Matthew Reilly: The Great Zoo of China

Syme said, ‘We listened in on the clean-up. All the animals were killed in the blast, either incinerated or asphyxiated. The Chinese government issued a bullshit story about Wolfe and Perry dying in a car crash on a mountain road, their bodies sadly burned beyond recognition. They planted some DNA on the scene and the media bought it.’

‘What did you do about that?’ CJ asked.

‘What could I do?’ Syme said. ‘What could I say? That they died after the Chinese government found, nurtured and put on display two hundred dragons and then lost control of them? I made a special report to the President—a verbal report—alone with him in the Oval Office. Your efforts, and those of your brother, were specifically mentioned. It’d be the end of my career if I put anything about this in writing. Either way, the Great Dragon Zoo of China is history.’

‘What about Minnie?’

‘We returned her to her parents in Nanjing,’ Johnson said. ‘Since all the key players at the zoo are now dead, she should be safe.’

Johnson changed the subject. ‘This island may have everything a dragon needs, but how is it for the modern woman?’

CJ smiled. ‘An old infantry tent isn’t exactly the Ritz but it’s okay. And I’m learning to love fish cooked on an open fire. There’s some wild fowl on the island; they’re scared shitless of the dragons. They taste like chicken.’

She nodded at Lucky. ‘But then I’m not here for the lifestyle. I’m here for the company.’

Hamish hefted a couple of containers from the back of the plane. ‘We brought you a few home comforts and some tools. Figured we might help you fix up one of these old buildings.’

Hamish opened the containers to reveal a little diesel generator, jerry cans of fuel, some light bulbs, a toolbox, power drill, screws and nails, a portable stove, some gas canisters and packet after packet of vegetable seeds. He also presented her with a satellite phone, a medical kit and batteries for her earpiece, which had run out of power a couple of weeks earlier.

‘Thanks, Hamish,’ CJ said, ‘that’s very thoughtful of you, but much as I’d like to, I can’t stay here permanently. I don’t think dragons and people were designed to live together. I’ve spoken to Lucky and she understands. I told her that she and her family must avoid humans. They’ve dug a deep den under the hill and they’ll go there if any people arrive, however unlikely that may be. They just want to live in peace.’

She stroked Lucky affectionately on the snout. The dragon purred.

‘That said, I’d like to come by here every now and then to visit my friend, and having a solid roof over my head would be nice.’

‘How would you get here?’ Syme asked.

CJ said, ‘Thought I might take a job in Darwin, down in Australia. Lot of crocodile jobs there and it’s only a few hours’ flight-time to here. Figured I could take up flying lessons and, well, if I could somehow get my hands on a plane…’

‘You know,’ Syme said, ‘the President told me very specifically that a reward of some kind was in order for your efforts, Dr Cameron. I think I might be able to find some spare funds in my budget to help you purchase a decent plane. After all, there’s got to be some reward for saving the life of the US Ambassador to China and preventing a global outbreak of dragons. In fact, if you ever need any money for anything , you just give me a call, okay?’

CJ smiled. ‘Thanks. I will.’

The four of them spent the rest of the day rebuilding one of the base’s shacks, flanked and followed by the family of yellowjacket dragons.

At one point in the course of the day, Greg Johnson said to CJ, ‘I was wondering if, you know, we ever found ourselves on the same side of the world, you’d like to grab a coffee sometime?’

CJ looped a stray strand of hair over her ear. ‘Are you asking me out on a date, Agent Johnson? I don’t get asked out on many dates.’

‘I might be.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, smiling.

When the day was over, they all returned to the seaplane. It was time to go.

CJ stepped to one side with Lucky and gave the dragon a huge hug. Tears welled in her eyes.

‘White Head like Lucky,’ she said.

Lucky mewed. ‘ Lucky… like like… White Head… Lucky sad …’

‘White Head sad, too.’ CJ gave the yellow dragon a kiss on the snout. ‘But White Head will return.’

And with those words, she walked off to the seaplane.

Amonth later, CJ Cameron resigned from her position at the San Francisco Zoo and took up a senior role at Kakadu National Park in northern Australia, outside Darwin, observing and studying the large saltwater crocodile population there.

Many of her students commented on how fearlessly she treated the big crocs. CJ would just shrug and say, ‘I’ve seen bigger.’

And her colleagues gently ribbed her about the handsome American gentleman with the salt-and-pepper hair who would swing by every few months to meet with her.

She also took up flying lessons.

Soon she was flying solo in a compact Pilatus PC-12 that she’d bought second-hand from the Australian Flying Doctor Service. A small plane, the PC-12 was known for its considerable range. It became common for her to fly off alone in her plane, ‘Just to spend some time on my own for a few days,’ she would say.

None of her colleagues noticed that the plane always flew north from Darwin, out over East Timor and Indonesia, toward the remote southern islands of the Philippines.

They did notice, however, that she always returned from these trips with a faraway but very contented smile on her face.

Well, Matthew. We always think your books can’t get any bigger or faster and then along comesThe Great Zoo of China!How do you do it?

As my regular readers will know, I love big-scale action. As the years have gone by, I like to think that the action in my novels has got bigger and bigger. From the early stuff in Ice Station —hovercraft chases, blowing up submarines—to the wild car chase and the exploding aircraft carrier in Scarecrow , and then to the even bigger action scenes in the Jack West Jr novels, I have always seen it as something of a progression for me. But—and it’s a big but—I always felt that, at some stage, I would reach a point where the action might simply get too big.

And then I decided to write about dragons… and suddenly a whole new ballpark of action opened up for me.

When I conceived The Great Zoo of China , I was very excited about the potential the story had for absolutely huge action. Once you can realistically bring giant dragons to life, you can then dream up all the things they can throw, hurl and otherwise destroy! I came up with garbage trucks, buildings, revolving restaurants and fighter planes. I felt like a kid in a candy store when I wrote this one.

How did you come up with the idea of the survival/existence of dragons?

I actually had the idea for a zoo filled with dragons way back in 2003. I was travelling through Switzerland, of all places, when I stumbled upon a ‘dragon museum’. It was a little place, but it had all these fantastically realistic paintings and drawings of dragons: pictures of their skeletons and their musculature. In other words, all the things that would make them seem real .