The Great Zoo of China (39 page)

‘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.
’

W
ith 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.’