Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

CJ turned to see the young electrician, Li, stepping forward.

‘I will go with you,’ he said in English.

‘Thank you, Li,’ CJ said. ‘Grab yourself a gun, a helmet and a flashlight.’

She stepped over to Lucky and placed a foot in one stirrup.

Patrick said, ‘Don’t do this, CJ. You’ll be dead inside half an hour.’

‘Then at least I won’t be scared anymore,’ CJ said.

Li returned wearing a flashlight-mounted helmet and carrying an MP-7. CJ pulled him up onto Lucky behind her. ‘Hold on tight. This is gonna feel weird.’

Li wrapped his arms around her waist like a motorcycle passenger riding pillion.

CJ leaned close to Lucky’s ear. ‘Lucky. Go nest.’

Lucky keened and the electronic voice replied: ‘ Lucky… go nest. ’ Then she turned slightly and grunted something else. ‘ Lucky… no like… Big Eyes. Big Eyes… bad human. ’

‘What’s she saying?’ Patrick asked.

CJ looked over at Patrick, standing there in his broken glasses and dirty lab coat.

‘She’s saying she doesn’t want to go to the nest either, but she’ll go anyway,’ CJ lied.

‘Good luck, CJ. You’re gonna need it.’

Lucky took to the sky from the smashed-open restaurant with CJ and Li on her back. She soared out over the zoo, wings spread wide, gliding.

As Lucky banked westward, CJ saw the shadows of the last few red-bellied black dragons ahead of them: all flying west, out over the rim of the crater toward the Nesting Centre.

Staying high, Lucky swept over the rim and the Nesting Centre came into view.

CJ caught her breath at the sight that met her.

The Nesting Centre was covered in dragons .

Red-bellied black dragons of all sizes—princes, kings and emperors—crawled all over it, a writhing mass of leathery bodies and bat-like wings.

The Nesting Centre was no small structure either. It was perhaps the size of four aeroplane hangars, square in shape but with a circular cage-like structure on its roof, a hemispherical steel-barred dome.

As they came closer to the Nesting Centre—but not too close—CJ saw six emperors attacking the steel dome from the outside, tearing it apart. The squeal of rending steel cut the air as the immense dragons, working together, wrenched the girders away, creating a huge ragged opening in the great metal dome.

When the opening they’d created was wide enough, prince-sized red-bellies slithered into the Nesting Centre. When it became wider still, the kings entered, and then finally the emperors dived in as well, tails slinking behind them.

CJ swallowed hard. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, literally going into the dragons’ den.

Okay , she thought. How do I get in there?

She gazed off to the right and saw the Birthing Centre, and she recalled that there was a tunnel that connected it to the Nesting Centre. That was the way in and hopefully an entrance that the multitude of red-bellied black dragons wouldn’t be watching. She checked her battlefield display unit, but it was hard to tell if the dragons shown on it were inside the Birthing Centre or above it. She had to take the chance.

She guided Lucky down to the right, toward the ring road and the entrance to the Birthing Centre.

The Birthing Centre was deserted.

CJ and Li entered it on foot. Li held his MP-7 raised, while CJ led with her flamethrower. Lucky loped along behind them, eyeing their rear.

CJ saw the smartboard with the map on it again and the dead bodies. The female crocodiles down in the water pit still bellowed and groaned. Looking down into the pit, CJ saw the corpse of the red-bellied black dragon she had encountered before—it was in the process of being eaten by the olive-coloured swamp dragon that had attacked it. The swamp dragon glanced up at CJ and Li, growled, then continued its feast.

CJ saw a glass cabinet attached to the wall. It had been smashed and battered. On the floor beneath it were the shattered remains of five yellow training units. The dragons, keenly aware of the shocks the remotes gave, had taken care of them when they’d come through here.

‘Clever things,’ CJ said.

She approached the doorway in the far left-hand corner, moving silently and cautiously.

The door was open.

A corridor stretched away beyond it. From the end of the corridor, she could hear dragon calls and roars. It sounded like a gladiatorial arena.

With great trepidation, CJ edged down the corridor, leading with her weapons. Li and Lucky crept down it behind her.

At the far end of the corridor was a door. It dangled off its hinges. It had been smashed open at some point. A large dark space was beyond it.

CJ came to the end of the corridor just as a deafening chorus of dragon roars echoed out from within the Nesting Centre and, to her horror, a great, hundred-foot-high column of yellow flame extended into the sky, lighting up her corridor.

She slammed herself against the wall.

Then, holding her breath, she peered around the doorframe.

‘Mother of Mercy…’ she gasped.

If she somehow managed to survive this, the sight CJ beheld inside the Nesting Centre would be one she would remember for the rest of her life.

Her doorway was positioned three storeys above the floor of the main chamber, so she had a good view of it. To her immediate left was a small building with glass windows, also three storeys tall. It was the only man-made structure in the chamber and it overlooked the space: it must’ve been the observation booth Ben Patrick had mentioned.

The floor of the chamber was a broad expanse of concrete, like the floor of an aeroplane hangar, except that in the exact centre of it was an extraordinarily wide circular hole that was at least forty feet in diameter.

The hole looked like a monstrous well and it bored down into the earth.

The dragons’ original tunnel , CJ realised. The tunnel they dug themselves and through which they’d emerged from their nest deep within the Earth .

This was where the Chinese had built their trap to capture each dragon as it had emerged from the nest two kilometres underground.

But it was the terrifying scene around the great hole in the centre of the chamber that had made her gasp in shock.

It looked like Hell itself—fiery light, prisoners bound in chains, squawking dragons surrounding them like a crowd of demonic spectators, roaring and beating their wings in approval of what was going on.

And what was going on was not pleasant at all.

CJ saw nine ‘master’ dragons lying in a long row, but they were not lying there by choice.

Each was bound by thick steel bands that were bolted to the concrete floor. The sturdy bands held down the animals’ necks, bodies, wings and walking limbs, keeping them rigidly immobile. Special metal sheaths kept their snouts tightly shut.

And they were, quite simply, enormous.

There was one king and one emperor of each type: two yellowjackets, two purple royals, two green river dragons, two eastern greys. There were no olive-coloured swamp dragon masters: CJ guessed that was because they were a new species created by the Chinese using the crocodile-breeding program. Each master was slightly bigger than the regular kings and emperors.