Chapter 12*

But for the noisy engine of the old truck, they had ridden in human silence for a while along a serene route almost void of human presence. The boy ought to have been skeptical, unfortunately, he wasn't since the beggar was kind enough to free him from the real danger.

"What ya name, kid?"

The young blond said nothing at first as his brain calculated, analyzed, and concluded. "Greene."

"Greene," he repeated as if testing the temperature of the water before doing his business. "Why that?" Again, he asked.

Greene finally sighted a tattered excuse of a convenient store after minutes of riding. Its once brilliant painted walls of what should have been a striking shade of bubble gum pink were now flaking cream white.

The rust embellished Break and Take retro signboard which had seen better days than he had, bizarrely hung on a risky forty-eight-degree angle.

He would have thought the place was abandoned if he hadn't seen an old lady walk out of it