Army of the Damned

VOLUME 7 Chapter 3

At midnight, the Greater Japan Guild's 747-400 lands at Woodstocks International airport. Queen Elizabeth is amazed by the skyline of the modern American style city. She then follows Detective Henry to the local police department. Visiting a car rental lot to get around the bustling metropolis faster. Inside the SUV the Detective rented, did they soon find themselves stuck in traffic near the Beachside as a horse was run over by a military truck, causing a massive pile up of its organs scattered about the intersection while the truck stopped hair thin before hitting a lightpost.

"By the Gods, what is this?"

"Welcome to our world. I can't believe this. In another world but here I am stuck in traffic in an Explorer. Fucking hell."

"Don't tell me we'll be waiting here?"

Soon, an armored quadrupedal robot appeared from the rooftops of one of the buildings. It had Orange tapes and Warning labels that it was a construction machine and to stay away. The once scary and armed robot was a harmless four legged machine with a crane and dozer addon.

"What is that? A creature with machine parts?"

"Oh that, that's just the Mark Fours. It was once Boston Dynamics' best product to the United States Military and NATO. Due to the population crash, many militaries were left with skeleton crews. Geniuses thought war robots were the next step."

"And I'm guessing something happened? For that looks very intimidating."

"They're meant for war. Not for hearts and minds. Hackers, they hacked into one of them and had an entire platoon wreck havoc in Nevada. Good thing I was living in Portland. Can't imagine being in Vegas when a bunch of armored robots was walking around your town. Good thing their weapons had to be manually turned on, so no one was truly hurt."

"Heavens, what were you humans thinking? Such a creation is a deviation of what it means to be a God. You can create such magnificent things, but why make them as war machines?"

"Look Elizabeth, I could go on and on about the state of my world but it will take days."

"And what do you suggest we do?"

"Well, I'd like to go through the evidence I've gotten so far. I've been investigating my lead to Havannah for a while now, but I've gotten no solid leads at all to her whereabouts. Her taking Hellraiser might be the one that I need to finally justify actual police intervention as that means I have more probable cause, and a solid one that's theft."

He goes through his pockets, finding a notepad that was already thin. Swimming in his messy notes, the two's attention was taken by a firework in the beach to their left. The bass boosted music soon invades the safety of the SUV's interior as a black tahoe behind them honks its horn.

"What are these annoying ear blistering sounds?! Gods, is this what they call noise pollution?"

"Oh, there's a party of sorts on the beach and of course, the traffic's noise mixed in. Yea, this is totally a normal day really. Get used to it, you'll be seeing more of this."

"With these temperatures? You Outworlders are surely different."

"Ah no, those are vampire players just celebrating at the beach before snow finally envelops the entire thing."

"And how are they allowed to make such noise? Aren't the buildings to our right meant for housing?"

"They got a permit I'm pretty sure. I think they're holding some contest for the prettiest or most handsome vampire and they'll be given a rare wine."

"Wine?"

Hearing the word, the Queen's eyes lit up and the detective's senses were suddenly heightened, feeling the excitement of the woman.