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.