The two men were silent before Thomas glanced at him and said, “You must really like this girl. That’s how many times this week now? The guardhouse places bets nightly. You won me five bucks.” That could explain why he wasn’t too cross with him.
Elliott examined him slyly out of the corner of his eye for just a second, a quick gauge and nothing more. “Three.”
Thomas puffed out a breath from the side of his mouth. “Three that I’ve caught you at,” he corrected. “I’ve heard of two more at least.”
Elliott nodded, caught out. The guards were talking amongst themselves, naturally. “Sergeant Paul on Sunday and Private Mann on Wednesday,” he confessed. After a moment he continued, “Paul again on Thursday.”
Thomas grunted but he didn’t sound pissed off. Elliott had the impression that if he didn’t have direct orders, the private might have been an ally. He was almost pureblooded Puyallup tribe Native American, dark of hair and eye. You could slice deli meat on his high cheekbones. He and Elliott were of an age, though they couldn’t have been more different. Jenson Thomas was naturally physically gifted. He could probably jog up the slope of K2 with his exhausted pack mule strapped to his back when he was five. He was one of those guys. But he was a good guy.
“Listen, man,” Thomas said suddenly after a few quiet moment, “I get the whole ‘knight in shining armor’ thing. I do, seriously. But… from what you’ve told me, this girl made her choice. And she doesn’t seem the type to much appreciate being second-guessed. Or rescued.” He hitched one shoulder up as if to say but what do I know?
Elliott drew in a deep breath. “I dragged her in to this,” he explained, not for the first time. “And it’s my responsibility to-“
“To what? To take her choices away from her? To discredit her ability to think for herself? Man, this chick… you’re not going to win her that way.”
Elliott tripped over a crack in the pavement that Private Thomas seemed to just glide over effortlessly. Bastard.
“So what do you suggest? That I just let her get herself killed out there? Killed or worse?”
“What I’m suggesting,” Thomas said patiently, “is that you are in no position to let her do anything. Even before you were kept here, sister was doin’ it for herself.” Elliott smiled. “And… that maybe you should think about who you’re really doing this for.”
That last came out gently, with a small punch on the shoulder to take the sting out of the admonition. Elliott still winced. He’d wondered himself, was he doing this more to assuage his own guilt than anything else. But he didn’t really want to think about that now.
The two men completed the journey in companionable silence.
The compound was quiet as evening fell, or at least as quiet as it ever was. Normally it was a bustle of activity, which baffled Elliott immensely. They were still in a safe zone. There was only one zombie here and she was already contained. There wasn’t much threat but there always seemed to be something going on.
Fairchild Air Force Base, as it turned out, was uniquely suited to being the base of operations for the Washington Area Strategic Safety Unit Protocol, a name that was carefully thought through, even if the acronym was not. The Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School was located here, which was good because all those things were eventually going to be vital skills, perhaps for everyone. There was a refueling wing here as well. A few miles south of Spokane, it was sheltered by the rain shadow effect, leaving it drier than Western Washington.
And of course it was safely north of the Columbia, the wide river that formed a natural barrier between Washington and Oregon. It was a barrier they were counting on now that they’d blown up the major bridges that spanned it.
All but one of Elliott’s group was given a room of their own in the barracks. Elliott had to admit it was a nice gesture. They even had the base vet take a look at Pat and Spot to make sure they were okay. And after an intensive debriefing by Governor Smith and Director Carter, they had been largely forgotten about by the higher ups. Not so much so that they’d been willing to let Elliott go of course, but other than keeping him contained they left he and his friends to their own devices.
All except one.