The Great Zoo of China (42 page)

She pushed Minnie toward Lucky.

‘Hi, Minnie,’ she said. ‘Get on.’

The little girl’s face was streaked with tears, but she nodded. She edged toward Lucky—

—when suddenly the superking raised its head to the heavens and sent a geyser of fire shooting up into the sky.

Then the big animal swung its head down so that it stared directly at CJ . . .

. . . and it opened its jaws . . .

. . . and CJ’s eyes boggled as she saw the dragon’s giant mouth yawn wide, saw its many teeth, its pink tongue and the depths of its throat—and rising from those depths, a surging ball of flames.

The next second, the dragon sent a horizontal pillar of fire spraying right at CJ and Minnie.

C
J flipped her hood over her helmet and pushed Minnie hard toward Lucky before she herself spun on the spot, turning her back to the dragon.

Superhot flames slammed into her, lashed around her. It was unbelievably hot, unbearably hot. The flames totally consumed her body.

Then the inferno stopped and in the smoke haze that followed it . . . CJ remained standing.

The master dragons reared back in surprise, stunned that CJ could possibly still be alive. Clearly, no animal had ever survived such a blast.

‘Still here, motherfuckers,’ CJ said.

As she said this, CJ saw the superking’s left thigh, saw the brand on it:
R-02
.

She quickly pulled the yellow training unit from her suit and punched its touchscreen display with a gloved hand:
R-02
then
SHOCK
.

The superking immediately squealed in agony and clutched at its head, causing all the dragons ringing the confrontation to look at each other in confusion.

CJ dashed over to Minnie and threw her onto Lucky’s back. ‘We can’t stay here.’

No sooner was CJ in the saddle than Lucky sprang into the air—a nanosecond before a horizontal tongue of fire lanced out from the superking’s mouth and liquefied the floor where Lucky had been standing.

CJ didn’t care where Lucky went so long as it was somewhere else, but with dragons flanking them on every side, it turned out there was only one direction Lucky could go: down.

Lucky dived into the vertical tunnel and shot down it at rocket speed.

With Minnie seated between her thighs, CJ quickly clipped herself in. She also attached a clip to Minnie’s belt, but as she did so, she lost her grip on the training unit and it went tumbling away into the tunnel.

‘Shit!’ CJ reached after it, but it fell into the darkness, never to be seen again.

CJ spun in her saddle to see three red-bellied black princes sweep into the tunnel behind them in hot pursuit.

The two masters, she noted, didn’t follow.

The walls of the circular tunnel swept by at phenomenal speed. There were dim orange lights spaced along its length: ageing military-grade glow sticks.

At first the tunnel was dizzyingly vertical, then it bent at a forty-five-degree angle. CJ held on to Minnie while Lucky streamlined her body to get maximum speed.

CJ flung back the hood of her heat suit, revealing her commando helmet. She flicked on the flashlight mounted on its side.

Then, without warning, the walls of the tunnel simply disappeared and CJ found herself flying out in wide open space above a vast underground cavern.

Hundreds of glow sticks illuminated the cave in a faint orange glow. Mainly used by the military and by cave explorers, glow sticks were a clever choice of light source by the Chinese: powered by a mild chemical reaction, they required no external power or cabling and, importantly, they made no noise, so they would never have disturbed the dragon eggs. These glow sticks, however, were at the end of their chemical lives and many had gone out. The ones that still worked gave off a sickly orange glow.

The cavern itself was shaped like a gigantic funnel, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. Sweeping down its flanks in a wide spiral was an irregular shelf-like path on which sat dozens and dozens of oversized leathery eggs. At the very base of the funnel CJ saw a small steaming pool of water, a natural spring of some sort that had kept the cavern moist for millennia.

The dragons’ original nest
, CJ thought.

The eggs, she noticed even in her haste, were of different sizes: the larger ones, she assumed, were for the emperors and kings, the smaller ones for the princes.

All were hatched, open.

A small demountable booth had been erected at the top of the cavern beside the exit tunnel, but it looked long abandoned, covered in dust and dirt. Once all the dragons had hatched, it had lost its usefulness and, like the glow sticks, the Chinese must have simply left it here.

With three
whoosh
es, the three pursuing red-bellied black princes sped into the cave. Two covered the exit tunnel, while the third hovered in the air and bellowed a roar of the utmost fury at CJ, Lucky and Minnie.

CJ recognised the dragon instantly.

It was Red Face.

‘Not you again,’ she said.

Lucky landed on the spiralling path on the side of the cave and said, ‘
White Head . . . off
. . .’

CJ hesitantly obeyed. ‘What are you doing?’

‘
Lucky . . . fight . . . red princes . . . Lucky help White Head
. . .’

Before CJ could protest, Lucky took to the air and, hovering in front of CJ and Minnie, she roared back at the red-bellied black princes, a terrifyingly fierce shriek that CJ had not thought her capable of.

The electronic voice in CJ’s ear said: ‘
. . . Begin
challenge
. . .’

CJ stared at the scene in amazement: there was Lucky, hovering on one side of the cavern, while high up on the other side, guarding the exit tunnel, were the three red-bellied black princes, also hovering.

Red Face snarled at Lucky, then nodded at one of his companions and it flew forward.

It was another red-bellied black prince that CJ knew. She recognised its hideously melted snout. It was Melted Face. She had to hand it to the dragon: he was a survivor.

Melted Face shot down toward Lucky.

Lucky answered the roar and flew up at Melted Face.

The two dragons raced toward each other and CJ realised that she was seeing what Zhang had called a ‘joust’.

The two prince-sized dragons raced at each other at shocking speed and as they passed they lashed out with their claws.

There was a cry of pain—CJ couldn’t tell if it had come from Lucky or Melted Face—and then suddenly they were past each other and hovering again, ready for another pass.

They sped toward each other again, faster this time. Lucky streamlined her body, beat her wings. Melted Face flexed his claws.

And they clashed again . . . only this time Lucky rolled at the moment of impact . . . and again there was a shriek of pain . . . and once again they both kept on flying . . . only this time, Melted Face did not pull up into a hover. He just went careering into the opposite wall, smashing into it—lifeless, dead—before his body dropped down the length of the cavern and splashed into the little pool at its base.

CJ snapped round to look at Lucky.

Lucky held a ragged chunk of flesh in her right foreclaw. She had landed a killer blow on the second pass.

Red Face squealed and flew into a jousting position.

Lucky readied herself for battle again.

But then the third red-bellied black dragon took up a position beside Red Face.

CJ looked on in horror. It was two against one.

‘Lucky!’ she called.

The dragon turned.

‘White Head and Lucky fight!’ she yelled.

In answer, Lucky swooped around in a tight circle and allowed CJ to leap onto her back before resuming her face-off with the two red-bellies.

CJ felt her heart beating loudly in her head. She reached inside her heat suit and pulled out her MP-7. She couldn’t believe she was doing this.

She was partaking in a dragon joust . . .

The three dragons sprang forward, racing toward each other, two against one.

CJ had never felt Lucky accelerate so quickly. She saw the two red-bellied black princes speeding toward her across the massive cavern. They were going to pass by on either side of Lucky and double-team her.

Then she saw Lucky extend her left foreclaw—Red Face was coming at them from that side, so CJ levelled her gun at the dragon on the right. It wasn’t exactly a lance but in this aerial joust, it was the next best thing.

They all came together in a blur of claws and roars—Lucky shooting in between the two oncoming dragons—and CJ loosed a burst of fire from her MP-7, aiming as best she could at the right-hand dragon’s head.

She saw blood-spurts erupt from its snout, mouth and eyes—while on the other side, Lucky and Red Face extended their claws and slashed at each other and then—
swoosh!
—the two red-bellies rocketed past.

The right-hand dragon, hit in both eyes by CJ’s gunfire, crashed at full speed into the far wall in a starburst of rocks, breaking its neck with the impact.

Red Face squealed as he banked away and CJ saw a trail of blood dripping from his ribcage and he landed on an egg-shelf, whimpering and wounded. He cried to the heavens, a squeal of agony.

Lucky continued flying, wings beating powerfully—

—before she jerked unexpectedly, faltering, and lost speed.

Worried, CJ looked down to see that Lucky’s entire left flank was slicked with blood.

‘Oh, no . . .’ she gasped.

Lucky may have wounded Red Face, but Red Face had also landed a serious blow on her.

CJ tried to figure out what to do now.

Then it hit her: the infirmary in the Birthing Centre. If she could get Lucky there, maybe she could patch her up. But that would mean getting past all the dragons upstairs.

CJ rolled back the sleeve of her heat suit and looked at the battlefield display unit duct-taped to her left forearm, to check on the dragons up in the Nesting Centre.

What she saw surprised her:

The crowd of red crosses was no longer massing around the Nesting Centre. There were now only three red crosses at the Nesting Centre. CJ figured they represented Red Face and his two buddies.