Zulu
My name's bait, whoops I meant Zulu. My name's Zulu, although it might as well be bait. Actually bait starts with a B, so there's a possibility I'd be doing a lot better than I am.
Hey, my name's Bait, and you're going to find out why.
I skip between the buildings. No, skip's much too nice a word for it. I probably looked more like the Roadrunner, except my legs a little more all over the place, and I keep tripping over my shoe lace.
What a day to forget to do up my shoes.
The aglets surf the puddles as I sprint, because my life depends on it - no joke. The cloudburst drenches my face, and is actually rather soothing, wiping my sweaty skin, plus it hides my tears. Every time I reach a streetlamp, I glimpse over my shoulder, and he's a little closer. No, that's wrong. A lot. He's a lot closer.
He's so much faster than everyone ever said he was. I can hardly see his feet move - they're simply a blur.
A stitch threatens to tear me in half, and my ankles feel like they're being whipped every time they hit the floor. I grab onto the ledge of a window, and boost myself to the next one. The light from inside casts my penumbra-corpse across the street as I climb storeys higher up the apartment building. He stands in my shadow, still, observing my pathetic attempts at escaping.
Do I dare look at him?
He's not human, I try to explain it to myself. At those speeds, he can't be.
Ahahah, nice joke, Zulu. Crack a last one before I die.
All jokes aside, I've never seen speeds like that. Literally, I mean if he was going any faster I probably wouldn't be able to see him.
Shame it has to end like this, isn't it just? The two of us, the two extremes. Alpha and Zulu, the beginning and the end. Guess it's some form of irony that I'm the end isn't it? We used to be close. It might've been just that, that brought us so close.
And I guess you could say this is his beginning. No one we ever wanted to see him begin, definitely not like this anyway, but here we are. I've never really believed in fate until the moment A took out Z, which means I won't right until the moment of my death.
I'm Z, and he's A, in case you're still not catching on here.
I swallow my pride - which isn't hard, considering there isn't much to begin with - and then take a deep breath. I can't hear him coming, which doesn't really surprise me. He's the best, after all.
The worst is bound to be so far behind the best that I can't even hear him coming. I might as well be blind and deaf and trying to fight Jackie Chan all at once. Except the characters in Jackie Chan films often just fall backwards over tables and then don't get back up again.
He calmly, mundanely pulls himself over the edge. It's just the dark figure, just a mere shape in front of all the city lights glistening in their beds.
"Do you expect me to fight back?" I mumble, struggling for words as the noose ties around my neck.
"I don't want you to."
"Well, I don't particularly want to die, but doesn't seem like that one's on the survey. So, am to sit down and wait for you to kill me?"
"Zulu -"
"No, no, hold on, I got this," I utter acerbically, bending to the ground, still catching my breath from the run. I cross my legs and lean back on my arms. "How's this?"
"Zulu, maybe I would feel better knowing you put up a fight for your own life."
"Fuck you."
"You never were very lady-like."
"At least some of us haven't changed," I mutter.
"Shame, in reality, I didn't just kill you during the chase. Would've made the emotional side of this a lot easier," he sighs.
"Like you give a toss," I chortle.
He pulls out the semi-automatic pistol we were all provided with out from the back of his trousers.
I threw mine in a river this morning as a teenage act of defiance. I'm nineteen by the way, so yes, I qualify.
The moonlight mirrors off the gun like a spotlight into my eyes. The shimmering beauty of this killer is implausibly prepossessing.
His spare hand pulls back the slide with delight. He never did keep the safety on. He never wanted to. He takes aim, squinting at me down the sight, and I sit forward, emptily glaring at the silhouette beyond the pouring rain and beneath the peeking moonlight, which slinks back behind the clouds so it doesn't have to witness the murder.
In near to complete darkness, there's a bang.
I've never seen Alpha miss a shot. And I never got to.
YOU ARE READING
Phonetic
ActionA B C D E F G, don't believe in what you see. H I J K L M, you can't run from them. N O P Q R, you won't get very far. S T U V, no escape from me. X Y Z, you're dead.
