All there was left, was the war.

— 49 —: THE WAR

— 49 —

THE WAR

Big Elroy had ridden with the Rovers for years before the dead rose, but not his whole life. Before he was a biker he’d been a soldier. A sergeant in the army who’d served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then was brought up on charges of rape. The victim, a thirteen-year-old girl, ignored threats against her own life and those of her family to testify. The army believed her and Big Elroy was stripped of rank, given a dishonorable discharge, and barely avoided jail time. If the girl had been white, he knew he’d have served time.

He wasn’t out of work long before receiving a job offer from Blue Diamond, a security firm that provided, among other things, military contractors. No one called them mercenaries anymore.

Big Elroy spent eight wonderful years on gigs in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America. He did not much care who cut the checks to Blue Diamond. What mattered was that he was having fun and getting paid well. Blue Diamond respected his skill set and his understanding of tactics and strategy. By his eighth year, Big Elroy was running his own team and designing complex mission plans.

Then he got shot. For a soldier it would have been called a million-dollar wound; the kind of injury that insures you’ll never have to see the hell of combat again. For a contractor like him, it was like being pissed on. He had a limp he’d never shake and some nerve damage in his left hand. He lost more than seventy percent of the sight in his right eye. They gave him a severance package and a swift kick in the ass. Within six months he was riding with the Rovers.

Now he was the Rovers. He’d been on the rise within the club before things went to shit, and when the dead rose and the top tier management of the Rovers club began eating each other, Big Elroy stepped in to fill a critical vacancy.

Now he had two hundred and twenty soldiers in this region and another two hundred out in scavenging teams throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. By tomorrow, he’d even have his own kingdom.

Happy fucking Valley.

Maybe he’d call it Rovertown. Maybe he’d call it Elroytown.

Either way, it was his. All he had to do was take it.

He stood like a general from some old Napoleonic war painting, sitting astride a horse on a hill that commanded a wide view of the valley. There were fires burning out front. There were fake-out teams and snipers on the east and in back.

And the main force of his army was ready to rock and roll.