The Great Zoo of China (47 page)

The regular king simply collided with the last fighter and latched itself onto it, and to the pilot’s horror, the fighter lost all its aerodynamics and began spiralling toward the ground. A hundred feet off the ground, the king released it and the fighter crashed into the side of the zoo’s crater while the dragon just flew off, rejoining the other two as they headed for the battle at the airfield.

Watching all of this from the safety of a bunker just outside the electromagnetic dome were Hu Tang and Colonel Bao. They had arrived there by car only fifteen minutes earlier.

Their reinforced concrete bunker—a superstrong double-storey command post—sat just behind the line of fifteen emplacements that emitted the dome.

There was movement everywhere in the bunker: technicians at consoles, soldiers on radios, officers peering through binoculars at the disaster unfolding outside. Monitors and plasma screens showed various views of the dragons’ onslaught.

A technician turned to Bao. ‘Colonel! Telemetry is confirmed: the outer electromagnetic dome is operating at half-strength. The dragons somehow disabled the emplacements at the worker city. If they knock out the emplacements on this side, the outer dome will fall.’

Hu Tang stared incredulously at the scene in front of him. He hadn’t thought this could get any worse, but it had.

He turned to Bao, panicked. ‘Did you hear that? They disabled the emplacements on the other side! Do something!’

‘Be quiet,
sir
,’ Bao said calmly. ‘We still have options.’ He turned to an officer behind him. ‘Major. Prepare the thermobaric bombs: airfield, worker city and at the Halfway Hut.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hu Tang’s eyes went wide. ‘You’re going to destroy everything?’

Bao turned to face him, his eyes hard. ‘We have kept other eggs elsewhere, Minister. We have all the elements required to build another dragon zoo. What we cannot rebuild is our nation’s reputation.’

‘Will
we
be safe?’ Hu asked.

‘Of course we’ll be safe, you fool,’ Bao growled. ‘This command bunker stretches ten storeys below ground. It’s strong enough to withstand a thermobaric blast on its doorstep while everything outside it will suffocate in the ensuing vacuum. Minister, hear me well: the moment those dragons bring down that outer dome, I will detonate all three thermobaric devices and destroy every living thing in and around this zoo.’

T
he Chinese military airfield was crumbling under the dragons’ attack. It was mayhem, pandemonium; a maelstrom of fire, explosions, carnage and death.

And it was into this that Hamish Cameron drove his ladder truck.

Hamish gripped the wide steering wheel with white knuckles. Syme sat by his side holding a pistol he’d found in the waste management facility. Given the circumstances, it seemed pretty puny and useless but he clutched it grimly anyway.

The entire airstrip in front of them was bathed in fire. The charred remains of Chinese Army vehicles lay alongside sections of the revolving restaurant’s roof, the concrete ring road and the smashed control tower.
All
the Chinese jeeps, trucks and tanks were either overturned or smashed.

In the flickering orange light of the many infernos, the dragons looked like monsters from the underworld: with their fierce red bellies, black skeletal hides, slavering jaws and howling cries, they were the embodiment of the word
terrifying
.

‘Feels like we’re driving into Mordor,’ Hamish muttered.

‘What’s Mordor?’ Syme asked.

‘Never mind.’

Hamish floored it.

The big red truck reached the edge of the runway and banked wildly as it sped around a crushed tank and, with its immense weight, smashed right through the remains of a burning troop truck.

Hamish pointed forward. ‘They’re going for the emplacements supporting the dome!’

Indeed they were. Having dealt with the defensive human force, the dragons were gathering at the line of emplacements behind the airstrip and its hangars.

Hamish saw the flare of the superking’s fire-breath.

‘Whoa, baby!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here, take the wheel!’ he called to Syme.

The US Ambassador slid into the driver’s seat as Hamish kicked open the door and leaned out.

‘Where are you going?!’ Syme yelled above the inrushing wind.

‘CJ told me to hold off those dragons for as long as I could, so that’s what I’m going to do,’ Hamish said. ‘I’ll be on the back. Get us to those emplacements, Mr Syme!’

With those words, Hamish swept out of the truck’s cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

The fire truck wended its way through the fiery airfield. It sped past the wreckage of troop trucks, jeeps and cargo planes.

As the long-bodied truck swept through the battlefield, the small figure of Hamish Cameron could be seen on its back, slowly making his way along its length before he arrived at the hose station at the very rear of the superlong truck.

The hose station looked like a gun turret: an open-air revolving cannon, only instead of firing bullets, this cannon fired water.

Hamish dropped into the revolving chair of the hose station, found a switch marked
INITIATE PUMP
and looked up just as two prince-sized red-bellies landed on his truck right in front of him and roared angrily.

Hamish swung the water cannon around and jammed down on the trigger and a powerful column of compressed water came blasting forth, slamming into both dragons, knocking them off the fire truck!

‘Take that, you reptile motherfuckers!’ Hamish yelled.

But then, with a great
whump
, an emperor dragon landed right in the path of the fire truck.

In the driver’s cabin, Syme yanked on the steering wheel and the truck swung right, disappearing inside a hangar.

The fire truck whipped past the shattered remains of a couple of planes and Syme ducked as the truck blasted through the rear wall of the hangar.

Syme raised his head again to see the line of emplacements now right in front of him.

‘Not exactly the route I meant to take, but we got here,’ he said to himself.

The dragons were already there.

The two masters were blowing fire at the ground in front of the middle emplacement while other dragons dug.

Syme saw them and had an idea. He searched the switches on the console above him and found the one he was looking for.

The fire truck’s lights lit up the area with strobing red rays while its siren wailed.

Blaring away with light and sound, the fire truck swept in among the gathered dragons and they all turned, surprised at the arrival of this loud, large beast.

The truck swept in front of the superemperor just as the huge animal reared back, readying itself to blow liquid fire—at the exact instant that Hamish appeared in front of it and let fly with a blast from his water cannon!

The superemperor’s fire was extinguished in its throat. It whimpered, confused, as Hamish brought his cannon around and blasted the superking in the face as well.

Then Syme was speeding away again and at a squeal from the masters, the red-bellied black princes leapt into the air and chased the troublesome fire truck.

W
hile Hamish was racing around the airfield in his fire engine, CJ was speeding along in a different kind of truck.

After seeing the pack of red-bellied black dragons disable the emplacements on the perimeter of the worker city and then depart, she, Lucky and Li had flown down from their vantage point on the hill.

They headed straight for the electricity substation just inside the arc of emplacements.

The substation was deserted, its walls streaked with blood.

Lucky landed in front of a large warehouse and CJ and Li dismounted. Li threw open a sliding door to reveal several electrical repair trucks parked inside.

He went straight to the largest of them, an oversized white truck. This vehicle had a regular cabin but a specialised rear section which was filled with electrical spare parts.

‘This is the worker city’s main cable repair truck,’ Li said. He threw open one of its compartments to reveal a spool of thick copper cable, black insulation rubber and a very high-tech-looking silver box that was covered in digital displays. ‘High-voltage cable and an insulation-repair unit,’ he said.

CJ gazed at the parts.

‘These dragons are smart,’ she said. ‘Smart enough to bring down the domes. But what they don’t realise is that while they can destroy things,
we
can rebuild them.
We can fix the outer dome
. Repair it. I needed the dragons to succeed at this end and then head off to the airfield. Now, while they’re attacking the airfield, we’re going to repair the emplacements at this end. We needed to fail before we could succeed.’

‘Provided the others can hold the airfield long enough . . .’ Li said.

‘That’s right. Which means we don’t have much time. Here, you drive.’ CJ held open the driver’s door for Li. ‘We’ve got to get to that middle emplacement.’

They zoomed out of the shed.