Matthew Reilly: The Great Zoo of China

They descended on the airfield’s runway, where Hamish and Kirk Syme were waving from a captured open-top jeep.

The timer on the bomb hit: 1:00… 0:59… 0:58…

Lucky landed first, depositing Johnson and Minnie into the jeep a bare second before— whoosh! —the yellowjacket emperor picked up the entire jeep in its mighty talons and swept it up into the air.

Led by Lucky, with CJ on her back, the pack of yellow dragons then sped south as fast as they could, trying to put as much distance between them and the Great Dragon Zoo as possible.

0:30… 0:29… 0:28…

The dragons flapped their wings powerfully, flying hard.

Buffeted by the wind, Hamish and Syme looked down from their jeep at the landscape far below. The huge body of the emperor carrying their jeep blotted out the sky above.

0:20… 0:19… 0:18…

As she flew, CJ peered back at the rectangular crater that housed the zoo, the huge landform now a distant speck on the horizon.

0:10… 0:09… 0:08…

CJ patted Lucky on the neck.

‘Fly, Lucky. Fly,’ she whispered.

The timer ticked downward.

0:02… 0:01… 0:00…

Detonation.

Aflare of blinding white light flashed out from the Halfway Hut.

The lateral outrush of white-hot fire that followed immediately after it incinerated everything in the vicinity of the hut.

Then came the shock wave.

Terrible destruction radiated outward: trees toppled, cable car towers were thrown to the ground, the beautiful white castle blew apart, the roller coaster in the amusement park splintered into a thousand flying struts. The main entrance building’s entire facade just fell away, ripped clean off it.

All the trees on the lower reaches of Dragon Mountain were flattened by the shock wave but the great mountain withstood it, the ravenous surge of energy racing around it like a river around a rock.

The blast wave fanned out in every direction. It shot northward, blowing out the windows of the casino hotel. Eastward and westward, it simply ran up and over the slanted crater walls, felling trees and flinging boulders.

And as the blast wave expanded, it sucked all the oxygen from the air. Any dragons in the air just dropped from the sky, instantly asphyxiated. Any on the ground just collapsed where they stood, the life in them extinguished in a single moment. The blast wave extended all the way to the worker city in the northeast and the airfield to the southwest, where it suffocated all the dragons gathered in those places as well. Any Chinese troops still in or near the valley were also killed.

It was the same for Ben Patrick.

His back broken, his body immobile, Patrick got to see the main entrance building’s facade fall away from him. It would have been better to fall with it and die that way.

For it was then that the vacuum blast hit him… and sucked his lungs clean out through his mouth. Patrick’s last sensation was vomiting up the two fleshy sacs that were his own lungs and seeing them right in front of his eyes. Only then did he black out and see no more.

The thermobaric device had done exactly what it had been designed to do: kill every dragon in and around the valley but retain most of the landforms and the basic infrastructure of the zoo.

As she flew away from the megavalley, having seen the distant flash of the blast, CJ sighed.

It was over.

The Great Dragon Zoo of China was no more.

FORMER NAVAL STATION MAGELLAN

MINDINAO PROVINCE, THE PHILIPPINES

20 MARCH (TWO DAYS LATER)

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 it generated a massive ash plume that covered much of the Philippines. The local monsoonal rains had since mixed with that ash, overlaying many of the Philippines’ more remote islands with a foul black sludge that made them all but uninhabitable.

Among those islands were several old US military bases, most of which had lain abandoned since World War II.

One of the smallest and most remote of these was Naval Station Magellan. It lay ninety miles west of Basilan Island in the far south of the Philippines.

Assaulted for six months of the year by torrential rain and by stifling humidity for the other six months, it had little to recommend it. Its old airfield was potholed and overgrown with weeds. The mush from the Pinatubo eruption had caked the hills, making them useless for any kind of farming.

Which was why not a single human being noticed when five strange yellow beasts landed on the island’s weed-strewn runway.

It had taken them two whole days of island-hopping to get here from southern China. The dragons had needed a lot of reassuring from CJ—speaking through Lucky—that there would be land on the other side of each stretch of dreaded salt water, but they had trusted her and braved each leg of the journey.

It had required multiple stops to cross the South China Sea, with the dragons needing to rest after each long glide. At times, the yellowjacket emperor had had to carry Lucky and the other prince on its enormous back, while it carried the jeep, since its colossal wingspan allowed it to glide for far greater distances than the smaller dragons. The emperor and the two kings could also, it appeared, fly quite a bit further than the few kilometres the Chinese had given them credit for. It was a tough, gruelling journey but in the end they made it.

Six hours before they’d arrived at Magellan, the yellowjacket emperor had deposited the open-top jeep—containing Hamish, Johnson, Syme and Minnie—at the tip of another island containing an active US supply base. They would walk from there, make contact with the personnel at the base and arrange to get home.

Only one member of the group continued on with the five yellowjackets and remained with them at Naval Station Magellan: CJ.

FORMER NAVAL STATION MAGELLAN

MINDANAO PROVINCE, THE PHILIPPINES

1 MAY (SIX WEEKS LATER)

Amonth and a half later, a small Cessna ‘Caravan’ seaplane with no transponder landed at the remote island. Its pilot was Kirk Syme, US Ambassador to China and former naval aviator.

After it pulled to a halt, three men stepped out of it: Hamish Cameron, Greg Johnson and Syme. All were dressed in casual clothes. Johnson’s left arm was in a sling.

Standing beside one of the old base’s rusty buildings, waiting for them, were CJ and Lucky.

Hamish said, ‘So, how’s the new home?’

CJ smiled. ‘It’s got everything the modern dragon needs: fresh water flowing down from the hills and lots of big fat fish in the lagoons. Lucky and her family are doing just fine.’

Three of the other four dragons peered out from the surrounding trees, watching cautiously. The emperor lay in the nearby freshwater lagoon, only its massive snout protruding above the waterline.

‘They don’t want to be found,’ CJ said.

‘And we’re happy to keep it that way,’ Syme said.

Johnson said, ‘I checked the intelligence logs: this base isn’t even considered US property anymore. And local Filipinos steer clear of the area. It’s off the radar. Might as well be off the map.’

‘What happened with the zoo?’ CJ asked.