Dragon's Ark Read online

  Dragon’s Ark

  D. Scott Johnson

  © 2016 Scott Johnson

  ISBN: 978-0-9863962-5-0 (hardcover)

  978-0-9863962-4-3 (paperback)

  978-0-9863962-6-7 (ebook)

  Cover design by Melissa Lew

  Interior layout by Lighthouse24

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Gāng Dàwei

  Chapter 1: Mike

  Chapter 2: Kim

  Chapter 3: Fang Hua

  Chapter 4: Kim

  Chapter 5: Zoe

  Chapter 6: Mike

  Chapter 7: Tonya

  Chapter 8: Zoe

  Chapter 9: Spencer

  Chapter 10: Tonya

  Chapter 11: Kim

  Chapter 12: Zoe

  Chapter 13: Kim

  Chapter 14: Tonya

  Chapter 15: Zoe

  Chapter 16: Kim

  Chapter 17: Helen

  Chapter 18: Mike

  Chapter 19: Kim

  Chapter 20: Helen

  Chapter 21: Kim

  Chapter 22: Mike

  Chapter 23: Kim

  Chapter 24: Helen

  Chapter 25: Kim

  Chapter 26: Mike

  Chapter 27: Kim

  Chapter 28: Zoe

  Chapter 29: Helen

  Chapter 30: Tonya

  Chapter 31: Zoe

  Chapter 32: Spencer

  Chapter 33: Mike

  Chapter 34: Tonya

  Chapter 35: Helen

  Chapter 36: Spencer

  Chapter 37: Zoe

  Chapter 38: Kim

  Chapter 39: Tonya

  Chapter 40: Mike

  Chapter 41: Spencer

  Chapter 42: Kim

  Chapter 43: Tonya

  Chapter 44: Zoe

  Chapter 45: Kim

  Chapter 46: Helen

  Chapter 47: Kim

  Chapter 48: Helen

  Chapter 49: Mike

  Chapter 50: Kim

  Chapter 51: Tonya

  Chapter 52: Kim

  Chapter 53: Mike

  Chapter 54: Kim

  Chapter 55: Zoe

  Chapter 56: Tonya

  Chapter 57: Helen

  Chapter 58: Kim

  Chapter 59: Spencer

  Chapter 60: Tonya

  Chapter 61: Kim

  Chapter 62: Tonya

  Chapter 63: Zoe

  Chapter 64: Tonya

  Chapter 65: Kim

  Chapter 66: Tonya

  Chapter 67: Kim

  Chapter 68: Helen

  Chapter 69: Kim

  Chapter 70: Helen

  Chapter 71: Mike

  Epilogue: Zoe

  Afterword

  About the Author

  “What we think, we become.”

  – Buddha

  “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”

  – Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

  Prologue: Gāng Dàwei

  Six years from now

  May 25, 2:35 p.m., Three Gorges Dam

  Gāng Dàwei jumped when another lightning strike split the sky. He was inside the dam’s control room and still had to shout over the rain so his crew could hear. “No! Look!” He pointed at the dark panel in front of him. “There’s no power!” Nothing in here would work without power.

  They crowded around the gauges like tribesmen confronting fearsome magic.

  Tiĕ Lin pulled back from the group. “So what? The automated systems—”

  “The automated systems are down!” Another wave from the reservoir crashed against the floodgates hard enough he felt it through his feet. “Do you see that?”

  The crest of the wave broke ten meters over the top of the dam. A solid sheet of brown water wider than a village and thicker than a skyscraper tumbled down the other side. The storm, the third one in seven weeks, was parked just west of the dam and hadn’t moved in four days. All three shifts of the control crew were here now, and none had slept more than a few hours the entire time.

  “The gates won’t open on their own anymore,” Gāng Dàwei shouted at the technicians around him. He was the control foreman, but they never listened when it mattered the most. “We have to open them manually.” Three lightning strikes briefly revealed the empty control rooms, part of the towers that anchored the floodgates.

  “Hell with you,” Tiĕ Lin replied. “There’s no way we can get to those shitty rooms. We’ll be washed over—”

  None of them understood. “No,” Gāng Dàwei said. “It’s not random. Watch.” The fifteen technicians gathered close to the windows, while the storm threw lightning near and far. The thunder was so loud it probably terrified his ancestors. “Count!”

  When he got to one hundred twenty, another wall of water crashed over the top of the dam.

  “Go!” He shouted at them. “Go now!”

  They ran into the rain as it came down so hard he could barely see. Two minutes to cross fifty meters was a brisk walk on a bright spring day, but in these conditions they had to help each other up whenever someone stumbled. The next wave loomed over them as they crammed into the first tower’s control room.

  Gāng Dàwei slammed the door shut. This time there was no question about being brave. He and his crew all screamed as water rammed through the bottom, then the sides, and then the top of the doorjamb. The room went briefly silent as the water completely covered the low windows. He was sealed inside a room with his men under water and five hundred feet in the air. Someone giggled. Gāng Dàwei fought with his own need to express something. He had to stay silent, stay strong, be the leader his men needed.

  And then it was over. The water rushed over the dam and he could see outside again. They could survive this. His grandfather had helped design the dam, and this wasn’t the first superstorm to strike it. To win, to save the dam, they had to control the flooding, balance the overfilled reservoir. Get it wrong one way and thousands of people would lose their homes. Get it wrong the other way and they’d all be on the hook for damage to the structure itself. They had to get the harmonics of the waves under control.

  He turned and pointed to the pair of men standing closest to the tower’s consoles. “You two stay here and control this gate, everyone else, go!” The rest of his crew rushed out again in front of him, but now he had the key. The waves weren’t random, and the next tower was much closer. He could do this; they would save the dam, the villages, everything.

  At every tower, he had another pair of men peel off and man its control room. The final tower he saved for himself and Tiĕ Lin. It was critical to get this right, and Gāng Dàwei didn’t trust anyone else with the point closest to the opposite shore.

  As Tiĕ Lin closed the door behind them, he looked out the window to see how the other teams were doing, but could only make out the next tower. Gāng Dàwei blinked twice. A dark shape—a man—worked his way around it. He definitely wasn’t part of the crew. There was an assault rifle on his back, which turned weird into seriously scary. Not to mention the dark uniform that looked like something out of a combat realm.

  Tiĕ Lin asked, “Who the fuck is that?”

  The man outside looked upstream and braced on handles nailed into the concrete. They weren’t there this morning either. This wasn’t a realm. Stuff like that didn’t just appear. Whoever this was had prepared for the storm.

  Another thick wall of brown water broke over the dam. When it cleared, the stranger got back to his feet and then started working on a small black box.

  Gāng Dàwei wouldn’t just stand by while an armed man messed with a box attached to the dam. His dam. “Bomb” was a word he didn’t want to think about, but whatever it was, wh
oever he was, he had to be stopped. The stranger was a big man, so he went to the tool chest at the back of the room and pulled a ratchet the size of his forearm out. Gāng Dàwei handed Tiĕ Lin a radio earbud so he could keep the teams in the towers coordinated while Gāng Dàwei confronted the stranger. The waves would be tamed with the flood gates, but only if they were careful. “Stay here,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the storm. “I’m going to figure out who the hell that is.”

  “No!” Tiĕ Lin’s whisper was more of a shout. He leaned closer. “It’s a ghost.”

  Useless superstition. “It’s a ghost trying to fuck with my dam.” Gāng Dàwei shook loose from Tiĕ Lin’s grip and opened the door. “Let’s see if it’s immune to steel.”

  He should’ve tried sneaking, but with another incoming wave and the urge to figure out who this really was, Gāng Dàwei more or less ran. The noise of the rain covered any sound he might make anyway. Probably. Tiĕ Lin’s superstitions were stupid, but Gāng Dàwei had grown up with the same stories. Ghosts might be real. Standing out in this storm anything seemed possible, and if he didn’t get this done right now he’d be washed over the side. At least the ghost…the man’s…back was turned.

  As soon as Gāng Dàwei was in range he clubbed the dark-clad man, who collapsed instantly. Not a ghost after all! Gāng Dàwei yanked the balaclava over the man’s head.

  He had a swarthy face with thick dark hair and a broad mustache, not Chinese, not Asian at all. The wires in his hands were wrapped around the base of the tower and disappeared over the reservoir side of the dam. Tiĕ Lin skidded up beside him and, working together, they carried the unconscious stranger back to the control room.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tiĕ Lin asked.

  “I have no idea. He was working with wires, that’s all I could see.” Gāng Dàwei checked the window. Tiĕ Lin had done well with the team. The new wave was nowhere near as high as the last.

  An earpiece had fallen on the man’s neck. Gāng Dàwei knelt down and listened closely. Another man said numbers in English. Counting down. He pulled the earpiece free and walked back to the window.

  Wires. Trailing over the side of the dam.

  The voice reached ten.

  He looked down. An identical set of wires ran right outside his window.

  The voice reached five.

  They were all going over the reservoir side. A new wave was heading in.

  Fuck my ancestors.

  The voice reached zero.

  Electric traces flashed down the wires and the floor tossed him into the air. Gāng Dàwei landed on the console in front of him and his shoulder popped. The pain flashed, and it took a second before he could open his eyes. He had to find out what happened. Gāng Dàwei dragged himself back to his feet, but the floor wouldn’t stay still. The noise rattled his bones. He finally managed to pull himself up to the window with his good arm.

  The dam was gone. Just gone. Where there had once been hectares of concrete and steel, there was now a tremendous waterfall. The contents of the reservoir, no longer held in check, rushed out. An angry wall of water three hundred meters tall roared down the valley, an elemental dragon that consumed everything before it. The floor lurched and spun, and then his feet left the floor.

  The window pointed downward and the water crashed in.

  ***

  Qiáng Shān knocked his stack of mah-jong tiles down and they scattered on the floor.

  After a few moments his grandmother said, “Well, what are you waiting for?” She leaned down from her perch on the overstuffed chair next to him. “Pick them up, you useless little turd.”

  He stared up at her. The blaring of the TV, the sounds of afternoon traffic on the street outside their house, and the wind all worked together to stir his head into a fused chaos. The overpowering light from the open windows and the smells of the restaurant down the street completed it. His stillness was the control. Stay silent. Make predictable movements. Rock back and forth. The chaos was tolerable then.

  “Go on, pick them up. I can’t walk around here with all your stupid tiles scattered around. I said,” she reached out to him, “pick them up, or I’ll grab your hand.”

  As soon as she got within a few centimeters of his hand, Qiáng Shān couldn’t help it. He shrieked, and then quickly gathered the tiles. The chaos in his mind surged and ebbed on a schedule of its own, but just the threat of someone’s touch would punch a hole right through it. In a moment of clarity, he wondered at the calligraphy of the signs celebrating his tenth birthday. They were shiny, with red and gold colors beneath the black symbols. After a moment they bled together, and the chaos took him again.

  He stacked the tiles. The smooth feel, the rhythmic clacking, the sense of forces balancing slowed his rocking, allowed him to focus as time passed.

  His grandmother stared at the TV behind him, completely still. His mind was clear enough, for now, to understand that something interesting was going on. He turned and was able to understand the TV. The minutes dragged on, and he could still think. It was turning out to be an exceptional day.

  A well-dressed woman sat at a desk, speaking frantically. “…the earthquake came from a previously undiscovered fault underneath the dam. All citizens along the Yangzi river corridor are advised to seek high ground or their shelter sphere site immediately…” Pictures from a helicopter showed a muddy froth rushing through a small city. A tall building fell softly into the foam and vanished. It was almost exactly like when he stacked his tiles too high.

  His grandmother was on the phone. Her shouts echoed through the edges of his hard-won clarity. “Yes, I’ll bring your useless brat. You just make sure my son gets there safely. Do you understand?” She slammed the receiver down and marched into the room, brandishing a broomstick. “Get up!” she said, banging the end into his shoulder. “I said get up! We need to run! The water’s coming! Get up!” She pushed him hard enough with the handle that his other shoulder touched the tiles. When they fell in a rush, his clarity shattered. The storm inside his head consumed him.

  They stood in front of a door, not one he’d ever seen before. It was dark, gray, made of solid metal. The frantic running and shouting and all the people and the pushes against the improvised armor of the hard cases his grandmother hung around his neck were flashes in his memory.

  When he examined the control panel next to the door, all at once, for the first time ever in his life, everything went completely clear.

  It was glorious.

  Thinking. This was how normal people thought.

  They were in a metal corridor that butted up against a gray sphere taller than his grandmother’s house. Father pounded on a door in its side.

  “You have to come out, Weng! You have the keys! We can’t open the doors without the keys!”

  As long as he stared at the thousands of controls on the board, his mind stayed clear. It was obvious now. Qiáng Shān walked up and reconfigured the board. With the press of a button, he unlocked all the doors. Throughout the complex there were shouts of relief as the doors slammed open, allowing the thousands crowded around outside into the building and the rescue pods within.

  His family was here with him. They were frightened.

  “Qiáng Shān,” his grandmother said, “get away from that.”

  “I have to let the people into the building,” he replied. “Otherwise they can’t reach the pods.” Silence swelled as he pushed the last of the buttons. There was a definite rumbling outside now, and a wet sulfur smell filled the rising breeze. Qiáng Shān couldn’t understand why the rest of them stopped talking. He turned around.

  His father, mother, and grandmother stared at him. His mother was crying. “What did you say?”

  It wasn’t that big of a deal. “He had the whole complex locked down, Mother.” It was so obvious. “I’ve let them in, but I’m not sure how to unlock the spheres.” More pieces of his life fell into place. It might all go away, but for now Qiáng Shān rolled with it. His pare
nts were important government officials. The provincial governor was inside the sphere.

  His grandmother chuckled, a dark smoke-scarred sound Qiáng Shān was very used to. “Well I’ll be damned. We’ve got seconds left to live, and the little shit chooses now to talk.”

  Qiáng Shān’s parents immediately shouted at his grandmother and she shouted right back. They were running out of time. He ignored them, the increasingly panicked shouts echoing through the complex, and the growing rumble and rush outside. He needed to open the locks. Everyone here would die if he couldn’t open the locks. They were the new kind. There was a quantum stack that powered them squatting next to the control board.

  There was a kind of latch in the stack. He couldn’t see it, not exactly. He could grasp it though, but not with his hands. Qiáng Shān reached out with his mind.

  There were lines of potential, and he couldn’t remember how to breathe. Waves taller shorter everywhere open grab wave open unlock find unlock this wave highest lowest collapse and now…

  The thunder of water and shouts couldn’t overpower the bang that went off in his head and left his ears ringing. It faded as sphere doors whooshed open. Qiáng Shān rushed inside with his family and strapped in. A crash shook the complex as his father slapped the button to close the door.

  His grandmother swore at the provincial governor over and over again. He couldn’t stop laughing, which made grandmother angrier, which made it funnier. This was clarity. He’d lived for so long wanting it, and it was still his. The sphere lurched sideways and slammed them all against their straps.

  “Here we go!” Father shouted. Qiáng Shān could barely see out of the small portal as the water tore the rest of the support structures away. With another lurch their shelter sphere escaped the braces and rushed away into the flood.

  ***

  The pain in Kong’s body had spread from the wound in his belly. Everything burned now, a sure sign the injury was far worse than a deep bruise from the gear shifter.

  He’d come so close to exposing them all. Right now a journalist waited in a village at the bottom of the valley for his evidence, for the terabytes of data he’d hidden in plain sight. The model of the fishing ship was an honorable gift made amazing with its state-of-the-art holographic projectors. His boss admired its realistic depiction of men working at sea, put it in a place of honor in his office, and then promptly forgot about it.