So they left. From what my buddy Oscar has told me, the last person was gone by 2014. Two different banks that had slowly been consuming the property one foreclosure at a time wound up selling off the whole thing. To who, no one is really sure, other than it is some European company with more money than sense. In the years since, the property hasn’t been altered or improved, and is rarely visited at all other than by guards and those the guards are meant to discourage.  Meth heads wanting to steal copper out of the walls to sell. Junkies and vagrants and kids looking for a place to hang out or spend a few nights.

Even with all the time and neglect, the property and the buildings there are still very valuable. Vandalism, theft and arson are just the start of the concerns. You also have to worry about someone trespassing, getting hurt, and then trying to sue. Again, I don’t know who bought the place, but they clearly have an odd way of investing their money from what I’ve seen. All they’ve done is buy a headache and not done anything with it.

Point being, my job—well, my company’s job—is to make sure their headaches don’t get any worse. The clubhouse has been converted into a security office, and every day there is a guard posted there when they’re not out patrolling the property. At night, there’s one guard on Monday through Thursday and two on Friday through Sunday. Because people always want to be an asshole on the weekend.

The typical routine for a twelve-hour shift is as follows: Arrive at the clubhouse and log in to the computer system. Check that the feeds from the security cameras set up outside of the clubhouse, the gourmet grocery store, the tennis courts, and the utility building are all functioning properly. Then, within thirty minutes of arrival, start patrol of one of the Zones.

Our security company has divided Whispering Oaks into six Zones for patrol purposes. Zone One is the central area of the Clubhouse and surrounding buildings including the cobblestone shopping area and staff garage. Zone Two is primarily streets containing smaller (if you call 2,000-3,000 foot homes small) homes in various states of being built but few in a totally finished state. Zone Three contains most of the finished homes big and small, as well as the tennis courts and two of the exterior pools. Zone Four is the golf course and two miles of walking trails woven into the woods at the course’s edge. Zone Five is where the larger parcels of land were being sold. It is mainly empty, grown-up lots, but there are actually three enormous houses that were built to completion before everything collapsed. We call them the Red House, the Green House, and the Grey House, based on their exterior colors.