Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

CJ needed to get in contact with him. She touched her earpiece. Like a cell phone earpiece, it contained a microphone as well.

She went to press the TALK button on the earpiece, but as she did so, a garbled woman’s voice came through it, speaking in Mandarin.

CJ translated. ‘— Run … White head … Run —’

She didn’t know what the hell that meant. Busy channel. Clearly, the dragons were running amok all over the zoo.

The fluorescent lights of the tunnel flashed by outside.

She keyed the mike: ‘Zhang! Hamish! Anyone! Can you hear me?’

No reply.

She stole a glance in her rear-vision mirror and to her relief saw that the tunnel behind her was empty.

She scanned the cab for weapons or anything else she could use. On the seat beside her, she saw Yim’s black-and-yellow leather jacket, with its armoured spine and neck.

That can only help , CJ thought, so she wriggled into it as she drove.

The truck-and-trailer sped through the tunnel.

Still no dragons behind it.

CJ came to the tunnel’s mouth and burst out into bright sunshine. She immediately brought the pick-up to a skidding halt.

Then she leapt out of the cab and ran to the back of the trailer, glancing down the tunnel—

—when, like bats out of Hell, the four red-bellied black princes came banking out of the waste management facility, flying low and fast.

CJ ignored them.

With Lucky looking on curiously from the other side of the bars, she fumbled with the bolt securing the dragon’s cage.

She flung open the gate.

‘Go on! Out! Get out of there!’ CJ yelled at the yellow dragon. ‘Do you understand me? Out! ’

The dragon just stared at her in what appeared to be amazement.

Then, glancing at the dragons roaring down the tunnel behind them, it clambered out of the cage.

The yellowjacket—still wearing its saddle—slunk up onto the roof of the cage and with a final look at CJ, took to the air.

Then CJ was moving again, sliding back into the pick-up’s cab and jamming down on the gas pedal. The truck shoomed off down the ring road as the four black princes burst out of the tunnel a bare second later.

They immediately looked skyward—to see Lucky soaring away toward Dragon Mountain, out of reach.

But CJ wasn’t out of reach.

They took off after her.

CJ drove fast. Faster than she had ever driven in her life.

Her truck-and-trailer combo shot down the ring road, gaining on Hamish’s heavier garbage truck.

Ahead of the garbage truck, she could see one of the Great Zoo of China hatchbacks that the Chinese office workers had sped off in, fleeing from the waste management hall.

That was strange, she thought. She could have sworn she had seen six or seven of the little white hatchbacks speed out of the—

Wham!

A white hatchback landed on the road right in front of her pick-up!

CJ swerved instinctively, avoiding the falling car by centimetres. The car had come flying out of the sky from the right and it went bouncing away to her left where it slammed against the rock wall on the outer side of the ring road.

CJ peered upward to see a pair of red-bellied black princes soaring away, having dropped the car at her.

She saw a second pair of princes coming in toward her, carrying another hatchback in their talons. They swooped in low and released the little car.

This car flew across CJ’s bonnet in a flash of white, missing by millimetres. Then it was gone, smashing into the rock wall and exploding.

CJ’s pick-up was rocked by the blast, but she managed to keep it going down the ring road.

Holy shit , she thought. The dragons are throwing cars at me!

There came a sudden shuddering whump and her speeding truck was lifted momentarily off the ground. CJ turned to see that one of the four red-bellied black princes from the waste management hall had landed on the roof of her trailer.

CJ saw its head and she gasped.

Its black-and-red face was horrifically melted and blistered, exposing its jaw muscles and tendons. Some of the spikes of its crest had also melted, causing them to bend over. It was the black prince who had been closest to the jerry can when CJ had shot it, the one whose face had been engulfed in the fuel fire.

It roared at CJ, a shriek of unadulterated rage. Then, one claw at a time, it made its way forward along the top of the empty trailer, coming for her.

As it shrieked at her, CJ could have sworn she heard a garbled electronic voice coming again through her earpiece. It said in a stilted male voice in Mandarin: ‘— Fear… me —’

It was almost as if… no… CJ shook the thought away. That was crazy .

Ahead of her, she saw Hamish’s garbage truck swerve around something, which she quickly realised was an overturned hatchback lying on the road, and suddenly she was almost on it herself, with Melted Face on the trailer behind her.

CJ hit the brakes, causing her pick-up to fishtail past the overturned hatchback, at the same time causing her trailer—with Melted Face on it—to slide right into the overturned hatchback.

The trailer hit the upturned car with a mighty bang and the impact stopped it dead in its tracks, separating it from CJ’s pick-up and sending Melted Face flying forward onto the roadway, tumbling and rolling in a squealing mass of wings, tail and claws.

Never stopping, CJ hit the gas again, righting her pick-up from its dry skid, and now free of the weight of the trailer she zoomed off at greater speed. Within seconds, she was right behind Hamish’s garbage truck.

She pulled up alongside its driver’s door and waved at Hamish, indicating her earpiece.

‘What channel?’ she called.

Hamish pulled Zhang over and asked him, and the deputy director—still wearing his own earpiece—looked over at CJ and held up four fingers.

CJ grabbed her earpiece and flicked it from 22 to 4.

‘Zhang! Can you hear me?’

‘ Yes , Dr Cameron ,’ his voice came through loud and clear.

‘Where can we go to that’s safe?’

‘ About three kilometres up this road is the Nesting Centre, the site of the original dragon nest. It’s secure. We can take shelter there .’

‘Good enough for m—’

CJ’s truck jolted violently and she turned to see Red Face land in the tray of her pick-up, right behind her!

The dragon punched through the cab’s rear window and CJ was showered with glass and suddenly a giant claw was clutching around the cabin trying to get at her.

CJ ducked low, lying flat on the seat of the cab. She couldn’t stay here.

‘Zhang!’ she yelled into her mike. ‘Tell Hamish I’m coming over!’

‘ What? ’

‘Just do it!’

CJ reached up and hit the pick-up’s cruise control. It now sped along beside the garbage truck as dragons wheeled and banked overhead.

She wriggled across the cab, underneath Red Face’s scrabbling claw, and pushed open the passenger-side door.

Wind rushed into the cabin. CJ saw the garbage truck’s running board only a couple of feet away, the road rushing by beneath it.

Do it now, before you think about what you are doing! her mind screamed.

Then Red Face rammed his head through the rear window of the cabin. His splotchy red head all but filled the little space, and the Bluetooth earpiece in his mouth was still bizarrely beeping, but by the time his head was inside the cabin, CJ was jumping out of it, diving out its right-side door, hands outstretched, hoping to catch hold of—