Seeds of Doubt

Evans says that Darlene is now past the most dangerous part of her injury. He believes that with enough rest and care, she will live. She lost a kidney and has some nerve damage on her left side, but she greets everyone with a sunny grin. She's got a tenacity of spirit that I can only envy.

While we were gone, most of the folks here did one hell of a job streamlining the defenses. There were lots of small attacks by zombies, and one moderate sized assault by some smarties. Rather than simply defend and wait to be attacked again, our brave and brilliant citizens learned from each attack. Ideas have been passed around about making some modifications to the walls over time to make them better for defending against groups. Ideas that make it much more efficient for us to cut down the undead when they swarm us.

Lt. Price has put in his two cents on this issue. He's a true military thinker, it seems, and spent a lot of his free time before the collapse learning about military history, methods of combat and warfare through history, all of that nerdy stuff that fantasy readers lap up. He took a good hard look at some of the ideas and made reasonable and logical cases for or against most of them, and improving on a few. Of course, we still aren't treating him as a citizen just yet, so he doesn't have more than an educated guess about our capabilities and resources, but I can safely say that most of what he thinks we should do, we can do.

As I get to know the guy a little better every day, I trust him a little more. Not that I would want to hand him the keys to the armory or anything, but he genuinely seems to be putting in an effort to help however he can. I am still thrown off by the fact that he hasn't said word one about going back to his unit in Richmond, and that bugs the shit out of me. I mean, I could get behind the idea that he might hate those guys and the truly shitty conditions they must live in, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He speaks about them rarely but with real warmth and respect when he does. He tells us funny stories about the troops that he lived with there. He sounds like a guy who was doing very well, was as happy as he could be in these circumstances.

And clearly, he's just not the deserter type. He loves the uniform, the idea of being a soldier. He isn't the type not to check in with his superiors if there were any chance he could, yet he hasn't said anything about going there since that first day after he woke up here. He's showed no further interest in leaving the compound, and that doesn't jibe with the sort of person he appears to be. Honorable, duty-bound.

It might just be that he is very aware of his situation. No chance that we will be changing our minds anytime soon and taking him on a trip to Richmond, and unable to make a go of it on his own because of his injuries. Maybe he is just embracing his current circumstances and enjoying how things are for him at this time. He might choose to bring it up with us again down the road, when he feels we have more mutual trust. He might decide, once his bones have mended, to leave on his own two feet and try to get home. I guess only time will tell the truth of it.

Still, it nags at me. I like the guy, and am starting to respect him. But there are still little things about him that throw me off.