Damage & Decay

Chapter 2

Part One: Family Business

"I don't know what's waiting for us when we die– something better, something worse. I only know that I'm not ready to find out yet."
      - Charles De Lint, The Onion Girl

———

The following weekend Eren and Levi 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 means dropping out it 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.

Eren and Levi 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 turned out to be carrying 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. Eren and Levi 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 started chowing down on the kids and grandkids.

"I don't get this," Eren confided to Levi 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?"

Levi 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."

Levi 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, Eren and Levi had gotten it into their heads that locksmiths got to see this stuff, but the old guy said 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 the Eren 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 Levi 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."