And again.
After eight tries she was cursing a blue streak and using language so intensely and descriptively foul that Benny was extremely impressed.
Finally Riot stepped back from the ravine and threw the lasso onto the grass.
“So much for your brilliant plan,” she groused. “I might as well hang myself with that damn thing.”
She started to stomp off, got about ten paces, and stopped. She turned with a quizzical look on her face. The same expression was blossoming on Lilah’s and Nix’s faces; and Benny was sure he wore an identical look.
Riot had said it.
Hang myself.
They looked at the lasso. Everyone smiled.
Ten seconds later they were kneeling together at the edge of the ravine, dangling a much smaller loop down into the shadows.
“A little to the left,” suggested Benny. “No, too much. Back . . . back . . .”
Lilah crouched next to Riot, her spear extended all the way down, using the blade to bat aside reaching hands and to tap the loop toward Ortega.
“Little more . . . ,” breathed Benny. “Little more . . .”
The edge of the loop brushed against the big zom’s face. Everyone held their breath as, with infinite care, Riot eased it over the crown of the man’s head and then slowly, slowly down until it hung pendulously below his chin.
“Now!” cried Nix, and Riot jerked back on the rope. The slack loop snapped tight, constricting like a noose around Sergeant Ortega’s throat.
They had him.
Kind of.
He was still down in the pit.
They grabbed the rope and began to pull.
Benny, though slim, was the heaviest of them; but, like the girls, the hardships of warfare, frequent injuries, small meals, and stress had leaned him down.
Sergeant Ortega, before death and desiccation had wasted him, probably weighed 260 pounds. Now he was probably 220. They had a two-to-one weight advantage over him, but they were lifting from the top, with the majority of his weight below the noose, and they were trying to pull him up a twenty-foot wall. While he fought and writhed and struggled.
It went from a brilliant plan to a brutal struggle. The sun hammered down on them and sweat burst from their pores as they pulled. They set their feet into the sandy soil, using tufts of the tall grass for traction. They groaned and growled and yelled and cursed.
The sergeant was an improbably heavy weight. He felt like he weighed a thousand pounds. They moved another foot back.
And that was as far as they got.
Benny strained and strained until his blood sang in his ears and black poppies seemed to burst in his eyes.
Finally they collapsed. Their hands ached; their lungs burned with oxygen starvation. They lay sprawled where they’d fallen, except for Nix, who crawled like a battlefield victim to the edge of the ravine and peered down.
Nix, who was never one for cursing, repeated a few of the phrases Riot had used a few minutes ago.
“What?” asked Benny listlessly.
“It’s the other zoms,” she said.
Benny lifted his head. “What?”
“They grabbed at Ortega as soon as we started pulling him up. Some of them are still holding on to him.”