Project Maigo(14)

At the mention of Collins’s name, Buddy, aka Bud or Buddy-Boy, depending on who is talking to the dog, runs up to me, an excited look in his brown Australian shepherd eyes. He looks for Collins, his favorite, despite the fact that he belongs to Watson, and settles for me when he can’t find her. His head appears beneath my right hand, and I dutifully pet him.

“Went to get coffee,” Cooper says. “Said you hadn’t slept much on the flight home.”

That was an understatement. I’m not sure I slept at all. The one time I got close I was woken by a nightmare. Not of Nemesis. It was a clown riding a panda bear, chasing me through a house while smacking my back with a broken car antenna. I’ve had nightmares about bears since my close encounter a year before. And everyone hates clowns. Not sure about the car antenna. Maybe I’m being haunted by the ghost of Truck Betty. It’s more plausible than most of the cases stacked around the office.

“Sleep is overrated,” I say. “Coffee, on the other hand, is delightful.” I walk to my station and sink into my office chair, staring at the black screen for a moment. “Hong Kong...”

I turn to the others and find them waiting expectantly. Even Woodstock sits up and leans forward, hands on knees.

“It wasn’t Nemesis,” I tell them.

“Then what was it?” Watson asks, already typing at his computer, bringing up images of the ruined Hong Kong port. “What else could have done this?”

“Not sure,” I say. “Something we haven’t seen.”

Cooper crosses her arms. “How do you know? There weren’t any witnesses.”

“There was one,” I say, thinking of the mysterious blonde. “Whatever struck the port glowed orange like Nemesis, but was much smaller.”

“What about the prostitution ring?” Woodstock asks.

“Slave traders,” Cooper says, clarifying the crime.

Woodstock nods. “Right. What ’bout them? Don’t they fit Nemesis’s M.O.?”

“They do,” I say. “But there weren’t any bodies.”

“What’s your point?” Cooper asks, brows furrowed.

“Nemesis stopped eating people once she was fully grown. We’d hardly make a snack for her now. So why would Nemesis raid the port, eat nearly three hundred people and then leave?”

Watson scratches his head. “She’s...growing again?”

“Not her.” I say.

“Oh,” Watson says, pausing mid-scratch. His hand slowly falls to his lap. “Ohhh.”

I nod. He’s figured it out. “Whatever this thing is, it’s growing, too.”

A blaring sound from Cooper’s station makes us all jump. After I calm myself, I recognize the klaxon for what it is. “Is that Homer Simpson screaming?”

While Cooper runs for her desk, Watson says, “I set it up for her. She likes The Simpsons.”

First, Cooper doesn’t let anyone play with her computer. Second, I didn’t know she had a sense of humor. I’ve clearly spent too much time out of the office. “What’s the alarm for?”

“Nemesis sightings,” Watson says, and I feel my face pale, as the blood leaches away.

I head for Cooper. “Where?”

“Australia,” she says. “Sydney. At the Opera House.”

“How did it get from Hong Kong to Sydney in a day?”

No one has an answer, because its impossible.

“There’s photos this time. Lots of them.” She clicks away with her mouse, and the large view screen on the side wall of the room lights up, displaying several pictures of what appears to be a 100-foot-tall, part hammer-head, part gorilla creature with a familiar glowing triangle of membranes at the center of its chest.

“Could Nemesis have shrunk?” Woodstock asks.

“That’s not Maigo,” I say, letting slip my alternate name for the creature who nearly killed Cooper.

She shoots me an annoyed glance, but says nothing about it. “Then what?”

I step up to the large screen, looking at photos and watching short video clips. The monster is eating people. Devouring them whole, like a kid reaching into a bucket of Halloween candy. Ravenous. Starving. I’ve seen this before, when Nemesis was still pounding her way through Maine. But this...this isn’t her. “I’m not sure. It’s something else. Something...new.”

That’s when another alarm sounds, once again making us all jump. But this time, we’re all looking around, trying to understand from which station the dull air-raid klaxon has come. That’s when I realize it’s not coming from inside the Crow’s Nest. It’s coming from outside, but it’s muffled by our brick walls and armored windows.