Free ECLIPSE by Richard North Patterson Page A

kept up their eerie, warlike chant, their deep voices a terrible counterpoint to the piteous pleas of men and women and children, the shouts of their comrades, the dull thud as a soldier kicked a girl writhing on the ground. A dry retching sound issued from Omo’s throat.
    “I’m still with you,” Marissa whispered. From behind them Marissa heard boots stomping, the sounds of slaughter coming closer. The heat of conflagration brought dampness to her forehead. Closing her eyes, she prepared to die in Luandia.
    She lay there, Omo whimpering in her arms. Minutes passed. Thecries subsided, the gunfire grew scattered. The chanting stopped. In the eerie silence, glowing cinders brushed her face.
    She opened her eyes again. The eclipse was passing, and the smoke of fire and tear gas drifted through the false dawn. A few feet from her lay Omo’s would-be suitor, an arm stretching toward them, eyes sightlessly peering from his nearly decapitated head. Omo trembled soundlessly.
    Fearful of notice, Marissa did not move.
    Nor did she wish to. Arrayed in front of her were the bodies of once vibrant villagers in the grotesque postures of violent death. Two soldiers wrenched a man outside her line of vision; gunshots followed. A small boy darted into the bush, seeking cover. Another soldier, his pants around his ankles, sodomized the wife of a village elder as she lay on her stomach groaning; the plump head teacher stared dully at the soldier and his victim, blood dribbling from her severed ear. Three soldiers poured gasoline on a wounded youth, then wrenched the cigarette lighter from his grasp and set his clothes afire, adding more gasoline as he began to twitch and scream. Beside him, Omo’s mother clasped a head scarf to her face, as though to ward off the stench of burning flesh. A soldier ended the boy’s misery with a gunshot and then, turning, put a bullet through Omo’s mother’s head.
    “Good,” a deep baritone intoned from behind Marissa. She knew it was Okimbo before he stood in front of her.
    She gazed up at him, Omo’s face still pressed against her. “You came to hear a speech,” he said. “Listen, and I will give you one.”
    Marissa sat up, mute. Okimbo walked to the platform and climbed it to stand where Bobby had, the colonel’s audience corpses strewn amid slaughtered goats and chickens and the few villagers not yet dead—a woman covering her face; a six-year-old boy wailing without tears; a grizzled man, eyes dull with shock, contemplating his missing arm. Their sole kinship now was fear. Of the buildings, only the church and Bobby and Marissa’s home survived.
    Pausing to adjust his eye patch, Okimbo drew himself up as though imitating Bobby, addressing the dead and traumatized with mock solemnity. “Asari people,” he proclaimed, “this is your day of liberation.”
    He pointed to the charred remnants of the village, the gesture stately and grandiose, as though this were a miracle of renewal. “What you see,” he called out, “is the eclipse of the Asari movement—the consequence tothose who follow Bobby Okari into the charnel house of murder and sedition. This will happen in every village where people gather in his name. I will come in the night. After my soldiers kill your men and enjoy your women, they will burn your empty houses to the ground.” He stared across the bodies at Marissa. “This is how we will sanitize Asariland, Marissa Okari. So watch, and learn.”
    Lying in Marissa’s lap, Omo remained as still as the dead. “Bring Okari’s father,” Okimbo ordered.
    Two soldiers dragged Chief Okari to the foot of the platform, machetes dangling from their belts. Still garbed in his headdress and robe, the old man gazed stoically at Okimbo as though clinging to the remnants of his dignity. Okimbo pointed to the church. “Take him to the altar,” he told the soldiers. “Make of him a sacrifice as in the Old Testament, when man truly feared his God.”
    At this, Bobby’s father