The Great Zoo of China (22 page)

CJ peered upward to see a pair of red-bellied black princes soaring away, having dropped the car at her.

She saw a second pair of princes coming in toward her, carrying another hatchback in their talons. They swooped in low and released the little car.

This car flew across CJ’s bonnet in a flash of white, missing by millimetres. Then it was gone, smashing into the rock wall and exploding.

CJ’s pick-up was rocked by the blast, but she managed to keep it going down the ring road.

Holy shit
, she thought.
The dragons are throwing cars at me!

There came a sudden shuddering
whump
and her speeding truck was lifted momentarily off the ground. CJ turned to see that one of the four red-bellied black princes from the waste management hall had landed on the roof of her trailer.

CJ saw its head and she gasped.

Its black-and-red face was horrifically melted and blistered, exposing its jaw muscles and tendons. Some of the spikes of its crest had also melted, causing them to bend over. It was the black prince who had been closest to the jerry can when CJ had shot it, the one whose face had been engulfed in the fuel fire.

It roared at CJ, a shriek of unadulterated rage. Then, one claw at a time, it made its way forward along the top of the empty trailer, coming for her.

As it shrieked at her, CJ could have sworn she heard a garbled electronic voice coming again through her earpiece. It said in a stilted male voice in Mandarin: ‘—
Fear . . . me
—’

It was almost as if . . . no . . .
CJ shook the thought away.
That was crazy
.

Ahead of her, she saw Hamish’s garbage truck swerve around something, which she quickly realised was an overturned hatchback lying on the road, and suddenly she was almost on it herself, with Melted Face on the trailer behind her.

CJ hit the brakes, causing her pick-up to fishtail past the overturned hatchback, at the same time causing her trailer—with Melted Face on it—to slide
right into
the overturned hatchback.

The trailer hit the upturned car with a mighty bang and the impact stopped it dead in its tracks, separating it from CJ’s pick-up and sending Melted Face flying forward onto the roadway, tumbling and rolling in a squealing mass of wings, tail and claws.

Never stopping, CJ hit the gas again, righting her pick-up from its dry skid, and now free of the weight of the trailer she zoomed off at greater speed. Within seconds, she was right behind Hamish’s garbage truck.

She pulled up alongside its driver’s door and waved at Hamish, indicating her earpiece.

‘What channel?’ she called.

Hamish pulled Zhang over and asked him, and the deputy director—still wearing his own earpiece—looked over at CJ and held up four fingers.

CJ grabbed her earpiece and flicked it from 22 to 4.

‘Zhang! Can you hear me?’

‘
Yes
,
Dr Cameron
,’ his voice came through loud and clear.

‘Where can we go to that’s safe?’

‘
About three kilometres up this road is the Nesting Centre, the site of the original dragon nest. It’s secure. We can take shelter there
.’

‘Good enough for m—’

CJ’s truck jolted violently and she turned to see Red Face land in the tray of her pick-up, right behind her!

The dragon punched through the cab’s rear window and CJ was showered with glass and suddenly a giant claw was clutching around the cabin trying to get at her.

CJ ducked low, lying flat on the seat of the cab. She couldn’t stay here.

‘Zhang!’ she yelled into her mike. ‘Tell Hamish I’m coming over!’

‘
What?
’

‘Just do it!’

CJ reached up and hit the pick-up’s cruise control. It now sped along beside the garbage truck as dragons wheeled and banked overhead.

She wriggled across the cab, underneath Red Face’s scrabbling claw, and pushed open the passenger-side door.

Wind rushed into the cabin. CJ saw the garbage truck’s running board only a couple of feet away, the road rushing by beneath it.

Do it now, before you think about what you are doing!
her mind screamed.

Then Red Face rammed his head through the rear window of the cabin. His splotchy red head all but filled the little space, and the Bluetooth earpiece in his mouth was still bizarrely beeping, but by the time his head was inside the cabin, CJ was jumping out of it, diving out its right-side door, hands outstretched, hoping to catch hold of—

—her
fingers latched onto the garbage truck’s running board and they clung on tightly as her boots hit the roadway and bounced wildly.

The now driverless pick-up truck—with Red Face half inside it, half outside it—peeled away toward the rock wall on the left-hand side of the road. The dragon yanked its head out of the cabin and took to the air an instant before the pick-up hit the wall at speed and exploded in a ball of flames.

With CJ dangling from its left-hand side, the garbage truck thundered down the ring road.

‘
CJ! You still with us?
’ Hamish’s voice came through CJ’s earpiece. He must have appropriated Zhang’s.

‘Just!’ CJ called over the rushing wind.

Whump!

A dragon landed on the garbage truck right above her.

It was another red-bellied black prince. Its hind legs gripped the roof of the garbage truck while it hung upside-down
on
the side of the big truck, glaring at CJ. It opened its saliva-filled jaws in what could only be described as a broad, self-satisfied grin.

‘
CJ! I see it!
’ Hamish’s voice called. ‘
Go under! Now!
’

CJ didn’t bother to discuss her brother’s plan. She grabbed a pipe underneath the running board and swung herself
under
the speeding garbage truck, the Kevlar backplate of her jacket skimming against the roadway as—

—the garbage truck swept into another tunnel and—

—
whack!
Hamish swung the truck in close to the tunnel’s mouth, so close that the truck’s left flank hit the mouth of the tunnel, taking the dragon clean off it while the garbage truck continued on into the tunnel, with CJ safely underneath it!

The dragon fell to the roadway, bruised and confused, as the garbage truck sped away.

Then it shook its head, got back to its feet and took off, heading back into the fray.

In the garbage truck’s cabin, Hamish peered at his side mirror.

The creature was gone. But he couldn’t see CJ.

‘You still with us, Chipmunk?’

‘
I’m still here
,’ CJ’s voice replied. ‘
Thanks, little brother
.’

‘Can you get to the cab?’

‘
I’ll try
.’

Hamish said, ‘You know, this is some seriously crazy shit—’

The windshield in front of him exploded inwards. The black-fisted foreclaw of a dragon appeared immediately afterward, quickly followed by the upside-down head of a fourth red-bellied black prince.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Hamish yanked his head back, involuntarily pulling on the steering wheel as he did so, causing the speeding garbage truck to slam against the side wall of the tunnel and kick up sparks.

On the underside of the running board, CJ swung wildly with the unexpected swerve and a blaze of sparks flew up all around her.

‘Hamish! What are you doing?!’ she called.

‘I got a dragon problem of my own up here!’ Hamish yelled.

The dragon in front of him was trying—in a furious frenzy—to tear away the windshield and get inside.

Beside Hamish, Greg Johnson levelled his AK-47 at the dragon and fired a short burst.

The bullets pinged off the animal’s armoured forehead. The dragon barely noticed.

It roared and lashed out, knocking the assault rifle from Johnson’s hand.

As the garbage truck sped on, CJ used all her strength to haul herself out from under it and swing up onto its running board.

The running board—on which the zoo’s garbage men would stand as they went about their work—ran down the rear half of the truck.

CJ saw a steel ladder at the rear. If she could get to it, then she could climb up onto the roof and work her way forward to the cab.