Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

CJ flicked on her helmet flashlight and hastened down it.

As she ran, she noticed the occasional flare of fiery orange light illuminating the lower end of the tunnel.

When she arrived at the base of the tunnel, she saw the reason for those flares.

CJ stood on a ledge high above an enormous— enormous —underground cavern. Like the nest back at the zoo, it was funnel-shaped—wide at the top, narrow at the bottom—with a single curving ledge running in a spiral all the way down its nickel-sided walls.

And lined up neatly on that spiral were dragon eggs: hundreds and hundreds of them.

CJ gasped. The nest at the zoo had held 88 eggs. There must be over 2,000 of them here .

In the middle of it all was the red-bellied superking, blowing gentle bursts of liquid fire around the cavern, warming it, creating the right conditions for the eggs to…

…an egg not far from CJ cracked. CJ saw a tiny snout pecking at the shell from within.

The egg was hatching.

Consumed with its task, the superking hadn’t seen CJ arrive.

‘Okay, genius,’ CJ said to herself. ‘What are you going to do now? How do you stop a ten-ton fire-breathing dragon?’

She checked her weapons: the MP-7 with its taped-on grenade launcher and the flamethrower with its liquid propane tank.

She looked out at the superking as it blew another tongue of fire.

That was its greatest strength—the ability to breathe fire—but perhaps it was also its greatest…

‘Go hard or go home, Cameron,’ CJ said aloud. ‘Win or die trying.’

And so she laid her trap. It took her three minutes.

Then she sprayed fire from her flamethrower out into the cavern and called, ‘Hey! Fire-breather! Are you looking for me!’

The red-bellied superking turned at her shout.

CJ was standing in the mouth of the tunnel at the top of the enormous cavern, waving. She loosed another burst from her flamethrower.

The superking accepted the challenge and rocketed up at her.

CJ immediately turned and hurried back up the tunnel, making it about twenty metres by the time the superking appeared in the tunnel’s entrance, filling it.

It roared, a deafening sound in the confined space.

CJ froze, as any normal prey would do.

The superking responded by doing what any normal predator would do: it folded its wings, stomped up the tunnel, reared its head and blew a great extended blast of fire right at CJ.

At which point, two things occurred that most certainly did not happen in the usual predator–prey dynamic.

First, CJ flipped on the hood of her heat suit, so that now her whole body was protected, just as the wave of fire rushed over her.

Second, the dragon’s great tongue of fire ignited the pool of liquid propane that CJ had poured onto the tunnel’s floor from her flamethrower’s tank… a pool that extended out from where CJ stood down to the spot where the superking raged.

The propane pool immediately lit up in a curtain of blazing fire and suddenly the superking itself was engulfed in flames!

The dragon shrieked as its wings and skin caught alight. It bucked and thrashed against the walls of the tunnel.

Then its head was consumed by fire and the hideous flaming thing turned and locked eyes with CJ—to find her holding her MP-7 aimed directly at its face.

Braaaaaaaack!

CJ loosed a burst on full auto and the rounds slammed into the superking’s eyes and forehead, ripping its skull apart. Its eyes exploded, shredded by bullets.

And the superking dragon fell.

It hit the floor of the tunnel with a monumental thump, its body still on fire. Its muscles twitched and then it went completely still.

The superking was dead.

CJ exhaled, utterly spent.

But she wasn’t done.

Without hesitating, she strode past the burning body of the superking and headed into the cavern, still holding her MP-7.

Then, standing at the mouth of the tunnel above the massive cave, she fired off nearly every grenade she had in her grenade launcher.

Explosions rocked the cavern. Eggs blasted out in sprays of albumen before they caught fire and burned. The squeals of dying infant dragons cut through the air.

Then CJ aimed her grenade launcher at the ceiling of the cavern and fired off more grenades.

Under the weight of those explosions, the cavern’s ceiling crumbled, dropping great boulders of nickel down on the eggs, smashing them, crushing them, while the curved spiralling ledge containing the eggs just fell away from the cavern’s walls.

Eggs and nickel dropped down into the giant funnel-shaped cavern. Owing to the shape of the cavern, they all fell into the narrow base, where they were more easily crushed by the falling rocks.

In a final move, CJ stepped back up the tunnel, moving past the remains of the dead superking, and fired off her last few grenades there, causing the tunnel’s roof to collapse and cave in.

The roof came down, flattening the corpse of the superking and blocking the exit, and leaving CJ Cameron standing there, breathing hard, her face blackened with soot and dust but her victory achieved.

Her ammunition spent, CJ tossed her MP-7 to the ground and began the long trudge back up the tunnel.

CJ emerged from the tunnel to see the first rays of sunlight peeking over the crater wall to the east.

She had survived the night.

No sooner was she out of the tunnel, however, than she dashed for the lake. She splashed to her knees beside Lucky.

The yellowjacket lay on her side in the shallows, moaning painfully.

She jerked suddenly at CJ’s arrival—probably assuming CJ was the other dragon coming to finish her off—but then she relaxed when CJ began stroking her forehead.

‘Easy, girl. Easy.’

CJ saw a large gash running down Lucky’s right hind leg: a terrible wound. She embraced the dragon, resting her head against Lucky’s huge cheek.

Lucky sighed, a pained braying noise.

‘ White Head… fight master…? ’

‘Yes,’ CJ said. ‘White Head fight master. White Head kill master.’

Lucky grunted, still lying on her side. ‘ Lucky like White Head …’

And for a short while the two of them just lay there together in the shallows of Crater Lake as the sun crept over the horizon.

After a time, CJ rose and took a look at Lucky’s laceration.

It was an awful wound—right across the top of her thigh—but CJ figured if she could stitch it up, it would only affect Lucky’s ability to walk. She should still be able to fly.

‘This is not going to be pretty and not very hygienic either,’ CJ said as she fashioned a needle out of a sharpened stick and used her own bootlaces as thread. ‘And it’s going to hurt like hell.’

It hurt all right.

Lucky howled in agony throughout the operation but eventually CJ stitched up the wound, drawing the skin firmly together.

Lucky panted quickly.

‘Lucky stand?’ CJ asked.

The dragon tentatively rose to her feet… and promptly fell down as the leg failed to bear her weight. But she tried again, favouring her other legs, and managed to hold herself upright.