The Great Zoo of China Read online

  That’s it, you bastard. Do what you do. But I’ve got a bigger brain than you.

  It was trying to drown her, but as it did, CJ did a strange thing: she stretched out with her right hand—the hand that was inside the croc’s mouth—and grabbed hold of a fleshy flap of tissue at the back of the reptile’s tongue and yanked on it hard.

  That flap of tissue was the palatal valve and it was incredibly important to a crocodile, since it covered the croc’s tracheal opening when it was underwater, preventing water from going into its lungs.

  So when CJ lifted this crocodile’s palatal valve, water began gushing down its trachea.

  Now she was drowning it.

  The croc didn’t know what was going on. This had clearly never happened to it before: prey fighting back. It began to cough and gag, before . . .

  . . . it released CJ and swam away, tail lashing.

  Free of the croc’s grip, CJ surfaced and sucked in gulps of air. She checked her shoulder. Thanks to the Kevlar plates in her jacket, it was fine, just a little bruised.

  She rose into a kaleidoscope of light and sound.

  The roar of the waterfall and the thump-thump-thump of the Chinese helicopter filled her ears; the glare of its floodlights created spots in her eyes; and from somewhere she heard Hamish’s voice calling: ‘CJ! Behind you!’

  CJ spun. The croc had returned. It had regathered itself for a second attack and was now five feet away.

  CJ tensed for round two. She was standing at the edge of the swamp, where the high reeds met the glistening expanse of the lake, her back to the lake.

  And then the crocodile stopped.

  It didn’t attack. It just stayed where it was, staring at her from a distance of five feet.

  Then it did something even more unusual.

  It edged backwards.

  CJ cocked her head. That just didn’t happen.

  She frowned, her mind racing—

  Uh-oh . . .

  Slowly, very slowly, CJ turned to face the lake behind her.

  There, five feet away from her in the other direction, staring up at her with only its eyes, ears and snout protruding above the waterline of the lake, was the only animal in the world that could scare off a seventeen-foot-long saltwater crocodile.

  A two-hundred-foot-long olive-coloured emperor dragon.

  The thing was simply immense and it stared at CJ with almost unnatural stillness.

  More olive-coloured dragons rose up out of the lake beside it, princes. Three, then five, then seven. A whole pack of them.

  Rain pattered down on the water around them. Their slit-like eyes, horned ears and spiky backs were all that could be seen.

  ‘Swamp dragons . . .’ she heard Go-Go gasp.

  It was then that CJ bumped against something under the surface. She looked down to see a chest-high Perspex retaining wall separating the saltwater swamp from the freshwater lake: the borderline between crocodile and dragon territory.

  The gigantic emperor watched her.

  But it didn’t attack.

  And in a moment of realisation, CJ deduced why.

  It still had ears and she was still wearing her wristwatch with its protective sonic shield.

  She saw Hamish, Johnson, Wolfe, Go-Go and Syme nearby, also at the edge of the lake.

  ‘Get closer to the dragons!’ she yelled.

  ‘Are you insane!’ Wolfe said.

  ‘CJ!’ Go-Go shouted back. ‘They’re swamp dragons! They’re very agg—’

  ‘They can’t attack us with our shields! But the crocs can!’

  ‘Halt! Stay where you are!’ a voice called from a loudspeaker on the chopper overhead. A line of bullet-impacts sprayed across the water’s surface around CJ.

  The dragons growled and hissed at the chopper. They’d clearly had bad experiences with gunships before.

  CJ saw Johnson raise his newly acquired 9mm pistol up at the helicopter and she wondered what he was doing. A pistol would be useless against a gunship.

  Johnson fired three quick shots.

  Sparks flared on the side of the chopper, near the top of its cockpit windows.

  Johnson grimaced. He’d obviously missed what he was aiming for.

  He fired again and this time CJ understood.

  A small explosion flared out from the chopper’s fuselage, just above its cockpit windows, and CJ glimpsed something go flying off it.

  The chopper’s sonic shield–generating antenna.

  The big gunship wasn’t protected anymore.

  The response from the swamp dragons was instantaneous.

  The emperor swamp dragon rose out of the lake with a mighty roar that drowned out both the sound of the chopper and the gushing of the waterfall.

  Rising to its full height, it was impossibly huge. Gargantuan.

  The great animal dwarfed the Mi-17—one of the biggest helicopters in the world—its immense body making the chopper look like a toy. It spread its bat-like wings wide as it rose and torrents of water rolled off them. With its pointed ears, skeletal body and immense wings, it looked like an angry demon rising out of Hell itself. The wave of water it displaced as it came out of the lake threw CJ back into Johnson.

  The emperor reached out and snatched the chopper with its foreclaws and then dropped back underwater with the ten-ton helicopter in its grip!

  The massive chopper went under tail-first, its searchlights tilting upward, sending beams of light lancing into the sky before the whole helicopter simply vanished beneath the waves of the lake, its rotors slapping the surface on the way down. The beams from the spotlights became eerie green glows as the chopper disappeared into the murky depths of the lake. Soon they vanished, too, and the lake became dark again.

  ‘Holy fucking shit,’ Hamish said.

  ‘Come on,’ Johnson said, taking CJ by the arm. ‘This way.’

  He pulled her through the chest-deep water toward the waterfall.

  As she allowed herself to be hauled along, CJ glanced back at the boardwalk and saw what Johnson must have already seen: the bouncing lights of cars and other vehicles coming from the direction of the casino hotel.

  ‘The casino is no longer an option,’ Johnson said. ‘We go for the mountain. If we cross the lake behind that waterfall, maybe they won’t be able to see us.’

  Pulling CJ with him, he plunged through the veil of falling water.

  CJ emerged on the inside of the waterfall. It was somehow quieter here, the only noise the steady rush of water. A long rock wall stretched away to the south, hidden behind the cascade. The water here was shallower, only waist-deep.

  ‘Come on, everyone,’ Johnson called, moving purposefully, gun up. ‘We can’t stop moving.’

  The group waded down the length of the waterfall, hidden behind its veil of falling water.

  Hamish walked up front behind CJ and Johnson. Hamish had been in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he’d seen some seriously weird shit in those hellholes, but here, now, in this zoo, he was still trying to process everything that had happened.

  The whole time the group sloshed along behind the waterfall, they were shadowed by the pack of swamp dragons. The dragons followed close behind them and occasionally—startlingly—poked their heads through the curtain of falling water.

  But they didn’t attack. The sonic shields on the watches were still effective.

  The swamp dragons, Hamish thought, were easily the ugliest of all the dragons he had seen so far. Perhaps it was simply a colour thing. The yellowjackets, purple royals and red-bellied blacks, with their vibrant colourations, had a kind of style. These olive-green dragons, with their flatter snouts and spotted skin, looked like hideous monsters. The way they lurked in the water didn’t help either, all hunched and craven.

  Hamish recalled the ugly olive-coloured dragon that had appeared out of nowhere in the Birthing Centre and attacked the red-bellied black prince.

  ‘These dragons look different to the others,’ he said to Go-Go as they pushed through the water.
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  ‘That’s because they are,’ Go-Go said. ‘The swamp dragons were the first dragons at the zoo to come out of the bioengineering program.’

  ‘The what?’ Wolfe asked. He hadn’t gone through the Birthing Centre earlier.

  ‘The crocodile breeding program,’ CJ said.

  Go-Go said, ‘The bosses wanted more dragons, so they utilised female saltwater crocodiles as hosts for dragon insemination. The program eventually managed to produce a lot of “pure” dragons—mainly red-bellies, yellowjackets and eastern greys—but at the start, as the engineers tried to figure out the right gene matrix, it produced an unexpected type of dragon, this species that we call the brown swamp dragon.’

  Hamish said, ‘So the swamp dragons didn’t come from any eggs inside the original nest?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Go-Go said. ‘They are a totally new, entirely man-made, bioengineered dragon—essentially nine parts dragon, one part crocodile—bred right here at the Great Dragon Zoo.’

  ‘Which is why they look so different to the others,’ Hamish said.

  ‘Precisely,’ Go-Go said.

  ‘We saw your Birthing Centre,’ CJ said flatly. ‘Not exactly the nicest place I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘It isn’t nice. As you would imagine, dragon eggs are a lot bigger than crocodile eggs. Giving birth to a dragon kills the host croc.’

  ‘What!’ Hamish said. ‘You kill the mother crocodile to get a new dragon egg?’

  ‘A female crocodile’s birth canal isn’t wide enough to expel a dragon egg, so a Caesarean section is made. This, unfortunately, is fatal for the host mother. I know, I know, it’s callous and cruel,’ Go-Go said, ‘but for my bosses this is an acceptable sacrifice in the pursuit of building an amazing zoo.’

  ‘Just like we are an acceptable sacrifice,’ Ambassador Syme said.

  ‘Yes,’ Go-Go said quietly. ‘Just like we are.’

  After about fifteen minutes of wading, they reached the end of the waterfall, where they were confronted by a small rocky cliff.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Hamish volunteered.

  He began climbing. The gushing of the waterfall filled his ears. If there was another Chinese helicopter waiting for them outside, he wouldn’t know it until he poked his head above the top of the rock wall.

  After a short climb, he tentatively raised his head above the little cliff . . . and was immediately assaulted by the harsh glare of a spotlight that came blazing to life.

  There waiting for him and the others, its rotors stopped, its spotlight flaring, was a second Chinese Mi-17 helicopter gunship, with a dozen soldiers arrayed in a semicircle in front of it, their rifles pointed right at Hamish.

  CJ’s ragtag group—Hamish, Wolfe, Johnson, Syme, Go-Go and CJ herself—stepped out from the waterfall with their hands raised.

  It was raining more heavily now.

  The chopper stood about twenty feet above them, on a stone viewing platform overlooking the waterfall.

  Dragon Mountain rose behind it, a steep slope of uneven black rock. A set of stone stairs led up from the waterfall to the viewing platform and then from the platform up the mountain: a hiking path of some sort.

  CJ frowned.

  The first time the Chinese had found them in the swamp could have been predicted. But this was different. It was as if the Chinese knew where her group had been going. She wondered how—

  And then, with her hands raised, she saw the Great Dragon Zoo watch on her wrist, with its little pilot light glowing.

  It didn’t just create a sonic shield, she realised unhappily. It probably also had a GPS transmitter in it, so the Chinese could keep track of all their guests.

  They’ve known where we were all along.

  Looking at her raised hands, she also wondered why she bothered putting them up. These Chinese troops were probably going to execute her and the others right now—

  The Chinese captain in charge of this unit—he held a battlefield display unit in one hand and a pistol in the other—barked an order and his men cocked their rifles.

  They were going to shoot them, then and there.

  ‘Aw, heck . . .’ CJ scowled.

  Then something very large flashed between her and the chopper and suddenly the twelve soldiers were only six. The large object was followed by a second one and the next moment, the six soldiers were only one: the captain was left standing there, alone and confused.

  CJ snapped to look sideways and saw two earless red-bellied black kings flying away, gripping the Chinese soldiers in their claws, biting down on a couple of them.

  The chopper’s pilots reacted instantly. They fired up the Mi-17’s engines and its rotors began to spin.

  The captain on the ground ran for the chopper just as, with a hideous shriek, two red-bellied black princes—also earless—came roaring out of the rain-filled sky and knocked him to the ground.

  One held him down while the other gripped the captain’s head in its claws and ripped it clean off.

  Then the two princes sprang toward the helicopter. Its rotors were beginning to blur with speed and through its canopy, CJ could see its pilots looking out frantically at this new threat.

  The two princes hurled themselves right through the Mi-17’s windshield and soon all CJ could see of them was their tails, lashing back and forth as they mauled the pilots, spraying blood all over the side windows of the cockpit.

  CJ stared at the attack. The sheer ruthlessness of it was astonishing.

  But then she cocked her head to the side. There was something odd about it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on—

  ‘Run!’ Johnson yelled. ‘We’re not gonna get many chances like this!’

  ‘The stairs!’ Go-Go called, pointing at the hiking stairs carved into the mountainside above and behind the chopper. ‘They go past a fire exit in the side of the mountain!’

  ‘Roger that!’ CJ was already moving, bolting across the viewing platform and passing the chopper, when the two kings returned.

  As she dashed past the decapitated body of the Chinese captain, she spied his battlefield display unit on the ground beside his outstretched hand.

  She scooped it up and jammed it in the thigh pocket of her cargo pants just as one of the kings swooped over her, low and fast, the wind-gust almost bowling her over—before the big beast slammed hard into its real target, the chopper.

  The Mi-17 rocked wildly and the king hit it again and this time, the chopper rolled onto its side, right behind CJ and her group.

  CJ and the others dived forward as the huge Mi-17 slammed down onto the ground behind them. Its rotors, now tilted dramatically, fizzed like buzz saws, dangerously close. Weapons and crates went tumbling out of the helicopter’s open side doors, scattering to the ground.

  ‘Grab a gun!’ Johnson called and CJ snatched up a pistol that had landed near her. Johnson grabbed something bigger, a long rectangular case.

  ‘Up the stairs!’ CJ yelled, leading the way. Go-Go ran behind her, then Johnson, Hamish, Wolfe and Syme.

  CJ bounded up the stairs two at a time, rising above the smashed helicopter just as one of the earless red-bellied black kings landed like a gigantic eagle right next to her and roared at her face! It was classic apex predator behaviour, designed to frighten its prey into a petrified, frozen stance.

  But CJ Cameron was no ordinary prey.

  She whipped up her pistol and pumped two rounds right into the beast’s left eye.

  The dragon screamed and, losing its balance, fell from its perch, dropping away from the stairs and—squelch!—its long neck landed astride the spinning rotor blades of the chopper and the dragon was instantly beheaded, its head falling from its neck in a disgusting spray of blood.

  Another shriek made CJ spin around.

  The second earless king had seen the first one’s demise and now it was zooming in toward CJ and her group.

  ‘Oh, man . . .’ Go-Go gasped.

  This time the sight of the flying king dragon coming straight fo
r them with its talons raised, its jaws bared and squealing its hideous attack-scream made even CJ pause. It was coming in fast, way too fast to evade or avoid. Even her pistol would be useless. This was a sight no animal lived to remember.

  Then CJ heard a deep whump from her left and suddenly a finger of smoke lanced out toward the incoming dragon, a finger of smoke that had come from the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher that Greg Johnson had extracted from his newly-acquired case.

  The rocket hit the dragon and an explosion flared out in the rainy night. One of the dragon’s wings fell away from its body and the big creature’s head lolled lifelessly, but due to its considerable inertia, it continued travelling straight for them.

  ‘Move!’ Johnson shouted. ‘It’s going to hit!’

  CJ took four bounding strides up the stone stairway, closely followed by Go-Go and Johnson.

  Hamish, Syme and Wolfe all leapt down the stairs a bare second before the incoming dragon smashed against the stairway at phenomenal speed, turning a whole section of the steps to dust before it dropped to the platform below, broken and dead.

  When the dust settled, CJ found they had a new problem.

  A twenty-foot-wide void now existed in the middle of the stone stairway, separating her group.

  She, Johnson and Go-Go were on its upper side while Hamish, Syme and Wolfe were cut off below.

  CJ locked eyes with Hamish as the rain came tumbling down.

  ‘Get out of here, Cass!’ he called. ‘We’ll find another way up the mountain!’

  She knew he was right—they had to go and they had to go now—but she didn’t want to leave her brother.

  ‘Hamish!’ she yelled. ‘If we can’t find each other, find a radio and do the call we did as kids: 20 at 20.’

  ‘20 at 20, got it!’ he shouted back. ‘Now go—’

  ‘Wait!’ She tore off her watch and held it up. ‘Take off your watches! They’re tracking us with them.’ She threw the watch down into the remains of the helicopter.

  ‘But won’t we lose our shields?’ Syme called. ‘Then the dragons will be able to get us!’

  ‘We trade one set of predators for another,’ CJ shouted. ‘And those dragons don’t have tracking devices or guns.’