Phonetic

The Death of Zulu

Yankee

Zulu didn't even explain to you what's going on, did she? Typical.

I suppose the fact she was being hounded by Alpha might've had something to do with it. No excuses, though, because now you're my luggage, and I really, really hate luggage. You. You're holding me back, you sweet son of a bitch.

I balance my feet over the edge of the building, half of each foot twelve storeys off the ground, half on the roof, stable. Half tempting me just to fall, and the other half telling me to wait for the inevitable.

I will die. All of us, at the end of the alphabet, we're just meat.

Yankee. The word that'll ultimately lead to my death. Playing the multi-tasking housewife, as it's also my name.

Since I'm Yankee, I'm the second weakest, or I was. Second weakest and second to die. I'm engaged, chained in a forced marriage to the earth. The bacterium will decay my body, and that's it. No heaven, not that I'd ever see it anyway.

I tie my hair back into a high ponytail, the stragglers instantly drifting back into my face, enjoying the early morning view, before the sun's attempted to breach the horizon yet. The gelid rain mazes down my back, chasing up the hairs on my arms.

They'll all be after me, now. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... everyone. I thought Zulu would hold them off for at least the night, but apparently not, and of course it would be Alpha who found her first.

Me and this gun, we watched Zulu surrender herself. She knew Alpha would take her life no matter how lucky she could get, and generally speaking, Zulu wasn't very lucky. Luck doesn't really come into play a lot with us.

We didn't stop him because then I might as well be digging my own grave while I'm at it. Do I sound like a grave-digger to you? I don't have a shovel anyway.

I click off the safety quickly, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. My focus chases Alpha as he jumps between buildings, just like any kid would've in long-jump. I cool my breathing, raising the gun at the city lights, tracing the aim back to the vague shape of Alpha, roof-hopping. I pull the slide back, and Alpha abruptly stops. He heard us.

Shit.

My finger shivers down the trigger, as the ends of my nerves burn.

"Hey, Yankee."

The shock snaps my fingers shut, and the bullet erupts from the pistol. The recoil bites at my digits and elbow, and I almost drop the gun as I spiral around on my toes. Through the haze and the pouring rain, I stare into her eyes.

Even before the day knows light, they're glittering with illumination. When enough adrenaline is bursting our blood vessels, our eyes could be mistaken for the blue neon club lights in the streets. Light spirals our pupils as the drug surfaces.

Oh crap, I'm doing a Zulu.

We're all just phonetics, you see. Sounds. Our screams fill the night and our gunfire shakes the ground you walk. But you'll never see us because we're just you. We all started out the same, after all.

We all have no parents. All taken from an orphanage, so the Crazies wouldn't have parents knocking on their door like 'why's my kid suddenly stronger than me.'

The Crazies are the people that did this to us. Strapped us down as children and every day gave us a slight amount of this drug, doses ranging from Alpha to Zulu. It was something they called 'Valens', which was injected between once a week to once a day depending on the individual, until yesterday for some, actually.

Quick science lesson: Valens contains Epinephrine, TSH, Cortisol, and Aldosterone, amongst various other things, that to me, really didn't matter when we were being told. For any of the smartasses thinking, heeeeyyy those's are big words, I know what they mean, get lost. For any of the dumbasses that don't, they're your essential hormones for producing energy during exercise - also, read a book or something.

What happens when you're literally forced extra energy every day is, well, people like Alpha turn up and go on a killing spree.

The Crazies were definitely a little party of nutjobs, hence when they so rightly earned their name, and kept twenty-six children in a warehouse space adapted into a make-do home. For quite obvious reasons, what these psychos were doing was completely illegal, so we, the children, rarely went outdoors and definitely didn't have a social life outside of each other.

The Crazies, as far as I could figure out, were made up of doctors, scientists and generally clever loopy-loos. Clever enough the hide twenty-six children from the world for almost fifteen years. And now, when they realised we have limits, they just release us.

What's the most efficient way to kill twenty-six people who have essentially not existed for fifteen years?

Her glowing eyes are never concealed, not even for blinking. They lie like stones on mine, behind the barrel of her pistol, held loosely in one hand, outstretched far in front of her.

Make them kill each other.

On our final night, we all had a small device attached to our left wrist. It looks just like a black square, but when in contact with another one, supposedly will open up with something similar to small straw. At our death, it will release all these raging hormones through the straw, and whoever was in contact, will receive them.

Who would kill their brothers and sisters just for energy? People who want to live.

We were twenty-six individuals that had been taking in artificial hormones for fifteen years - that's since one-years-old for the youngest of us. Our bodies will naturally burn through this energy within a few days, but will not be able to produce sufficient amounts, since we've never really naturally relied on it before. The more you were provided with - Alpha - the more dependant you were on it, and the less your body naturally produced.

If you don't use it, you lose it. We didn't use our natural hormones, so our body stopped producing a significant amount of them a long time ago, since it really didn't need to. So now, we're, essentially, without a source of energy converters.

We can eat and drink, but it won't turn to energy. We can take in all the oxygen we want, and but the hormones aren't there to change it into glucose. Let me put it simply: If we don't kill each other, we die.

Apparently, the last standing will have enough energy stored to last them the average lifetime. What a game.

What's the most effective way to kill twenty-six people without getting your hands dirty? Get them to kill their own family, because they'll do it.

To put it bluntly, I died. And now, Bravo will live at least a few months longer already.

And that's with her kill tally at one.