Moe Lane

There is a summer cold in Chez Lane, we fear. Been dealing with that all day, not to mention more naps than usual.

I’m not going to lie. Mary-Jo Carter barely had to sell me on the expedition. She gave me the whole pitch anyway. 

“Lost Atlanta is one of the few major cities on the Eastern Seaboard that hasn’t been picked over, or fully destroyed.” Carter looked barely old enough to be a Congressman’s aide, let alone a Congressman herself, but the rules were different in Kentucky. She certainly sounded like she knew what she was talking about. “The post-Discovery plagues bit very hard there, and there were a cluster of thaumaturgical spikes that disrupted recovery efforts, at just the worst time. That would make it valuable, on general principles.” She smiled, for a moment looking even younger. “But there’s also a special prize to be won.”

I considered the wine rack with a critical eye. We were having this meeting in my family’s Potomac river-house, which is a lot fancier than it sounds. I may be so far down the line of succession that my name was simply scribbled on the back of the page somewhere, but I was certainly welcome to use House Barod’s various manors. Within reason, obviously. The family wouldn’t care if I popped open another house red, but I’d have to pay to replace any of the really good vintages.

I decided that it was time to tell the story about how the Fermi Resolution world got their Coca-Cola back. I was aiming for one thousand words today, but… stuff happened.

Ruins of Atlanta, Georgia
2256 AD

The kudzu screamed, and leapt.

I’m not going to lie: I flinched, slightly. Not as much as I did the first time I had heard the scream of a feral kudzu hunting bloom, but it’s definitely something you have to get used to. Or I guess… not.

Now, Finglas Carver didn’t flinch. He just whirled, quick as lightning, and shoved his spear smack into the middle of the kudzu bloom. It immediately snapped itself around the spearhead, trying to suffocate it like it would a squirrel, but instead tangling itself up in its own questing tendrils. Before it could unscramble itself, Finglas’s brother Nellas weaved his fingers around in an intricate pattern that collapsed into a jet of fire.

Kudzu smells shockingly good when it burns. Sort of like sandalwood and pine — but Finglas waved me away. “You don’t want two lungfuls of that smoke,” he told me as he maneuvered the burning kudzu to a clearing. “One lung, sure is good. Two lungs, that’s too good.”

I nodded my understanding as I carefully looked behind me. They’d told me feral kudzu didn’t hunt in packs, but then they’d also told me that they didn’t go after humans. Clearly the creatures weren’t entirely predictable.

There weren’t. Just the usual wild riot of the Old Georgian countryside. But there were probably going to be other things. Vicious. Nasty. Maybe even deadly.

I grinned. I couldn’t wait.