She’d meant to go for only a few miles, but once she got out there was no real reason to stop. Maybe she would never stop, never be able to get it out of her system. Last night hadn’t helped. She ran along the river toward the industrial park at a light jog. Entered into the rhythm of her body, her breathing, her heart. Felt light and fast and slightly nervous running without a gun, without a vest, without gear and other sets of eyes nearby. It was disorienting, not the wide flat enclosed space of the FOB, sand and dust getting into everything, every tiny corner. In winter when it rained the stuff became like wet clay, a heavy mess, weighing them down even more. She thought about the vastness of the space and low fortified concrete buildings. The cold comfort of the bunker and blast walls and looking out beyond the high fence at the expanses of nothing—paranoid when any man or animal wandered into range. The way fear and boredom could become one, could become anger, could become some kind of holy distance.
