Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

‘Everyone!’ she called. ‘Climb! Get to the top and then jump across to that platform!’

No-one was in a state to argue: Seymour Wolfe was whipping his head this way and that in a panic; Aaron Perry was clinging desperately to a seat; Greg Johnson was holding up his boss, the ambassador. Hu Tang kept stammering, ‘Oh God, oh God’ in Mandarin while Deputy Director Zhang wore the blank despairing expression of a man who had just seen his entire future go up in flames. Hamish seemed okay, but then, he’d been in war zones before.

They all followed CJ, using the bolted-down seats as a kind of ladder, and soon they were up at the sliding doors at the top end of the cable car.

Hamish and Johnson yanked them open—and immediately a torrent of water came rushing in, slamming into their faces, almost knocking them back down the car. The waterfall was now gushing directly into the upturned cable car.

‘Go!’ CJ yelled. ‘Hurry!’

Hamish went first, then Johnson. They stood on top of the car and began helping the others out.

One by one, the group climbed through the column of water streaming down into the cable car, with Johnson and Hamish pulling them up from above: Wolfe, Perry, then Ambassador Syme, Hu Tang and Zhang. They all emerged from the cable car before jumping tentatively across to the landing platform.

Only CJ, Na and the bartender remained inside the cable car. Water rushed into the car through the upper doorway in a thick unbroken gush. Smaller cascades tumbled over the seats.

Climbing up beside CJ, Na was sobbing, shivering.

Then CJ heard a groan.

It wasn’t an animal or human groan, however, but the sound of rending metal.

Filling with water, the cable car was literally bursting at the seams.

Abruptly, a window exploded under the weight of the water and the whole car jolted… and began to tilt slowly away from the waterfall.

‘CJ! The car’s about to fall off the ledge!’ Hamish yelled through the pouring water. ‘Come on!’

CJ hauled ass, clambering up the last few seatbacks, with Na and the bartender moving desperately beside her.

‘ Move it, people! ’ Hamish called from the doorway.

CJ, Na and the bartender reached the doorway just as something large and black came rushing in through it, borne on the water, and collided full-on with the poor bartender who was hurled down the length of the vertical cable car.

The impact with the bartender had halted the dragon’s fall and suddenly there it was in his place, right in front of CJ and Na!

It was a prince-sized red-bellied black dragon.

It hissed at them, right in their faces, and CJ saw the deep bloody wounds where its ears should have been.

It was a creature of another time, a terrible serpent-like thing. It was everything that human beings—soft and clawless—feared. Its fangs were long, its talons scythe-like, its hide armoured. No human could fight such a thing. And you couldn’t reason with it either.

This red-bellied black prince, CJ saw, had an almost entirely red head and a small camouflaged box grafted to the left side of its skull… and suddenly she realised that she had seen it before: it was one of the dragons from the amphitheatre, the sullen prince that had reluctantly performed for the female trainer—

The dragon moved before CJ could react. It snatched Na’s throat in one powerful claw and bit her head off with a shocking tearing bite. Blood sprayed all over CJ’s face.

CJ was horrified—not just by the savageness of the act but by the speed of it. It had happened so fast!

The red-faced dragon dropped Na’s headless body and turned its gaze on CJ.

Others might have been stunned motionless in such circumstances but CJ had fought nasty things before. Instinct kicked in and she lashed out at the creature with her right boot.

The kick connected and she caught the dragon square in the mouth.

The dragon recoiled at the kick and in doing so fell back into the column of water gushing into the cable car and was swept away, down to where the bartender was.

The red-bellied black prince landed with a splash at the base of the cable car. The dragon squealed and thrashed beside the hapless bartender.

CJ looked down at them, at first too stunned to move.

The red-faced dragon shrieked again, looking directly up at her.

There came another metallic groan and suddenly someone—Hamish—was grabbing her by the collar, calling, ‘You can’t help him!’ and CJ was yanked up through the column of pouring water and all of a sudden she was standing in daylight beside her brother and Zhang on the top end of the upturned cable car, on the face of the curving waterfall, in front of the elongated landing platform that led to the ruined medieval castle.

Bizarre.

The cable car was still tilting slowly away from the waterfall. CJ saw the landing platform only a short jump away, but then she caught sight of a shadow moving behind the curtain of water just a few feet from her.

A second black prince, also earless.

At first CJ couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. Its head was bent over something. Then she saw it wrench something off the roof of the cable car with its jaws and with horror CJ realised what that something was.

It was the cable car’s snub antenna.

The device that generated the cable car’s sonic shield.

‘CJ! Come on!’ Hamish yelled.

Just then, the dragon pushed its head through the curtain of water.

It took a step forward, moving like a tiger, emerging from the wall of water one claw at a time, its head bent low.

The cable car groaned again. It was leaning ever further, about to topple off the ledge on which it was so precariously balanced.

Zhang leapt away to safety.

‘Jump!’ Hamish yelled.

And they jumped, together…

…just as the second dragon lunged at them, but it missed, and as they dived off the cable car at the very last moment—grabbing onto the end of the landing platform with their fingertips, their legs flailing behind them—the cable car toppled off the face of the waterfall, taking the two black princes and the unfortunate bartender with it.

The big double-decker car fell a full eighty feet down the face of the waterfall before it landed with a great splash in the roiling whitewater at the base and went under.

CJ and Hamish dangled from the end of the landing platform, high above the dizzying drop.

Greg… reached down and hauled CJ up.

‘We can’t stay here!’ he shouted over the din of the falls, showing more coolness under pressure than CJ would’ve given him credit for.

Within moments, she and Hamish were on their feet and running with the group along the length of the landing platform as dragons wheeled and shrieked and shot by overhead. They dashed into the ruined castle just as the red-bellied black emperor that had started the whole thing rushed by in a hurricane of wind and fury.

Hamish slammed the doors of the castle shut behind them.

Silence, save for the muffled sound of the waterfall outside.

Wolfe and Perry both fell to the floor, breathless. Hu and Zhang just looked shell-shocked. Greg… checked on the US Ambassador, who leaned against the wall, soaking wet.

CJ peered up at the interior of the castle around them.

They were in a high-ceilinged entry atrium. It was the size of an aeroplane hangar and it looked old and decrepit, with gaping holes in the ceiling and charred walls. Torn tapestries hung from crossbeams. Two sweeping staircases ran in matching semicircles on either side of the hall, leading to a chamber of some sort. But one of the staircases was useless: it had a ragged void in its middle, presumably created by an angry dragon.