Darwin, Australia

[The chosen meeting point with my contact is a small local downtown diner, one of first businesses to reopen after the final clearing of the territorial capital. From our outdoor table, I can still make out a trio of bullet holes in the building across the street. The subject of today's interview is a Zachary "Dingo" Kayes, founder and CEO of "Wolfpack International", a trade conglomeration that provides its own mercenaries for protection of cargo ships and other efforts that are playing a major role in restarting economic growth in the Pacific. With his sunglasses and gelled hair style, he looks more like the millionaire playboy one would expect, never suspecting him to be a combat veteran with nearly twenty years of service with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment]

You have any idea how hard it is to have the name "Zach" these days? Anytime my first name comes up, no matter where I am, someone gets jumpy or at least starts looking around nervously. And who could blame them after all these years? I'd be on edge too if I was in their shoes. I've had to start going back to an old nickname that some smartass Americans called back in the prewar days: "Dingo". Yeah, they thought they were bloody clever coming up with that one. Not exactly glamorous but at least it doesn't cause a panic in a crowded room. Should probably count myself lucky they didn't go with "Kangaroo" or something even worse.

Did you work often with the Americans in leadup to the war?

When they were making a mess in a Middle East, sure. Australia may not have been as tempting a target for terrorists as New York or cities in Western Europe, but we were definitely on the list of groups that warranted a few middle of the night visits from SASR. After their pullout and military drawdown from Iraq and Afghanistan though, Australia chose to reevaluate its own standing in the world. We decided that it would be best to focus on covering our own asses and be more active in protecting our interests instead of relying on our allies for so much, giving a wide berth to the Taiwan Crisis in a way that would only get us involved if we wanted to be. That's the reason why I was in Zambia in the days before everything started going to shit.

What exactly was your mission in Africa?

Nothing that would normally be worth writing home about. It was a joint operation with ASIS to do a threat assessment and come up with plans to safeguard Australian citizens and businesses if there was a surprise coup or terrorists began to target foreigners in the country. Extremists had begun to grow more violent in places like Somalia and the Horn, and those in Sydney wanted experts on the ground to make sure we had plans ready in case the worst-case scenario happened. But Zambia was a pretty safe country all things considered and the whole job was a cakewalk. Visit a few places, talk to a few people, and write down some recommendations that will be collecting dust in some filing cabinets. Honestly it was more of a working vacation than anything. Even squeezed in time for a private safari a couple of days before we were scheduled to leave.

We were a small group, three of us foreign guys plus a local mate who'd traded in military life for animal conservation work in the country. He was showing us all the proper sights: elephants, lions, giraffes, and we were all genuinely having a fun go of it. Nothing seemed off until we were walking one of the trails deep in the bush, and we heard a noise not too far away.

A noise?

That's maybe not the best way to describe it. We definitely heard something, a cacophony of wild bellows and growls coming together. But we also could feel heavy vibrations in the ground beneath our feet that came in the same direction. I looked to our guide and asked him what was going on, figuring it had to be some sort of stampede or the like. But he said he had no idea and had never heard or felt anything like that before. He was worried that it might have been a group of poachers trying out some new trap, and wanted to check it out to see for himself what new methods they could be using. We all had our sidearms with us, more out of habit than because we'd actually been expecting trouble, and we were still confident enough in our skills and experience that hunting down some poachers actually sounded a bit fun. A career in killing gives you warped views of things like that.

Quickly and quietly, we made our way off the trail into the wilds where plant life got thick enough that it could obscure easy view of what was in front of us. But that was all that stood in our way. All the animals seemed to have cleared out of the area, and I do mean ALL the animals. Couldn't even hear any birds making noise in the trees. Now our mate had gone from looking concerned to a little unnerved. A feeling we were all about to share when we reached the clearing that was ahead of us. It too was completely empty, save for the banged-up body that was lying in the grass. Based on the markings on the ground around and the condition, it looked like it had been the victim of one hell of a trampling, with the head caved in and several of the limbs practically stomped flat. It was hard to tell with the condition of the clothing, but whoever it had been was dressed more like a foreigner who'd watched too many movies about African adventures rather than an experienced traveler or even a poacher. We just about wrote it off as a stupid bastard wanted to get way too close a look off the beaten path, and the local wildlife had just reacted in a weirdly aggressive way. That was until we got a closer look at the corpse itself.

It wasn't bloody and tattered in the way you would have expected. None of the predators or even scavengers had bothered to take a bite out of them. If anything, it looked like the opposite had happened since you could see a fresh chunk of flesh sitting in the remnants of the teeth and jaw. And that was the only place you could see the crimson-colored blood you'd expect. The rest of the body seemed to be leaking this brown and black goop that didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. Even old corpses wouldn't have looked like that.

Did you try to identify who the corpse may have been?

The only we could have done that was by looking for an ID, and none of us were touching that body with how freaky it looked. I was arguing with one of my mates about how it could have possibly gotten in that condition when our guide said he'd found tracks that probably belonged to our dead bloke just outside of the trample zone. We decided to follow them for as far as we could, hoping it would lead us to some answers, but all it brought was more questions. Whoever this person was, they had wandered around for about five kilometers without taking so much as a piss break. The tracks ended at another safari trail that had been running most parallel to our own with a jeep that had turned over onto its side near the tree line. There were no animals anywhere near the road, either. The only fresh tracks there belonged to other humans, about five or six as best we could tell.

[Dingo wraps his fingers against the table, frowning as he seems to focus on the bullet riddled wall across the street]

From the markings on the ground, it looked like the jeep's driver had tried to swerve out of the way of the people in the road and had lost control. The tracks showed that the people had converged on the wreck, but they weren't lending a helping hand for the injured. We found pools of dried blood, real blood, in the Jeep for at least three people splattered around the seats and consoles that suggested there had been a struggle. But no bodies. Even after we swept the area, we couldn't find any remains or even drag marks that might have suggested pulling away the dead somewhere else. It was like everyone had just…. gotten up and walked away.

It must have been around that time that the paranoia began to set in for us, standing there in that still completely silent part of the wilderness that we had been enjoying just a couple of hours before. Suddenly we all didn't feel like badass commandos on holiday. All at once I couldn't shake the feeling that we were prey in a land full of predators who were stalking unseen all around us. It's stupid to admit in hindsight, but in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. I guess the others must have felt the same since I didn't hear anyone argue when we started in a hurry to do just that. Looking over my shoulder the whole way out to make sure we weren't being followed by anyone. Or anything.

You didn't think to look further into the matter?

How could we? We didn't have any official authority in the country, and we were supposed to keep our presence there unknown as much as possible. The only way we could have carried on our own would be to try to follow more of the tracks from accident site and the thought of hiking around there another fucking second was out of the question. That primal survival drive screaming at us to get out of dodge couldn't be ignored.

What about an autopsy of the trampled corpse?

Even if we'd been willing to touch the thing, we didn't have the proper equipment to conduct any kind of examination or such. And there was no way we were going to carry it all the way to our vehicles and drive it back with us, a bad idea for any number of reasons. The best we could do at that moment was to have our guide mark everything on his map and get the proper authorities to look into it and do a proper investigation. It wasn't unheard of for bodies to pop up in the bush, and the locals would be better experienced to handle it all. At least that's what we thought.

Did he ever reach back out to you and relay what they found?

No. In fact, I never heard from him ever again after we left. I know how all that must sound, especially with what we know now, but back then we had no idea what we were looking at even when it was right in front of our faces. On the plane ride back home a couple of days later, I even laughed at myself in embarrassment. Of course there had been a logical explanation for what must have happened, I was just too busy losing my nerve like a kid thinking about ghost stories to see it.

I didn't give the whole thing a second thought. Not until Zach started shambling in the streets of Brisbane.