Wading in deeper, he found a man sprawled in a chair, his mouth agape. Flies circled the body, which had not yet begun to smell. As Knight slowly moved closer in breathless dread, he could see blood oozing from the eyes and nose—the same symptoms exhibited by the tigers that had died of feline leukemia at SafariWorld. The insurance man immediately processed the distinct risk that he was standing at ground zero of the next global pandemic.

“Shit.” Knight backed away, covering his mouth with his sleeve as he retreated from the room.

He left the offices and crossed toward a warehouse building. On the way, he passed a stack of empty cages like the ones he had seen being loaded onto the military trucks at the Tiger Palace in Thailand. Nearby, under a tin roof, he found a group of enormous earthenware vats covered in tarps, which were secured by ropes around the lip.

Next to the vats, he happened upon crates of empty new tiger wine bottles bearing the same label he had seen at the roadside shop an hour before. Through his travels, Knight had learned enough about tiger wine production to suspect that each earthenware vat contained dead tigers in various stages of decomposition.

He climbed up on a loading dock and moved inside the warehouse, where he found rows of cages like a giant prison block. There had to be hundreds, if not thousands. Through the bars, he could make out dead tigers, their forms obscured by shadows. Others were still in the process of giving up the ghost, stirring in their anemic agony.

Knight heard the loud snarl of a tiger in the distance. He searched for the source of the sound, tracing it to a room at the end of the hallway. Inside, he spotted a Laotian worker gripping a long metal rod as he cautiously approached a tiger.

Knight edged back into the shadows, then watched in shock as the worker jabbed the tiger with the rod, sending electricity crackling through its body. The tiger immediately crumpled, and the slaughterer continued to hit it with electricity as it convulsed on the ground.

“Wait!” Knight called out at the horror of it all. He hadn’t intended to make a sound, but the word burst reflexively from within him.

The worker turned with the electrified rod in hand and waved it threateningly at the pale-faced intruder. Knight put out his palms as he inched backward. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy!”

The worker continued to advance on Knight, coughing violently in his direction.

Knight recoiled in fear and moved into the hallway as the worker pursued, screaming at him in Lao. Knight turned and sprinted, triggering the predatory instincts of the surviving tigers, who snarled in terrifying dissonance at the fleeing meal.

Another worker emerged to investigate the commotion, blocking his path. Knight collided with the man, knocking him back against the wall and barging past him. He raced toward a door.