The Great Zoo of China

by Matthew Reilly

  Hamish took the watch, frowning. ‘Then you won’t be protected—’

  But CJ was already off, leaping over the low guardrail and crouch-running across the road while the three dragons looked the other way, consumed by their meal.

  Hamish pushed the others through the scrub that ran along the edge of the road, heading for the tunnel, every now and then turning back to check on CJ.

  He had gone thirty metres when he saw her—unseen by the dragons—slip through the open door of the upright jeep.

  The hardtop jeep was facing away from the tunnel, having flipped that way when it had crashed, and through its rear window, Hamish saw CJ search for the remote until she found it up near the rear-view mirror. She turned and gave Hamish a thumbs-up.

  Huddled in the jeep, CJ didn’t hit the remote straight away. She was waiting for the others to get to the gate. She slouched below the dashboard, staying low, trying to remain unseen by the dragons only ten yards away.

  The king dragon ate the third workman while his two lieutenants looked on.

  She saw Hamish and the others reach some bushes next to the tunnel just as the king stepped back and allowed the two princes to have the last sobbing workman. They tore him apart, one taking his upper body, the other his lower half.

  At which point, CJ hit OPEN on the remote.

  With a dull mechanical clunking, the gate sealing the mouth of the tunnel slid upward, opening.

  Hamish and the others didn’t need any prompting. They hurdled the guardrail and dashed inside the tunnel.

  The three dragons spun at the movement.

  Hamish found a panel on the wall, hit CLOSE and the gate slid back down, closing with a soft whump.

  Inside the jeep, CJ exhaled with relief. They were safe.

  Now she had to get herself to the tunnel. She figured if she lay low in the jeep, the dragons would eventually take off and then she could just sneak down to the tunn—

  Beep-beep . . . beep-beep.

  A soft electronic beeping sound made CJ turn to see the huge head of one of the princes on the other side of the driver’s window, staring right at her!

  CJ sprang back. ‘Ah!’

  She turned the other way—to see the second prince peering at her through the passenger side window!

  ‘Ooh, shit . . .’

  The first dragon roared, loudly and furiously, and CJ saw it more clearly: it was the one with the red face and the box-shaped implant grafted onto the side of its head. Now, however, it had a Bluetooth earpiece wedged between two of its bloody teeth. To her horror, CJ recognised it as Na’s earpiece.

  The Bluetooth earpiece was making the beeping sound as it searched for a device to pair with.

  This was the same red-faced dragon CJ had kicked in the mouth inside the cable car and which had last been seen falling to the bottom of the waterfall inside the car.

  It must have got out.

  Red Face bellowed again and, glaring malevolently at CJ, punched the driver’s door with its foreclaw. The door dented inward. The car rocked.

  The second prince roared as well and with nothing else to call on, CJ turned the key in the ignition and miraculously the battered jeep started.

  The two dragons withdrew at the revving of the engine.

  CJ jammed the jeep into reverse and floored it.

  With a squeal of tyres, the jeep took off, shooting back toward the gated tunnel.

  The king dragon turned idly at this sudden movement, seemingly more intrigued than disturbed. It didn’t move.

  But its two earless princes did.

  They bounded after the jeep and as CJ sped backwards in reverse, Red Face launched itself onto the bonnet of the car and roared fiercely at CJ through the windshield.

  The second dragon landed on the roof of the backward-speeding jeep and the roof bent inwards under the animal’s weight, almost crushing CJ.

  Leaning low, CJ kept her foot on the gas and the jeep raced down the ring road in reverse.

  Riding on the bonnet, Red Face punched through the windshield and CJ ducked as glass exploded all around her and suddenly a massive black forearm with razor-sharp claws was right there in the jeep’s cabin with her, trying to get at her.

  One claw slashed across CJ’s left shoulder, slicing through her leather jacket, drawing blood.

  CJ screamed in pain.

  Then she yanked left on the steering wheel and the car swerved crazily, forcing Red Face to withdraw his claw to keep himself from falling off the speeding jeep.

  Her shoulder burning with pain, CJ turned to look through the rear window of the jeep: the tunnel was now only thirty yards away.

  Then the entire rear door of the jeep was wrenched clean off and the second dragon swung in through the opening and snarled at CJ from point-blank range.

  At the same time, on the bonnet, instead of reaching in with his claw, Red Face jammed his head through the shattered windshield and suddenly CJ found herself staring into the open jaws of that dragon, too.

  CJ gritted her teeth in determination.

  ‘You guys wanna go for a drive? All right, then . . .’

  She jammed the gas pedal all the way down, yanked the steering wheel hard right, causing the reversing jeep to swing that way and then she dived out the driver’s side door just as the speeding jeep crashed through the guardrail separating the ring road from the hillside.

  The jeep shot off the road, with the two black princes on it, and it bounced and jounced for fifteen metres before it slammed into a tree, sending the two dragons flying off it. Red Face slammed into a thick tree trunk, wrapping around it. The second dragon tumbled further down the hill, end over end over end.

  Up on the road, CJ rolled to a halt, grazed but alive, only ten metres from the gate.

  ‘CJ!’ She saw Hamish on the other side of the barred gate. ‘Move your butt!’

  He hit an unseen button and the thick-grilled gate slid up a couple of feet. CJ scrambled forward on her hands and knees, rolled under it, and the gate came down and she exhaled with relief, safe.

  Smack!

  Red Face slammed against the bars of the gate, inches away from her, and she fell back onto her butt. The enraged dragon reached through the bars—frenzied and furious—desperate to grab her, but CJ scuttled backwards, away from its grasping claws.

  The dragon hissed.

  But it couldn’t get past the gate, and as she sat on the floor of the tunnel, her chest heaving, tears welling in her eyes, CJ looked up at Hamish.

  ‘Now that’s character building,’ she said.

  The Administration Building

  and Tower

  (plus Waste Management Facility)

  Safely behind the grilled gate, CJ wiped her eyes clean and stood. ‘All right, folks. Let’s go find someone who can get us out of here.’

  ‘Aye-aye to that.’ Hamish handed her back her Great Dragon Zoo watch. ‘Here, you better put this back on.’

  The group headed down the tunnel. It was modern and well lit, with a high curving ceiling that spanned a two-lane bitumen road. Two full-sized semitrailer rigs could pass through it side by side. It stretched ahead for about five hundred metres where it met another barred gate through which daylight shone.

  Seymour Wolfe’s lower lip was quivering. He was, CJ could tell, visibly coming to terms with what they had just endured. ‘This is just . . . just unbelievable.’

  Aaron Perry had already progressed to anger. ‘It’s FUBAR, is what it is: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.’

  CJ noticed that Hu Tang was saying nothing. He just walked along with his head bent, lips pursed, deep in thought. Deputy Director Zhang walked beside him, desperately avoiding eye contact.

  Glancing behind her, CJ saw the grim silhouette of Red Face at the northern gate. He had been joined by the other black prince and the two dragons paced back and forth on the other side of the bars.

  It’s only the red-bellied black dragons that are attacking, she thought. She wondered why. Was there someth
ing about them that was different to the other dragons?

  Then, abruptly, the two dragons stopped, turning to face something that had caught their attention, and took to the air.

  CJ was happy to see them go.

  About a hundred metres down the tunnel, her group came to a set of oversized garage doors embedded in the wall.

  ‘This is our waste management facility,’ Zhang said.

  As the group arrived at the doors, one of them rumbled open and three Chinese men in suits came running out. They raced straight to Hu Tang, babbling with concern, but he brushed them off with a few sharp words.

  CJ entered the waste management facility.

  A fleet of twenty-four brand-new garbage trucks were parked in perfect rows. They were big Isuzu trucks, with large hydraulic compacter units at their rears and THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA painted on their white sides.

  Clearly the Chinese hadn’t got around to changing the logos on them yet, CJ thought. After today’s attack, she wondered if they ever would.

  Beyond the fleet of garbage trucks was a gigantic concrete pit—sixty metres by fifteen metres—that was partially filled with refuse. Along one of its long walls were several huge piston-driven compacters, designed to compress the waste against the opposite wall. Overhead cranes then lifted the compacted waste into dump trucks that were parked in loading docks on the opposite side of the great pit, facing some more oversized garage doors that led westward, out of the crater.

  On the left-hand side of the space, parked by some diesel pumps, was a collection of fire trucks. Painted bright red and glistening with newness, there were four mid-sized water pumpers and two superlong ladder trucks.

  It was an impressive facility, even if the whole massive place did stink of garbage.

  There was one other thing about the hall that struck CJ.

  There was a dragon here.

  But it wasn’t on the loose or on a rampage. Indeed, quite the opposite.

  It was the yellowjacket prince that CJ and the others had seen do tricks in the amphitheatre: the one named Lucky.

  Right now, Lucky sat obediently, if a little nervously, inside a caged trailer that was coupled to a Great Dragon Zoo pick-up truck. The dragon still wore the saddle on its back.

  Its female handler, the young woman with yellow-streaked hair—CJ recalled her name was Yim—stood beside the cage, stroking Lucky through the bars. Yim was still wearing her black bodysuit and her radio earpiece but not her armoured black-and-yellow leather jacket.

  ‘What’s happening, sir?’ Yim called to Hu in Mandarin.

  ‘Some of the dragons have become . . . aggressive,’ Zhang replied as he kept walking. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Lucky is hurt. After we did our fly-by past the cable cars, she landed on a loose rock and rolled her ankle. I hope it isn’t broken. Our truck was here getting refuelled. I was about to take her to the Birthing Centre when all the alarms sounded.’

  ‘Just stay here,’ Zhang said, not stopping.

  Looking very confused, the handler stayed with her caged yellow dragon.

  CJ didn’t care. She just followed Zhang and Hu, who were drawing a crowd as they strode toward a pair of elevators in the right-hand wall.

  ‘Where to, Chipmunk?’ Hamish asked.

  ‘I need to find a suture kit,’ CJ said. The entire left shoulder of her brown leather jacket was now stained with blood. ‘Then I want to get on a plane, go back to the hotel in Hong Kong and take a long hot fucking bath.’

  She jerked her chin at one of the suits fawning around Hu Tang and said curtly in Mandarin: ‘Where is the infirmary?’

  The suit nodded quickly. ‘Level three,’ he said in English. He then spoke into a radio in Mandarin.

  An elevator arrived. CJ got in. The others followed.

  Greg Johnson stood close beside CJ.

  Amid the noise of all the others talking, he said softly: ‘Dr Cameron, in your professional opinion, what just happened here?’

  CJ glanced sideways at Johnson. ‘You move well . . . for an embassy aide. You’re not just an ambassador’s assistant, are you?’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not relevant right now. What is relevant are our chances of survival. What just happened?’

  CJ said, ‘These animals are clearly smarter than our Chinese friends have given them credit for. The Chinese came up with what they thought was an ingenious system to protect their cable cars—the sonic shields—but the dragons scratched off their own ears so they could attack the cars. They also know about our watches. They’re problem-solvers, Mr Johnson, and that’s what I find most worrying.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because intelligence in the animal kingdom is directly proportional to brain size. As a percentage of body size, humans have the biggest brains of any creature on this planet, hence we are the dominant species. Chimps and apes and whales and dolphins come next, and all of them exhibit problem-solving skills: the ability to use X to achieve Y.

  ‘Crocodiles have medium-sized brains, but the reptilian brain doesn’t waste space with notions of empathy or conscience. When a crocodile looks at something, all it is thinking about is how it will go about hunting it and eating it. Crocodiles also exhibit problem-solving skills both in their trap-setting and in their evasion techniques: it is well known that you will never capture a crocodile with the same technique twice.

  ‘What worries me is these dragons have really big brains. The sonic shields on that cable car and on our watches were preventing the dragons from getting to us. So they solved the problem: they tore off their own ears or wrenched off those workmen’s arms, removing their watches.’

  Johnson looked at her for a long moment. Then he spoke in a low voice. ‘There could be other problems for us here as well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ CJ said, wincing. Her shoulder burned.

  ‘I mean—’

  Just then the elevator doors opened onto the third floor of the administration building. After the artificial underground light of the tunnel and the waste facility, CJ was assaulted by brilliant daylight.

  A wide bank of floor-to-ceiling windows met her, windows that opened onto a glass-domed balcony overlooking the valley. CJ could see the rear of the ruined castle and beyond it, Dragon Mountain.

  A female Chinese secretary hurried up to CJ and, bowing, handed her a shrink-wrapped first-aid kit.

  CJ took the kit and walked out onto the glass-domed balcony, followed by Hamish.

  Seymour Wolfe’s traumatic reaction had progressed to anger. He yelled at one of the Chinese suits: ‘You are gonna get me on the first fucking flight out of here! You cannot imagine what I am going to write about this in the Times when I get back! Go! Make it happen!’

  Aaron Perry was also shouting, ‘Get me out of here right now so I can get on the fucking Internet!’

  Hu Tang was speaking animatedly to the other suits, giving orders and directions, pointing at Ambassador Syme and the two journalists.

  ‘Bring my plane here from Hong Kong,’ Syme said to Hu. ‘We’ll fly direct to Beijing from here.’

  Hu nodded in reply and began walking off with his people. ‘Stay here. I’ll take care of everything.’

  While all this was happening, CJ sat down on a bench on the broad balcony and opened the first-aid kit. She slipped off her jacket and hiked up the sleeve of her T-shirt. Her shoulder was a bloody mess. She was reaching for an antiseptic swab in the kit when Greg Johnson sat down beside her.

  ‘Here, let me help you with that,’ he said, taking the swab from her.

  CJ eyed him closely. ‘You have experience field-dressing wounds, Mr Johnson?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He dabbed the gash on her shoulder, cleaning away the blood.

  ‘Bullet wounds?’ Hamish asked.

  ‘Maybe.’ Johnson tossed away the swab and picked up a needle and thread. ‘You might want to bite down on something. This is gonna hurt.’

  CJ grabbed her leather jacket and bit down on its collar. She g
runted sharply as Johnson pierced her skin with the needle and started sewing up the wound.

  While Johnson worked, CJ gazed out over the valley.

  The dragons, she saw, were flying with extra speed now. It wasn’t the lazy gliding she’d seen before. It had purpose. Gangs of red-bellied black dragons flew in coordinated packs, while the other types of dragons clustered together defensively.

  After a couple of minutes, Johnson tied off the last stitch. ‘You’re done. All patched up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ CJ said. The needlework was good. The scar would be small.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Johnson asked.

  CJ nodded at the red-bellied black dragons flying around the valley in their groups. ‘I’m wondering what they’re thinking. I’m wondering why they attacked our cable car? Why today? Why now? Wait a second . . .’

  She pulled her oversized UV glasses from her fanny pack. Amazingly, they were unbroken. She put them on. The electromagnetic dome still glowed green above the crater, lancing up from its emplacements on the rim. Beyond it, much higher up, the second red dome remained in place, while a pale-blue sonic shield pulsed around the admin building.

  ‘Patterns,’ she said to no-one. ‘What pattern were they exploiting?’

  ‘Huh?’ Hamish said. ‘What do you mean?’

  CJ turned to face Hamish and Johnson, still wearing the glasses. Their sky-blue sonic shields pulsed around them. Gazing around her, CJ noticed that many of the Chinese workers inside the admin building bore no such spherical shields. Given that the building had its own shield, they probably saw no need to wear individual ones.

  She took off the glasses and chewed on one of the earframes, thinking.

  Then she blinked.

  ‘The two o’clock fuel run,’ she said.

  ‘The what?’ Johnson said.

  CJ’s head snapped left, scanning the valley and the sky above it.

  ‘Reptilian predators like crocodiles and alligators love patterns, repetition. If you do something every day at the same time, they’ll notice it. And if it helps them hunt you, they’ll use that pattern against you. Just before the attack on our cable car occurred, I saw some fuel tankers doing a standard refuelling run at two o’clock. The dragons were waiting for those tankers to appear at the usual time—’