Tides of fear and awe rippled through the albinos. Fastbinder stood at the edge of the rock, where the audience could feel his towering presence. “I am now your king,” he said. “Bow down and obey your king.”
According to Fast, some of the albinos could speak rudimentary English. Apparently, generations ago, these people dwelled on the earth’s surface. They had all been taught to understand some basics of the language. Many of the albinos obeyed at once.
Fastbinder spoke into the microphone, and his voice came from an amplifier on the wall in the back. “Obey your king!”
The albinos in back squealed at this display of great sorcery and prostrated themselves.
“Obey!”
This time his voice came from a speaker in the ceiling overhead. A crater appeared in the middle of the crowd of the albinos as they sought to mash themselves into the floor under the weight of the sound.
Whiteslaw was impressed. What power. What fear Fastbinder evoked from these miserable troglodytes. But the credit went to Jack Fast. He had turned his father into the new king of the Underworld with nothing more than a few loudspeakers and some cheap factory equipment.
The kid was loving it, too. His eyes were glittering in the light of a few strung-up bulbs, and his face shone with pleasure.
Jack Fast practically started bouncing with excitement when the resistance movement showed itself. A tight knot of powerful albinos was pushing its way through the obedient subjects. Whiteslaw knew them for what they were at once. Tough guys. Bullies. Their leader was a pale-skinned bulldog. Part of his upper lip was missing, giving him a permanent sneer. He trudged to a halt before the stage, lifting his scrap-metal sword defiantly.
“No king. No obey.”
The bully’s men were on the move, moving carefully through the crowds, not pushing now as they approached either side of the stage. They were going to make an assassination attempt on Fastbinder and Fast!
Which meant—Lord in heaven! If those two got killed, Whiteslaw would never see the surface world again.
“Obey!” Fastbinder shouted, amplifying his voice into thunder.
“No!” the bully bellowed.
“Fast, look!” Whiteslaw squealed and waved wildly at the sides of the stage. The idiot kid gave him a big smile and a thumbs-up, but never even glanced to the side. There were four on one side, two on the other, and they were going to chop Fast and Fastbinder into bloody pieces and all Whiteslaw could do was watch.
The attackers came to a halt, made surprised sounds and began straggling oddly. There was something sticking to their feet. One of them bent down and grabbed at the thin rag covering the stage, only to find his hand adhere to the stuff. Then his other hand.
Jack Fast wasn’t even looking, but he gave Whiteslaw another thumbs-up, then reached for his lighter fluid.
Whiteslaw watched the attackers wad themselves up in the sticky material, which was the human equivalent of flypaper. Before long they were enmeshed. They had no understanding of their predicament, only that they were helpless and vulnerable and they hooted in terror. The bully called to his men and got grunts in return that may or may not have been words, but the bully knew his men were in trouble.
Jack Fast spritzed four of the attackers with Kingston Charcoal Brand Lighter Fluid and announced into his microphone, “They would not obey.”
He struck a fireplace match and tossed it on the helpless attackers, who burst into a white blaze of screaming flame unlike any stack of charcoal briquettes Whiteslaw had ever fired up. The fight was brilliant and the heat wave was intense, but not as intense as the sound the victims made before they died.
The albinos shrank back, and they looked up.
Yeah. Fast said they had some vision. They couldn’t see much, but they could see his blaze, and they saw Jack Fast silhouetted in front of it with both hands raised. Even with atrophied eyeballs and a coating of skin, they saw that much!
The fire faded in seconds to an orange glow, and Fast moved across the stage, talking, keeping the people trained on him. He came to the other pair of attackers, who were just as glued together as the first group. They wriggled as he spritzed them. “They would not obey. They would not obey,” Fast intoned from the speakers mournfully, and struck another match.
The albinos watched, and Whiteslaw marveled at the brilliance, literally and figurative, of the young son of Jacob Fastbinder.
When the second white blaze diminished. Fastbinder stomped his feet, shaking the rock floor, and commanded, “Obey!”
The albino bully collapsed, whimpering in subjugation, and the others—every last one of them—followed his example.
Fastbinder seemed pleased with himself, and Herbert Whiteslaw wondered if the old kraut had any clue what just happened. Oh, sure. Jack’s stage show had firmly convinced the cave people that Fastbinder was their lord and master. None of them would ever think of disobeying him.
