The Great Zoo of China (41 page)

I
f she somehow managed to survive this, the sight CJ beheld inside the Nesting Centre would be one she would remember for the rest of her life.

Her doorway was positioned three storeys above the floor of the main chamber, so she had a good view of it. To her immediate left was a small building with glass windows, also three storeys tall. It was the only man-made structure in the chamber and it overlooked the space: it must’ve been the observation booth Ben Patrick had mentioned.

The floor of the chamber was a broad expanse of concrete, like the floor of an aeroplane hangar, except that in the exact centre of it was an extraordinarily wide circular hole that was at least forty feet in diameter.

The hole looked like a monstrous well and it bored down into the earth.

The dragons’ original tunnel
, CJ realised.
The tunnel they dug themselves and through which they’d emerged from their nest deep within the Earth
.

This was where the Chinese had built their trap to capture each dragon as it had emerged from the nest two kilometres underground.

But it was the terrifying scene
around
the great hole in the centre of the chamber that had made her gasp in shock.

It looked like Hell itself—fiery light, prisoners bound in chains, squawking dragons surrounding them like a crowd of demonic spectators, roaring and beating their wings in approval of what was going on.

And what was going on was not pleasant at all.

CJ saw nine ‘master’ dragons lying in a long row, but they were not lying there by choice.

Each was bound by thick steel bands that were bolted to the concrete floor. The sturdy bands held down the animals’ necks, bodies, wings and walking limbs, keeping them rigidly immobile. Special metal sheaths kept their snouts tightly shut.

And they were, quite simply, enormous.

There was one king and one emperor of each type: two yellowjackets, two purple royals, two green river dragons, two eastern greys. There were no olive-coloured swamp dragon masters: CJ guessed that was because they were a new species created by the Chinese using the crocodile-breeding program. Each master was slightly bigger than the regular kings and emperors.

There were also two red-bellied black master dragons, but only one of them, the superemperor, still lay on the floor. The other, the superking, stood free, released from its bonds, bellowing at the sky. It blew a blazing column of fire up into the night.

As it raged, three red-bellied king dragons attacked the steel bands restraining the still-bound superemperor. Suddenly, the bonds broke and the superemperor reared onto its hind legs and it, too, roared at the sky, releasing a towering burst of liquid fire.

The assembled crowd of red-bellied black dragons shrieked in delight.

Their two masters were free.

CJ watched in awe as the mass of red-bellied blacks fawned before their masters.

Like queen bees in a hive, the two masters were visibly superior to the other dragons. Their crests were higher, their necks longer, their chests broader, their wingspans wider, and of course, they could breathe fire.

The superemperor was beyond enormous. It towered above the chamber looking like something from another world. Every time it sprayed the air with a column of fire, its minions roared appreciatively.

The superking struck CJ in a different way.

Not only was it slightly larger than the other king dragons, it was also somehow more sinister. It had a sharpness to its eyes, suggesting an extra level of intelligence that sent a chill through CJ. It surveyed the chamber with cool calculation.

Its gaze fell on the other captive masters and it screamed a furious, ear-piercing shriek.

All the watching dragons fell silent. An eerie stillness fell over the chamber.

The two red-bellied masters stomped over to the two yellowjacket masters bound to the floor. The yellowjackets were utterly immobile. They could not even open their snouts. They were totally defenceless.

Without so much as a pause, the red-bellied superking lowered its head, opened its jaws and vomited forth a horizontal column of blazing liquid fire.

The superemperor did the same.

The twin streams of fire enveloped the yellowjacket masters and the two pinned-down beasts immediately caught fire.

They squealed and writhed in their bonds as their hides ignited. The chamber echoed with their cries as the two creatures were burned alive.

The crowd of spectating dragons erupted in roars of demented joy.

‘Oh, God,’ CJ breathed.

Behind her, Li stood with his mouth open.

Lucky whimpered softly at the sight of her own master dragons being killed so cruelly.

The two yellowjacket masters were now covered in flames. They tore at their bonds, twisting with all their might, but they were held fast to the floor. They could do nothing but burn, and burn they did.

The two red-bellied masters stepped along the line of captive superdragons and stopped in front of the next pair, the two grey masters. Another tongue of liquid fire enveloped these two.

They’re eliminating the competition
, CJ thought.
One pair at a time
.

She stood. She didn’t have to watch this and, indeed, while the crowd of dragons was distracted by the grotesque spectacle, it might give her the opening she needed to get to the observation booth unnoticed.

‘Lucky, stay,’ she said. ‘Li, come with me.’

As the two grey masters writhed in flames, CJ and Li hurried toward the observation booth.

Moving low and fast, they scurried unseen across an exposed catwalk and clambered up some steel stairs, entering the booth.

No sooner were they inside it than the world outside lit up again and there were more roars and CJ peered out the booth’s viewing windows to see the next pair of masters—the purple ones—come alight. The yellowjacket masters now lay still, their corpses smoking.

Then the last pair of defenceless masters, the green river dragons, were set alight by more sprays of fire, and now the whole Nesting Centre really resembled Hell: squeals of pain, flaming bound creatures being tortured, roars of sneering delight from the crowd of dragons, all of it ruled over by the two merciless red master dragons.

‘We need to find the detonator unit,’ CJ said to Li as she began searching. ‘It’s in a safe somewhere in here.’

The booth looked like a mine office. It contained desks with computers and printers, plus cupboards and lockers. Several Taser units of different lengths and sizes dangled from hooks; the smallest ones were handheld, the biggest ones were the size of cattle-prods. Helmets hung off coat-hooks beside four thick industrial-yellow heat suits—they were made of a bulky fireproof material and had hoods with Lexan glass faceplates. Each looked like a cross between a HAZMAT suit and the blast suit that a bomb-disposal specialist wears.

CJ flung open the cupboards. Li did the same.

No dice.

There were a couple of offices adjoining the observation booth. CJ disappeared into one of them.

Inside it, she found a shelf on which sat a compact yellow remote identical to the one she had seen Yim holding during the trick show: it was one of the training units that could give a shock to any of the dragons. She grabbed it.

But still no safe.

She came to another office. It had a wide mahogany desk, nice carpet and an open window overlooking the main chamber. The office of a senior person like Colonel Bao. CJ could hear the roars and the whooshing of flames outside, frighteningly close.

Then she spotted it, under the mahogany desk.

A little safe.

It had a small battery-powered digital screen and a ten-digit keypad. Inside it—hopefully—was one of the red detonation units.

CJ crouched in front of it and punched in the code Ben Patrick had given her: 9199.

The safe beeped angrily:
INCORRECT CODE ENTERED
.

‘What?’ CJ frowned.

She punched in the code again.

INCORRECT CODE ENTERED.

CJ’s brow furrowed. Had she punched in the wrong code? Or had Patrick got it wrong? Or was this perhaps the wrong safe—

At that moment a different kind of scream from outside interrupted CJ’s thoughts.

The scream of a little girl.

CJ snapped up and looked out the window.

There on the floor of the main chamber, surrounded by the horde of snarling dragons, were four captive human beings: Director Chow, two of the senior Communist Party officials—still wearing their outdoorsman clothing—and the little girl named Minnie.

‘I
t’s
a feeding ritual . . .’ CJ whispered as she stared out at the scene.

A gang of four princes pushed the human captives forward, toward the two master dragons.

It was indeed a feeding ritual, like the one CJ had witnessed earlier on the ring road, when the red-bellied black princes had offered the Chinese workmen to their king. These junior dragons were presenting their superiors with a food offering.

The two master dragons peered imperiously down at the four quivering people in front of them.

The superemperor lunged forward and took Director Chow in its mouth, and the zoo’s director disappeared in an instant, taken in one swallow.

The superking took more time. It lowered its head to examine the two Communist Party men and cocked it to the side. The two men shook with fear. The dragon grunted, then it snorted with its nostrils and both men were knocked to the ground by the rush of air.

They tried to get back to their feet but the superking just scooped them up in its jaws and gulped them down with a jerking movement of its chin.

And suddenly all that remained before the two dragons was the little girl, Minnie.

She stood before the pair of giant beasts, impossibly small, sobbing, still wearing her Disney mouse ears cap.

The crowd of dragons hissed and snarled. It was a child’s ultimate nightmare become real.

The superemperor lowered its mighty head. Minnie shook before its gigantic slavering jaws, quivering and crying.

It opened its jaws.

Strings of saliva extended from the upper fangs to the lower ones.

Then a stream of horizontal fire suddenly extended
between
the dragon and the girl, cutting
across
them, and the superemperor recoiled, startled.

Indeed, every dragon arrayed around the wide chamber reared in surprise as a human on the back of a yellowjacket prince appeared in the middle of the space and stood defiantly before the two red-bellied black masters.

CJ Cameron and Lucky.

CJ looked like a knight on a stallion, only instead of a lance she held a flamethrower, and instead of armour she wore an industrial-yellow heat suit with the hood flung back.

As soon as she’d seen Minnie, CJ had moved, abandoning her difficulties with the safe.

She wasn’t concerned for Director Chow or the Communist Party big shots. They had known the risks of this place when they’d come here.

But Minnie was different. She was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die this way: abandoned, alone and in total fear.

And so CJ had dashed out of the office, holding the yellow training remote and snatching a heat suit off a wall-hook.

She’d slid into it, then mounted Lucky and swooped down to the floor of the chamber and fired her flamethrower across the face of the superemperor.

Now, she sat astride Lucky, in front of the two enormous master dragons. The bulky heat suit made her look like the Michelin Man and with the hood flung back, her helmeted head was exposed.

The two master dragons glared down at her, their eyes furious.

CJ leapt off Lucky’s back and placed herself squarely between them and Minnie.

‘Get back!’ she yelled.

The masters growled.

The army of surrounding dragons began to hiss ominously . . . and slowly move in.

Maintaining eye contact with the superking, CJ loosed another spray from her flamethrower.

The masters arched back. CJ hoped they figured that any other fire-breathing animal was to be respected. The ring of dragons paused, wary of the flames.