When I finally reach her, I know I’ve made it too late.

“Oh, Annie. . .”

Annabella’s eyes fly open as she inhales sharply, reacting to the sound of my voice. I can see her attempting to move, the effort and concentration behind her eyes, but her body remains as still as stone.

A strained gasp leaves her mouth. “I can’t move.”

“I know, Annie, I know. Just. . .just hold on for a second, okay?”

I yank my bag from my shoulder, furiously digging through the mess of supplies and survival gear. “I can help you. Hold on, you’ll be okay.”

She grunts. When she manages to speak, her voice is thin and ragged. “Is it dead?”

I allow myself to glance up quickly, where the rotting, decomposing corpse now lies motionless. It must have smashed its skull open when it fell from the scaffolding with her.

“It’s dead,” I reply. I return to my bag and come up with a vial of morphine, a syringe, and a few rolls of ace bandages. “What’s hurt? Where do you hurt?”

I look back to her. Her body is all wrong, a contorted and misshapen pile of limbs and flesh. Her head is facing me, looking at me, but her body is turned slightly away so that her neck is bent at a sharp, unnatural angle. One look confirms that one of her legs is broken — the knee bends backwards rather than forward. Though she’s wrapped in multiple layers of clothing, I can already see the blood beginning to pool under her thighs.

I can feel the panic beginning to set in. “Oh, god,” I murmur.

“Everything. Everything hurts. Everything,” she whispers, repeating herself over and over. “Everything, everything, everything.”

I roll up her sleeve and jam the syringe into her arm. I don’t bother measuring the dose of morphine.

A new sound of groaning and gurgling emits from the distance, and I know we have only moments until the other walkers are upon us. Stray pieces of wood fall from what remains of the scaffolding above, colliding with an overturned metal trash bin. The crash must have been loud enough for them to hear.

“I thought — I thought I could make it,” Annabella coughs. “I thought I would make the jump.”

My throat feels like it’s closing in on itself. “It’s okay, Annie. You did good. You did make it.”

“But the wood broke.”

“It’s okay,” I say. My voice is trembling now. “You’re gonna be okay.”

She coughs weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” My vision begins to blur and I use my free hand to wipe away the tears. “You did so good. So good. And you’re so brave.”

“I’m going to die.”

A sob finally escapes my lips, but I manage to reign it in. “Yes.”

She has no sense of urgency when she speaks, no sense of sadness or fear. “You gave me the morphine?”

“Yes,” I reply. “Do you feel it?”

“I can’t feel anything anymore.”

“Okay,” I whisper, only barely managing to hold back another round of sobs. The groaning is getting louder, closer. The walkers are moving faster than I thought.

Annabella’s eyes dart toward the sound, then find their way back to me. “They’ll be here before I die,” she says. “I don’t want to die like that. Not from them.”

“The morphine—“

“It won’t work fast enough. You have to do it, Danny. You have to do it.”

I shake my head furiously. “I can’t.”

“I think my neck is broken,” she continues, barely audible. She pauses briefly, her eyes clamping shut. After a moment, she relents. “I can’t move.”

A mixture of snot and tears runs down my face and I wipe it off. “I can’t kill you, I can’t help you, I don’t have my gun.”

“Knife.”

My eyes widen. “I won’t kill you, Annie.”

“Please,” she coughs. Her eyelids begin to droop slightly. “Please don’t let them get me. I don’t want to die in pain.”

“Annie—“

“Daniel,” she interrupts, managing to raise her voice slightly. A flick of movement catches my eye in the alleyway of the two buildings that sit directly across the street from us. Walkers.

“They’re here,” she says weakly. “Danny, please.”

“I can’t, Annabella, I can’t hurt you. I only have my knife, I would have to. . .to. . .”

Another round of sobs wracks my body as the realization hits me. “I can’t!”

Her eyes lock with mine, and I can see the desperation. The walkers are getting closer.

“I don’t want it to hurt,” I say feebly. “If I do it like that, it might hurt.”

“It’s okay,” she says. She manages a weak smile. “I trust you to let me go peacefully.”

The sound of footsteps grows closer, and I wrench my hunting knife from my belt, my hand trembling.

“Annie, I’m so sorry,” I cry.

She closes her eyes briefly. “Don’t be sorry, Danny. You’re saving me.”

The walkers are close enough now that I can smell them, their decomposing skin and flesh mixing into a scent that brings up the urge to vomit.

“What if it’s not peaceful?” I ask frantically. “What if it hurts?”

“I trust you,” she says. “Please. Hurry.

Tears are streaming down my face freely now. I make no effort to stop them. “I love you, Annie.”

“I love you too, Daniel.”

I hesitate, switching between looking into the eyes of my dying sister and the cold, empty sockets of the rapidly approaching zombies.

The blade of my knife finds its way to her throat. I can no longer speak, but when she opens her eyes again to look at me for the last time, I know she understands every emotion I could never hope to express to her.

She allows her eyelids to drift closed one last time. “I trust you,” she says, with the blade of my knife resting heavily on her neck.

As the tears blur my vision and the nearest walker reaches out for us, I wretch my arm across my body.