Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

‘Get back!’ she yelled in Mandarin, waving a broom at the four dragons. ‘Back, I tell you! Stay away from her!’

The lead black prince lowered its head, extending its long neck, and hissed at her, a deep low hiss of anger.

It was Red Face. He still had Na’s beeping earpiece lodged between his teeth.

Beep-beep… beep-beep.

But there was more to this scene than just a confrontation between rival dragons, CJ realised.

She saw small camouflaged boxes attached to all four of the red-bellied black princes’ heads, and she realised that these four dragons, including Red Face, were the same four dragons that had performed alongside Lucky earlier, up in the amphitheatre.

It appeared that they didn’t like their fellow performer.

They circled Lucky’s cage like hungry wolves.

‘Stay back!’ Yim yelled. CJ saw that she still wore her earpiece with its inbuilt microphone—

Suddenly Yim moved, reaching for the yellow remote on her belt but, quick as a whip, Red Face launched himself at her and suddenly Yim was on the ground and the dragon was astride her and her hand holding the yellow remote was pinned to the floor.

With a sharp stomp, Red Face smashed the remote to pieces.

Then he hissed into his trainer’s face, drooling into her eyes.

Yim screamed and Lucky shook the bars of her cage—straining to open them, crying out—as Red Face’s claw came rushing down again, this time at the handler’s head.

There was a foul burst of blood and brains as the dragon’s claw came down and the trainer’s head exploded and a pool of blood fanned out beneath Red Face’s claw. Yim’s body went limp.

Lucky roared with helpless rage and then, to CJ’s surprise, began to whimper, a soft keening that seemed like genuine grief.

It’s pining , CJ thought in amazement. Pining for its handler .

But then the four red-bellied black princes turned their attention to Lucky and the yellowjacket stopped whimpering and took a wary step back, even though it was still inside its cage.

The yellow dragon, with the saddle on its back and with its bright yellow colouring, suddenly looked very different from the other dragons: it looked tamed, civilised; a collaborator who had been caught.

Red Face swatted at the cage, his razor-sharp claws clattering across the bars. The other three male princes hissed, surrounding the cage.

CJ watched, horrified and captivated.

The red-bellied black dragons, she noticed, didn’t just hiss and snarl: they made distinct burring sounds plus long exhalations. It sounded to CJ like—

Jesus , she realised. They’re communicating with each other .

CJ also had to admit that she felt sorry for the yellowjacket. The lone female dragon had just lost her human companion and now, outnumbered and surrounded, she was about to be slaughtered.

‘CJ…!’ Hamish whispered urgently. ‘Come on…!’

She turned. Hamish and the others had reached the garbage truck by the inner doors.

CJ frowned, looking back at the four red-bellied black princes surrounding the yellowjacket. One of them punched the cage, making it rock. They were toying with Lucky.

Surprising herself, CJ waved Hamish away.

‘Go!’ she whispered. ‘I’ll catch up!’

Hamish frowned, not quite understanding. But then he must have seen something in her eyes—a stubborn conviction that he’d seen before—because he just said ‘Okay,’ and keyed the ignition on his garbage truck.

At the vibration of the garbage truck firing up, the four dragons surrounding Lucky whipped around. But after deciding that it was of no concern to them, they turned back to face Lucky.

Only when they did so, they found someone standing between them and the yellowjacket.

CJ.

She stood between the four dragons and Lucky, Glock pistol held in one hand and something that looked like a thick plastic suitcase in the other.

It must have made for a strange sight, she thought: her—five foot six inches tall and armed with a single handgun—facing off against four red-bellied black princes, each of them nine feet tall, huge and menacing.

The imprisoned Lucky seemed the most surprised of all. She appeared to watch this unexpected development in shock.

Red Face glared at CJ, lowered his head and growled.

Beep-beep… beep-beep.

The dragon stepped forward—

Blam!

CJ fired her pistol into the concrete floor at the dragon’s feet. The round sparked as it pinged away.

The dragon paused in mid-stride.

CJ was standing beside the pool of blood that had been Yim’s head, and, glancing downward, she saw something: the dragon handler’s earpiece. It must have been expelled from Yim’s ear when Red Face had stomped on her skull.

Still aiming her gun at the dragons, CJ put down the suitcase-like object and scooped up the earpiece with her spare hand. If she got out of here alive, she might need to get in radio contact with Hamish and the others.

She put it in her ear—and immediately heard a garbled electronic voice come through it, a man’s voice speaking in Mandarin.

CJ translated: ‘— black dragons attack —’

The rest of the zoo must be under attack. Jesus.

Red Face growled again, a sound laced with menace.

Then, without warning, one of the other dragons lunged at CJ from her left. But she was ready for it and she swung around, scooping up the suitcase-like object and flinging it at the incoming prince.

That object was a jerry can, half-filled with gasoline.

The jerry can hit the dragon in the snout just as CJ pivoted with the gun and fired, hitting the fuel can, and the container exploded into flames.

Liquid fire flew in every direction. All four of the dragons were hit and they recoiled, while some of the flames hit CJ herself and the sleeve of her jacket caught fire.

But the biggest victim had been the incoming dragon. That dragon squealed as flames engulfed its head and the animal immediately began rolling around on the floor, trying to extinguish the gasoline-fuelled fire raging on its face.

CJ flung off her flaming jacket and took the opportunity to fire at a fuel tank mounted on an overturned garbage truck behind the dragons.

Her shot hit its intended target and the fuel tank exploded, issuing a massive fireball that billowed out all around her foes.

The dragons leapt away from the flames as CJ bolted, dashing down the side of the caged trailer and diving into the cab of its pick-up truck.

She keyed the ignition and floored the gas pedal and the truck-and-trailer shot off the mark.

The pick-up blasted out of the waste management facility, racing into the ring road tunnel with CJ at the wheel, driving hard and not daring to look back.

The pick-up swept into the tunnel.

CJ wanted to go right—to the south, to get to the main entrance building and out of this fucked-up zoo—but no sooner was she in the tunnel than she realised that that wasn’t an option.

The remains of the fallen control tower filled the road in that direction. It looked impossibly huge, out of scale with the two-lane road: the multi-level tower lay crumpled across the roadway, completely blocking it.

Tyres squealing, CJ swung left—north—accelerating quickly to eighty, then ninety kilometres per hour, the caged trailer behind her bouncing wildly. Inside it, Lucky was tossed against its barred walls like a rag doll.

One hundred metres ahead of her, CJ saw Hamish’s garbage truck arriving at the tunnel’s northern entrance. The gate there was still closed, but Hamish must have had a remote in his truck, because as the truck arrived at it, the big gate began to rise.