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"You can’t win them all!"

That was the phrase that Tyrone had said every so often. Tyrone was a longtime friend of Tom Saviny and a skilled hover-chopper pilot. Tyrone often teased Tom to teach him a lesson in humility. But as of yet, Tom had a perfect record of civilian rescues. The year is 2042 and the city of New Orleans is infested. The plague of zombies now covering the entire world has finally spread its ghastly fingers across the once-safe region of the southern United States. This time, technology may help in eradicating these ghouls forever, but not with some ultimate bomb or technical virus, but by the fierce, robotic powers of the Mobile Knights. 

Tom walked through the long hall of the military compound and pressed his palm onto a cognition lock. In response, the lock read his palm print and opened up with a metallic squeak. Tom passed by three remote pods, which looked like big, oval eggs that had been painted metallic red. Inside, remote pilots crammed up in these technical cockpits, which they used to control their androids that were busy conducting missions miles away and deep in the city beyond. The pods had a holographic, first person view from the advanced androids and robots that worked the streets from afar. Basically, it was a type of advanced, remote control and politicians often accused the R.C.P unit as being nothing more than over-grown boys playing with high-tech toys and fancy video games.

Nevertheless, the R.C P (Remote Control Policing unit) was responsible for the most successful rescues. Outside, the city of New Orleans was a hellish nightmare. For years, speedy, flesh-eating zombies had roamed the states and only a few places were successful in ridding their districts from the demonic plague.  Tom moved toward his own RCP pod and activated a control to get in. Once inside, he activated his automaton and the robot he dubbed Marlene had instantly sprung to life with her red eyes flashing. His android was made in the form of a woman. Others were non-human in appearance, but his branch made them appear human-like as to apply a more comforting, psychological affect for the victims they would rescue. His division was called the Mobile Knights and in true knightly fashion, they took their remote controlled automatons to do battle in the streets every night. There, the robots exacted the revenge of their organic counterparts, searing rotting flesh via super-heated laser rays and using chainsaw-like blades, which were imbedded in their android’s arms.

Since the year 2038, Marlene, herself, was responsible for two hundred and fifteen clean rescues. A clean rescue was a term the knights used to describe a rescue of an uninfected person. Dirty rescues were ones that involved bringing back a person infected from the ghoul’s rabid bite. Needless to say, the later never worked out well. However, a barrage of heroic metals decorated Tom, for unlike other remote police, Tom had never lost an android or had a dirty rescue to his credit.  As Tom drove his android from her hiding place behind a metal barrier near an old fire escape, the reactivated robot put on her audio sensors and immediately picked up screaming from a distant, Cajun bar. The navigation system in her chrome skull located the sound and soon Marlene was in front of the run down bar.  A myriad of old, voodoo relics and paraphernalia littered the streets. Apparently, many had tried rituals to dispel the ghouls to no avail. At one time, the city was in the safe zone, but now the streets of New Orleans were filled with zombies and the odd smell of uncooked, Cajun spices never to be fulfilled in the rich recipes of the French quarter.

A hologram flickered the bars open sign and Marlene was about to enter, but Tom could see from Marlene’s internal viewpoint that a mob of undead bad-boys was running up on her from behind. Without turning her legs, Marlene’s torso spun around and a laser turret, which was imbedded on top of her left arm, was quickly aimed at the incoming zombies. Blam-squeeeeen! In a flash of thunder, the laser turret ripped through the flesh and bones of the ghouls. Heads exploded from the extreme heat of the laser and Marlene calmly turned her torso back toward the bar’s front door with a cool, machinated hiss.

Behind her, twenty-three zombies twitched their last movements and finally lay dead…really dead! Tom drove Marlene into the bar’s lounge. Her legs were sensitive to the uneven litter on the floor and Tom pushed a button in his pod that turned on Marlene’s infrared vision. She wasn’t looking for ghouls, but instead live humans to rescue. Tom had discovered that zombies didn’t show up on infrared, as their bodies no longer pumped warm blood. However, the infrared was great for finding victims hiding amongst the wreckage. Bleep, bleep, bleep!

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