Arguably, being good at running was one of the things that had kept David alive for as long as it had. He didn't think of it as a bad thing, and when you had so few strengths, you had to keep the ones you had and use them when the need arose. "That's not a bad thing," he muttered softly, for lack of a better response.
David knew that a lot of people saw it as a bad thing, as a sign of weakness or whatever, but he couldn't shoot, he was weak with melee, and he wasn't very good at strategizing, so why shouldn't he run? Besides, he added inwardly, I thought you were so adamant about the fact that I wasn't good at anything so, why should this matter to you? he asked.
If David was villianizing Patterson, it wasn't out of any desire to make his life hell. All of his life, David had been teased for one reason or another. He was always ghost kid, always the kid who wasn't as good at sports as the other boys or always just a little bit different. So other boys saw him as an easy target. He'd never been able to hold his own. Only because every time he did, people saw how pathetic an attempt it was and used it to tease him more. Sure, some bad feelings faded at the end of the world, but some? Some would never go away. Patterson, he figured, was just another one of those types of people, and most of the time he didn't fault the guy for it. He'd probably have felt guilty if Patterson mentioned feeling villainized, because that type of thing; making someone feel bad about themselves really wasn't who David was.
If David had any talent with his gun, he might have followed Patterson's advice and taken his gun out right then to take care of some of the distant swimming infected, but he didn't, so he wouldn't. A small part of him wanted to ask about more weaknesses, but he knew that talking to him was a bother to Patterson, so he didn't say anything else.
"Makes me wonder how they survive down there," he said in a meek tone. He was curious, but he didn't suspect Patterson, of all people, to answer him. "Do they eat fish? And I wonder if any fish, or sharks or whatever, have the virus…" That… was a terrifying thought and almost immediately took his focus from the fact that the man he was face to face with intimidated him even more than the underwater menace.