Chapter 11
On Wednesday evening as Joyce prepared dinner, she had the news on. Luckily the national news had nothing about a devil-worshiper in Sunnydale getting away with murder, Joyce wanted to stop thinking about that altogether. But the news was still less than encouraging. A 13 year old girl had been gunned down in the street in Chicago, in a suppossedly safe neighborhood. And the international news was getting progressively worse, tonight they were talking about the crises in Sloboda. Joyce remembered hearing about this when Dawn was born. In 1999 Slobada had been a region in Serbia. When Milosivich was committing attrocities, and NATO intervention became likely, Slobada declared it's independance, saying they wanted no part of that conflict. The U.S. was the first country to recognie their independance, Clinton wnted to foster dis-unity amongst Milosivich's allies. As a new nation Slobada took in refugees from the war. The different ethnic groups got along fairly well. Unlike in Serbia Muslims were alowed to practice their religion openly, but not allowed to convert others. Other laws were considered almost humorous by the west. One such law required all government officials to make at least one public appearence in broad daylight, to prevent vampires from taking over the government. But now things were getting more serious in Sloboda. General Karadizc, one of their founding fathers, was running for president. His platform included purging his country of vampires and werewolves. The international community feared this was merely a pretext for eliminating political dissidents and/or undesireable ethnic groups. To Joyce Summers it seemed like there was no good news anymore.