Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

Colonel Bao was clearly doing the same thing: assessing whether he should help this very senior Party official, or cut and run.

Hu and Bao swapped a glance… and then raced for the elevator.

Sun swore at them. ‘You dirty cowards!’

Bao flicked an emergency release switch up near the top of the elevator’s doors and the doors came open easily. He and Hu slipped through them, both men stealing a final glance back at the turning bay behind them.

The three dragons that had been attacking the troop truck stepped away from it, their snouts smeared with blood. They had literally torn it to shreds.

Their hungry gazes turned to the two silver Range Rovers.

The dragons looked from Director Chow, still struggling in his car, to the other upside-down Range Rover, with the girl and the Politburo man still inside it, and Sun outside it.

As the dragons moved in on the two Range Rovers, Bao shut the elevator doors and coldly locked them.

‘We can’t help those people anymore,’ he said. ‘We must leave them to their fates.’

Hu followed the colonel as Bao went over to a heavy steel door sunk into the rear wall of the elevator shaft. He inserted a high-tech laser-cut key into the lock and the door clanked opened.

Bao pulled out a radio. ‘This is Colonel Bao. I need a helicopter at the east-side emergency exit in ten minutes.’

A voice replied, ‘ I’m sorry, sir. But the beasts have knocked out all of our choppers. ’

‘Then send a fucking car!’ Bao barked. ‘A jeep, a truck, anything! I have to get to the secondary command post at the airfield! Bao, out.’

He clicked off. ‘Damn it. I can regain control of the zoo from the airfield, but it’ll take us at least an hour to get there by car. Fuck .’

‘Then let’s go,’ Hu said, and the two of them took off down the long, dark concrete tunnel, one of the few tunnels that led out of the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

CJ dreamed.

Bizarre images flashed across her mind. She saw herself flying high above the world. Then she saw the face of a yellowjacket emperor dragon, impossibly huge, staring at her from very close range, opening its jaws—

CJ’s eyes darted open.

To find a yellowjacket emperor dragon staring at her from very close range.

She started, but the dragon didn’t attack. It was lying very casually in front of her, its chin resting on the ground, just watching her.

For a moment, CJ wondered if she was still dreaming.

Looking about herself, she was in what could only be described as another world: she lay on a wooden stage inside an ancient-looking monastery high up in some kind of chasm.

A wide wooden doorway opened before her, revealing a broad balcony that looked out at a second sky-temple mounted on the opposite side of the chasm.

It was still night and it was still raining. CJ didn’t know how much time had passed since she had blacked out.

Completing the fantastical nature of the image were the dragons.

She was surrounded by a small group of yellowjackets, five of them, forming a tight ring around her—the emperor, two kings and two princes.

Like the emperor, all the others were staring very intently and curiously at CJ.

One of the princes stepped forward, easily distinguishable from the other dragons by virtue of the saddle on her back: Lucky.

As CJ looked at them all more closely, however, she began to see that each yellow-and-black dragon bore unique patterns on its face and neck. No two dragons had the same markings.

Lucky came up to CJ and, to CJ’s great surprise, bowed her head.

CJ leaned back, confused.

Lucky brayed a series of low burring sounds from deep within her throat.

CJ looked from Lucky to the other yellowjacket dragons, unsure what was going on.

Lucky turned to the other dragons, apparently equally confused. She threw a meaningful look at one of the watching kings. The king growled deeply, a noise that sounded profoundly unimpressed.

Lucky turned back to CJ and repeated the sequence of low brays.

Lucky stepped up close to CJ so that her toothy snout was right in front of CJ’s face.

CJ remained stock still, not daring to move. The yellowjacket’s fangs looked deadly.

And then Lucky nudged the earpiece in CJ’s ear.

CJ frowned. The earpiece. The one she had taken from the body of Lucky’s handler back in the waste management facility when she had rescued Lucky from Red Face’s gang.

CJ touched the earpiece. ‘What are you trying to tell me…?’

Then she saw the metal implant on the side of Lucky’s head, the box-shaped one that had been painted yellow and black to camouflage it against the dragon’s skin, the one trailing a small but distinct wire that disappeared into Lucky’s skull.

‘No way…’ CJ breathed. ‘The Chinese figured out a way to communicate with you…’

A flurry of thoughts and images came together in her mind:

Yim, the dragon handler, giving commands to Lucky and Red Face during the trick show.

Ben Patrick saying: ‘— I have a database of over three hundred separate and identifiable vocalisations—Every squawk and screech you hear has meaning— ’

And the garbled electronic female voice CJ had heard through that earpiece after she had rescued Lucky from Red Face and his gang:

‘— Run … White head … Run —’

And the male voice she’d heard before that: ‘— black dragons attack —’ And the same voice she’d heard when Melted Face had shrieked at her: ‘— Fear … me —’

Even the way Lucky had growled and grunted at Red Face and his gang in the cable car tunnel. It had been communication, deliberate and articulate communication .

Holy shit…

During the crazy chase in the pick-up truck, CJ had thought the strange voices coming through her earpiece had been crossed signals from other radios in the zoo; the voices of workers panicking in the face of the attacks.

But now as CJ’s gaze fell on the metallic box grafted onto the side of Lucky’s head, she had a different idea.

The female voice had been Lucky.

The male voice: Melted Face.

Those metallic boxes on their heads were indeed implants of some sort—implants connected to the dragons’ brains and larynxes, implants fitted with state-of-the-art data chips that somehow translated their grunts, squawks and coos into language. The Chinese had even had the sense to use separate male and female voices for the different dragons, a small but clever touch.

By the look of it, however, not all the dragons at the zoo had such implants. Only the performing ones: Lucky and Red Face and his gang. None of the other four yellowjackets surrounding CJ right now had implants on the sides of their heads.

CJ pulled out her earpiece and looked at it.

It was set to channel 4. CJ recalled switching it to that channel so she could speak with Hamish and Zhang in the garbage truck.

She tried to remember what channel it had been set to before then.

‘22…’ she said aloud. She flicked the dial on the earpiece to 22.

She looked up at Lucky and—despite herself, despite thinking that this was absolutely crazy—she nodded.

Lucky cooed and mewled…

…and the electronic female voice once again came through CJ’s earpiece, speaking in Mandarin.

It said, ‘ Hello… White Head… Me… Lucky. ’