"To the people of Groveland, I urge to you that we stick together in unity as we prepare to take on the Northside troops! We have been the victims of political heresy, inhumane doctrine, and genocide. This fight did not start just three years ago, no it started long before that, before the groundwork had ever been laid for this police state that is New Mecca. But no more! No longer will we lay here dormant and dying, starving for not only food, but for life, and liberty!" The crowd that has gathered at Langston is the largest that has formed since the draft was held on the lower Eastside almost five weeks ago. Many of the Groveland civilians collectively decided to abandon their former living quarters once the 3rd Order of New Mecca had been announced. The first three Orders were to shut off access to the entire Westside and Central New Mecca.
Most of the new faces were the last of the civilians to make it out of South New Mecca to the lower Eastside once it had been effectively quarantined and shut off from the rest of the state. Electrical fencing had been secretly prepared right underneath the citizens feet, to be brought to the surface with a single push of a button. Simultaneously, on the day that the first 1st Order passed and the fences started going up around Central New Mecca, a report had leaked about the governing elite of the state conspiring to come together, shut off New Mecca's lines of communication with the outside world, and "cleanse" the state by way of starvation and chemical warfare. That was the worst thing possible for a providence already locked in a deadly state of emergency because of a three year race war. After Kedric and Malcolm were killed the tension had reached a boiling point, but it didn't turn fully explosive until two protestors were killed in Downtown New Mecca about six months later. The irony of the situation was that both men involved were on the same side of the protest, though one black and one white. Their altercation resulted in both of them tumbling over a ledge and plummeting to their deaths, only to be sensationalized on the front of the New Mecca Tribune the very next morning. The 'race war' media spin would go on for the next year and a half and incite what has become known as the New Mecca Civil War. Although only a fraction of the overall damage to New Mecca during this period, saying that the death toll was higher than it had ever been is an understatement. Things had escalated significantly faster than the elite had predicted, and the city was quickly going under. The 4th Order of the state saw the first use of the nerve agent Sarin on the hostile citizens of Westside and Southside New Mecca. That was the moment everyone realized that the rumors were real, that the state was actually attempting genocide. We all learned that day that the struggle happening in New Mecca was not about race, it was indeed a burgeoning civil war.
That day would be the last anybody would learn much of anything coming from the other side of New Mecca. Then all of a sudden you couldn't hear anything at all. Before the elites evacuated for their haven on the Northside, before the media blackout, and before they shut off all communication signals leaving or coming into the state, they left a rather cryptic message on the main billboard that read:
"For some time now you all have wondered about the direction of the New Mecca state as we embark upon a journey towards a modern, and more fit, civilization. However this does not mean that it has to be the end of your contributions to the rebuilding and replenishing of a stronger New Mecca, sacrifice will only expedite the overall process. Each individual will remain in their assigned confinement camp for an undisclosed duration. Any attempt to escape will lead to automatic execution of suspect and family unit. This decree has been declared sovereign for all civilians of the state, effective immediately. We will not allow for foreign interference in our state affairs, because just like in life, and in the latter-day New Mecca, only the strong survives. In every confinement camp there is a kill switch that will demilitarize the fences, allowing access to Central New Mecca. There you shall find the key to your freedom, if you're lucky."
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Before I Black
Short StoryKaleb Blackman and the Knox Twins are big time, the best that Langston Reigns Middle School has to offer. Like most boys, they love the spotlight, totally ambitious, yet unaware of the many vices that often come with it. In what has become a way of...
