"Sometimes even stronger people have to run." Brennan responded quietly. He wasn't in particular habit of being anything but patronizing around David, but, on the other hand, he wasn't particularly inclined to being surly, just distant, and it surprised him that his mood around David had never been prone to its usual fluctuation, much like it is now.
Brennan would never admit it, especially to David, but he has run before, many times, and long before the Outbreak. He was stubborn, yes, and he refused to bend, but it also made him very vulnerable to change and left him with poor adaptive skills. Brennan had long been running from his mother before running from infected, and he had run from both with the same fervor, at least in the beginning.
There were a number of times, early in his training, when he had tried to run. He was an architect, for Christ's sake, not a murderer, and even though it was a matter of survival, a matter of 'us versus them', he couldn't help but imagine how his father felt when he shot his wife point blank. The thought of potentially killing someone he had met, or knowing that he was killing someone's husband or wife, daughter, son really messed him up for a while. He wasn't a violent man, he was prone to passive-aggressive fighting at his best, basic fist-fighting when he was drunk. And before the Outbreak, he had never been particularly devoted to God before, but his fear, and there was no other word for it, however undignified, and his anxiety were almost too much and he prayed so often he sometimes wondered if it was enough to make up for years of forgetting. There were a lot of things Brennan didn't share with the people he has been living with on Liberty Island; most of them only knew his name and his grumpy disposition, and nobody asked for more. He'd never been the kind of person to make friends quickly or easily, nor was he the kind of person that begged for attention, and when he merely became a guard on the island, he slow let his purpose here define him, to the point where even he has begun to question if there was anything more to him.
Brennan regarded David for a second more, before focusing his eyes on where the body of the swimmer had been. He couldn't see it any longer, the current having pulled it under and out to sea by now. Force of habit ran a prayer for their soul and for his through his mind, and before he could check himself, he quickly crossed himself. He hoped he hadn't been caught and latched onto David's speech, hoping to divert any attention away from himself. He didn't need to have the rumor that he was some Bible-thumper to run through the camp. Most mentions of God nowadays were stilted and tainted by radicalism and he didn't need to give the survivors something else to hate him for. God was his way of dealing with the fact that he was a murderer, and God helped him to sleep at night; he didn't need them to take Him away.
"I've seen some fish carcasses wash up on shore, stripped bare." He commented quickly. He almost sounded shaken, and he covered that up as best he could. No need for weakness. "I haven't seen any infected fish or sharks, but the possibility is high. If dogs and cats and the like can get infected, I don't see why fish couldn't." He realized that saying such might fuel a fire of panic in David, but he wasn't going to lie, because regardless of how Brennan might treat him, David wasn't a child. "More reasons to be careful near the water."