If they were to make it through tonight, Lizzie knew those whistles would be the soundtrack to her nightmares for the rest of her sleeps. The piercing high-pitched shrieks reverberated around the bones in her skull, as if her head were a hard-boiled egg, and someone was taking a metal spoon to her temple. Except, she wasn't hard-boiled, not anymore, maybe she never was. Once the spoon finally cracked through her flesh and bone, it would not reveal solidity, one assured state of mind. No, once opened, everything would flood from her brain, the brittle shell collapsing in on itself, irreparable.

Those whistles were like a culmination of all the great fears in the new world. Clickers, death, war, blood, pain, loss, suffering, even a lack of faith in peace beyond the grave. Stand firm and risk losing who you are or die and become another body in a sea of anti-humanity.

The whistles were a warning of what was to come. Like Joey's footsteps through the cold, echoey hall beyond her prison cell door, they signalled a slow and sadistic arrival, and arrival that could not be stopped. Lizzie planted her hands firmly on her knees, letting her sniper rifle slump to the ground by her feet. Her head weighed heavy, her vision blurred, her entire world began to spin on its axis, as if she had suddenly become aware of the Earth's rotation. Her breathing quickly slipped from her grasp, descending into uncontrollable wheezing fits, desperate gasps for air as if each could be her last.

She felt as if she was going to black out when two firm, safe hands gripped her shoulders and lifted her back into consciousness.

"Kid, kid! You're okay! We're all going to be okay," Max soothed. "Just breathe, okay? With me, in... and out... in... and out, there you go, keep that going."

He was there just long enough to reel her back into reality, but by the time she looked up again, Max was scrambling up the front of the wall. A guard perched on the very top locked hands with him and heaved him up the last section, stepping aside to offer Max the space, like a politician standing behind a plinth.

A whistle now hung around his neck.

This time, Max didn't have to call for silence. He wouldn't have even been able to force a single Novus occupant into making a noise. They stood at attention, an army of unlikely troops, ready to wage the unlikeliest of wars.

"They are coming," Max boomed. It was all he could think to say. "They are coming, and there is a hell of a lot more of them than us. But that doesn't matter. There could be a million of them, and it wouldn't matter. Shall I tell you why? Because we have to win. We have to fucking win. Not for us. Certainly not for them. We have to win for every single person we have ever loved, every single person we have lost along the way, every human being we have ever passed in the street, every face that has ever thrown you the slightest of glances. I know it may feel like we are alone right now, like we're a tiny rock in the middle of the most brutal of storms, without any help or hope in sight. But we are not alone. Novus is not the only one. There will be Novus' all around the country, all over the globe, across Europe, Africa, America, Asia, everywhere. Little Novus' standing up for humanity's right to carry on. The right for us to live our fucking lives. They are coming. But we are going to be the ones walking away. Mark my words."

Max's speech has quickly evolved from a shout to a downright roar by the end, as he pleaded with his fellow people to pick up arms. He had no right to ask them to fight, no one had that right, but the clickers weren't asking.

The rumbling in the distance was growing louder by the second, but the sound that caught Max's ear was a sharp slapping down to his right. Val's eyes were locked intensely with his, for the first time emitting a sense of belief, as she clapped her hands together, slowly, but fiercely. Within a second or two, T's mammoth hands added to applause, followed by Lizzie, and GiGi, and before long, every single resident of Novus was engaged in a rapturous chorus of togetherness. The rumble of the approaching clickers was met by humanity's own war cry, and it was the most human thing Max had ever seen.

"North! One o'clock!"

The shrill voice could only just be heard above the cries and claps, but it silenced them with all the conviction of a conductor commanding a brass orchestra.

Max swivelled on his heels, straining his eyes through the darkness toward where the shaking hand was pointing. He raised his open palm to the sky, before crunching it closed into a fist. The spotlights above snapped up, illuminating the path ahead, and leaving Novus in an eerie dusk.

After taking a few moments to adjust to the lighting, they finally came into view. Like one shuffling mass, impossible to differentiate between one body and the next, they bore down on Novus like a carnivorous mob.

"There are more this side!"

"And here too!"

They were attacking from all angles, leaving them no method of escape, herding them like cattle to the slaughter. It was time.

"You all know your positions! Everyone, man the walls! Wait for your shots, then give em hell! We keep the fighting beyond the walls, if you hear my whistle, you get your arses back inside!" Max bellowed.

Retreating into the hospital and barricading themselves in felt like an elongated suicide, and Max prayed it wouldn't have to come to that. If nothing else, the promise that falling back was an option may at least make some of his people feel safer. Putting a building between them and the dead would only work for so long though.

Max offered a hand down to Lizzie, before hauling her up to the very top of the wall, sniper in tow, "Are you sure you're up to this? There's no reason why you can't do your job from the rooftop, or the balcony," he suggested for the hundredth, but last, time.

Lizzie didn't reply, but her eyes dared him to ask again. Instead she took her place on the wall, rested the end of her sniper between two pieces of wood, and aimed down the sight. The snipers had the worst job of all. To everyone else, the clickers looked like a blurred looming shadow, Lizzie could now see each and every set of lifeless red eyes, each starving, snapping set of teeth, every person beyond the illness. Survival was a possibility, but she didn't know exactly how much of her would be left.

Max raised his arm again, his hand open and wide, spreading all five digits as wide as they would go. He had to fight every impulse within his body and mind to prevent his limbs from shaking to their very core, but keep them steady he did. Then, he waited. He forced himself to ignore the panicked, panting breaths of those around him as the three-pronged swarm enclosed around their home. He rejected every urge to give the open fire order. They had plans in place, brave plans, but with high risk came high reward.

On each of the three roads leading up to the hospital, they had placed cars in a line, along the breadth of the tarmac. At first glance, they looked like feeble blockades built to hold back a troop, rather than an entire militia, but there was method to the apparent madness.

They had left a small gap of two metres or so in the centre of each wall, providing the clickers with enough room to pass through unharmed, but not without creating an undeniable bottleneck. Now only one hundred yards away, the hordes began to bunch up, bursting through the man-made gap like a cork shooting from a champagne bottle. Of course, some made their way over the cars, forced by the tsunami of bodies behind them, but that didn't worry Max. He waited another few heartbeats for the bodies to bunch up together, before snapping his thumb down into his palm.

Then the index finger dropped.

Middle finger.

Ring.

Pinky.

Crack!

A sniper bullet fired from the rooftop, like a cannon signalling the start of battle.

Crack! Crack!

Two more.

The bullets pinged against the metal of the cars, piercing their fuel tanks and sending sparks flying from all angles. Like lighting a match and flinging it into a dry field after a rainless summer, the sparks dashed against the petrol-doused tarmac and erupted into flames. The once pathetic, low walls of metal had now become barriers of fire, as the blaze whooshed down the lines either side from the central sparks.

The cars themselves were buried in sheets of orange and black, before the first of them violently exploded, sending the bonnet sailing into the night sky.

***

Somewhere a few blocks beyond the anarchy, an approaching Saunders jumped out of his skin as a sonic boom shattered through the streets.

Shots. An explosion. The undead had arrived before he had. Perhaps, after everything, his cure would fall on silent ears. 

Dead ears.