Free The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf by Nick Bryan Page A

it down when she leaves.”
    “Right.”
    Shaking his head, Hobson went back over to the door, reached outside and pressed the Social Awesome button on the intercom. It rang, sounding more desperate to Angelina with every tone, until the machine gave up the ghost. Silence fell, and the cold was flooding through the open door now, chilling her even further.
    “Brilliant,” he said.
    “Now what?” Angelina hoped the answer involved going home.
    “We get the fuck out of here, Choi,” he snapped.
    “Thank God.”
    “And next time a nerd asks you out, I’m not chaperoning.”
    Before she could blush or complain, there was a scream, a yell, a clear human awful noise. It pierced through the walls of the building and almost squeezed the Cornish pasty out of Angelina’s stomach. Finally, it ended with a thud. She yelled, jumped, landed, then spat out: “HobsonWhatTheFuckWasThat?”
    He glanced at the lift, and then behind him at the door marked STAIRS . “Don’t know,” he said, “but think it came from in there.”
    “Well, let’s run away from it, then.”
    Hobson looked through the gloomy porthole in the door. “There’s something dripping down in there.”
    “Let’s definitely run away.”
    “Gimme a second.”
    Hobson poked the stairwell door open bit-by-bit, stepping inside once there was space. He took a wide diversion around something just the other side, underneath the staircase itself. The lights flickered on in the porthole as he entered, revealing him edging towards the back wall, before climbing the stairs slowly.
    After another glance out to the street, Angelina crept up to the window in the door. There was something falling down in there, from the first floor to ground level. A steady rush of blood poured through the plastic railings and smashed into the floor. It was thickening and red, congealing around the edges of its own splat.
    Gulping, she looked up, and saw the source: a ripped up torso of a body creeping towards the edge of the next level, glooping its insides everywhere. Hobson was kneeling down next to the remains, eyes wide and back of huge hand covering his mouth and nose.
    Angelina pushed the door gently open — enough to let her voice through, without risking a trip into the thin waterfall of gore.
    “Hobson?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Is that Matt?”
    He looked down towards her and nodded.
    Angelina inhaled so deep, she almost made herself sick.
    *****
    The door slammed downstairs, and Hobson sighed. Was it too late to send Choi out for a sandwich again?
    Blood sopped through Matt’s clothing, dripping between the claw-marks in his shirt and trousers. His left forearm was missing, right hand still clasped loose around the stump. The amputation and hacked-up side of his torso oozed the most red sludge. His neck and head, though, somehow escaped mauling. Whatever attacked him lacked high reach, and he’d stayed upright. For a while, at least.
    The longer the body lay there, the more the mess pooled. His straggly hair lay in the blood puddles, sticking together and turning a dirty red-brown colour. The eyes were cold, face sad. This one wasn’t the killer, Hobson concluded, and felt a little guilty that he and his assistant spent so long asking if he was. But, again, that was the job.
    The dead smell was travelling up Hobson’s nose and down his throat. He stood up again, taking a firm step back.
    It looked like a dog had killed this one too. Could be the same animal that did William Lane, maybe a different beast, but the bite marks clinched it. Fucking hell. A canine serial killer?
    Hobson looked beyond the body, to a trail of blood splurges stretching up the stairs. Matt stumbled from where he’d been attacked, down the building until he bled to a halt right here. If the original mauling site wasn’t Social Awesome on the third floor, he’d ditch detective work right now — maybe go into online marketing.
    He looked down at the door he’d come through. The lift was turned off,