Sheena tugged at his arm. "We have to go," she told him softly.

After Eriq sighed, they raced through the corridors towards the comm center.

Skully was the first to enter the comm center with the president behind him, and Funboy behind the president. They entered with a sense of urgency.

"We ready?" Skully asked Meade. "We gotta get going. And I mean yesterday. Did you plan a route to the lower level?"

"There's only one way," said Meade.

Skully already knew what he was talking about without asking. "Through the stairwell," he intuited. Then he stared at the bank of monitors. The stairwell was congested with the living dead. "Ammo check," he ordered.

Meade had two grenades, a big help when clearing the staircase, but ammunition was running low.

"Are you ready, Mr. President?" Skully asked him.

"I've been ready the moment I stepped a damn foot on this floating sewer pit. Get me the Hell out of here."

"Yes, sir. Meade will clear the stairway with the Semtex grenades and clear a path. Funboy and I will take the rear so that we can keep those things at a distance. You follow Meade. Is that clear?"

President Michelin nodded.

"And what about me?" asked Schott. "Where do I stand in all this?"

Skully pointed to the space before the monitors. "Right there," he told him.

"You're leaving me behind?"

"I'm afraid there's no room onboard the Winged Banshee. It is what it is."

Schott appeared wounded and angry at the same time. "You just can't leave me here with those things running around out there."

"And why not?" asked Funboy. "There a law against it?"

Schott begged them, the man actually closing his hands together in an attitude of prayer. "Please," he implored. "Don't leave me here. Not with these things."

Skully pointed his weapon at him. "There is an option," he told him. "I can put you out of your misery . . . if that's what you want me to do"

Schott dropped his hands in defeat.

"Yeah," said Skully, lowering his weapon. "I didn't think so."

"Please," the president said. "Get me the Hell out of here. If you need to shoot the man, then do so. If not, then we need to go."

Funboy raised his hand and waved at Schott with malicious amusement. "See ya. I'd hate to be ya." Then they moved quickly toward the stairwell with Schott standing alone inside the comm center.

Chapter Fifty.

Like the beginning of every resurrection, it started as a burning itch. Cells regenerated from dead tissue, reanimating themselves, and restoring life where there was death.

Tin Man had been laying inside the Banshee's airlock waiting for the journey back to New DC when vague memories started to return to its mind's eye. Snippets of past events arose as random and kaleidoscopic pieces that made no sense to it at all, the images disjointed. All it knew was that it was inside the Wastelands killing at will and with impunity-a way of life. So when it opened its ice-crusted eyes, it sensed that killing was its natural forte.

It sat up. Then its eyes focused to the different points of its surroundings.

The low ceiling.

The bulb that burned brightly inside the recess.

The surrounding corrugated walls of metal.

The steel door with the porthole window.

Everything was alien and familiar to it at the same time.

And then Tin Man sniffed its surroundings, its olfactory senses picking up something alive and close by-a feast.

It stood up inside the chamber with its nostrils flaring and homing in.

On the other side of the metal door was a living mass-so close. Its hunger almost too painful to bear, it raised its hand, brought it to the door, and began to slide its fingers along the surface.

. . . schreeeeee . . . schreeeeee. . . schreeeeee. . .

. . . schreeeeee . . . schreeeeee. . . schreeeeee. . .

The pilot of the Banshee sat at the helm checking his watch. The mission had exceeded its limits by more than fifteen minutes, which caused great concern since Skully's team had always operated punctually-the unit in and out within the given timeframe.

But when Meade finally contacted the ship to let him know that the package had been secured and to 'start revving the engines,' he'd been relieved.

While he was checking the uplinks, he found most of Earth's receiving links either dead or fading, which brought on a baffled look. The satellite link to New DC was inoperative.

"New DC, this is Banshee Four. Come in, New DC."

There was nothing but the sound of white noise.

Then he tried again, sounding more persistent: "New DC, this is Banshee Four. Come in, New DC."

White noise.

"Do you copy me, New DC?"

Nothing.

Behind him a soft scratching sounded against the door. It was faint and hardly noticeable, but it was definitely there.

. . . schreeeeee . . . schreeeeee. . . schreeeeee. . .

Believing that it was Skully and his unit, the pilot pressed a button on the pilot's console, opened the airlock door, and called over his shoulder. "Strap in," he said. "I'm having difficulty contacting New DC."

There was no response from the rear of the Banshee.

"New DC, this is Banshee Four. Do you read me?"

The shuffling of feet behind him.

"New DC, this is--"

The pilot stumbled over his words as he saw Tin Man standing behind from the reflection of the cockpit's window. Then he turned his head, fast, their eyes connecting with pinning stares.

Tin Man's skin was blue and white, the color of ice, with eyes glazed with frost but fully functional. It raised a hand to him, moaned, and articulated to the pilot its most primal need.

"Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee."

Before the pilot could utter a scream, Tin Man drove the ends of its fingertips through the pilot's eyes and into his skull, pulled the man from his chair, and began to feed.

Chapter Fifty-One.

"They were part of my old unit," Eriq told Sheena as they hurried down the corridors toward the comm center. "They're called the Force Elite, a Special Ops group, one of many, under the sole control of the president of the FFE, which is Michelin."

They rounded the bend. Skully must have moved the president along quickly, he thought, because they were nowhere in sight.

"There's obvious tension between you and them, especially with Michelin," Sheena said.

"Yeah, well, that's because the son-of-a-bitch demoted me due to insubordination."

"Insubordination? You?"

He nodded. "When I managed the team we were a respected unit. We operated under the guidelines of 'loyalty above all else, except honor.' But when President Michelin took over as Commander-in-Chief, he perverted everything we stood for. He turned us into a kill squad with strict orders to kill anybody outside the walls of the Fields."

"Genocide?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps the beginning of one. I was taken immediately out of the loop after I was demoted."

"Did you-" She cut herself off.

"What? Kill? Only when I had to for the defense of the cities. But I refused to kill for the sake of carrying out a protocol to promote Michelin's genocide. So I refused, which is why I was relegated to the mausoleum. One night I failed to carry out a mission after we were called to duty to suppress a gathering of Wasteland savages who were allegedly conspiring to charge the walls of New DC."

"And?"

His face dropped. "They weren't conspiring at all," he told her. "They were people who were starving and defeated. You could see it in their faces. All they wanted was something to eat. They weren't a threat to anyone. Anyone could see that they didn't have a vicious bone in their bodies." Then he thought about the little girl waving to him, such a beautiful child, but he didn't tell Sheena about her because the memory was too painful.

"And?" She felt like she was pulling teeth, but she also knew that an admission was also a catharsis for the human soul.

"I dropped my weapon," he said, "and any member of the Force Elite who lays down his weapon is considered a coward because he's surrendering his duty. I wanted no part in executing people who couldn't defend themselves, let alone conspire against an established community."

"And Skully took over," she said, intuiting.

Eriq nodded. "He was my second-in-command. The moment I dropped my weapon he took immediate control of the team, and he didn't waste the moment of opportunity, either," he said. "I just closed my eyes, and to this day, I can still see the muzzle flashes through my eyelids and smell the cordite in the air. It never goes away."

"Was there anything you could have done to save them?"

"No. Nothing. The command to terminate the hostiles was issued with zero tolerance. The moment I dropped my weapon I knew I was facing two outcomes: either a court martial, which I received given my past actions as a soldier, or execution. But the moment my weapon hit the ground I had already accepted my fate either way. I was not going to murder people. That's not the way of the Force Elite. At least not back then. There's no honor in wanton killing, and there certainly was no 'loyalty above all else, except honor' since there was no honor involved."

She could hear the pain in his voice. "You knew you could have been executed?"

"Yeah. But at least my conscience would have been clean. More so, I would have died as a true soldier of the Force Elite. One who believed that loyalty was above all else, except honor. They're just assassins now, and Michelin is their guiding hand."

They rounded the last bend without difficulty.

"You're a good man, Eriq," she told him.

He wanted to believe that, but he had allowed evil to prevail by laying his weapon low when he could have issued an order of retreat, even if it went unheeded. Or to fire against his own unit, only to end up dead inside of a mass grave along with others he never met or knew, becoming a man forgotten.

No matter how he looked at it, there was no answer for a peaceable outcome.

Skully had seen to that.

"So now I'm labeled a coward in their eyes," he added.

"I know you," she told him with no uncertainty. "You're no coward."

He just harrumphed and continued on.

When they reached the comm center they saw Schott leaning against the console holding a wrench he'd taken from the toolbox, a weapon for defense. The man was obviously scared.

Eriq looked around the area. Then to Schott, "The president?"

"They took off about a minute ago," he said. "They said I couldn't board the Banshee. Said that I had to stay here." His shoulders began to fall in relief. "I thought you were one of those things out there."

"Where were they headed?'

"Down the portside stairwell to the bay holding the Banshee."

"The stairwell? Isn't it congested?"