The Great Zoo of China (18 page)

I
nside 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)

S
afely 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 something 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.’