The Great Zoo of China Read online

  ‘Never mind,’ CJ said.

  Now that she was talking with the dragon—and she was surprised how quickly she accepted this—CJ started to think about other things.

  ‘Lucky, what is happening now?’

  ‘Lucky no understand White Head.’

  CJ kicked herself. She needed to use simpler language, no what’s, why’s or now’s, just simple nouns and verbs. She wondered if the translator might work with English—it was a translation program after all; also, given Ben Patrick’s involvement in its development, she figured it was a distinct possibility. So she said in English: ‘Red dragons kill humans.’

  Lucky seemed to comprehend that, and the electronic voice switched to English. ‘Red dragons bad dragons . . . Like kill humans . . . Like kill dragons . . .’

  ‘And yellow dragons?’

  ‘Yellow dragons good dragons . . . Yellow dragons like sleep . . . eat . . .’

  ‘I’m beginning to like you yellow dragons,’ CJ said, smiling.

  ‘Lucky no understand White Head.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  CJ asked, ‘Red dragons want fly away?’

  ‘Red dragons want release red masters . . .’

  ‘Red masters?’ CJ said, frowning. She didn’t know what that meant. ‘Red masters . . . emperors?’

  Lucky said, ‘No . . . Master dragon big big dragon . . . Two red masters . . . Two yellow masters . . . Two purple masters . . . Two grey masters . . . Two green masters . . . One master strong strong emperor . . . one master strong strong king. Black heads hold masters . . . in nest.’

  CJ tried to process what she had just heard.

  If she was White Head, then ‘black heads’ must mean the Chinese. She also guessed that the repeated words ‘big big’ and ‘strong strong’ meant extra large and extra strong.

  She didn’t like the sound of this.

  The notion of some kind of master dragon that was bigger and stronger than the other dragons wasn’t that surprising: it was common in the animal kingdom, from queen bees to lions. If she was interpreting Lucky correctly, each variety of dragon had two of these master dragons, one supersized emperor and one supersized king.

  More worrying, however, was the idea that the Chinese were keeping them captive in the ‘nest’, which she translated as the Nesting Centre.

  The Chinese knew they were special and so had kept them there, separated from the other dragons.

  CJ remembered the guards at the Nesting Centre during the first attack: even in those extreme circumstances, they had flatly denied Zhang and her group entry.

  This was why the Nesting Centre had been strictly off-limits.

  CJ also recalled the image of the Nesting Centre she had seen earlier, with the pairs of dragons lined up neatly in a row: they must have been the master dragons.

  But perhaps, she wondered, the Chinese had underestimated how special the master dragons were: it seemed the red-bellied black dragons now wanted to release their masters, perhaps even more than they wanted to escape from the zoo.

  ‘Masters are very strong dragons?’ CJ asked.

  ‘Master dragons strong strong dragons . . . big big . . . spit fire . . .’

  ‘Wait, what?’ CJ said, shocked. ‘These dragons can breathe fire?’

  ‘Master dragons spit fire . . . Fire help dig . . . Fire kill dragons.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Lucky no understand White Head.’

  CJ didn’t like the sound of this at all. She tried a different angle. ‘Dragons want . . . to kill? To fly? To be free?’

  Lucky seemed to ponder this.

  ‘Dragons want . . . open big big nest . . .’

  CJ frowned. ‘Big big nest?’

  Lucky brayed again. The earpiece translated: ‘Two nests . . . Small nest, big nest . . . Dragons sleep long long time . . . Lucky nest small nest . . . Small nest open . . . Small nest dragons go big big nest . . . Open big big nest . . .’

  The blood drained from CJ’s face.

  ‘Are you telling me that there is another dragon nest in this area? A bigger one? And that the nest at this zoo is actually a small one?’

  ‘Lucky no understand White Head.’

  CJ stepped out of the monastery building, striding past the pack of yellowjacket dragons. She peered across the dark, rain-flecked megavalley in the direction of the Nesting Centre.

  Then she remembered something: the battlefield display unit in her thigh pocket.

  She pulled it out and looked at it. It must have been connected to some external data system—perhaps a satellite or, more likely, the military airfield outside the valley—because it was still working despite the loss of power inside the zoo.

  With the falling of the inner dome, however, it had changed completely:

  Whereas before most of the red crosses had been clustered around the administration building, now they were converging on the Nesting Centre. The red-bellied black dragons were going for their masters.

  At the top right-hand corner of the image, grey dragons were fleeing en masse from the valley, heading off to the northeast.

  As she gazed in horror at the map, a question formed in CJ’s mind.

  The red-bellied black dragons had led the initial attacks. And now they were descending upon the Nesting Centre. They were driving all this and they clearly weren’t finished.

  Stepping back into the monastery, she said, ‘Lucky. Red dragons want . . . ?’

  ‘Red dragons like red dragons . . . Kill other dragons . . . Like rule . . .’

  ‘And if they release their masters,’ CJ said to herself, ‘they become the only dragons with fire-breathers. They become the most powerful dragons.’

  She turned to face Lucky. ‘Lucky help White Head?’

  ‘Lucky like White Head . . .’

  ‘Lucky help White Head fight red dragons?’ CJ pointed at the Nesting Centre. ‘Lucky fly White Head to nest?’

  Lucky looked off in the direction of the Nesting Centre, peering into the rainy night. The dragon seemed to be considering the question very seriously.

  If anything, she seemed apprehensive about the idea, fearful even.

  She pivoted and coo-barked at one of the two yellowjacket kings. The king dragon looked at CJ hard, as if evaluating her. Then it grunted at Lucky permissively.

  Lucky turned back to CJ. ‘Lucky . . . White Head . . . fight red dragons.’

  With CJ on her back, Lucky soared over the blacked-out zoo.

  CJ gazed at the landscape below her: the rain had lessened to a weak drizzle now and she could see the whole megavalley. Without any man-made light, it seemed as if the valley had lost all its colour; it was now a world of blacks and greys.

  She eyed the distant western rim of the crater. She could see many dragons making their way there, gliding across the sky. She hadn’t seen the inside of the Nesting Centre before and she was nervous about what she might encounter there, not least a supersized ‘master’ dragon.

  She had, however, one stop she wanted to make on the way.

  She brought Lucky in toward the remains of the revolving restaurant at the summit of Dragon Mountain.

  The disc-shaped structure had literally been torn apart in the dragons’ attack and the later gas explosion. It looked like a tuna can that’d had its lid peeled back. Half of its roof was simply gone, wrenched away. On its entire southern side, its four broad descending levels lay open to the sky. The Chinese troop truck still lay inside it, turned on its side, nose pressed up against the central elevator bay. The corpses of Chinese troops and commandos lay all over the place, in various states of dismemberment, guns on the floor beside them.

  Lucky landed lightly on an open-air part of the restaurant.

  CJ dismounted quickly and hurried toward the kitchen, racing for the dumb waiter in which she had left Greg Johnson. She hoped it had withstood the gas explosion. She pulled its heavy steel doors apart.

  Johnson wasn’t in it.

  Swipes of blood slicked the walls
of the box-like elevator.

  ‘Damn it,’ CJ breathed.

  The CIA agent was gone.

  CJ emerged from the kitchen to find Lucky poking her nose under a section of fallen ceiling.

  ‘What have you found there?’ CJ said, coming over.

  Lucky pushed the section of plasterboard away, revealing the body of Li, the young electrician CJ had met twice before.

  Li groaned, waking, only to shout in terror when he saw Lucky staring at him from so close.

  CJ stepped in hastily. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. She’s with me.’

  Li blanched in surprise.

  For her part, Lucky seemed a little, well, offended by the man’s terror. She hadn’t been threatening him in any way. She snorted huffily.

  Kneeling beside Li, CJ switched to Mandarin: ‘Are you all right? Can you move?’

  Li grimaced in pain. ‘I think . . . I dislocated my shoulder when the roof fell on it.’

  CJ examined his shoulder. It was indeed out of position. ‘We gotta get that baby back in. Here, lean forward and stay still.’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ Li said.

  ‘I’m better than that. I’m a vet. Vets do everything: brain surgery, heart surgery, lab analysis, dislocations—’

  Whack. She shoved his shoulder back into the socket. Li yelped but then immediately began to breathe easier. His shoulder was in place again.

  ‘What is happening?’ he asked in slow English, taking in the scale of the destruction around him and the darkened zoo outside.

  ‘The dragons cut the power. They’ve brought down the inner dome—’

  A groan made them both spin.

  Lucky turned, too, and growled.

  It had come from the cabin of the side-turned troop truck.

  CJ approached it cautiously. Another section of fallen ceiling covered the top of the truck’s cabin, concealing it from view.

  She scooped up an MP-7 machine pistol from the floor and aimed it at the cabin. The windshield of the truck had popped halfway out of its frame. CJ yanked it clear and, expecting to see a dragon come bursting out of it, quickly aimed her gun—

  —only to see Dr Ben Patrick lying inside the cabin, his forehead covered in blood, his glasses askew.

  CJ lowered her gun.

  A few minutes later, Patrick sat patiently while CJ wrapped his forehead with bandages.

  He kept glancing at Lucky, who watched curiously.

  ‘White Head . . . help . . . Big Eyes . . .’ Lucky’s voice said in her ear.

  CJ half-laughed. Big Eyes. What else would a dragon call someone with glasses?

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Humans help humans.’

  Patrick watched the exchange. ‘I see you’ve discovered Lucky’s translation chip,’ he said.

  ‘Found it while I was looking for a radio. It’s pretty amazing,’ CJ said. ‘But it only works for her and the four red-bellies from the trick show, right?’

  ‘That’s correct. That implant grafted onto the side of her head connects directly to her larynx, giving us precise readings of her utterings. The unit then compares her utterances with the hundreds of vocalisations that have been collated in my database of dragon calls and, voilà, you hear what she says,’ Patrick said proudly.

  He added, ‘Lucky must like you. She’s very choosy. She doesn’t speak with just anybody. In fact, she’s always favoured women.’

  ‘I helped Lucky out of a nasty situation earlier,’ CJ said. ‘She has an admirable sense of gratitude.’ She turned to the dragon: ‘White Head like Lucky.’

  The dragon’s ears twitched backwards again. ‘Lucky like White Head.’

  CJ said to Patrick: ‘We’re on our way to the Nesting Centre. The dragons cut the power, knocking out the inner dome. Now the red-bellied black ones are gathering at the Nesting Centre. They want to release some kind of bigger dragons from there, something called masters.’

  Patrick’s eyes went wide. ‘They’re going after the masters? Shit, if they get out . . .’

  CJ showed him the battlefield display unit, with all the red crosses converging on the Nesting Centre.

  ‘Tell me about these master dragons,’ she said, ‘and how I can stop them.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I can try,’ CJ said.

  ‘No. You can’t,’ Patrick said. ‘If those masters get out, it’ll make what’s happened so far look like child’s play.’

  ‘Humour me,’ CJ said.

  Patrick sighed, then said, ‘Out of the original 88 eggs, there were two master dragons born to each clan: one superemperor and one superking. They are kept in the Nesting Centre, bound, with their snouts held firmly shut. The reason is that these master dragons have a unique set of glands at the back of their throats that release a kind of incendiary acid. Alone among the dragons at this facility, they can project liquid fire.’

  ‘So what we were told on the tour about there being no fire-breathing dragons at the zoo was a lie,’ CJ said.

  ‘You were never supposed to see the masters, so think of it as a half-truth,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Seems to me that this place is filled with half-truths,’ CJ said. ‘I repeat: how do I stop them?’

  ‘Let me be clear, CJ. It’s not just fire that they breathe. It’s a liquid acid-based fire. If that acid-fire touches your skin, it’ll eat right through your flesh and your bone. If it sprays over you, it’ll turn your entire body to mush. It’s not a pretty sight. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘For the third time, Ben, how can I stop them?’ CJ said.

  Patrick said, ‘There are two protocols in place in the event that we lose control of this zoo. The primary protocol for use in the event of a total security breakdown involves the detonation of several thermobaric bombs at strategic locations around the zoo. A thermobaric bomb creates an oxygen vacuum that will kill every living thing within a very wide radius. That is the last-resort plan.’

  CJ didn’t feel the need to tell Patrick that she was already aware of the three thermobaric bombs held somewhere at the zoo.

  Patrick went on. ‘There is a secondary protocol, however, that doesn’t go as far as that. It involves the implants in the dragons’ heads, the chips in their brains that emit an electric shock if a dragon comes into contact with one of the electromagnetic domes.

  ‘When we train the dragons, we use what we call “training units” to trigger those implants. Pain is a swift teacher.’

  CJ recalled the trick show and the moment during it when Red Face had baulked at doing a trick. The trainer Yim had held up a yellow handheld remote and Red Face had performed. Yim had been threatening the dragon with a shock. CJ also now knew why Red Face had smashed that same remote to pieces when Yim had reached for it in the waste management facility moments before her death.

  ‘Lucky’s trainer had a yellow remote,’ CJ said. ‘Is that one of these training units?’

  ‘Yes. As you will have seen, each dragon has an alphanumeric ID code branded onto its left thigh. You enter a dragon’s code into the training unit and then you can shock that individual dragon.’

  ‘How many of these training units are there and where can I get one?’

  ‘There aren’t many, maybe five or six, kept in the Birthing and Nesting centres, since that’s where we train the young dragons.’

  ‘Shocking them is a temporary measure, Ben. How about killing them?’

  ‘Let me finish,’ Patrick said. ‘Those implants in each of the dragons’ heads were equipped with a second capability for use in the event that a dragon or dragons got excessively violent or out of control.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Each implant contains two grams of the plastic explosive PVV-5A inside it; not a lot, but enough to blow a dragon’s head apart from the inside.’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ CJ said. ‘So how do we detonate these implants?’

  Patrick said, ‘A regular training unit can’t detonate those chips. It requires a special detonator unit. And there are only t
wo detonator units in the whole zoo. They look exactly like the training units, only they are red, not yellow. For obvious reasons, both of these detonator units are kept inside high-security safes, the combinations for which are known only to a few senior people.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Director Chow, Colonel Bao . . . and me.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because Chow is just an administrator and Bao is simply muscle,’ Patrick said dismissively. ‘By virtue of my research, I know more about these dragons than anyone else at this zoo; more than anyone else alive, for that matter.’

  ‘So where are the safes?’ CJ said.

  ‘The first is at the military airfield to the southwest of the zoo. That airfield is basically the zoo’s second command centre; you could run the whole place from there. I imagine that’s where Colonel Bao has gone, if he’s still alive.’

  ‘That’ll be tough to get to. And the second detonator unit?’

  ‘It’s inside the Nesting Centre.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ CJ said. ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘Bao has an office there, inside the observation booth overlooking the main chamber of the Nesting Centre. The main chamber houses the master dragons and the opening to the dragons’ original nest.’

  ‘What’s the combination to the safe?’ CJ asked.

  ‘9199,’ Patrick said.

  CJ nodded, memorising the code. She started walking around the side-turned truck, peering at some objects on the floor near it.

  As she did so, she said, ‘Ben, they knocked out the inner dome by trashing the generators and cutting the main power cable. If they go after the outer dome, how will they go about bringing it down?’

  Patrick said, ‘The inner dome only had one set of laser-emitting emplacements. Since it’s a back-up barrier, the outer dome has two sets. The first set of emplacements is at the airfield. The second set is over by the worker city to the northeast, on the opposite side. Both sets of emplacements are fed by separate main power lines, so if one set of emplacements is cut, the other set still maintains the dome.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ CJ said from behind the truck. ‘Describe them for me, so I know them when I see them.’