Animals of all shapes and sizes gathered in the trees, curious, and also terrified, at the scene that had just unfolded before their eyes. Smoked lingered high in the sky, temporarily blocking out sunlight. A young lemur jumped from tree to tree in the thick canopy, his black and white tail occasionally poking through the leaves, his curiosity drove him to leave the pack behind in order to get a closer look at the wreckage. There, near the shore of the island, lay what looked like half of a plane. Massive in size, the torn plane had sunk deep into the sand. The other half was nowhere in sight, although further inland smoke could be seen rising from the trees. It was likely that the smoke led to the missing half of the plane.

Suddenly, breaking the quiet, there was a loud screech, “Ahhh! HELP! I can’t move!” The screams of terror belonged to a woman, her leg had been crushed by a food cart. Somewhere underneath all of the wreckage, there were survivors fighting to escape the flaming debris. And, as if on cue, more shouts of panic soon filled the air. The gathered animals, seeming to respond to the spreading panic, quickly rushed back inland in an attempt to escape the madness that had come to their isolated island. The young lemur made a risky jump to catch up to his pack, and, in the process, broke a weak tree branch.

The branch fell through the canopy, slapping other branches on the way down, and, eventually, it hit something that did not belong to the vast forest. Dangling in the tree was a large man, an unconscious man. Still strapped into his seat, he had been spared any major damage. Albeit, he was not out of danger yet. The airplane seat had landed awkwardly in the tree, and was slowly leaning over the edge. One wrong move would send the seat, along with himself, speeding down to the ground. It was this man, Christopher, that the falling branch hit. Luckily he was nice and drunk, so when the branch smacked his head, he hardly felt a thing. Although, it was just enough to pull him from his slumber.

“Huh, the fucks goin' on?” his voice was sluggish and low as he talked, not quite realizing what was going on. He brought his rough hands to his eyes, and attempted to rub away his exhaustion. It was then that he realized what had happened, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Instincts kicked in and his body immediately went still. “Okay, Chris. N-nothing to worry about,” he tried desperately to reassure himself. “You’re just stuck in a giant [i]fucking[/i] tree.” There was an empty seat next to him, he could only assume that the passenger that was in the plane next to him had perished in the crash. Not wanting to end up like his fellow man, he quickly decided to escape his current situation.

“Alright, where am I?” In military training his drill sergeant has always told him to be wary of his surroundings; know where you are, know where you need to be, and know where you don’t need to be. Those had always been the golden rules. “Okay,” he took a deep breath, “I’m in the tree, I don’t need to be in the tree, and I don’t want to be in the fucking tree. I [i]need[/i] to be on the ground. Ground, good. Tree, bad.” Taking care not to move anything but his head, so that he did not tip the seat over the edge, he looked beneath him. “There!” He shouted to no one in particular. Only a few feet beneath him was another branch. It was long, wide in circumference, and, most importantly, it looked sturdy enough to support his weight.

“Alright, all I need to do is unbuckle the seat belt and I should fall straight to it. Simple enough, right, Chris?” It was a simple plan, sure, but simple could go very wrong very fast. There was a chance that the seat would fall down with him, and probably crush him in the process. His large hands wrapped around the seat belt, and his thumb eventually came to rest on the button that led to freedom. “Fuck it!” Without any more hesitation he pushed his thumb into the button. With a click and a snap, Christopher was sent flying down. The burly man did not stop until he hit the target branch. Had his arms not been conditioned from military training, his grip might not have held. While it was not as eloquent as an acrobatics landing might have been, he managed to hold onto the branch. Sadly, though, his shirt did snag and tear on the way down. “Damn it,” he muttered. His favorite brown shirt had been ruined. Knowing that he had bigger problems to worry about, he pulled himself up and onto the tree branch. At the moment it held underneath weight. After a moment of sitting, he broke the silence with a deep sign.

The forest floor was about fifty feet down, and that made him begin to wonder, “Are all of the trees so fucking huge on this island?” Christopher decided to take a moment to rest, and look around. He let his eyes wander all over the island; it all seemed so foreign to him. Never in his life had seen, or even heard of, trees that were as large as these. “Where the hell are we?” His question went unanswered. It was then that he noticed the screams of the other survivors. Until now, it had not even occurred to him that there might be others.