A day later, in the morning.
Riku had the volunteers lined along the basement aisle where the furniture and housewares had once been stacked high. Now it was a staging area—tape rolls, flattened boxes, banged-up cookware, and scavenged tools lay in neat piles.
"Armor first," Riku said. "No bare skin near mouths. Hands, forearms, neck, shins. If they get teeth on you, I want cardboard and plastic in the way, not flesh."
They went to work. Duct tape hissed as it unwound; cardboard sleeves slid up forearms and shins. Riku tore an old glossy catalog into tight rolls and wrapped two around Kenji's wrists, taping them down like cheap bracers. For neck guards, he cut U-shapes out of thick shipping boxes and taped them to collars like crude gorgets. He pressed plastic cutting boards over a pair of torsos and cinched them with twine—ugly, but better than nothing. A stack of metal baking sheets became shields, wrist-lashed with tape and twine.
