At some point
By Strega

It was just a short flight. Pick up the little plane from the repair shop, do a preflight, then take it up to make sure everything was working.

Mike had a habit in these cases. He took the plane out over the savannah, away from the river, the town, the airport and the farms around it. His explanation was that if sometime went wrong - and that did happen with these planes, some of which dated from the second world war and had been maintained on a shoestring - he'd rather crash on a zebra than someone's house.

It also let him get a good look at the wildlife, which he liked. Herds of wildebeest, zebra, antelopes. Giraffes, elephants, and sometimes a gang of hyenas or the resident pride of lions. He couldn't afford the guides you needed to see them up close, so he saw them from the air.

There was a man in town who had a pet hyena. Well, a heavily muzzled and leashed "pet" but a pet nevertheless. He'd seen it, but like most people he'd never seen a wild hyena. Until today.

It happened without warning. It usually did. The engine cut out with barely a sputter and that quickly there was only the rush of air over the airframe and Mike suddenly had to find a place to land an unpowered plane.

"Dammit. Now I wish I'd stayed closer to the strip." There was no chance of making it back. He was only five thousand feet up and if he tried he'd plant it right into the shanties outside town. "This is what I get for trusting Harry." Harry was a good, experienced mechanic, but he liked the bottle a little too much. Mike should have checked the plane more thoroughly before taking it up.

Landing in the river was out. There were plenty of crocodiles that would be very happy to see him. That just left the flattest piece of savannah he could find.

That didn't mean it was flat, though. Between the undergrowth, the acacias and the ripples in the landscape he'd be luckily to set down and walk away.

He almost did. Mike held his breath as the first crackle of wheels-on-brush sounded and then lurched violently in his seat as the full weight of the little plane came down on the gear. Mike bounced around in the cockpit like popcorn in a popper, battered and bruised, until with a final violent lurch the plane pitched forward, burying the prop in an acacia and sending him flying out of the plane, seat and all.

He crashed through the tree, which at least killed most of the momentum, and landed with a mighty thump. He was just conscious enough to unbuckle himself from the seat, and looked up to find a very surprised hyena staring down at him.

It was the first close-up look he'd had at a wild hyena. It was also the last. It had been sleeping in the shade of the bush when he crashed and it sprang to its feet, alarmed at the sudden appearance of a human. Mike fumbled at the last buckles, too stunned to be alarmed, and as he freed himself the hyena looked him over.

It must have realized he was too weak and stunned to defend himself, because as he looked up the hyena stepped forward and neatly engulfed his entire head.

Mike tried to pull back as the hyena's massive fangs slipped over his skull, but he was too slow. Jaws that could crack elephant bones clamped down around his face, the hyena's powerful tongue gathered itself beneath his chin, and with a wet gulp he found his face pressed against slick wet throatskin as the hyena began to swallow him whole.

He'd heard about this. Some of the local wildlife, for reasons the zoologists didn't understand, had a snakelike ability to swallow large prey whole. They said that if someone disappeared on the savannah and you couldn't find a body, or pieces of one anyway, it was because they had ended inside a lion, a hyena or who knew what other beast, swallowed alive only to suffocate in a stomach.

It was a way to monopolize a food source and not share with fellow predators. Perfectly understandable, the zoologists said, but that was little consolation as as the hyena stepped forward and forced its jaws down over his shoulders.

Slippery throat gripped his face and tugged him inward as the hyena swallowed and he was too bruised and battered to put up much of a fight. Its jaws were already to his elbows and with his arms pinned to his side Mike could only scream and kick ineffectually, hitting the dirt and not deterring the hyena at all. It stepped forward again, working its jaws hurriedly over him until even his waist was taken in, and a great contraction of its throat muscles pushed his face past a tight muscular valve and into the bile-scented heat of its gut.

Mike was not a big man, but he was almost as heavy as the hyena. That didn't stop it from lifting him from the ground, its thick neck bulging oddly, and swallowing up his hands and ass with a great lurching gulp. As the muscle and bone creaked and groaned around him the hyena got its jaws around his upper thighs and began to bolt him down, darting its muzzle forward to swallow more of his legs and then pulling it back to let gravity help slide him down its throat.

It was already to his knees and Mike could only squirm weakly as his torso was squeezed into the hyena's stomach. Hot gastric juices were already stinging his skin, and his khaki shirt provided protection for only a moment as it was soaked through.

That it wouldn't be able to digest. His clothing was all plant fabric, a no-go as far as a hyena's stomach was concerned. The rest of him was another matter. Hyenas could even digest bones, he remembered.

Its jaws lurched forward as it readied itself to finish its meal and Mike slipped helplessly into its stomach. Would anyone find out what had happened to him? Maybe someone would find his clothes after they left its body, however that happened. The rest of him, the face people knew, his fingerprints, even his dental records would be useless. All the parts of him people could identify were a about to be hyena food.

Kito the hyena arrived at the plane crash site, hopefully seeking a dead human or two to snack on, and discovered he was too late. He showed up just in time to see his brother Issa lift his muzzle, swallowing laboriously, and to see the double bulge of human feet slide down the hyena's long neck to add to a great kicking swelling in his brother's middle.

"Lucky," Kito said, and trotted around the crashed plane, seeing if anyone else had been in it. There was no one, just the plane, the ejected seat and the still-moving bulge in his brother's gut. "Was that the pilot?"

"I guess," Issa growled, and got onto his feet with obvious effort. The bulge between his legs almost dragged the ground but he managed to trot away from the plane, grunting with effort as the bulge threw him off balance. The man in there very much wanted out and his struggles made it even harder for Issa to run, but run he did. Kito followed after, knowing why his brother was anxious to leave.

The reached the ridge and the cover of brush before turning back to look. A thin streamer of smoke rose from the wreck into the calm air. Sure enough, two lions were already investigating the wreckage, a great-maned male and a sleek lioness. If Issa were still down there, too full to escape, he would most likely be on his way to a lion or lioness's stomach, taking his human meal with him. Or perhaps they would have torn him apart and shared, but more likely the first one to arrive would gulp him down as hurriedly as he had his human.

They were safe now, though. "What do you mean, 'you guess'? It's the pilot or it isn't."

Issa arched his back then straightened, then pushed his twitching belly with a forepaw as he tried to get the man situated for easiest digestion. "Well, you know. At some point it stops being 'the pilot' and starts being 'the thing I'm digesting'. I'm just not sure when that is."

"You ate him clothes and all?"

"If I had taken the time to strip it I would have had to share," Issa growled. "Or the lions would have arrived and then it wouldn't be just the human who ended up as a meal."

It was the way of the savannah. Everyone stole from everyone, or simply ate their fellow predators if the opportunity arose. Big predators ate little ones and little ones ganged up on solitary big ones. Issa was right to be cautious. The lions would not have hesitated to eat him if they'd caught him. Even a female hyena, if big enough, would have tried to force him to cough up his meal and would have happily swallowed him if he refused. You didn't say 'no' to a female hyena if you knew what was good for you. You might nose after her, hoping she'd be interested in sex, but you did that very politely, because if you got on her bad side you'd end up in her insides. Probably whole and alive, not that it mattered.

The drawback to eating humans in a hurry was that they wore indigestible things. "Here's hoping all that comes up instead of going out the other way," Kito growled, having had a pair of shoes make their way, very uncomfortably, clear through his intestinal tract. Human he could digest. Their things, sometimes not so much.

"You would have done the same thing and you know it," Issa said, and with a visible effort he tensed his belly, the fur gripping tight around the swallowed human. This forced out the air and Issa let out a mighty belch as the man kicked a last time and was still. There was no more struggle, just the beginning of a low gurgle as his stomach began to work.

The two hyenas watched the lions walk away from the crash as a human vehicle arrived to investigate it. They would find nothing. They came looking for the pilot, but the point had passed when the man could be called that. Now he was just the thing Issa was digesting, and if Kito envied his brother, he certainly couldn't fault him for snapping up a meal when fate presented with such a lucky opportunity. Issa was right. He would have done the same thing.