Read Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory for Free Online Page B

its edges.
    “Now you see, it’s really quite simple,” Killov said, addressing his officer cadre as if they were pupils and he the headmaster. “To achieve maximum pain it is necessary to go right to the source. Some favor modern high-tech equipment and they do have their points—but I prefer to go right to the point.” At the word “point,” with a speed that startled those gathered, Killov whipped the blade in a blurred circle up and then down onto Kraskow’s immobilized arm. The blade slammed clear through the wrist, the bone, and then into the wooden arm of the chair itself. The severed hand leaned over slowly, hanging by just a few sputtering veins, and then fell with a splat onto the floor.
    Kraskow’s face turned sheet-white as the hand fell. His eyes opened so wide that the officers could see the vein structure at the inner edges. It seemed as if he were taking the longest breath in history, just sucking and sucking at the air. Suddenly he released the air flow and let forth with a scream that made the hair crawl along the arms of the KGB brass.
    “Yes, yes, see how he screams,” Killov said proudly, pointing to his victim. Kraskow’s forearm, just above the severed wrist, was spouting a torrent of blood that splashed over Killov’s legs and boots and onto the officers’ pants as well. Jaggedly sliced tendons and the stump of bone poked out at odd angles from he butchered appendage, as if not quite sure whether to stay or go.
    “Now all we need,” Killov said, licking his dry lips constantly with quick flickers of his narrow dark tongue, “is—” He looked around. “Ah, here.” He smiled benignly at his students, barely able to see them now through the rushes of light and color that rode the river of drugs through his veins. “Electricity—such a wonderful thing.” He reached over, unplugged a table lamp and slammed the knife down again on the cord where it entered the lamp-base. He took the exposed twin wires that had been feeding the lamp electricity and walked the several yards back to Kraskow who, even in the mindless screaming of his pain, knew he didn’t like what was coming.
    “Now, for the pièce de résistance,” the KGB leader said, nearly falling over, but catching himself at the last second. “We apply the electricity to the source that will feel it the best.” He held the shiny red copper wires right up to the dangling nerve bundles and ligaments that hung like limp bloody strings. “Drekoff, plug it in!” The wires sparked as they touched the moist tissue and sent a blue arc of 220-volt electricity directly into Kraskow’s nervous system. This time there was no hesitation in his reaction. The man’s entire body jerked and convulsed within the straps of the chair as if he were coming apart from inside out. His face instantly went red as a boiling lobster as his tongue burst from his mouth, swelling larger by the second, the blood vessels in it popping and bubbling. The mutilated arm swung wildly around within its confines, sending a spray of blood over the entire audience like a hose.
    “There, you see,” Killov laughed with enthusiasm, “it works. The pain is—extreme, is it not?” The officers, coated with blood, tried to keep from vomiting, for they knew that to fail to show fortitude and appreciation in the face of Killov’s hideous game meant that they might be the next game themselves. Twisted, grinding smiles somehow carved their way onto the officers’ faces and Killov took it in, satisfied.
    Kraskow’s eyes began to boil and smoke came out of his ears in slow puffs. With Killov continuing to hold the wires to the stump, jamming them deep inside, the thing in the chair flopped, twisting in impossible angles. Suddenly the brain, heated to the boiling point with nowhere to go, exploded through the face. The nose, the eye sockets, the teeth and lips vanished beneath the ooze of pink and gray tissue. The crown of the skull parted, the super-heated brain