The Great Zoo of China (16 page)

This red-bellied black prince, CJ saw, had an almost entirely red head and a small camouflaged box grafted to the left side of its skull . . . and suddenly she realised that she had seen it before: it was one of the dragons from the amphitheatre, the sullen prince that had reluctantly performed for the female trainer—

The dragon moved before CJ could react. It snatched Na’s throat in one powerful claw and bit her head off with a shocking tearing bite. Blood sprayed all over CJ’s face.

CJ was horrified—not just by the savageness of the act but by the speed of it. It had happened so fast!

The red-faced dragon dropped Na’s headless body and turned its gaze on CJ.

Others might have been stunned motionless in such circumstances but CJ had fought nasty things before. Instinct kicked in and she lashed out at the creature with her right boot.

The kick connected and she caught the dragon square in the mouth.

The dragon recoiled at the kick and in doing so fell back into the column of water gushing into the cable car and was swept away, down to where the bartender was.

The red-bellied black prince landed with a splash at the base of the cable car. The dragon squealed and thrashed beside the hapless bartender.

CJ looked down at them, at first too stunned to move.

The red-faced dragon shrieked again, looking directly up at her.

There came another metallic groan and suddenly someone—Hamish—was grabbing her by the collar, calling, ‘You can’t help him!’ and CJ was yanked up through the column of pouring water and all of a sudden she was standing in daylight beside her brother and Zhang on the top end of the upturned cable car, on the face of the curving waterfall, in front of the elongated landing platform that led to the ruined medieval castle.

Bizarre.

The cable car was still tilting slowly away from the waterfall. CJ saw the landing platform only a short jump away, but then she caught sight of a shadow moving behind the curtain of water just a few feet from her.

A second black prince, also earless.

At first CJ couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. Its head was bent over something. Then she saw it wrench something off the roof of the cable car with its jaws and with horror CJ realised what that something was.

It was the cable car’s snub antenna.

The device that generated the cable car’s sonic shield.

‘CJ! Come on!’ Hamish yelled.

Just then, the dragon pushed its head through the curtain of water.

It took a step forward, moving like a tiger, emerging from the wall of water one claw at a time, its head bent low.

The cable car groaned again. It was leaning ever further, about to topple off the ledge on which it was so precariously balanced.

Zhang leapt away to safety.

‘Jump!’ Hamish yelled.

And they jumped, together . . .

. . . just as the second dragon lunged at them, but it missed, and as they dived off the cable car at the very last moment—grabbing onto the end of the landing platform with their fingertips, their legs flailing behind them—the cable car toppled off the face of the waterfall, taking the two black princes and the unfortunate bartender with it.

The big double-decker car fell a full eighty feet down the face of the waterfall before it landed with a great splash in the roiling whitewater at the base and went under.

C
J and Hamish dangled from the end of the landing platform, high above the dizzying drop.

Greg . . . reached down and hauled CJ up.

‘We can’t stay here!’ he shouted over the din of the falls, showing more coolness under pressure than CJ would’ve given him credit for.

Within moments, she and Hamish were on their feet and running with the group along the length of the landing platform as dragons wheeled and shrieked and shot by overhead. They dashed into the ruined castle just as the red-bellied black emperor that had started the whole thing rushed by in a hurricane of wind and fury.

Hamish slammed the doors of the castle shut behind them.

Silence, save for the muffled sound of the waterfall outside.

Wolfe and Perry both fell to the floor, breathless. Hu and Zhang just looked shell-shocked. Greg . . . checked on the US Ambassador, who leaned against the wall, soaking wet.

CJ peered up at the interior of the castle around them.

They were in a high-ceilinged entry atrium. It was the size of an aeroplane hangar and it looked old and decrepit, with gaping holes in the ceiling and charred walls. Torn tapestries hung from crossbeams. Two sweeping staircases ran in matching semicircles on either side of the hall, leading to a chamber of some sort. But one of the staircases was useless: it had a ragged void in its middle, presumably created by an angry dragon.

There were no dragons in sight.

There was, however, one out-of-place feature: high up near the ceiling, a modern black catwalk ran around the wall.

There was no ladder to it. It entered the hall from the north and exited to the south. At first CJ couldn’t figure out what it was. Then she realised: it was for guests to walk on and observe the dragons in their castle home.

‘Well, this isn’t going to look good in
The New York Times
,’ she said. ‘Okay, what do we do now? Where can we go?’

No-one replied.

She jerked her chin at Hu. ‘I said,
what the hell
do we do now and
where the hell
can we go!’

Hu was still in shock. His jaw quivered. He couldn’t speak.

‘The administration building,’ Zhang said quietly. ‘It’s on the western wall, right behind this castle—’

Boom!

The big door behind them shook, struck from outside.

Boom!

Again.

An enraged roar assaulted their ears.

The emperor.

‘We gotta move, people,’ CJ said, running for the intact sweeping staircase. ‘We gotta move now . . .’

More shrieks rang out from outside. Two shadows whipped by overhead, shooting past one of the holes in the ceiling: red-bellied black princes.

The group hurried up the curving staircase.

They were almost at the top of the stairs when the main doors to the atrium blasted inwards in an explosion of splinters.

The red-bellied black emperor stood in the doorway, giant and menacing. It bellowed, its jet-engine roar shaking the walls of the castle.

‘Hurry!’ CJ called as the emperor thundered through the doorway, stomping into the atrium with great, whomping strides.

They dashed up the last few steps just as two red-bellied black princes smashed through a pair of stained-glass windows on the other side of the hall and landed at the top of the other, broken staircase.

‘This way! Into the throne room!’ Zhang called, leading them into the chamber directly behind the atrium.

They all hurried into it . . . only to stop dead in their tracks.

An absolutely gigantic yellowjacket emperor dragon lay before them, curled in a ball in the throne room of the castle.

Velvet curtains and torn tapestries hung around it. CJ saw some black steel spiral steps nearby that led up to another guest catwalk running around the ceiling of this room.

The massive yellowjacket was the picture of calm repose. Its colouring was magnificent, brighter than the colouring of the little female CJ had seen earlier, the one named Lucky. This one’s yellow stripes were the most vivid yellow; its black stripes, the deepest black.

It raised its gigantic head and stared at the group curiously. Its slit eyes were huge and unblinking. And it still had ears, CJ noticed immediately.

Then, suddenly, two yellowjacket princes popped up from within the emperor’s embrace. They had been sleeping inside its massive limbs and although they themselves were nine feet tall, they looked positively tiny beside the emperor.

Ever the loyal lieutenants, they leapt to their emperor’s defence, placing themselves between it and this group of intruders.

One of the princes hissed at CJ and approached—

—only to recoil with a piercing squeal.

It had struck the sonic shield emitted by her watch and CJ saw that the princes also still had their ears. The shield generated by her watch still worked.

And then the yellowjacket emperor growled.

It was a sound of the most intense malevolence and it came from deep within the giant creature. The ultimate animal warning. The walls of the throne room quivered, so great was the sound.

CJ held her breath.

They had stepped into its lair, its territory, and it wasn’t happy about it.

CJ found herself wondering: could their little sonic shields really withstand an emperor’s charge? It didn’t seem to her that they could.

Then, with surprising speed, the giant yellowjacket sprang from its position and leapt at them!

There was nothing CJ could do. Nothing any of them could do. It was too fast.

But the yellowjacket thundered
over
them and with a mighty thwack of flesh against flesh, it slammed into the red-bellied black emperor that had appeared in the doorway behind CJ’s group.

Territorial behaviour
, CJ recalled. That some puny little humans might have encroached upon the yellowjacket’s territory was one thing. But another emperor dragon, well, that could not be tolerated.

The entire castle trembled as the two airliner-sized dragons went rolling back into the enormous entry atrium. For a few moments, the two beasts were a single entity, a mass of yellow-and-black limbs intertwined with red-and-black ones with two flailing tails added to the mix.

The ground rumbled as they fought, jaws snapping, claws tearing.

The two yellowjacket princes leapt to the aid of their emperor and joined the fight with the earless red-bellied black emperor—at the same time as the two red-bellied princes from the atrium charged in to defend
their
massive brother.

CJ didn’t need to be offered another chance. ‘Come on!’ she called. ‘Get up onto that catwalk and follow it out of this place!’

The group obeyed.

Within moments they were up on the catwalk, running south. Sure enough, it led out of the castle, to a long pedestrian bridge that stretched over to a vehicle turnaround attached to the ring road.

It was all designed, CJ figured, so that guests could be dropped off here, walk through the ruined castle on the elevated catwalks, and then be picked up later at another turnaround.

Right then, she didn’t care. She hoped by now that some kind of security force or rescue team had been dispatched to come and get them. If she couldn’t get her group to the administration building, then at least she had to get them out in the open where they could be spotted by a closed circuit camera or a rescue chopper.

Running out in front of the others, she dashed across the pedestrian bridge and arrived at the turnaround. About two hundred metres to the south, down the black bitumen ring road, was a tunnel that bored into a sloping section of the western crater wall. At the moment, the mouth of the tunnel was sealed by a thick-barred gate. Towering above the tunnel, built into the sloping hillside, was the administration building.

Zhang saw it, too. ‘There is an internal entrance to the admin building inside that tunnel! Go!’