The Great Zoo of China (35 page)

—J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE HOBBIT

(GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD, LONDON, 1937)

T
he two silver Range Rovers zoomed around the ring road with their two troop truck escorts.

They were speeding down the eastern side of the valley now, passing a high ravine cut into the eastern wall of the crater. The four vehicles shot through an awning-covered receiving area—it housed a turning bay which serviced an elevator that led up to the cliff-top monastery built in homage to the Purple Cloud Temple.

Sitting in the cab of the lead troop truck, Dr Benjamin Patrick peered out into the night, concerned. Beside him, a Chinese sergeant drove.

Then, just as their four-vehicle convoy emerged from the receiving area, all the streetlights on the ring road blinked out.

The road went dark.

‘We’ve lost power . . .’ Ben Patrick said.

The driver said, ‘The back-up generators will—’

‘The generators were destroyed in the initial attack,’ Patrick said, looking quickly from the roadway to his own shield-generating watch.

The pilot light on it winked out.

‘We have no protection anymore,’ he said ominously. ‘We’re all exposed.’

As he said this, something large and black swept past his truck. The rush of air that followed the flying beast was so great it made the eight-ton troop truck wobble.

‘We’re in trouble,’ Patrick said a split second before his truck was hit with incredible violence and his world flipped over and went black.

While CJ had been battling dragons inside the cable car station and fleeing to the revolving restaurant, Hamish, Syme and Seymour Wolfe had also been fleeing: in their case, to the small building they had spotted at the base of the waterfall.

They dived inside the little building and slammed the door. No sooner was the door shut than there was a loud bang from the other side, followed by furious screeches from the two earless red-bellied black princes that had been pursuing them.

Hamish took in the space around him.

They were in a very tastefully decorated café, with picture windows looking out at the curving waterfall and the ruined castle on the opposite shore of the lake. Six glass-roofed Great Dragon Zoo tour boats sat tied to the dock outside.

The café was dark. The only light came from the red glow of a Coca-Cola refrigerator and a cake display.

The dragons banged on the door for a time and then stalked around the side of the one-storey building, peering in through its windows.

Foiled for the moment, they retreated to the muddy treeline not far from the building—although Hamish had a feeling that they weren’t far away. They might be watching the café, waiting for their prey to emerge again.

That had been fifteen minutes ago. He, Syme and Wolfe had stayed very still, below the windows, watching, waiting.

And then the twin glows of the refrigerator and the cake display went out and the café was plunged into total darkness.

Inside the revolving restaurant atop Dragon Mountain, CJ, Li and Go-Go stood with their hands raised before the ten Chinese commandos arrayed around them. Johnson still lay on the floor.

CJ glanced at the restaurant around her. It had clearly not seen any fighting or attacks from the dragons: there was no wreckage or blood pools. The commandos, she guessed, must have landed on the roof and come in through a ceiling hatch or something.

The small lamps on each table glowed. The soft halogen bulbs in the ceiling gave off a dim light.

Then, abruptly, all the lamps and all the overhead lights winked out and the whole restaurant went dark.

CJ saw the computer screen in the adjoining office shrink to black.

And then she saw
every
source of illumination outside the restaurant—the floodlights encircling the valley, the streetlights on the ring road—extinguish.

The power was out across the zoo. The only light was that coming from the spotlight on the Chinook helicopter hovering outside.

The Chinese commandos aiming their guns at CJ instantly became a cluster of shadows.

It was then that CJ heard the shrieks. At first there were just a few of them, but then there came a chorus of replies.

Dragon calls.

The dragons were communicating.

The Chinese commandos looked about themselves, nervous, unsure.

With a loud
whoosh
, a large shape swept past the windows and CJ saw the underbelly of an emperor dragon rush by and, in a shockingly powerful move, collect the hovering Chinook helicopter as it did.

It simply snatched the helicopter out of the air—one second it was there, the next it wasn’t. CJ didn’t see the chopper hit the side of the mountain, but she heard the explosion and saw the sudden fiery glow.

She spun and, for the briefest of moments, locked eyes with the Chinese trooper in charge of the commandos. Hunter and prey, caught in the unfolding plan of an even more dangerous creature. Would he still execute her?

In answer to the unasked question, he clenched his teeth and raised his 9mm pistol, aiming it squarely at CJ’s head—

—just as the entire wall of windows behind him shattered and an eight-ton Chinese Army troop truck came flying in through it.

C
J dived left, pulling the wounded Johnson with her as the troop truck smashed through the windows on the eastern side of the restaurant and bounced up its broad levels.

CJ glimpsed the red-bellied black emperor that had hurled the truck at the restaurant. It banked away before pulling up, its wings spread wide, and landing on the roof of the restaurant with a loud, floor-shaking thump.

The troop truck ploughed through tables and chairs, sliding on its side
right through
the circle of commandos that had been threatening CJ. It ran right over the lead trooper and two other commandos before crushing two more when its side-turned grille smashed them against the wall.

While CJ had dived left, Li had dived right, only to have a section of the restaurant’s ceiling come crashing down on top of him. The young electrician’s shout was cut off as he was buried beneath the rubble.

The truck came to a halt and it was only when the noise of its spectacular entry had subsided that CJ heard the groans of the men
inside
it.

The dragon must have picked the truck up somewhere—with the troops inside it—and flung it at the restaurant.

Wind and rain whipped in through the gaping thirty-foot-wide hole in the eastern side of the restaurant. The open sky loomed beyond the opening. The valley floor yawned a thousand feet below it.

CJ lay on her belly beside Johnson inside the darkened restaurant, staring in disbelief at the side-turned troop truck.

There was a truck inside the restaurant. The mountaintop restaurant.

And then the other dragons came.

They came screaming in through the truck-sized opening in the side of the restaurant.

Red-bellied black princes, purple royal princes, even a couple of eastern grey princes: there must have been twenty of them.

CJ’s eyes went wide.

It was a veritable
invasion
of dragons.

They launched themselves at the Chinese commandos, leaping astride them, ripping out their throats. A couple of the Chinese commandos managed to get off a few shots, only for the dragons to overwhelm them and throw them to the floor and start eating them alive. Screams filled the air.

And just when CJ didn’t think it could get any crazier,
the whole southeastern section of the restaurant
was wrenched away.

The sound of rending steel drowned out the screams of the commandos and where only moments before there had been neatly laid tables and chairs and soft lamplight, now there was a gaping hole of loose wires and shredded floorboards and a hundred-foot-wide stretch of emptiness!

CJ saw an emperor dragon flying away with an entire section of the restaurant gripped in its claws. It dropped it, circled back and proceeded to stick its massive head in through the great hole it had created. Its roar sent wineglasses toppling and plates smashing to the floor.

Amid all this pandemonium, CJ shoved Johnson over a serving counter and into the kitchen. She dived over the counter after him just as a black prince snapped at her heels. Go-Go threw himself through the swinging kitchen door, the
OUT
door used by waiters and waitresses.