CHAPTER 64: RECLAIMING SECOND FLOOR PART 2

Kenji froze as a woman in a stained summer dress launched at him, hands grasping. Her hair was a moving net; Kenji flinched back—and tripped.

Riku pivoted before the thought finished forming. He slammed his forearm into the woman’s throat, pinning her to a pillar, and snapped to Kenji. "Up! Up now!" His boot shoved Kenji’s shin under his own body; leverage did the rest. Kenji popped to a knee, pipe up, eyes wild.

"Breathe!" Riku barked into his face. "Step in and strike."

Kenji stepped. The pipe hit temple. The woman slid down the pillar like spilled paint.

On the right, a curtain burst and two sprinters came out with that awful stuttering speed—too fast for the eye to make them human. Miko was already moving, sliding between bodies, Glock low. She fired one round, then another—both into tile at the feet. The sharp barks cracked the air. The sprinters hiccuped, jerked. The half-second of stutter was all Murata needed; he hooked one by the ankle, yanked, and the skull met tile. The teen with the mop handle stabbed for the other’s eye; missed; stabbed again. Riku arrived on the third and finished it, one stroke, no waste.

"Reset!" he called. "Check space. Don’t chase—hold your lane!"

They worked the floor like that—three steps, clear, three steps, clear—using toppled displays as fences and pinch points. Riku called angles, Murata translated them into motion with a sergeant’s clarity. When someone over-swung, Takuya’s bark yanked them back in line. Twice, Riku grabbed a shirt collar and yanked a volunteer out of teeth range. Once, he slammed his baking sheet into a jaw mid-lunge; teeth scratched metal, not skin.

They kept it quiet. When a cluster bunched too tight, Riku tossed a handful of batteries down an intersecting aisle—clatter-clatter-clatter in the dark. Heads snapped toward the noise. Three peeled off, sprinted for the sound, straight into another pair’s waiting pipes.

Kenji surprised himself. The fourth time he stepped in, he didn’t squeal. The pipe went where he looked. He didn’t close his eyes.

"Better," Riku said, not looking away from his next target. Kenji flushed under the grime and breathed like a person again.

They bled the floor of movement slowly, steadily. A bite tried to get purchase on cardboard and found the taste of tape. Fingers scraped at plastic and skipped off. A woman’s nails raked down Murata’s shield and left long silver lines; he shoved her away, and the volunteer beside him finished the job with two ugly strikes that left her still.

In the electronics stall, a rat’s nest of cables tangled a volunteer’s feet. He went down hard, ribs barking off a shelf. "Partner!" Riku thundered. The man’s partner—young, shaking—stood for a heartbeat too long. Then he screamed wordlessly and jumped between teeth and prone flesh, baking sheet out. The dent rang like a gong. Another volunteer grabbed the downed man’s collar and hauled him over the cable hump like a sandbag. "Good!" Riku shouted. "That’s how you live!"

A dozen bodies later, the noise began to thin. Groans shrank to whimpers, whimpers to the soft scuff of dead weight settling. Dust hung thicker. Riku signaled a hold. "Listen."

They listened. No slaps of feet. No curtains rasping. Just breath. A few muffled sobs. The air conditioner’s dead grille ticking faintly as it cooled in a draft.

"Sweep teams," Riku said. "Pairs only. Eyes on corners. No one breaks line of sight. If you find movement, don’t shout—tap your pipe twice."

They swept. Two taps sounded once from the changing rooms; Murata and his pair went, and the taps were answered by a dull crack and silence. On the far aisle, Takuya found a crawler wedged beneath a fallen rack and dispatched it with a heel drop.

When they regathered at the stair door, twenty figures stood where they’d started—but their shapes were different now. Grease and blood had smeared stripes across cardboard. Tape was frayed, dented. Baking sheets were cratered. But eyes were steadier. Hands didn’t shake as much.

Riku scanned faces for pallor, for the telltale tremble of shock. "Injuries?"

"Bruised ribs," the volunteer from the cable snarl gasped, wincing. "Not bitten."

Riku pressed fingers lightly along the ribs, checked for crepitus; none. "Wrap and rest," he said. "You did good."

He moved down the line, checking forearms for punctures, shins for teeth lines, neck guards for scrapes. Medical instincts hummed—no bite breaks, just scrapes, barked knuckles, one twisted knee that he taped with a spare roll and a torn towel.

Murata’s gaze met his over the man’s shoulder. For once, there wasn’t disdain there—only something like measured respect. "Could’ve gone worse," Murata said.

"Could’ve gone better," Riku replied. "Next time, tighter shields. You were right flank anchor—hold your partner closer."

Murata grunted. "Noted."

They took a last walk of the floor together, Riku and Murata side by side with Miko trailing half a step behind, eyes still cutting corners. The second floor looked different cleaned of movement—full of ghosts, empty of threat. They passed a pile of bodies against a display of headphones, a smear of blackened blood across a cracked mirror, a mannequin wearing someone’s cardigan like a joke.

At the far stair to the third floor, Riku stopped. He looked up at the sign: ELECTRONICS • APPLIANCES. Behind it, dim shadows and the suggestion of stacked boxes.

"Not today," he said, mostly to himself. "Today we hold."

Back at the fire door, he turned to the volunteers. "You did it," he said simply. No big speech, no theatrics. "We’ll barricade this landing and make the sweep again this afternoon. Then we stage for the third floor tomorrow."

He pointed at the taped limbs and dented shields. "Re-wrap downstairs. Swap out any gear that’s soft or torn. Eat. Drink. Then rest."

Someone started to clap—one of the teenagers, high and shaky. It faltered, then grew. A ragged, awkward sound in that dead place, but real. Takuya didn’t clap, but he didn’t sneer either. Kenji wiped his eyes with his taped wrist and tried to hide his smile behind the pipe.

Riku didn’t bask. He just nodded once, pushed the fire door wide, and gestured them through. "Two-by-two," he said again. "We do everything the same way we survive—together."

They filed back toward the basement, bodies sore, armor ugly, weapons sticky.

Second floor secured!