Tom came back into the living room, looked at the remains of the dessert on the table, then looked at Benny on the couch.
“The offer still stands,” he said. “If you want to do what I do, then I’ll take you on as an apprentice. I’ll sign the papers so you can still get full rations.”
Benny gave him a long, withering stare.
“I’d rather be eaten by zoms than have you as my boss,” Benny said.
Tom sighed, turned, and trudged upstairs. After that they didn’t talk to each other for days.
2
THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND BENNY AND CHONG HAD PICKED UP THE Saturday edition of the Town Pump, because it had the biggest help wanted section. All of the easy jobs, like working in stores, had been long-since snapped up. They didn’t want to work on the farms, because that meant getting up every morning at the crack of “no way, José.” Besides, it meant dropping out of school completely. They didn’t love school, but it wasn’t too bad, and school had softball, free lunches, and girls. The ideal fix was a part-time job that paid pretty good and got the ration board off their backs, so over the next several weeks, they applied for anything that sounded easy.
Benny and Chong clipped out a bunch of want ads and tackled them one at a time, having first categorized them by “most possible money,” “coolness,” and “I don’t know what it is, but it sounds okay.” They passed on anything that sounded bad right from the get-go.
The first on their list was for a locksmith apprentice.
That sounded okay, but it turned out to be humping a couple of heavy toolboxes from house to house at the crack of frigging dawn while an old German guy who could barely speak English repaired fence locks and installed dial combinations on both sides of bedroom doors, as well as installing bars and wire grilles.
It was kind of funny watching the old guy explain to his customers how to use the combination locks. Benny and Chong began making bets on how many times per conversation a customer would say “what,” “could you repeat that,” or “beg pardon.”
The work was important, though. Everyone had to lock themselves in their rooms at night and then use a combination to get out. Or a key; some people still locked with keys. That way, if they died in their sleep and reanimated as a zom, they wouldn’t be able to get out of the room and attack the rest of the family. There had been whole settlements wiped out because someone’s grandfather popped off in the middle of the night and then started chowing down on the kids and grandkids.
“I don’t get this,” Benny confided to Chong when they were alone for a minute. “Zoms can’t work a combination lock any more than they can turn a doorknob. They can’t work keys, either. Why do people even buy this stuff?”
Chong shrugged. “My dad says that locks are traditional. People understand that locked doors keep bad things out, so people want locks for their doors.”
“That’s stupid. Closed doors will keep zoms out. Zoms are brain-dead. Hamsters are smarter.”
Chong spread his hands in a “hey, that’s people for you” gesture.
The German guy installed double-sided locks, so that the door could be opened from the other side in a real, nonzombie emergency; or if the town security guys had to come in and do a cleanup on a new zom.
Somehow, Benny and Chong had gotten it into their heads that locksmiths got to see this stuff, but the old guy said that he hadn’t ever seen a single living dead that was in any way connected to his job. Boring.
To make it worse, the German guy paid them a little more than pocket lint and said that it would take three years to learn the actual trade. That meant that Benny wouldn’t even pick up a screwdriver for six months and wouldn’t do anything but carry stuff for a year. Screw that.
“I thought you didn’t want to actually work,” said Chong as they walked away from the German with no intention of returning in the morning.
“I don’t. But I don’t want to be bored out of my freaking mind either.”