Maddox Private Military (Zombies 2010)

Maddox, International is a global private military firm founded in 1988. Since 1988, Maddox has supplied staff and services of a military nature for hire and use and private armies. The hiring of professional soldiers is a common practice in the history of armed conflict. Historically, these soldiers are commonly known as mercenaries, and many critics of Maddox have compared them to such.

While Maddox offered services to train or supplement official armed forces in service of governments, they could also be employed by private organizations to provide bodyguards for key staff or protection of company premises, especially in hostile territories. Maddox has continued operating into the crisis of the worldwide Worldwide Zombie outbreak. They have supplied mobile armed military personnel to assist in areas usually unreachable through the Zombie Outbreak. For example, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency closed off a large portion of the American mainland due to the weight of Zombie numbers and an increasing inability to deal with the crisis. Survivor communities within the abandoned 'Contaminated Zone' were offered armed services by Maddox, International. Personnel would be dispatched usually via helicopters, and help equip civilians with gas masks and other necessary articles for surviving the outbreak. Maddox forces would usually fight in such situations for personal interests, or be paid a fee by the desperate citizens. Means of contacting them is usually unknown. Notably, Maddox has an office in Sacramento, California, outside the limits of the U.S. Contaminated area.

Background
Maddox International was founded in 1988 by Walker Maddox, a retired U.S. military colonel using inherited funds and donations from private sources. They offered overseas mission services to companies, governmental agencies, and international organisations. Maddox vouches for the professionalism of its troops, stating that they all have prior military or law enforcement experience. The firm guarantees employed personnel will arrive with all the personal equipment necessary to handle all levels of violence.

Maddox is a privately held company and, thus, does not publish much information about internal affairs.

Zombie Outbreak
Shortly after the Zombie outbreak and the rebirth of the American People's Liberation Force, Maddox was employed, most likely by the United States government, to crush militant opposition from APLF supporters blaming the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and President Obama for the slow response to the Zombie epidemic. After martial law was instituted in Utah, with most of the U.S. Armed Forces trying to contain a defensive perimeter, and the APLF controlling large portions of the countryside, Maddox personnel were seen brutally enforcing order in Salt Lake City.

Defending at least three heavily fortified compounds across the remaining safe zones in the nation, Maddox operates mainly out of these for field missions in the Contaminated Zone, supplying staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress or investigate reports of Zombies in the regions nearby. Photographs have been taken of Maddox soldiers in gas masks and biohazard assault gear, preparing for a field mission.

Maddox facilities are easily recognizable. They have thick concrete walls erected around them, defending by metal sliding gates, hastily strung barbed wire, and guard towers with powerful searchlights. Each compound is equipped with cinder block biohazard cells to house captured Zombies. The buildings are subject to constant surveillance with video cameras, while gun-toting armored staff are stationed on the tops of buildings and ground-level security are fully clad in bulky protection gear. Although Maddox forces never directly work with the American DTRA, they avoid conflict as much as possible with the official authorities.

Maddox operations within the Contaminated Zone include the defense of Chicago, where a number of small survivor communities had tried to hold back the Zombie tide. The majority of Chicago's population had been affected by the toxic gas inducing the Zombifying symptoms, causing the tide to turn against the survivors. Maddox stepped in and offered to defend the united communities if they were paid whatever money or valuables the citizens had. One Chicago survivor reportedly described it as 'Almost robbery', although the firm maintained that it alone is responsible for keeping the surviving citizens alive. The 'fee' was paid by a leading deputation of survivor citizens.

After some of the survivors came down with the Zombie-like symptoms, Maddox personnel lined them against a wall in one of the houses and executed them. The subsequent burning of the bodies suggest that the company has DTRA information and an certain level of understanding the Zombie strain. When so many of the citizens came down with the strain, Maddox personnel radioed for rescue and pulled out, abandoning the remaining survivors to their doom. One of the firm's current goals is to reach Washington, D.C., as unconfirmed reports have suggested to DTRA that there may still be holdouts there. However, the sheer size of the Contaminated Zone has ensured that the firm cannot even land control teams into the zone deep enough to reestablish radio contact with Washington. Even then, the likelihood of actually reaching any survivors in holdouts remains slim.

The demand for Maddox has grown high, as they are a global organization and a major player in the effort to fight the Zombie epidemic. Their ranks have been thinned, however, as due to their close proximity in dealing with Zombies and the U.S. Contaminated Zone has led some of the personnel to fall victim to the Strain, as well. All such reported or even suspected cases in Maddox personnel is not risked and the mercenaries are subsequently detained, tested, and killed by their own comrades.

In many parts of the Zombie-overrun areas, the demand for Maddox services can be derived from the belief that quality matters more than quantity, primarily stemmed from their superiority to ordinary citizen soldiers or untrained civilians trying to fight off a Zombie apocalypse.

Maddox is a UN-recognized private security contractor. Their personnel are employed to operate in Zombified regions where it was either deemed too shaky to risk UN personnel, or simply politically impossible for a UN nation to send its own troops while others refuse. The advantage of hiring mercenaries in such situations is that it reduces overt UN involvement. Besides the Chicago incident, Maddox personnel operated in defending survivor communities at no cost, and whether the individual survivors approved of their support or not. One Maddox operative, when questioned about this, simply replied, "It's the firm's job," suggesting that the UN has paid off the company to launch such missions.