Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

Six-ton garbage trucks were flung away like children’s toys.

One skidded down the length of the hall before slamming into the concrete wall. Another two bounced end over end before disappearing into the refuse pit.

The king roared and with its every booming stride, the floor shook.

There was movement everywhere now. Workmen ran for their lives. Office workers in about seven Great Zoo – emblazoned hatchbacks sped out of the hall into the ring road tunnel, fleeing. Prince dragons hunted between the upturned vehicles.

CJ turned to face the imposing external doors. While she was sure they could contain the prince dragons, she wasn’t certain they could withstand an assault by a king or an emperor.

The king wanted to know as well.

With a deafening bellow, it wrenched away one oversized garage door, revealing a thick-barred gate beyond it.

The dragon hurled its shoulder against the gate…

…but it held.

The dragon roared with fury, tried again, but again the gate withstood the mighty impact.

‘They can’t get out this way,’ Syme said with relief.

‘And neither can we,’ CJ said. ‘Not without letting them out with us.’

As she said this, she thought she glimpsed two prince dragons stealing away to the left toward a small red door over in the far corner of the hall; it looked like an electrical booster room of some sort.

But it was only a fleeting glimpse, because it was cut off a second later when the king dragon stepped right in front of CJ’s windshield and stared into her eyes.

Then the great animal lunged forward and grabbed hold of her garbage truck and CJ’s world spun crazily again as the truck was flung through the air.

The garbage truck sailed through the air for a full three seconds before it landed on its side with a bone-rattling thud.

Then it slid for twenty feet across the slick concrete floor, stopping right on the edge of the refuse pit. It finished with its cabin protruding out over the pit, twenty feet above the base. There was only a modest pile of garbage in the pit, since the zoo was not yet fully operational.

Its occupants all now lay awkwardly on top of the driver’s door. Hamish lay squished on the bottom with Greg Johnson on top of him and CJ and Syme on him.

‘Is everyone oka—’ CJ began to say just as the upper door to the cabin was wrenched away from the outside and a red-bellied black prince peered inside, hissing.

‘Hamish!’ CJ called. ‘Open your door!’

‘But then we’ll—’

‘Now, Hamish!’

Hamish did so, just as the dragon reached down to grab CJ. As the driver’s door swung open, Hamish, then Johnson, then Syme and CJ fell down through it, dropping into the refuse pit, landing on the small pile of rubbish there.

The dragon came a moment later.

As she hit the pile of garbage, CJ rolled, a split second before the dragon’s claws landed right where she’d been. Now, CJ was lying on her back and the dragon was standing over her, roaring into her face—

Blam!

The dragon’s chest was hit by a bullet. The dragon recoiled, but was unhurt.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

More gunfire. More rounds hit the beast, in the chest, in the snout, even in one eye.

Now the animal wailed in pain and a final shot—from Greg Johnson, levelling the pistol he’d found—went up into the dragon’s mouth, through its brain, and the big beast flopped backwards, squealing and convulsing before finally it lay still on the stinking trash heap, dead.

‘Nice shooting,’ CJ said.

‘Thanks.’ Johnson checked his clip. ‘Don’t expect much more, because I only have one round left.’

Just then, CJ caught sight of something in her peripheral vision, something big and red flying through the air.

‘Duck!’ she called as a fire truck went soaring overhead in a high arc. It was one of the huge ladder trucks. It sailed down into the pit, presumably flung by the king, and slammed into the opposite wall.

‘Jesus!’ Syme yelled.

‘We can’t stay here,’ Johnson urged.

‘I know—wait a second.’ CJ sniffed. ‘Do you smell that?’

‘We are in a trash heap,’ Hamish said flatly.

‘No. It’s not trash. It’s gasoline…’

Her eyes fell on the newly arrived fire truck. It lay at the edge of the hill of rubbish, crumpled and broken.

And a small fountain of gasoline was spraying from its gas tanks. The tanks must have ruptured as the big fire truck had smashed into the pit. The leaking gasoline was forming a pool around the big red truck.

With a shriek another black prince landed on top of the fire truck, its wings spread wide.

CJ snatched the pistol from Johnson, but instead of firing it at the dragon, she fired its final bullet downward, at the pool of gasoline.

A spark ignited… and the pool around the fire truck came alight and a wall of fire sprang up around the dragon!

The dragon was engulfed in flames and it squealed before flying off.

‘Not bad,’ Johnson said.

‘Yeah,’ Hamish said, ‘only now our pit is on fire .’

He was right. Choking black smoke began to fill the pit.

‘Okay, boys, here’s the plan,’ CJ said, climbing up the rubbish heap, heading for the rim. ‘We find ourselves a garbage truck and we run the blockade out of here.’

‘Aye-aye to that,’ Hamish said, taking off after her.

They arrived at the rim of the pit to find that the waste management facility now looked like a battlefield.

Where once all the garbage trucks had been parked in neat rows, now they lay crumpled against the walls or upside-down, wheels pointed skyward. Red-bellied black princes variously crouched on top of the upturned trucks or prowled around them. Low afternoon sunlight lanced in through the thick bars of one external gate. The king dragon stood over by the southwest corner, roaring.

There was no gunfire anymore and less movement. The dragons had taken care of the gun-wielding Chinese workmen and all the office workers were either dead or had fled onto the ring road in the hatchback cars.

‘That truck over there!’ CJ pointed at a garbage truck over by the inner doors. It was even aimed at the open doors of the ring road tunnel, ready to go.

The four of them made a break for it, running fast, keeping low, dashing from garbage truck to garbage truck.

Johnson scooped up an AK-47 from beside a dead Chinese workman’s body and threw CJ a Glock pistol.

As they hurried past an overturned garbage truck, they heard a groan.

CJ ducked to see Zhang huddled inside it. Hu Tang, she recalled, had stayed up in the building earlier.

‘Come on, Zhangman,’ Hamish said as he leaned in and dragged the zoo’s deputy director out.

CJ, Hamish, Johnson, Syme and now Zhang hastened toward the garbage truck by the inner doors.

At one point, Hamish and the other three ducked left around an overturned truck while CJ went right… and suddenly stopped.

Beep-beep… beep-beep.

She knew that sound.

Slowly, very slowly, CJ peered around the corner of her upturned truck.

She saw the yellowjacket dragon—Lucky—inside its caged trailer behind the pick-up truck, looking extremely agitated.

CJ came further around and she saw why.

Lucky’s handler, Yim, in her black bodysuit and with her yellow-streaked hair, stood in front of Lucky’s cage, facing four red-bellied black princes arrayed in a threatening semicircle around her.