Greenie's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Greenie came back to the factory at four in the morning. Two hundred and nine plush bodies lay stacked on pallets by the door. Jordin sat on the floor beside them, hollow-eyed, threading the last hat. Sawyer had gone home an hour ago. Greenie opened the catalog and wrote the problem plain: too many bodies. No truck. If a convoy of green plushes rolled through town at dawn, whoever took the children would see it. He tore the page out and set it in Jordin's lap. Jordin read it twice. "We need a vehicle no one looks at," he said. "And a place no adult checks." He pulled out his phone. "I know one truck. It parks behind a barn on a farm outside town. The man who owns it hasn't driven it in a year." He did not say the name. He only said, "He owes me a quiet favor. I'll leave the keys on the seat by five." Greenie wrote: and the beds. Where. Jordin thought. "The preschool on the corner. Front door's locked, but the side latch is old. No one's been inside since the kids went." Greenie waddled out the loading door and crossed four blocks of empty street. He stopped at a small pink house across from a gingerbread cottage. Orange cones still blocked the driveway. He tapped the window twice, then twice again. Daisy opened it from inside. Pink plush, white bow, dark eyes that did not blink. "You look bad," she said. "You've been busy." Greenie held up the catalog. He wrote: 210 bodies. One truck. One night. I can't lift them alone. Daisy read it. She stepped over the sill onto the porch. The tape at the end of her driveway snapped when she walked through it. "The permit was fake," she said. "I figured that out last week. I just didn't have a reason to leave." They met Jordin at the barn. The old pickup started on the third try. Greenie and Daisy rode in the bed, loading arms full of soft green bodies from the factory into the truck three trips in a row. Daisy stacked them tight. She counted under her breath. She did not miss. At the preschool, the side latch gave with one push. They laid the plushes on the small cots row by row, hats straight, spikes up. Two hundred and ten green bodies, each waiting for a child. Jordin locked the side door from inside and slipped out a window. By five-thirty the truck was back behind the barn. The streets had stayed empty. No one had seen. Greenie stood on the preschool step in the last of the dark. He opened the catalog and wrote one line: they are hidden. Then his hand stopped. Because a light was on inside the preschool that had not been on when they left. Someone was already there.