“I won’t watch her suffer.”

He leveled the rifle at the rhino’s concave forehead, pained but knowing he had no choice. He had never shot an animal before. He swallowed, hesitating. Knowing that if he pulled the trigger, it would destroy them both.

He forced himself to keep his eyes open and not cower from what must be done as he squeezed the trigger past its breaking point.

CHAPTER 7
THE TIGER

For the past year, Knight had experienced a recurring dream. He was a Mongol warrior clad in animal skins, living as a single being with his immense black mare. It began this time as it always did, with him standing beside his horse, scanning the horizon, feeling the emptiness of knowing he was the only human for thousands of miles. Desperately thirsty, he made a small incision in a vein in the mare’s neck. The blood trickled down her skin and into a horn that already contained her viscous milk, creating a red and white eddy. He drew the horn to his lips, drinking down the acrid pink slurry until it streamed down his cheeks. Covered in the skin and milk and blood of horses, he mounted the mare and ventured out onto the endless grassy plateau of the Mongolian steppe—an abyss to be conquered.

The flight attendant woke him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sir, time to put your seat up. We’re about to land.” His eyes fluttered open, staring at her for a disoriented moment. He was still dizzy from the sleeping pill, head aching from the scotch. Where was he landing, and why was he headed there? He raised the window shade and gazed out: coastline, white sand, golf resorts, lagoons. That’s right, he remembered. Miami.

Knight had a diverse array of clients, but his bread and butter was private zoos. There were thousands of them throughout the country, with especially high concentrations in Florida and Texas. They ranged from personal collections of the rich and famous to low-rent roadside attractions where lions, tigers, and bears rotted in chain-link pens. And then there were the big corporate players, like SafariWorld outside Miami, that sold the safari experience to the masses.

Knight entered the theme park’s main gate, where a cartoon giraffe held a sign noting that the park was temporarily closed. He followed the signs, making his way through an elephant habitat, then past a lone rhino whose horn had been cut off to deter thieves, per Knight’s advice.

Knight finally arrived at his destination: the great cats exhibit. The veterinarians looked like spacemen as they wandered about in their biohazard suits. Several stooped to examine the carcasses of dead tigers littering all the pens and communal yards. There were a least two dozen, gaunt and collapsed like punctured tires. Even by Knight’s jaded standards, the scope of the devastation was terrible to behold.