"Stay the fuck away from me!" The large burly man yelled as Kaleb advanced forwards, the Air Marshal's pistol raised and ready to shoot.

"Afraid I can't do that. Now why don't you let the captain go and have a nice long chat with me about whatever the hell you did to the plane!" Kaleb barked back as Clarice, in the middle of this, sighed at being put back into life threatening danger so soon after they'd managed to land.

It had seemed like such an innocent request at the time. The Air Marshal, freshly woken up, had rushed to the cockpit and asked for help looking through the passengers for the person of interest he had been sent in to apprehend. His thoughts had been simple; they'd probably had a hand in crashing the plane, and Clarice couldn't quite argue with that logic. Nor could she argue with how, as Kaleb had explained, he could only trust a member of the flight crew with this info, so as to preserve his cover amidst the many other unassuming passengers.

"When you find them, act casual, like you're just helping people back on their feet after what just went down," he'd told her, "he shouldn't suspect a thing. You'll know him when you find him, if what I've been briefed about the sicko is to be believed. The less you know, the better the effect will be. You can just pass yourself off as being startled if he should suspect anything. Do you understand?"

She'd said yes, of course. Not her best decision made that evening. Next thing she knew she was helping up some big, burly fellow, and had just about enough time to notice his curious looking tattoos before his eyes went wide and he had his arm around her neck.

"Stay away or the girl gets it!" He yelled, as if quoting verbatim a cheesy 80's action movie. Seconds later Kaleb yelled out "freeze", aimed his gun, and started trying to negotiate.

"Listen carefully; we just crash landed on some hitherto unknown island..." he explained, gesturing to the many windows for the criminal to get a look at the strange swamp they now found themselves in. "There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You have two choices here: if you didn't have a hand in us crashing here then, should you let the girl go and help us all get out of here alive. Do that, and we can talk about you serving a reduced sentence once rescue arrives. If you did have a hand in all this, and you let her go, then I promise not to shoot you. So long as you talk, that is."

"Morons! Idiots! Halfwits! You have no idea what you're doing, where we are, or how to get out of this alive!" The mystery man shouted, backing up towards the opened emergency exit. "I don't know what you think you know, and I don't care. You're letting me leave, whether you want to or not!"

"You don't really think you can break her neck before I can get a shot off, do you?" Kaleb said, stone cold in his demeanor, so composed that Clarice started to wonder whether or not he'd actually try it.

"I doubt you're that good a shot. No. If anyone's getting out of this alive, it's me."

Kaleb's brow perked up at that.

"Why do you suppose that is?" The Air Marshal asked, and the criminal laughed in his face.

"Because I actually have a clue about what the hell is going on! By the Demiurge, they really told you nothing, didn't they? Why your kindly bosses cared enough about me to turn this flight into a sting operation! Still, I'll say this, I didn't cause the crash. I had no idea that-"

The man never finished his sentence. He, and Clarice in his arms, suddenly fell downwards and out the emergency exit, thanks to a quick yank from some unseen figure. They both splashed down into the muck, the criminal taking the brunt of the fall.

His grip on her, however, only tightened. Only for a second though, and not long enough for him to do any real damage. From the top of the exit ramp leaped down a previously prone figure, whom angled his right foot towards, and subsequently stomped hard on, the head of the criminal, the height of their fall giving the attack a painful amount of added oomph! From the sound of it, the criminal's nose was broken, his head likely concussed for good measure… and it didn't stop there.

THWACK! She heard her savior's fist hit him square in the head with startling force. THWACK! He hit again, and again, and again! Five THWACKS! Later and the miscreant was down for the count.

"Clarice!" She heard Blake yell out in panic, rushing down the ramp to help her up. "Please tell me you're fine!?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." She reassured her old friend, before looking to the man who saved him, currently in the process of throwing the unconscious criminal over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

"Oh? You again?"

Clarice recognized that same stern face and figure from the earlier cockpit based hijinks.

"Huh, funny that you'd save our bacon twice now?"

"Not really. It's actually quite grim." The well-built man said as he threw the limp body next to another laid out on the ramp, a badly hurt looking teen boy, or maybe girl, Clarice couldn't tell in the dark. "You're lucky I heard the racket before I started climbing up myself. I hate to imagine how Jonah would've handled your rescue if it were left up to him."

"Who's Jonah?"

Collin pointed behind his shoulder with his thumb. Right there, plain as day, was the man she'd met by the washroom, panting heavily as he hauled around some ridiculously overgrown garden snake.

"What are the odds," she muttered, taking in a deep breath. "Okay, well, at least there aren't going to be any more surprises, right?"

Blake cleared his throat.

"Not for you. Me though? Could you please give the short on what in blazes has been happening between when I blacked out and when that maniac woke me up with all his shouting? Because between me and you, it sure looks like we landed smack dab into the first circle of Hell!"

"Oh suck it up. I promise you, this is not what the first circle of Hell looks like." Jonah teased all while inching closer to their plane, throwing the head of the jumbo sized python onto the bottommost part of the inflatable ramp, next to the young fellow they had managed to save.

"Besides, we crashed here. Last I checked, Hell was underground, no?"

"That's enough out of all of you!"

All looked up and around to see Kaleb peering down from the emergency exit doorframe. His face as cross as it was relieved that things had worked out, sweat running down his face in a damp sopping mess.

"Pilots, get the injured back inside. As for you two..." he said, looking down over at Jonah and Collin, "it would be appreciated if you told us everything you noticed about the area outside the plane. Once we are inside that is... Now then, please, for Heaven's sakes, can we behave a bit more orderly?"

Clarice appreciated his sentiment, she really did. But as she picked up the brutalized injured soul before her, feeling them in her arms like a sack of ruined wet meats and broken glass, she really had to question what difference it would really make…

***

Nobody slept well that night. How could they? Crash landed on a mysterious island not found on any map, inside a mist filled murky swamp bank, populated by deadly fauna. All with the knowledge that the dead and injured were freshly laid towards the rearmost end of the plane, an ever present reminder of the sheer seriousness of the situation.

When daylight did shine down at last, Clarice found herself rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she got up from her cockpit seat, her back feeling less than stellar from the odd sleeping position. Still, she couldn't complain. At least she and Blake had dibs on the most secure spot on the downed flying machine.

Well, time to figure out where to go from here, she thought to herself as she skirted around Blake and flung open the cockpit door, being greeted with the sight of various freshly formed groupings of passengers. Some groups were all young people, others looking like ersatz impersonations of an old folks club. A bunch of rougher looking characters had their own group, as did some mild mannered looking folks. Families, friends, even a few foreign clichés had sprung up.

She glanced to one of such group as she strolled down the plane corridor. They didn't have anything visual to clue her in on why they'd grouped together, till she heard them speaking Spanish with each other in hushed tones. Further down, she saw a bunch of rancorous folks vigorously debating one another, all while Kaleb watched on while idly cleaning his spectacle lenses.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Good morning Miss…" he started as he saw her, before pausing. "Excuse me, I don't think I ever got your last name?"

"Ferrell," she answered, "though, I don't go by Miss. I ain't me mum, I ain't married, and I don't really think it'd be proper for me to go by."

"Very well, if you insist, then we can refer to one another in more casual terms if you'd like… Captain Ferrell. "He proposed, finishing his lens cleaning and plopping them right back upon his weary head.

"You can just call me Clarice. Or whatever works for you, I guess. Now then, I suppose you want to chat?"

"Correct. If you could follow me," he gestured towards the emergency exit, "there are important subjects which must be broached in private."

She didn't make any fuss with him, nodding along and following behind the Air Marshal in lockstep.

It's not like this is a surprise. Maybe he wants to talk about last night? No, he definitely just wants to chat about the plan going forwards.

She slid down the inflatable ramp right behind him, her soaked shoes being freshly mucked up by the dingy black swamp slop. Looking around at the sparse gnarled mangrove trees, occasional hilly outcropping of blackened earth amidst the stygian slurry, and the all-encompassing fog bank which blotted out the sun itself, it really did feel like she'd just stepped out of reality into a waking nightmare.

"I don't think I need to tell you that our prospects are bleak," Kaleb said while walking her over to a small little platform that'd been built of luggage bags and food service trolleys, upon which lay the corpse of the serpent from last night, and a medley of makeshift tools that a tired looking woman was fiddling with.

"Miss Bennu here is a woman of science, laboring to provide us a small bit of light in this unpleasant situation. She's been applying herself laboriously to get a basic water purifier up and running. Hopefully, it will soon solve our immediate hydration needs."

"Yup, my dear really is a super gal, isn't she?" Jonah said with a cocky smile as he flayed the snake with a sturdy looking compact knife. "Big brain and smoking hot body, what more could a guy like me ask for?"

Clarice saw Miss Bennu roll her eyes, and Clarice rolled them in solidarity.

"Now really isn't the time to be witty Jonah, not after what you pulled last night!"

"Oh?" Clarice raised her brow at than, and looked over to Kaleb, who loudly cleared his through.

"Ah, yes. You see, Mr. Dunkel here decided it would be a laugh to smuggle a hunting knife on board a commercial air flight." Kaleb said in a stern, authoritative tone. "Isn't that right, Mr. Dunkel?"

"Oh, come on! Honestly, it's not like I was going to use to hijack the plane or anything. I just wanted to see if I could, add a dash of excitement into my life y'know?" Jonah insisted as he cut a fresh, large swath of snake meat, laying it out onto a cut up T-shirt before setting his knife aside so he could wrap the choice cut of meat up in the cloth. Resuming his work carving away at the snake once he was finished parsing away the morsel of food.

"I fail to see what's so fun about breaking the law! If it weren't for your actions last night, and the testament in your defense Mr. Merriweather gave, along with the proof of said events before our very eyes, then I daresay you'd be joining that criminal miscreant we have locked up in the far right toilet stall!"

"Yeah, yeah, okay," he replied, somewhat deflated as he put away another hunk of meat alongside many, many others, before going back to carving the snake up.

"You aren't gonna charge me right?"

"That depends on how you continue to conduct yourself," he said, before looking over to Ms. Bennu. "You have my condolences for having to put up with such a troublesome man"

"You can say that again," she murmured as she worked on her filtration contraction, wiring a rubber tube into what looked like a makeshift metal drum, while tying it to some wire framework to keep the array stable. "Sometimes, no, most of the time, I wonder why my dad set me up with him. And then I remember the reason…"

"You don't need to remind me..." Jonah said, his words dripping with venom. "You aren't the only one who isn't happy in this relationship you know."

"Wait, are you two in an arranged marriage or something?" Clarice asked, and they both nodded with annoyance.

"Let's just say my dad had stuff her dad needed. One thing led to another, and suddenly they were trading their kids around like commodities, the bastards." Jonah Dunkel explained, his fiancée nodding along wearily.

"I think that's enough idle banter for now. Miss Bennu, you are sure you can start a fire, right?"

"As long as I can get some of the plane's jet fuel, then yeah, it should be pretty easy," she replied, looking just about finished putting the makeshift water filter together.

"Excellent. Most Excellent. Well, with our introductions sorted, I suppose I'll gather Mr. Merriweather and Mr. Goodman and we can begin discussing matters of greater import."

With that Kaleb climbed back up the ramp and into the plane, leaving Clarice to just idly stand by, looking on at the couple at work.

"You know, I don't see what his problem with me is. I honestly don't..." Jonah lamented, sounding somewhat disgruntled as he cut and wrapped up yet another fresh block of oversized snake meat.

"If I hadn't brought the knife with me, two people would've died last night. Maybe three depending on how that little scuffle with the goon went." He placed the knife on the rudimentary work station and pulled out a rag, cleaning off his gore covered hands as best as he could, splatters of red clinging to his skin.

"How's the neck by the way?"

I'm fine," Clarice said, catching a glimpse of black ichor, scabbed over his bared forearms. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'm feeling better than ever!"

Jonah cracked a wide smile, looking like he was about to erupt into a fit of laughter. In a moment his entire mood had lit up, his thoughts clearly zeroed in on his late night accomplishment.

"I killed a giant monster snake last night don't you know? Who wouldn't feel right as rain after something like that!?"

"He isn't kidding, trust me, I already asked him about his arms more than enough times to know," Ms. Bennu said as she grabbed his right arm, rolled up his sleeve as high as it could go, and showed off where the snake's teeth had plunged into his flesh.

"He isn't poisoned, either. I checked for any potential toxicity, there was nothing aside from the usual bacterial pathogens you'd find from the bite of any given wild animal. It's honestly really weird if you ask me." She said, nodding over to the snake's skull, where Clarice could see several jagged, knifelike teeth. "I don't know much about snakes, I'm a chemist, not an animal wrangler, but I know enough to know that snakes aren't exactly famed for having toothy maws."

"You're overthinking it, Florence." Jonah reassured her as he pulled his arm away. "And trust me, the bites look way nastier than they actually are. Just look at it! Healed right up overnight. Since then I've been feeling better than ever!"

"You would. Ugh, I swear to God you've been dreaming of a day like this ever since we first met."

"Oof. Not gonna lie, you really know your way around low blows honey." He said, leaned right up against her ear, before darting back with a chuckle. "Christ, you make me sound like some sort of psychopath, chomping at the bit for an excuse to stab something."

"Yeah, I do, don't I?" Florence teased, her mood, to Clarice, seeming somewhat improved. "Anyways, it's just some weird species of snake, just good for some water cooler talk. On that note, if any of you could start feeding the swamp water into the filter, that'd be nice."

Jonah shrugged, Clarice nodded, and all three got to work.