’s bodies into a single corner behind a dead demo wall. Riku ordered heads one way, feet the other.
"Why?" Kenji asked, then winced at himself.
"You’ll know if sothing tries to get up," Riku said, and kept moving.
At the double doors to the fourth, Riku pald the push bar and listened with his bones. Quiet—waiting, not empty.
"Shields high on the swing," he said. "Wedge imdiately. Garage lanes run long; sprinters will use them. Don’t balloon."
He pressed. The door sighed open to a breath of oil and dust. Long, low lights. Canyons of shelving: FASTENERS • POWER TOOLS • SAFETY EQUIPNT. Beyond a chain-link wall: an internal garage—two lanes, a drain, a shutter to outside that was down.
They slid two carts across the doorway, offset like teeth. Riku held a hand: listen. Only the soft tick of old tal cooling.
"Go."
First movent ca quietly: two figures from behind a chain spool and under a ladder display. They weren’t fast; they were wrong. Takuya’s hamr fell like a verdict. The second found Murata’s shield and slid off into the shelf. Clean. Controlled.
"Safety aisle," Riku said. "Masks, goggles if they stocked them."
They found half-face respirators with dry filters and safety goggles. Riku handed them out. "Wear around your neck. Don’t fight in them unless necessary."
POWER TOOLS lit Riku’s brain like a fuse line. Impact drivers. Grinders. Saws. Batteries—two with charge when he thumbed the test button, six more he’d trickle later. He marked a shelf with red tape. "Staging. Don’t grab until we’re clear."
"Fasteners," he told Kenji. "What builds walls and locks doors. If it’s heavy, stage it here." Kenji nodded and worked with a quiet competence that surprised him.
They moved slow, geotry tight. Every rolling ladder was a risk. Every loose box a future trip. Riku kept the wedge shape, the lanes, the posts. A tarp over a pallet of cent bags erupted into two chalk-dusted sprinters; they slipped on their own dust and died on steel.
They reached the chain-link and the garage. Inside: a delivery scooter with a flat, a kei truck with ghosted store logos, a compact sedan with its hood popped like surprise, an ATV half-disassembled. Tools slept where hands had left them.
"Check under—eyes, not hands," Riku said.
They crouched: clear under the car, the scooter. "ATV—sothing in the wheel well," Miko said. Riku jacked it an inch: a severed hand flopped out, fingers curled. He exhaled. "Okay."
They worked a checklist. Hoods latched, trunks popped with a screwdriver through the seat, glove boxes poked and peeled and posted. The kei truck yielded a toolkit; Takuya grunted like he’d found steak. A wall cabinet offered two bottles of fuel stabilizer and a roll of exhaust tape.
"Gold," Riku said, holding the stabilizer. "Stretch whatever gas we find."
A wheeled tool chest rasped open: multiter, voltage tester, heavy cutters, wire rope, trickle charger. Riku’s face didn’t change, but his movents got faster. "Staging."
A soft brushing ca from the outside shutter, the whisper of nails sampling tal. Not pounding. Riku’s eyes narrowed. "We rig a bell before night. I want to hear the first fingertip."
They finished the aisles: chain, locks, hand trucks, rebar, cable reels. Riku made them close what they opened, tie back what hung. Takuya finally asked, "Why the housekeeping?"
"Order buys seconds," Riku said. "Seconds buy lives."
By midday, the fourth floor was theirs. A closet had disgorged two biters; a ceiling tile had coughed out a third. The line handled it without yelling. They stacked their haul at the stair—neat, red-taped bundles. Two volunteers guarded it while the rest climbed.
FIFTH FLOOR — GARAGE, the chipped stencil read. This was the building’s deck: concrete, steel beams, waist-high rails. One roll-up at the far end was jamd half-open. Sunlight sliced a bright wound across the floor. Dust hung in that beam like a visible breath.
Riku cracked the door; sunlight pushed heat on his face. He swept his flashlight low, more habit than need, and saw tire scars, oil turned to skin, the long shadow of a dragged box. Then movent: where sunlight t shadow, hands stroked the floor under the jamd shutter, feeling for a way in. Bodies pressed lazily against the outside, not committed—yet.
He shut the door gently. "They’re kissing the gap," he said.
"So we leave it," Takuya said, quick.
"We leave that shutter," Riku replied. "The deck itself becos ours. Roof doors, office catwalks, anything that gives us eyes or ladders—we secure."
He split them into two teams, counter-rotating around the deck. Doors were tested, not trusted. A stairwell breathed; he chalked a double X and left it. A maintenance room offered bleach, degreaser, a half-case of nitrile gloves. "Take, but don’t mix mystery bottles," he warned.
At a bent rail, a biter crawled like a broken dog. It snagged a pant leg. Riku went to a knee and chopped the wrist first—cloth freed—then finished the head. He looked at Kenji. "Edges matter." Kenji nodded like he’d been given a theorem.
They found a roof access that was still latched. "We chain it later," Miko said, already picturing the lock-up. An office catwalk overlooked the deck with two cracked panes and a desk. On the desk: a hand-crank radio, plastic crazed but crank turning. Riku spun it twice; a red LED blinked. "Staging," he said, and Kenji smiled like he’d gotten away with stealing sothing holy.
They skirted the jamd roll-up with shoulders brushing the far wall. The dead hissed in the strip of light, fingertips combing dust. Riku filed it under ’fire later’ and kept them moving.
Full circuit complete, no fresh doors, no surprises. He keyed the radio. "Five—clear, minus enemy barricade at shutter. We’ll fortify from inside."
"Copy," Murata crackled. "Fourth staging complete."
They ferried tools and masks and stabilizer and the little generator downstairs in relays. The pile on the basent counter beca a wall of possibility: DVR and caras, battery packs and chargers, goggles and half-face masks, chain and locks, cutters, a trickle charger, the hand-crank radio blinking like a heartbeat.
"Cara one—loading yard," Riku said, laying a bullet cam on the counter. "Two—dock door inside. Three—front interior. Four—front street exterior if we can snake the cable. DVR on UPS in the office. Generator for tests. UPS to keep eyes alive between runs."
He and Miko took mounts and coax; Murata grunted and shouldered the reel. Takuya and two others muscled the generator to a corner near the office with airflow. Kenji rattled off radio basics to the d corner, voice steady now that it had work to sit on.
They mounted cara one over the yard; the picture blinked to life on a cracked monitor: empty asphalt, a wandering paper. Cara two showed their barricaded dock door from inside—solid, quiet. Cara three: the supermarket’s front hall, a taped CHILDREN DO NOT CROSS line bright against tile. Cara four took patience and a coat hanger through a dead conduit; then the front street appeared, a weather report of emptiness.
Murata stood at Riku’s shoulder without quite aning to. "Now we see before we hear," he said.
"Now we plan before we move," Riku answered.
They rigged the fifth-floor bell: a paint can, chain, and physics. Any tug on the shutter would rattle loud. Roof door got chain and padlock. Chalked Xs hardened into real locks with ugly, satisfying clicks.
At dusk they burned yesterday’s third-floor pile in the loading yard. The sll rose sweet and hateful. No one spoke. When the flas settled into dull orange, they dropped the roll-ups and went inside.
Riku climbed the counter again, not for drama—because people needed a picture to hang their fear on. He pointed to the monitor: four squares, four eyes on their world.
"Basent—ours," he said. "Supermarket—ours. Second floor—ours. Third—ours. Fourth—ours. Fifth—ours, minus the outside shutter. We’ll turn what we took into walls, eyes, and nerves. Food stays rationed. Work buys better shares. You want to eat more, help more."
He nodded at Murata—your turn, if you want. Murata looked at the monitors, the staged gear, the faces.
"Yesterday I said strength isn’t leadership," Murata said. "Today we learned discipline is. You don’t have to like the boy." A small, grateful laugh rolled. "But you will work under him. Because results decide."
Riku didn’t bow. He just said, "Tomorrow, we build," and stepped down into motion.
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