Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

‘We also have to be out of this valley by the time the Chinese regain control of it,’ Ambassador Syme said. ‘If we’re not, they’ll just hunt us down and kill us.’

Hamish peered out through the window beside him, gazing westward across the lake. The rain had diminished to a light drizzle and the lake’s surface was eerily calm. Hamish saw the ruins of the administration building beyond the castle on the opposite shore.

‘There was an exit in that waste management facility,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘That’s our way out. We cross this lake and make for the waste management facility.’

‘And how exactly do we cross this lake?’ Wolfe asked.

Hamish nodded at one of the six wide-beamed, glass-roofed boats tied to the dock near the café. ‘On one of those.’

‘Won’t that make us an instant target for any dragon that’s watching?’ Wolfe said.

Hamish said, ‘It will. But I have a plan for that. Let’s move.’

Five minutes later, the three of them dashed out of the café, running across the dock toward the six parked boats.

No dragons pounced.

Each man powered up two boats, untied them and set them off from their moorings. Then they all jumped aboard the last boat and sped away from the dock.

The six boats fanned out from the café, heading onto the lake in a star-like pattern.

Still no dragons attacked.

From the controls of his boat, Hamish scanned the dark sky. It was entirely empty of dragons.

The boat they’d jumped on was specially designed for sightseeing cruises. Not only did it have a broad glass-domed roof to allow for easy viewing of the dragons, it also, he now saw, had a glass bottom. Running up the middle of the boat’s hull was a long glass trough about eight feet deep. It had curved glass walls and clear plastic seats on which visitors could sit and look out at the underwater world of the lake.

Right now, in the deep of the night, that world was inky black.

Hamish kept looking up at the sky. ‘Where have they all gone?’

‘Maybe they got out?’ Syme asked.

‘Fine with me,’ Hamish said. ‘If they’re not here, it’ll give us a clear run across this lake.’

As he said this, one of the five other boats puttering along beside theirs suddenly cracked in the middle, folded into a V-shape, and was violently pulled under the surface by some unseen force. It shattered, spraying glass, before disappearing into the lake.

‘Shit!’ Syme yelled.

Hamish’s face went pale. ‘They’re not above us, they’re below us.’

He searched his control panel for a switch, found the one he was looking for—UNDERWATER FLOODLIGHTS—and hit it.

Instantly, the eerie underwater world outside the boat’s glass hull came alive and Hamish saw the enormous head of a green-skinned emperor dragon not far away, gripping the boat that had just been yanked under the surface and looking back at Hamish like a child who has been spotted with a stolen candy bar.

It was crouched on the bottom of the lake, wings flat on its back, tail curled. A king-sized green dragon lay beside it—also looking right at Hamish’s lights—while three green princes slithered through the underwater haze like oversized lizards, their four walking limbs hanging beside their bodies while their tails propelled them powerfully through the water.

Then the emperor moved.

It opened its jaws and Hamish saw two rows of terrifying teeth, and then the animal heaved upward, pushing off the lakebed, and Hamish’s stomach lurched sickeningly as the surge of water created by the beast’s movement lifted his boat high into the air.

The massive green emperor dragon rose out of the lake in all its terrifying glory.

Framed by the beautiful curving waterfall behind it, the colossal creature rose to its full height, standing two hundred feet tall and spreading its wings. As it did this, it sent a huge wave of water flowing outward from its body, a wave that pushed Hamish’s boat—infinitesimally small compared to the mighty dragon—away from the animal, toward the ruined castle on the western shore.

Hamish held on tight as the boat sped away from the dragon like a surfer on a wave. The dragon, unaware that it had aided their escape with its sudden movement, spun where it stood, snatched up the nearest decoy boat in one of its foreclaws and crushed the entire boat in an instant.

It roared as it flung the boat away.

Then the rest of the pack of green dragons—river dragons, Hamish guessed—started attacking the other boats. Princes boarded them. Kings smashed them. The emperor rampaged among them, standing waist-deep in the lake.

Hamish’s boat powered westward and as the force of the wave behind it diminished, Hamish turned off the underwater floodlights and hit the gas.

The shore was only fifty metres away.

‘Faster! Faster!’ Wolfe urged.

Hamish was peering forward when one of the decoy boats landed with a splash right in front of his boat, missing the bow by metres, thrown by the furious emperor.

He banked around it.

‘Faster, man!’ Wolfe yelled.

‘We’re going as fast as we can!’ Hamish said. ‘This thing isn’t built for speed!’

They were twenty metres from the shore when the boat simply stopped moving. Hamish pushed the throttle all the way forward. The boat revved loudly, but it didn’t respond.

‘Why aren’t we—?’ Syme shouted, turning.

He cut himself off when he saw the answer: the emperor stood behind them, gripping their stern.

‘Jump!’ Hamish yelled, pushing open one of the forward windows and diving out through it.

Syme and Wolfe did the same and they all leapt clear as the boat was pulled wholly out of the water. They landed with matching splashes as the emperor lifted the boat seventy feet into the air and shook it like a broken toy. It peered inside it, looking for them.

Hamish swam for the shore. So did Syme.

Wolfe swam for a jetty off to their right. He arrived at it, reached up and began hauling himself onto its wooden slats when something grabbed his leg and wrenched him downward. Wolfe was pulled so forcefully, his head smacked against the edge of the jetty.

Hamish saw Wolfe’s neck snap as his head struck the jetty, the blow killing him instantly. It was a horrible way to die, but still better than being eaten alive by a dragon.

Hamish swam harder. He wasn’t ashore yet.

With every stroke, he waited for the talons of a dragon to clasp around one of his legs and yank him backwards, but then he hit the shore, scrambled to his feet and ran for the treeline beside the ruined castle. Syme also made it and joined him in the trees.

They both looked back as a prince-sized green river dragon threw Wolfe’s lifeless body onto the jetty and began eating it with foul bone-cracking bites.

Beyond that grisly image, the huge green emperor sank back into the lake, slowly sliding under the surface until all that remained were a few sets of ripples. Not one of the six boats they had launched from the café could be seen.

Every one of them had been destroyed.

CJ led Lucky, Li and Minnie through the tunnel that connected the Nesting Centre to the Birthing Centre.

They emerged inside the Birthing Centre to find it empty—except of course for the crocs down in the pit and the olive swamp dragon. Having finished eating the red-bellied black prince it’d killed earlier, it had wrenched open one of the cages and was now halfway through devouring a crocodile.