by Ryder Stacy
“There—not so bad, is it?” the KGB commander asked the seated man. “Can you feel the power? Can you feel the energy surging down from the clouds—through the windows—filling your mind with perfect clarity, the vision of the stars?”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I really don’t—” Kraskow began, speaking so quietly that he could barely be heard. The other officers watched nervously. They knew the depravities of which Killov was capable and although every one of them had murdered or been responsible for whole graveyards of death—there was something about the way Killov looked, the way his face truly did take on the fleshless characteristics of a skull, eyes dark as the empty reaches of space itself—that made them suck in their breaths, made their hearts beat wildly.
“Perhaps if you were more comfortable,” Killov said with exaggerated politeness. “Perhaps you are afraid you will fall out of the chair and that is what is stopping you from feeling the power. You,” the KGB colonel snapped out at the others, standing silently in the center of the room. “Tie him down with your belts to the chair—so that he will not fall.”
Without hesitation the officers walked forward and against Kraskow’s terrified protests, strapped him down to the chair with belts tied around his arms and legs. They pulled back and Killov again addressed the now-shaking officer, his eyes wide as saucers.
“Now—you know you did cause me pain, don’t you?” Killov asked the man, addressing him almost tenderly as a parent would an errant child who had broken a plate.
“Yes sir, I know,” Kraskow began, seeing his last chance to plead for his life. “It was my only mistake, Excellency. I have been a loyal and obedient officer. Why, just last month you gave me a commendation for—”
“Yes, yes, last month. But the past is dead along with all the bodies that lie buried in it. Last night—we are talking now about last night. Now I’m going to give you a great honor,” Killov went on, walking around the desk with his hands clasped behind his back. As the drugs filtered into his bloodstream, his eyes grew narrower and narrower, his face flushed with the chemicals that raced through him. He searched for each word as if it were of critical importance that it be just the right one—as if he were reciting Shakespeare.
“Yes, a great honor. I suffered last night, Kraskow. Suffered pains worse than death. And I found it in some ways quite educational. I am going to share this with you, my friend. Let you experience the glory of pain as I did. The enlightenment of suffering.”
“Excellency, Excellency—my wife, my—” Kraskow sputtered.
“Shut up, pig. Your groveling merely shows that you have never been worthy of wearing the Blackshirt or the Deathhead pin that sits on your collar,” Killov screamed out, reaching over and ripping the golden insignia of the KGB Officer Corps from Kraskow’s lapel. The KGB leader stood back and looked at the offending officer as if contemplating a great work of art—trying to understand it, comprehend its every nuance. For Killov was, if nothing else, an artist of pain. Instruments of torture were his brushes and the human body was his canvas.
“Yes, I see it now,” he whispered with delight. The full strength of the handful of chemicals he had swallowed was hitting him like a tidal wave—ripples of fire rushing through his screaming open veins, his vision slightly wobbly and hazed over with the soft pall of gray and gold he knew and loved so well. His lips had dried to white string beans, devoid of any color whatsoever; his cheeks were sunken in, valleys in which shadows gathered to die. His eyes were filled with the raging madness that the officers had seen before. It filled them to the very depth of their bowels with a sick and nauseated sensation. For in his madness, Killov had performed acts of torture that the stomachs of even the most hardened of his murderers could not take. Killov was the leader of them all in the infliction of such sensations. He led them into the darkest recesses of the human soul. Places where there was no sky, no God, no love or hope. Just sadism—sadism taken to an infinite degree.
“Yes, beautiful,” Killov barked out, specks of yellow foam gathering around the corners of his mouth from the drug dehydration like the froth of a rabid dog. He clapped his hands. “Please gather around our esteemed colleague, Kraskow. Come, come,” he snapped impatiently as they faltered. He made them stand just inches away from the seated figure, whose face was now washed from forehead to chin with a thin sheen of sweat and tears.
The KGB commander reached down suddenly into his boot and pulled out a long sharp single-sided blade with glistening steel flames of light racing along 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 erupted into the air, and over Killov and the officers.
Killov whipped the wires out of the twitching arm as it was obvious even to him in his drug-cooked madness that the thing that had been Kraskow was dead. The KGB leader looked around with the face of a rat that had just feasted on blood until its stomach is bloated and heavy, its face twitching.
“This is the way of pain. This is the law beyond laws. My law. You all understand, don’t you?” He surveyed them one by one, checking for weaknesses, flaws, dangers. It was all part of Killov’s chess game with those around him. Playing with their minds, exposing them to his bloody rituals and photographing their reactions in his memory for future reference.
“Yes, you understand. I can see it in your eyes.” A radio watch beeped on Killov’s wrist as a voice announced: “Excellency, the military council awaits your command at the War Room.”
“Yes, perfect. Perfect timing,” Killov responded, smiling indulgently at the officers. Murder always put him in a good mood. “I’m coming.” Without brushing his clothes free of the red remains of Kraskow, Killov exited the room, followed by his officers.
Kraskow’s body lay slumped in the chair. Below the waist the mess of a man looked normal enough, but above . . . the severed stump, the head virtually gone. Above the shoulders just the neck, the front of the jaw remained—and oddly, the lower portion of one lip set in a slight downturned expression of sadness. It looked like an abstract statue, as if it had been made out of clean, carved stone instead of human flesh and bone. A sculpture depicting the ultimate flaw of the human character: That there was nothing man wouldn’t do to his fellow man.
Four
Rockson awoke, his head splitting like someone had just been chopping logs on it. Something was ringing loudly nearby. His watch—it was time for the meeting. Christ. He sat up and his skull felt like it was on fire. Every motion set his backbone into paroxysms of pain. Sometimes it was like that when he used the powers the Glowers had shown him. There was beauty in it, incredible beauty and understanding. But it took something out of him as well. He was not a Glower. Perhaps these headaches were a warning sign telling him to stop.
But by the time he was dressed and had splashed some water on his half-closed eyes, he felt slightly more human. He headed out the door and down the ramp system several levels to the Council Chamber. The meeting hall for the civilian and military leaders of Century City had been badly damaged in the neutron bomb attack of the subterranean city. But though the walls and much of the more ornate carvings that had been installed over the years had been carted away, the large oval-shaped auditorium was, if not beautiful, at least functional. Rock could see that the meeting had not yet really started as delegates marched around the chamber, cajoling and currying favor with their allies and enemies for whatever votes might be forthcoming. He started down the center aisle toward the podium and President Langford, who was sitting down, still not looking like something you’d stick in the window, when he saw Kim wave and start up toward him. But as she reached up to kiss him, Rockson saw another figure rushing up the aisle with a none-too-pleased expression on her perfect face. Rona Wallender.
“Pardon me, dear,” she said icily to Kim, who looked up with a startled expression. “Might I give a hug from the Century City Welcome-The-Boys-Home Committee?” Rock, ready to take on a razor-snouted polar bear or Red battalion at a moment’s notice, hadn’t the slightest idea how to handle the situation—and just let his eyes roll up and his arms hang at his sides. The two women he loved—together in the same place. Somehow he had always known it was going to happen, but like earthquakes or volcanos, you don’t look for them—they find you.
Rona pulled away from Rockson, smacking her lips lustily, and spun around toward Kim, her long red hair swinging wildly like strands of fire behind her. The two of them eyed each other like cats suddenly having to share a household in which one has been queen.
“So pleased to meet you,” Rona said, poisoned sweetness dripping from her full lips. “I’ve heard such sweet things about you. And you are sweet. Why, you’re just the cutest little thing.” She looked over at Rock with a half snort of disgust that the man she loved would pick such a tweaky little thing—even though he was two-timing her.
Rockson kept his eyes focused on infinity as if, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, that was somehow going to save him.
“And you,” Kim said loudly, pushing her chest out, putting her clenched fists on her hips, “for all your muscles and your Amazon proportions, look—almost like a real woman.”
Rona stepped forward, cocking a fist, ready to deck the blond bug before her with a single blow. At 5'10" plus, the one thing the statuesque acrobat and fighter was sensitive about was her well-developed physique. Sometimes in her most depressed moments she had felt that perhaps Rockson wanted a more feminine kind of woman—a petite charmer with dainty sex-kitten little movements and fickle tosses of the head. And Rona would never be that, could never play the coquette.
“But dear, you don’t look healthy at all,” Rona retorted, looking down at her rival, withdrawing her fist as she realized it wouldn’t help her cause with Rockson to smash in the teeth of his paramour. “You really should eat more—your ribs, everything—that is, what little there is to see—is poking out. Meat—eat more meat, my poor little thing.”
“She really is a remarkable specimen,” Kim said, turning her big blue eyes to Rockson, whose headache was threatening to jump back into his head, combat boots first. “With those thick arms and huge legs, perhaps she’s the female Homo Mutatiens, like you. Although from what you told me about Dr. Shecter’s theories of post-nuke evolution, she looks more like a throwback than a new species. Something more related to a Neanderthal, perhaps.”
At the word Neanderthal, Rona threw herself through the air at her rival, and only Rockson’s outstretched hand at the last second snatched her back by the hair as Kim raised her fists for a go at it. Rona turned around toward Rock, bringing her knee up toward his solar plexus as the chairman’s gavel cracked loudly several times. He coughed and looked down at Century City’s most renowned fighter and the two women who were about to set in tooth and nail. And even they had to soften under the stern gaze of council president Randolph, appointed recently after the disaster. He had a strong presence and had resolved to run all meetings under the full sway of the City’s laws and rules of decorum.
“There will be no fighting in this chamber as long as I am council president,” he said, severely admonishing the three of them, who melted under the words as hundreds of eyes peered over in astonishment from around the room. The trio, their faces red as burnished apples, sat down in the front row, not one of them daring to look at any of the others.
“And now that the little pre-meeting entertainment has ended,” Randolph went on, “we can begin.” The council president looked over suddenly to the right side of the stage and nodded his head quickly. A scratchy sound came over the P.A. system.
“Please rise,” Randolph said, as the words of the Star Spangled Banner began. “Please rise to welcome the President of the United States, Charles M. Langford.”
“Oh, say can you see,
By the dawn’s early light . . .”
Every man and woman rose as Langford got up from his chair and managed to slap a smile of sorts on his face. He walked toward the podium and, as if remembering the charisma of days of old, held his hands high over his head in a victory sign. The delegates cheered, tears coming to their eyes. They had all thought they were as cynical as they came—but the sight of the first president of the U.S. had had for a century cut through the veneer of sophistication. A man voted into office by a free election held among delegates from virtually every Free City in the country. He was old, half beaten—but he was their president.
“Thank you,
thank you,” Langford said, obviously moved by the ovation. Rockson, standing with the rest in the front row, noticed that the man’s eyes seemed to light up with a sparkle they hadn’t had for weeks. Maybe, just maybe . . . Langford waved his hands up and down for the crowd to sit, but the people wouldn’t. The applause went on and on. And when the song on the record player ended, it was put on again. There were few moments like this—having a sense of pride and a feeling of truly being a part of an all-encompassing America instead of just a collection of quarreling, isolated hamlets, never really getting it all together. Langford was the living symbol that it was all possible—every one of their impossible dreams of freedom.
After the second singing, the crowd at last quieted and sat down, but on the edge of their chairs.
“Thank you, thank you, I am deeply honored,” Langford said in a low but firm voice. “Not just for myself, but for the office of the presidency, which I think is what you are really applauding, what you are really feeling.” He exhaled, trying to regain his total concentration, as if coming out of a fog that had hovered over him.
“Now, I have no great words of encouragement to offer you. We’re all grownups here. Have all been through the realities of present-day life. Things are hard—and getting harder. But I also sense a change. Something in the wind that says our day is coming. If we just work together, grow into something bigger than our separate parts—be like the America of old—indivisible, all fighting for and with all. We can win. In my heart I truly believe this. Our Soviet occupiers are at one another’s throats. We can win!”
The delegates stood and cheered again as Langford seemed to tire suddenly and gripped the lectern with trembling hands. The crowd knew the words were clichés, generalities. But men lived by such and always had. For humans, above everything else, need hope or all is lost.