CHAPTER 66: SECURED!

"Battery aisle," Riku said, and led them to the counter where security glass had blown inward. He slid his arm through the hole, undid the latch, lifted the panel. "We’re not looting. We’re requisitioning." He counted out boxes with the calm of a man shopping. "One per pair. Murata—grab the AA bulk. We’ll power radios and lanterns. Takuya—take headlamps if you see them. Kenji—zip ties, tape, those portable radios there."

Kenji gathered, hands surer now. "You’re... stocking a store," he said, almost amazed.

"I’m building a spine," Riku said. "We can hang muscle on it later."

They found the CCTV endcap, and Riku’s Maintenance skill sang. Four bullet cameras with mounts. Two runs of coax. A DVR unit with a cracked casing but intact ports. He set it aside like a priest laying down relics.

"This will let us see our doors before we hear them," he said. "We’ll rig two on the loading yard. Two on the front. The DVR will live in the office. No more guessing when the dead decide to love us."

Murata’s brow ridged. "You can set that without power?"

"I can set it without mains," Riku said. "But we’ll need juice. UPS units, extension cords. If we’re lucky, a generator head we can fix. If we’re very lucky, trickle solar."

Luck was a relative term in the end of the world. They got half of what he hoped—two UPS blocks with decent batteries and a stack of extension reels. No solar. Not yet. In the small appliances row, they also found a hummingbird of a portable gas generator tucked under a shelf, box torn but motor intact. Riku crouched, fingers reading the carb like braille. "Gummed fuel," he decided. "We can clean it. It’ll run."

They staged the scavenged kits by the stair door and swept the last two aisles. Here the dead had done their quiet work weeks ago. A pair lay braced against each other, hands still clutching. Riku didn’t let anyone linger. "They could get up," he said, even though surely they couldn’t. He ended both anyway. Mercy or prudence, no one asked.

At the far end, where the third floor spilled toward a storage corridor, they found the oversized doors that would lead toward the fourth—the hardware level he’d seen on the store directory. Riku stared at the handles, listened with his jaw, then put his palm to the metal. Cool. Quiet. He resisted the urge to open.

"Tomorrow," he said, and the word felt like a blade set on a shelf. "We don’t overreach. We hold what we take."

They marched their finds back in bundles, two by two down the stairs, Miko sweeping the landings with the old bookstore flashlight and her Glock low and quiet. In the basement, the pile of gear drew a hush as real as any prayer. Radios. Batteries. UPS blocks. The generator.

Riku set the DVR on the counter, wiped at a smear of blood with his thumb like that would change what it was. "This," he said to Murata and anyone who wanted to hear, "is the difference between waiting and watching. When I tell you to be at the door, it’s because I’ll see what’s coming."

Takuya crossed his arms, eyes on the generator. "You gonna turn that into magic too?"

Riku didn’t rise to it. "I’m going to make sure the cameras work," he said. "I’m going to wire a bell on the front roll-up. I’m going to make it so a pile of meat doesn’t get to surprise a child again."

Takuya looked away first.

They took an hour to eat. Bread with peanut butter someone had found in a back bin. Water measured to cups. Riku made his rounds, checking fingers that shook and backs that stiffened. He tapped two shoulders and sent them to lie down because you don’t argue with shock. He asked Kenji to read the radio manuals out loud and, to Kenji’s surprise, the shaky little voice steadied as instructions turned into certainty.

"Push-to-talk. Keep transmissions short. Use call signs," Kenji said, and a few of the teenagers grinned because suddenly this was like a movie where they might live.

After, Riku and Murata dragged a folding table into the office and made it into a workbench. They tore a UPS apart and swapped a battery from the weaker unit. Miko sat on the floor with a camera mount and a screwdriver, turning screws into progress. Suzune rolled gaffer tape into neat donuts and labeled them with a sharpie. Ichika tried on a headlamp and pretended she didn’t like that it made her smile.

By afternoon, the second floor’s barricades had been checked again, the third floor had been circled a final time, and Riku’s line of volunteers stood straighter when he passed.

"Report," he said.

"Second floor—quiet," Murata said. "One crawler you heard before we did. Tatsuya crushed it. No breaches. Stair doors wedged."

"Third floor—secured," Miko added, as if it were inevitable. "We left two carts at the top landing. I chalked arrows to mark cleared lanes."

Riku nodded once. "Good work."

He stepped back up to the office and, for the first time since the morning, let himself look at the building map he’d scavenged from the wall by the customer service desk. He circled the basement and the supermarket and the second and third floors with a blunt marker, each loop darker than the last. The fourth floor—HARDWARE • GARAGE—waited like a dare. The fifth—GARAGE—hung above it like a roof they hadn’t earned.

He capped the marker and set it down.

"Tomorrow," he said again, this time to the empty office and the hum that lived in his bones.

He found Miko halfway down the hall cleaning the edges of her pistol with a scrap of cloth. She looked up at him. "You weren’t wrong," she said softly. "About doing it without guns."

"They need to believe their hands," he said.

"And you?"

Riku’s mouth pulled. "I believe in results."

The camp settled as evening rubbed its knuckles over the skylight. The volunteers drifted to their corners of the basement with new weight in their gait that wasn’t just fatigue. Pride, maybe. Or the shock of finding out they could do a thing they were sure they couldn’t.

Riku posted shifts. Murata didn’t argue when Riku told him to take the first watch. That was as good as a handshake.