“It’s 261,” said Lilah.
“Oh, crap.” Benny sighed. “On the bright side, that’s only sixty-five each.”
No one laughed at the joke. Not even Benny.
Riot fingered the silver dog whistle she wore around her throat. Each of them had one. “I had a crazy idea about two of us calling the gray people from different ends of the ravine, to thin the herd, but that plain won’t work. Too darn many of ’em.”
“So what’s plan B?” asked Nix. “Do we go down at one end and try some kind of systematic quieting thing? I mean, the ravine’s narrow enough that only three or four of them could come at us at a time.”
“Stupid,” said Lilah dismissively.
Nix colored. “I know, I was thinking out loud.”
Lilah eyed her. “Don’t. Unless you have a smart plan.”
“Thank you, queen of tact,” said Benny under his breath.
They began hashing out an idea that involved using the quads to pull big branches, small fallen trees, and other bulky debris, then pushing that stuff down on either side of Sergeant Ortega. Push enough stuff down and they could create temporary walls that would lock in Ortega—and probably a few other zoms standing close to him. The end result would be a much smaller number of zoms they’d have to deal with in order to gain access to Sergeant Ortega’s pockets and that satchel.
Then they began picking holes in the plan.
“The more we use the quads, the more chance other zoms will hear us,” said Nix.
“Reapers, too,” added Riot. “It ain’t all that far from where Benny got jumped yesterday.”
“Besides,” said Benny, pointing down into the ravine, “if we block off the tunnel, that’ll still leave Ortega and a bunch of zoms in a tight little space. If one person went down, the zoms would have a feast. If all four of us went down, we’d be so crowded we’d get in each other’s way. And we can’t shoot the zoms because of the noise.”
“We can come back tomorrow with Chong’s bow and arrows,” suggested Nix.
“No,” said Lilah. “Too much time. I can lean down with my spear, try and stab them in the head . . .”
“And probably fall in,” said Riot. “Ground’s too iffy, and you wouldn’t have squat for leverage.”
They stood there and stared.
Benny sucked thoughtfully at the inside of his cheek. An idea occurred to him, and he looked at the coil of rope looped slantways across Lilah’s body. “Huh,” he grunted softly.
“What?” asked Nix.
“Riot—you said something a couple of minutes ago,” he said slowly. “About herding the zoms?”
“Sure, but the whistles won’t do the trick,” she said.
“No, but I read enough Western novels to know a little bit about how cowboys herded strays.” He removed the coil of rope. “Anyone here know how to throw a lasso?”
As it turned out, they all did.
Nix knew a little bit about it from the Scouts back in Mountainside. Lilah had handled rope while struggling to survive—lassoing trees to climb and roping wounded animals she was hunting. But Riot was the real expert.
“After I skedaddled from the Night Church,” she said as she began fashioning a lariat, “I fell in with a group of scavengers. Called themselves the Rat Pack. They were a crazy bunch of kids who raided towns and tagged buildings that had good supplies. The kids were all into extreme sports—or I guess what had been extreme sports before the Fall. Skateboarders, BMX bikers, in-line skaters, and free runners.”
“What’s that?” asked Nix.
“It’s a kind of sport where you do all sorts of acrobatics over obstacles and up walls and suchlike. Looks like a bunch of crazy monkeys, but it’s amazing. Fun, too.”
“You did that?”
She shrugged. “I learned me a few tricks. There was a boy named Jolt who taught me a lot of things.”