The Great Zoo of China Read online

  CJ cut herself off and turned to Hamish. ‘This isn’t over yet.’

  Almost in response, a terrifyingly loud shriek could be heard from across the valley.

  All three of them turned.

  And their mouths opened.

  ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me . . .’ Hamish gasped.

  Three red-bellied black emperors were flying through the air, banking toward the administration building. Each dragon carried something large in its massive claws.

  Hamish said, ‘Are those—?’

  ‘Yes,’ CJ said.

  ‘Holy shit . . .’ Johnson said.

  The two lead dragons carried fuel tankers in their clutches. The long silver tanks of the semitrailer rigs glistened in the sun while the cabs dangled limply from them.

  The third emperor dragon carried a different cargo.

  It held a dripping-wet cable car that was covered with reeds. It was their old cable car, resurrected from the base of the waterfall. All its windows were smashed, and inside it CJ could make out shapes, moving shapes, lots of them.

  Red-bellied black princes.

  ‘We took refuge in the wrong building,’ she said flatly. ‘Brace yourself.’

  But by the time she said it, it was too late.

  The two lead emperor dragons swooped in toward the administration building—with its airport-like control tower at its summit—and like dive-bombers in World War II, released the tankers.

  The first fuel-filled tanker slammed into the control tower with tremendous force. Something must have sparked because then the fuel inside the tanker ignited and the whole tower exploded in a gigantic billowing fireball.

  Then it fell.

  CJ looked up in horror as the great tower toppled like a slow-falling tree off the summit of the admin building and fell down the face of the structure!

  For a moment she thought it was going to fall right on top of their glass-domed balcony, but it tumbled and bounced southward. Parts of it broke off as the flaming tower crashed down the slope until, with a colossal noise, it slammed down onto the ring road to the south of the admin building, right in front of the tunnel there.

  ‘Fuck a duck . . .’ Hamish said.

  The second tanker was hurled into the top floor of the administration building, right underneath an array of antennas situated on the corner of the roof.

  That tanker exploded, too, and the whole top corner of the building simply fell away in one massive chunk. It freefell down the face of the building, heading right for the glass-domed balcony on which CJ and the others stood.

  ‘Run!’ CJ called, the quickest to react.

  They dashed inside, followed by the others, running for all they were worth, as behind them the corner chunk of the building smashed down onto the glass dome. The dome shattered as the chunk of building blasted down through it and the balcony was suddenly open to the elements.

  CJ dived to the floor as shards of glass landed all around her. They’d got clear, just.

  She rolled, facing upward, held her UV glasses to her eyes . . .

  . . . and saw that the blue sonic shield around the admin building was no longer there.

  By destroying the antenna array, the dragons had knocked it out.

  She was on her feet in seconds.

  ‘Move! Move!’ She raced for the elevator.

  ‘What? Why!’ Wolfe called, still taking cover on the floor.

  CJ kept running. ‘They just brought down the sonic shield protecting this building! Now they’re bringing in the attack troops!’

  Wolfe turned and saw what CJ had foreseen.

  For right then, in came the third red-bellied emperor dragon, carrying in its claws the wrecked cable car filled with princes.

  The emperor swooped in low and released the cable car directly at the smashed-open dome of the admin building’s balcony.

  With a deafening crash, the huge double-decker cable car came flying in through the broken dome and slid for a full thirty metres before it ground to a halt inside the building, right near the spot where CJ and the others had been standing only moments before.

  Dragons burst out from it.

  There were maybe fifteen of them, all prince-sized red-bellied blacks. The five leading dragons had no ears while the rest did.

  They sprang out of the cable car like a rampaging army, heads low, tails high, foreclaws spread wide, searching for prey.

  The Waste Management Facility

  CJ didn’t bother waiting for the elevator. It wouldn’t get there in time.

  Instead, she just threw open a heavy door beside the elevators labelled FIRE STAIRS in both Mandarin and English.

  Closely followed by the five other American guests plus Zhang, she bolted down the stairs three at a time, swinging round the corners.

  Loud booms echoed out above her: the dragons were ramming the fire door.

  Then there came a sharp cracking noise and suddenly a furious roar rang out in the stairwell.

  ‘They’re in!’ CJ called.

  She came to the base of the stairwell, hurled open the door there, and found herself once again inside the vast waste management hall.

  She glanced to her right and saw the massive external garage doors—and she realised why the dragons had stormed this building: those huge doors led outside.

  Her group really had taken refuge in the wrong place.

  This was what the dragons had wanted all along. They hadn’t been after the people inside her cable car. They had just wanted the cable car.

  For this.

  For this assault on the administration building: one of the few places in the Great Dragon Zoo of China with an exit.

  In an academic corner of her mind, CJ found herself marvelling at the ingenuity of the dragons. This wasn’t just problem-solving behaviour. This was complex combination planning.

  Misguided though their plan was—even if they somehow got past the inner dome via the loading dock, there was still the second electromagnetic dome outside the first one, and how could they possibly bring that down?—it was still a plan.

  These creatures, CJ realised, were more intelligent than any animal she’d ever encountered.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Johnson called from the rear of the group.

  ‘Hamish, block the door!’ CJ yelled.

  Hamish climbed up into the cab of a nearby garbage truck, started it up, jammed it into reverse and backed it up against the stairwell door—

  —just as the first prince arrived there with a shrill squeal and poked its head through.

  Hamish rammed the big garbage truck against the door, slamming it, and the dragon’s head, sticking out from between the door and its frame, was sliced off, guillotined. Then the door slammed shut, held closed by the weight of the garbage truck.

  There came a series of loud bangs from the other side as more dragons arrived there and started ramming it. But they couldn’t get it open—yet.

  Bang!

  The garbage truck jolted slightly.

  Bang!

  Again.

  As the banging continued, CJ spun to check her options.

  The waste facility was just as she had left it: the wide refuse pit, the external doors leading outside, the inner doors leading back to the ring road tunnel, a couple of dozen garbage trucks and the pick-up truck with the yellowjacket dragon inside its trailer.

  At that moment, one of the elevators arrived with a ping and fifteen Chinese office workers in shirtsleeves and slacks hurried out of it, panic-stricken.

  A dozen Chinese workmen in blue waste facility coveralls raced to a locked steel cabinet on the northern wall of the hall. Their leader fumbled with a set of keys before managing to open the cabinet’s padlock and fling its thick doors wide.

  It was a gun cabinet.

  CJ saw guns on racks inside it—handguns and a few assault rifles that looked like AK-47s. The Chinese workmen started handing them out.

  CJ turned again and saw the external doors. ‘Seems to me that
the safest place to be right now is outside those doors and outside this valley. How do we open them?’

  ‘That control panel over by the elevators,’ Zhang said, pointing. ‘But immediately outside those doors are heavy safety gates. We’d have to open them, too.’

  Two of the Chinese workmen evidently had a similar idea about the external doors. They were already running for the control panel beside the elevators that Zhang had indicated.

  They were ten steps short of the panel when CJ realised.

  It was quiet.

  The banging had stopped.

  The dragons weren’t trying to get through the stairwell door anymore.

  She turned slowly.

  ‘Where will they—?’ she said as it happened.

  The two elevator doors suddenly burst open from within and red-bellied black dragons poured out of them!

  They’d come down the elevator shaft.

  First there were two dragons, then eight, then twelve. They fanned out rapidly. Some were earless though most still had their ears—but then CJ recalled that most of the Chinese workers in the admin building weren’t wearing their protective watches. There was plenty of prey for all of the dragons, earless or not.

  The two workmen who had been running toward the control panel beside the elevators were attacked first.

  Two earless dragons tackled them, hurling the men to the ground before leaping on top of them and tearing out their windpipes, almost ripping off their heads in the process.

  CJ’s face fell.

  ‘We’re not going that way now,’ Hamish said.

  ‘Got any other ideas?’ Perry asked.

  It was at that moment that the Chinese workmen opened fire with their guns.

  Within seconds, there was mayhem all over the waste management hall.

  Dragons shrieked. Gunfire clattered. Sparks bounced off the walls.

  The Chinese workmen took cover and fired their guns at the oncoming dragons, but just as a man hid behind a garbage truck and opened fire, a dragon would fly over the truck and fall on him from above and it ended in screams and blood.

  CJ saw one dragon ruthlessly slash one of its foreclaws across the front of a workman’s body. Four lines of blood exploded from his chest and the man fell.

  She saw another dragon rip a man in two with its foreclaws. Blood and intestines poured out from the corpse.

  A third dragon flew past and bit the head off another man. His headless body kept standing for a few seconds—the gun in its hand still firing—before the decapitated body finally collapsed to the ground.

  The Chinese workers’ gunfire seemed to have little effect on the dragons. Sparks pinged off their armoured hides and foreheads. Occasionally, CJ saw a gout of blood spray out from an unarmoured section of one of the dragons’ bodies and the animal would shriek, more in annoyance than pain. Then it would just continue its forward charge.

  The Chinese office workers were jumping into any kind of car or truck they could find.

  CJ saw three office workers dive into a Great Zoo of China hatchback, only for two dragons to grab the car from either side and fling it against the wall. The little car slammed into the wall roof-first, crumpling instantly, its occupants crushed.

  ‘Get into the garbage trucks!’ CJ called. ‘They’re heavier! They’ll give better protection!’

  The group split up, hurrying for the nearest garbage trucks.

  Zhang climbed into one truck, while CJ clambered into the cabin of another with Hamish and Ambassador Syme. Johnson joined them but not before risking a dash to grab a pistol that had been dropped by one of the Chinese workmen. CJ glimpsed Wolfe and Perry disappearing inside the thick-doored gun cabinet and slamming the door shut behind them.

  ‘You know, we’re lucky it’s just the little ones,’ Syme gasped. ‘The princes.’

  There came an almighty muffled roar and suddenly the brickwork above the elevators broke out into a spider web of cracks. A moment later, the entire wall above the elevators was smashed open from within and an enormous—earless—red-bellied king dragon burst out from it, bellowing furiously.

  ‘Mother of God . . .’ Hamish said.

  The bus-sized animal reared up on its hind legs. It absolutely dominated the space. It bounded forward, sweeping garbage trucks out of its path with its forelimbs.

  Six-ton garbage trucks were flung away like children’s toys.

  One skidded down the length of the hall before slamming into the concrete wall. Another two bounced end over end before disappearing into the refuse pit.

  The king roared and with its every booming stride, the floor shook.

  There was movement everywhere now. Workmen ran for their lives. Office workers in about seven Great Zoo–emblazoned hatchbacks sped out of the hall into the ring road tunnel, fleeing. Prince dragons hunted between the upturned vehicles.

  CJ turned to face the imposing external doors. While she was sure they could contain the prince dragons, she wasn’t certain they could withstand an assault by a king or an emperor.

  The king wanted to know as well.

  With a deafening bellow, it wrenched away one oversized garage door, revealing a thick-barred gate beyond it.

  The dragon hurled its shoulder against the gate . . .

  . . . but it held.

  The dragon roared with fury, tried again, but again the gate withstood the mighty impact.

  ‘They can’t get out this way,’ Syme said with relief.

  ‘And neither can we,’ CJ said. ‘Not without letting them out with us.’

  As she said this, she thought she glimpsed two prince dragons stealing away to the left toward a small red door over in the far corner of the hall; it looked like an electrical booster room of some sort.

  But it was only a fleeting glimpse, because it was cut off a second later when the king dragon stepped right in front of CJ’s windshield and stared into her eyes.

  Then the great animal lunged forward and grabbed hold of her garbage truck and CJ’s world spun crazily again as the truck was flung through the air.

  The garbage truck sailed through the air for a full three seconds before it landed on its side with a bone-rattling thud.

  Then it slid for twenty feet across the slick concrete floor, stopping right on the edge of the refuse pit. It finished with its cabin protruding out over the pit, twenty feet above the base. There was only a modest pile of garbage in the pit, since the zoo was not yet fully operational.

  Its occupants all now lay awkwardly on top of the driver’s door. Hamish lay squished on the bottom with Greg Johnson on top of him and CJ and Syme on him.

  ‘Is everyone oka—’ CJ began to say just as the upper door to the cabin was wrenched away from the outside and a red-bellied black prince peered inside, hissing.

  ‘Hamish!’ CJ called. ‘Open your door!’

  ‘But then we’ll—’

  ‘Now, Hamish!’

  Hamish did so, just as the dragon reached down to grab CJ. As the driver’s door swung open, Hamish, then Johnson, then Syme and CJ fell down through it, dropping into the refuse pit, landing on the small pile of rubbish there.

  The dragon came a moment later.

  As she hit the pile of garbage, CJ rolled, a split second before the dragon’s claws landed right where she’d been. Now, CJ was lying on her back and the dragon was standing over her, roaring into her face—

  Blam!

  The dragon’s chest was hit by a bullet. The dragon recoiled, but was unhurt.

  Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

  More gunfire. More rounds hit the beast, in the chest, in the snout, even in one eye.

  Now the animal wailed in pain and a final shot—from Greg Johnson, levelling the pistol he’d found—went up into the dragon’s mouth, through its brain, and the big beast flopped backwards, squealing and convulsing before finally it lay still on the stinking trash heap, dead.

  ‘Nice shooting,’ CJ said.

  ‘Thanks.’ Johnson checked his clip. ‘Don
’t expect much more, because I only have one round left.’

  Just then, CJ caught sight of something in her peripheral vision, something big and red flying through the air.

  ‘Duck!’ she called as a fire truck went soaring overhead in a high arc. It was one of the huge ladder trucks. It sailed down into the pit, presumably flung by the king, and slammed into the opposite wall.

  ‘Jesus!’ Syme yelled.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ Johnson urged.

  ‘I know—wait a second.’ CJ sniffed. ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘We are in a trash heap,’ Hamish said flatly.

  ‘No. It’s not trash. It’s gasoline . . .’

  Her eyes fell on the newly arrived fire truck. It lay at the edge of the hill of rubbish, crumpled and broken.

  And a small fountain of gasoline was spraying from its gas tanks. The tanks must have ruptured as the big fire truck had smashed into the pit. The leaking gasoline was forming a pool around the big red truck.

  With a shriek another black prince landed on top of the fire truck, its wings spread wide.

  CJ snatched the pistol from Johnson, but instead of firing it at the dragon, she fired its final bullet downward, at the pool of gasoline.

  A spark ignited . . . and the pool around the fire truck came alight and a wall of fire sprang up around the dragon!

  The dragon was engulfed in flames and it squealed before flying off.

  ‘Not bad,’ Johnson said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hamish said, ‘only now our pit is on fire.’

  He was right. Choking black smoke began to fill the pit.

  ‘Okay, boys, here’s the plan,’ CJ said, climbing up the rubbish heap, heading for the rim. ‘We find ourselves a garbage truck and we run the blockade out of here.’

  ‘Aye-aye to that,’ Hamish said, taking off after her.

  They arrived at the rim of the pit to find that the waste management facility now looked like a battlefield.

  Where once all the garbage trucks had been parked in neat rows, now they lay crumpled against the walls or upside-down, wheels pointed skyward. Red-bellied black princes variously crouched on top of the upturned trucks or prowled around them. Low afternoon sunlight lanced in through the thick bars of one external gate. The king dragon stood over by the southwest corner, roaring.