A New Death: CJ's Story

by Josh Vasquez

  ***

  “What was that?” Aunt Laura asks, as everyone move towards the back door.

  “Sounded like gunshots,” said G-Dad.

  Dad turned to me.

  “Keep your sister in the house, CJ.”

  He then turned back and walked outside with the others. I looked at Hailey, who was still coloring and now had her headphones back in. She didn’t hear the gunshots. As if she knew I was thinking about her, she looked up and smiled, but went back to coloring.

  Dad said I had to keep her in the house. Ok, done. I crept closer to the back door to try and hear what was going on out there.

  The adults were all standing at the bottom of our driveway, which sloped at almost a forty-five degree angle down away from our house. I could see one of our neighbors talking with Dad. He lived next door to us on our little circle. From where I was standing, I could barely make out what they were saying. I edged a little closer to the door, trying my best to stay out of sight.

  “Did you hear it?” The neighbor asked. “Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad answered. “But it sounded close.”

  The neighbor mumbled something, but I still couldn’t hear him from my closer position.

  “I don’t know,” I heard Dad say again.

  He went to say something else, but was interrupted when another man walked out from behind a house on the far end of our circle. He was holding a police-special style revolver in his right hand.

  “Don’t worry y’all! I got ‘em! Sorry for all the alarm,” he yelled.

  “What do you mean? Are they here already?” Our neighbor asked.

  His question and this new man’s arrival seemed to agitate the small crowd of neighbors who were now gathering near the end of our driveway.

  “No, I think it was just one of them. Must have wandered into the neighborhood somehow. Not sure how he got past the Parkside though,” the man with the gun answered.

  Our neighborhood was split into two sections. Parkside was up near Highway 21 and was called such because the neighborhood clubhouse and park was located within it. Our half of the neighborhood, Lakeside, was filled with tiny little lakes scattered around the landscape. The neighborhood wasn’t split like this on purpose though. It was originally supposed to be developed more, but was never completed. Dad said when the housing market dropped (whatever that means), the plans to build more dropped too. Which was a bummer, because there were plans to build a grocery store and a shopping center towards the front of the subdivision. It would have been cool to ride my bike up there and get a snack or something. I inched closer to try and hear what exactly wandered into our neighborhood.

  Maybe some kind of animal, I thought. No, they keep referring to them in the plural.

  “What are we going to do?” Someone asked.

  “I’m getting out of here.”

  “Me too!”

  Everyone started talking about leaving and arming themselves with guns and other handheld weapons. My thoughts on the probability of it being an animal were now very low. Unless of course, it was a pack of rabid bears or something. But I seriously doubted it was a pack of rabid bears.

  I noticed Ms. P standing at the edge of the group. She was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. Her hair was dry, so maybe she was fixing to get in the shower when all the commotion started. She noticed me staring at her and forced a smile in my direction.

  Ms. P often would look in on us for my parents, whenever they would go out on dates. They still felt I was a little too young to stay home and watch Hailey, so she was kind enough to check on us. A lot of times she’d come over and play games. She was young and pretty, and well, I didn’t really mind her coming over. She smelled nice too.

  The man with gun raised his voice, breaking up my thoughts about Ms. P, and tried to speak over the murmuring of the crowd.

  “Everyone, calm down! It was just one of them for crying out loud! We’re not even near the city!”

  The crowd seemed unsatisfied with the man’s words. It really only seemed to stir them up more. My Dad raised his hands, trying to quiet and calm everyone down.

  “Listen everybody,” he said. “We all need to go back to our homes, secure them and sit tight.”

  Sit tight? I thought. That’s not what we were doing. Why would he tell them that?

  “If you have firearms,” he continued. “I’d suggest you keep them loaded and close by you. If you don’t, I’d recommend you find any type of hand tool, such as a hammer or crowbar. We don’t need to panic; that’ll only cause us more trouble. If everyone keeps a cool head about this, we can all get through this safely. Now everyone go home.”

  The crowd swallowed what my Dad said much better than the other man’s words. He gave my Dad a smug look and walked back towards his house. One by one, everyone went back towards their homes. Our neighbor gave my Dad a head nod and walked back to his house. Once everyone was gone, Dad motioned for the rest of our family to follow him back into the house.

  I darted back into the kitchen and quickly sat at the table next to Hailey. She looked at me strange, wondering why I was sitting so close to her. Her music was still going strong. I gave her a smile, to which she mouthed, “You’re weird,” and went back to her crayons and paper.

  The adults all looked more worried now than they had been all afternoon. Dad was pulling on his goatee again.

  “What do we do Chris?” G-Mom asked, her voice somewhat shaken.

  Without any hesitation at all, Dad answered her.

  “We leave. Now.”