He wasn't experienced enough in the vagaries of guerrilla warfare to be wary of roads, and in retrospective to a veteran, the idea to follow a road all the way to a part of the Thorne Islands friendly to Paige's pastor could have had dreadful consequences. What then, if the mercs were there with a gun truck, shooting anything that moved? Helicopters tended to follow roads and tried to pin people down in open areas. 

Brian tried to compose an idea of what he'd write on twitter if he had anything capable of writing it -- the world had gone from 'lol hungover epic fuckin night #party' to 'shitting my pants on the run from terrorists #guerrillawar"

He was still naked and barefoot, and each passing yard of hiking made him more aware of his pain and aches as he started to grind through things. He was in superb physical shape, but the demands of survival on this level tended to make anyone exhausted after a long enough stretch, when the immediate danger passed and the body started to pay the price later for what it did before. He'd knew how to grind out and endure uncomplainingly -- there was the occasional stop for water, if there was any to be had, but he wasn't sure what water was safe and what wasn't to drink in an environment like this. 

Their little trek along the road, which was essentially a wide dirt track carved out of the jungle with ruts from tires rather than the sort of modern American highway road that modern Americans were used to, seemed insanely primitive, and it made him think that they were alone here -- that was abruptly ended when some Vaki emerged from the leaves, tattoos and sullen eyes in dark faces, and these guys had guns -- Brian wasn't a gun guy, so he didn't know what kind of gun it was. They looked the same to him, for the most part, but he could tell they weren't hunting rifles. Brian was about to piss himself again when one said, in accented English, "Miss Crawford, good thing we found you. There's a bunch of mercenaries to the North hunting for 'terrs' and Pastor Dan was worried you might run into that if you got lost. Picked up a straggler, eh?" If there was a warm reception for Paige, less so for Brian -- he looked like what he was; a douchey outsider here to party and get laid on the Thorne Islands, someone that didn't belong here, but for whom the hotels and all these monstrosities were built. He didn't care what was going on, only about his pleasure.

Luckily, these guys seemed to respect Pastor Dan, which was why Brian was getting any help at all. "No matter, we'll get you both to Pastor Dan." Brian didn't realize how lucky he was that these Vaki were doing a damned thing for him, he was just grateful that this ordeal was ending.

He didn't even think of the many ordeals ahead -- he thought things would take care of themselves.