Amnesia

Chris's POV

I stare out of the window of the crowded van, searching for her. I shouldn't expect to see her anywhere, there's no way she can catch up to us.

The sun has risen and the windows are rolled down to keep us all cool in the packed van. I sit on the floor with Kim's head on my lap. Someone's knees dig into my back but I focus more on looking outside then anything else.

"We need to go back," I say for the fifth time. "We left them!"

"They're dead," Jose replies. "There is no reason to go back.

A wave of anger hits me. How can he say this? He knows our background. He knows how important she is to me and he thinks we can just leave them?

"Don't look at me like that," Jose says as he notices my furious glare. "Would you like to go there and find her ripping someone else apart?"

"What if they made it?" I ask. "We just took off without them. We didn't even go back to look!"

"Because they were surrounded!"

"They're strong," I argue. "We left them for dead!"

"We can't go back now," Shayla says. "The road must be covered with infected."

"We should've turned around a long time ago." This time it's Anne who defends me. "Chris is right, we left them for dead. They could've made it through. If they did, Brenda is going to start to get angrier. She'll snap like Todd did, and we don't know if Alice is mentally strong enough to kill her."

"She wouldn't," Jose says. "No way would she kill Brenda. Did you see her face when she killed the first living human in the neighborhood? And he was bad. Brenda is her friend, there's no way."

"You don't know that," I say. My mind goes back and forth, my nerves rising along with the anger. I try to calm down but I struggle with the emotions that I feel. Alice is strong, but Jose is right. She wouldn't be able to handle killing her. It would emotionally destroy her, and I don't think I could handle seeing Alice sad.

I remember when we were younger, in middle school, and she had a good friend who committed suicide. She blamed herself for a year, throwing herself into a spiral of depression which I had to suffer through with her. Seeing her struggle everyday of her life and blame herself hurt me more than it probably hurt her.

I was able to get her out of it after long conversations. I still remember the nights that I'd sit worrying about her. If she was okay, if she was crying, or if she was numb.

I always wondered if she thought of me like that. If she hoped I was doing all right that day, if she wondered why I was absent. But as soon as high school hit, it went downhill. She met James and drifted away from me. She rarely talked to me whenever she saw me. I understood, but it got harder as the months passed by and our conversations started to die down to nothing. It finally got to a point where she barely looked at me.

I always had the feeling that James wasn't good. The way he carried himself. His arrogance that just radiated off of him. I tried to tell her to get away from him after their relationship went downhill but she didn't believe me, didn't listen. There was no point, she was too in love to notice what was happening was wrong.

I snap back to the present and wipe the sweat from my brow. "Stop the van."

Everyone looks at me, even the driver, but the van doesn't stop.

I get to my feet, shaking and weak but determined. "Stop the van!"

"Sit down, Chris," Jose says. "There's no use."

"Stop this goddamn van or I'm jumping out."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Jose asks. "There's no way you can manage walking all the way back."

"We should go back," Anne says. "Chris is right. We left them there."

"What if they're not there?" Shayla asks. "What if we waste the last amount of gas?"

"What if they are?" Anne continues her argument, her voice stern. "Brenda will turn, if she hasn't already. She'll get angry, she'll try to kill her or wound her and Alice is in no condition for that."

"So what're we doing?" Naoto asks, hands on the wheel.

"Turning around," I say. "We're going back to get them."

No one else objects. The van slows, then turns back towards the way we were coming from.

"Tessa, are you capable of driving?" Anne asks.

Tessa nods. We stop for a quick minute to switch out the drivers so Naoto can get some rest. Anne must've noticed his constant yawning.

Soon we're back driving down the road, on our way to get Alice. I sit down on the ground and hold my hands in my head. I've got an unconscious sister and a missing close friend. If Kim doesn't wake up, I'm going to have to deal with what I'm going to have to decide. And if Alice isn't there, or isn't alive, someone else is going to pay for that.