“Then you’d have an army of Mutts,” I say.
“Yep,” Paul says with a satisfied smile and glances at the General. “He put up a hell of a fight. Like down to the very end when Chloe herself cornered him in the armory. She looked like the cat that had caught the canary. Too bad she didn’t realize it was a set up.”
Jude, who has been silent this whole time, speaks up. “Wait…so you let her do this to you?”
“Well to him,” Paul says. “I didn’t let her get me. She couldn’t know about me and God knows what another dose of that crap would do to my system.”
I don’t blame him for that. Paul was barely alive when we found him in the testing center from all the chemicals they’d been pumping into him for months.
“How many were injected?” I ask.
“Five hundred and twenty three,” Erwin replies. “We took down half her army by the time they realized their mistake.”
“Boy, I wish I could have seen her face when she figured it out,” Jude says, breaking into a grin.
“Although we had the element of surprise, she had access to weapons and artillery. We fought for three bloody days. On the third a horde of Eaters found us, probably alerted by the continuous battle. One of the largest I’ve ever seen. Probably came up from Florida, which means all the cleared areas in Georgia and South Carolina are filled with the infected again.” Erwin sighs. “We both used the opportunity to gather our survivors and run. We moved northeast and she just went north. We knew from Cole she planned on going afte
r Alexandra and the northern survivors next. She just didn’t have the massive army behind her like she thought she would.”
“So everyone is a Mutt?” I ask. “The whole army?”
“Everyone that survived. We’re down to about three hundred now.”
“What about the members of the town?” Green asks. “Did you give them the EVI-2 as well?”
“No,” Paul answers. “That’s up to them. Right now we’re training them in the basics. They’ll get the option soon.”
“You’re aware Chloe is in the area? She has Alexandra and Jane. She left us for dead.”
Erwin laughs. “When will they learn it’s a mistake not to see the bullet in your head?”
That’s a question I’ve mulled over and over for days now. How did she let that happen?
I shrug. “Their stupidity is just another chance for me to end this.”
“When do we go after them?” Green asks, sounding eager to get back in the fight even though his body isn’t any readier than mine is.
“Patience is important right now. We’re strong but not big enough. We have scouts recruiting new members as we speak.” Erwin’s face turns serious. “The next battle will be the final one. We can’t go on like this—not if we want to survive as a species. The modifications and genetic alterations are damaging the thread of humankind.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” I ask.
“I don’t,” he replies. “But Dr. Ramsey has some ideas he’s working on in the lab right now.”
Chapter Eleven
“Sorry about that earlier,” I say to Paul. He’s taken me to an apartment over a row of shops stocked with food and necessities. My bag is already on the small couch, delivered by some unknown person, as well as dinner that hits my nostrils and stomach the second we arrive. I sit across from him at the kitchen table shoveling venison stew in my mouth with all the grace of a savage. “The attacking and stuff. I was out of line.”
“And a touch paranoid. It’s understandable under the circumstances.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. He studies the bruises on my face and he’s already commented that I’m walking with a limp. “You took quite the beating.”
“Yeah, the Hybrids weren’t gentle. I have no idea how I got out of there alive.”
Paul picks up the salt shaker and taps it on the table. “Tell me about Alex.”
“Chloe took her. I don’t think she killed her, not yet. She seems to have some ulterior motive with her. She certainly doesn’t want to give her the EVI-2.”
“No, not now that she knows the dual vaccinations result in a bad-ass super soldier like me.”
I roll my eyes. “Then what?”