“Hey, Dev,” Peter said, “you might want to pace yourself. This stuff adds up, and that price is three times what my mom paid for Mrs. Smith’s the last time I went to the store with her.”
An image of Peter shopping with a mother popped into Devin’s brain. Devin didn’t remember his own mother. Joe barely remembered his. Flix, same thing. But Peter had lived with his; loved her, probably. Been loved by her.
Devin laid his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I have money. Let’s go pick you out a coat.”
Coats. Hats. Gloves. A new pair of shoes for Flix because Devin couldn’t stand one more day of seeing Flix’s toe sticking out of his worn-out, too-small shoes. Three top-of-the-line Deep Thaw sleeping bags.
There. That was everything. Now, to pay. In his mom’s vintage romance novels, when characters had gone to the store, there’d been cashiers and talk of ringing things up, but here he didn’t see any bells or belts or pulleys or even any people who looked like they could “ring things up.”
“Let’s put everything in the backpacks.” Peter eased one pack from the bottom of the cart, unfastened it, and began piling in their stuff. “It’ll make it easier to carry out.”
Devin glanced around the store. “But how do we pay?”
Peter squinted at him. “We walk out. It takes the money from your account.”
“What does? And how does it know how much to take? And how do I know it took the right amount?”
“I don’t know. I’m just a kid. My mom did all this buying-things business. But sometimes I’d go down to the Maze-On by our house for candy, and I’d just walk out after I got it. My mom said I should get the receipt in the door, but I never did.”
Devin hesitated. “That sounds an awful lot like stealing.”
Peter rolled his eyes and slapped at Devin’s wrist where his money chip was implanted. “Why is Joe so much smarter than you? It’s not stealing. Momma would’ve never let me steal.” A haze clouded Peter’s eyes for a moment, hiding the brightness of the green. “There’s probably a sensor in the doorway that subtracts it from your account.”
“You don’t have to be a dickhead,” Devin said, unable to muster any bite behind the words. The trading of real items for some imaginary numbers hidden in his wrist. What a fucked-up world. “Let’s get out of here so we can get moving again.”
They finished piling all the supplies in the backpacks. Devin slung both of them over his shoulders, and they walked out the door.
Fast footsteps followed, and Devin grabbed for his rifle.
“Hey, hey there,” a man said, holding up his hands. He had hair on his face and greed in his eyes. “I just wanted to offer you a special deal, Mr. Goodknight.”
Who? Devin knew he had to be making a weird face, but he had no clue what this guy was talking about.
The man frowned. “You are” — he checked a small screen embedded in his arm — “Jonathon Devin Goodknight, eighteen, son of Beryl and Holling Detweiler-Goodknight, lately of the Texas Territory? Grandson of Barbara and Jameson Carnegie-Goodknight of Pittsburgh?”
One time, out in the shed behind Lil’s, Devin had read shit from the Bible, trying to figure out why the religion stuff was so important to Joe. This man made about as much sense as that book. Devin, eighteen, son, and Texas, he understood. Goodknight rang some faraway memory Devin couldn’t place. The rest? Nothing. But his heart had started pounding, and he wasn’t sure he was breathing. Was all the rest of that stuff people? His people?
“Who wants to know?” Peter asked, and for once, Devin was grateful for the kid’s snotty, condescending voice.
The man smiled one of those fake smiles like Boggs used to. “My name is Viking. I manage this Maze-On outpost, and I wanted to make sure Mr. Goodknight was aware of the special items available to our preferred clientele.” He inclined his head meaningfully toward Devin and whispered, “Back room, top shelf.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “It’s probably prostitutes, and we’re all stocked up. C’mon, Dev.”
“Wait here, Petey. I’ll be quick.”
Devin followed the man back into the store, his mind spinning. He didn’t care about any back room; he needed space to think. Jonathon Devin Goodknight. J. Devin Goodknight. Goodknight. Those were all him? And his parents? He grabbed the manager’s arm. “My parents. I, um, I call them mom and dad. Beryl and...”
“Holling, yes. It’s funny isn’t it, how we don’t see our parents as real people?”
Devin pretended to laugh.
The manager pushed through a curtain and into a darkened room. Small lights illuminated shelves of merchandise, and off to the side were two dimly lit rooms, both with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall so Devin could see right inside. In each of those rooms, a naked woman lounged on a bed.
“As you can see,” the manager said, “we have limited quantities of the most desired products. We’re not as fancy as one of our flagship stores, but we get by. Is there anything in particular you are interested in? We have lovely companions.”
The women must have been able to hear through the glass, because the closer one, a blond with hair that hung past her hips, smiled like a
