Chapter Text
I am a plastic tree. I do not have a name. I never really understood what names were for.
I wasn't always the murderer you see today. I had hope, once. I had faith in humanity. How did I get to that point, you wonder? Well, let's start at the beginning, shall we?
I don't know when I first became aware. It was a quiet thing, slipping into consciousness slowly and before I even realized it. I suppose I could not realize that I was conscious before I was conscious, but it still sounds strange to say it like that.
Voices. I heard voices, talking around me. I could not see yet, but I could hear, distantly and distorted as though from underwater. I did not understand what anyone was saying yet, but I listened. It took a long time to understand what they were saying, to make sense of the words, and I don't think I truly comprehended until I opened my eyes.
And open them I did. Lights, colors, figures moving about. Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to understand where I was and what they were. They were humans, inside a mall. I don't know which mall it was. I'd like to say it was Caiger, because Caiger was really the center of everything, during those days, but I honestly don't know anymore, and I doubt it was actually Caiger anyway.
There were zombies at the door. Clawing at the doors, tearing down the barricades, groaning and moaning as they came. I found myself knocked aside, tumbling across the floor on my side. I watched helplessly as the zombies sank their teeth into the humans, dragged them into the streets, and were eventually expelled with bullets and dumped into the streets.
The humans picked me up and threw me up against the doors again, along with vending machines and anything else they could find to use as barricades. I tried to speak, to protest against this treatment. I tried to move. I tried to act, to do something, anything!
My limbs twitched slightly, ever so slightly. I blinked my eyeballs, once, twice. It was only then that I realized I was not human. I was not like these others in the mall. I looked at myself, a green triangular figure of plastic, decorated in tinsel and ornaments. Some of those ornaments were painted as eyes. They were my eyeballs.
I am a plastic tree. I am not human. I do not have a name. I do not know how I came to life, what magic permeated my form to animate my limbs, and yet I am grateful nonetheless. I very much like being alive. Perhaps it was some variation of the zombie plague that infected me and affected me in a strange manner, though how it could do so without flesh and blood I cannot begin to guess.
No one noticed my movements at first, and I did not have the strength to pry myself away from the barricades. I was still mute, unable to make a sound. Again the zombies broke in, and pushed me against the ground, rolling across the floor to rest in a corner.
I could not sit by and do nothing. The zombies were hurting people. They tore apart people with their claws, ripped chunks out of them with their teeth, and raised by their heads to howl with fresh blood running down their chins.
With great effort, I righted myself. I stood up. It was difficult to balance and keep upright and took me many tries before I succeeded. The survivors were too busy with the zombies at the time to notice the strange behavior from a plastic tree, I'm guessing. But once they turned to try to throw me up against the barricades again, they stopped and took a second look.
"This plastic tree is looking at me," said one of them.
"You're imagining things," said another. "Just put it on the barricades."
"No way! The plastic tree moved!"
"Man, the zombies are really getting to you. Plastic trees don't move!"
"That one did!"
I wiggled my branches in an attempt to convince them that, yes, I could indeed move. I don't know how I can hear things, and even less how I can understand them. I can be thankful that whatever mystical force granted me life also granted me intelligence.
"Whoa, I think that tree really did move!"
"I think you're both drunk!" adds a third human, coming up behind them. "Just put it on the barricades already. You don't want the zombies to--"
At that moment, the vending machine that had been pushed haphazardly against the doors crashed to the ground again, and more zombies burst inside and ate all three of them. The zombies then turned to look at me through glazed, feral eyes, as if not sure what to make of me. I held perfectly still, not a difficult feat for one so new to moving, and the zombies ignored me and moved on.
The mall was no longer safe, however. I did not expect the zombies to be fooled about me being an ordinary inanimate object for long. I may have been barely alive, but I wanted to remain that way, and I also wanted to help the poor survivors somehow. I stumbled out of the building and into the streets, hopping at times and struggling to manage locomotion. Even just staying upright was a chore. But fear is a great motivation, and hope was strong still with me then.
Most of the buildings I passed were too heavily barricaded to get inside of, the doors and windows secured with furniture and anything the humans could get their hands on to protect themselves with. I finally found a building that I could manage to squeeze myself into. It was quiet in here, and I was alone in the dark, but I was safe for now. I could rest. It took a lot out of me to take my first steps.
I slept. I sleep a lot, really. Whatever magic animates me, I can only manage much activity in short bursts, and must conserve my energy at other times. I watch, though, with my eye ornaments gazing into the shadows, observing everything that happens around me. I was mistaken for an inanimate object more often than not during those early days, though I don't really fool anyone anymore. There are stranger things in Malton than me.
First things first, when I could, I took a look around the building I'd found myself in. It seems I wasn't as alone in here as I'd thought myself at first. There were humans on the other floors, in rooms, in laboratories, working on equipment, making serum for syringes.
"Are those syringes ready yet?" one human said to another. "We need to get revives going for the people that were in the mall."
"Just about. I'll get them right out to the cemetery as soon as possible."
I didn't really understand what they meant at first, but I felt a surge of bright hope within me nonetheless as the implications of what they were talking about dawned upon me. Those who were killed could be brought back to life with merely the work of a syringe. Zombies are not doomed to being undead monsters forever.
Grabbing a syringe, I headed outside to the cemetery that I overheard the scientists talking about. There were a number of zombies standing around, and as I got close to one, he said, "Mrh?" and looked at me with forlorn eyes.
I tried to reassure the poor man, and fumbled clumsily with the syringe I'd taken. It slipped from my grasp and dropped into the mud beneath my branches. Frustrated, I picked it up to try again, but I could not get it to work. I looked at the zombie apologetically and tried to tell him I was sorry, but the only sound that came out was a low hiss. Dejectedly, I shuffled back into the building again.
This wasn't going to work. I'd need to start with something simpler. Learning how to manipulate objects was a trying business. While I could envy humans their fingers, I had many more branches that I could move, and was certain that, in due time, I would be able to use them just as well as humans used their fingers. I had hope, and optimism. Nothing could get me down.
Yes, that was a time when I still had every hope for the future, when I believed that I could help to make everything better and build a brighter future for Malton. Maybe I could even find a way to cure the zombie plague, I thought. It might cost me my own life, since it was probably the reason why I was moving about and thinking at all, but surely it would be worth it if it would stop people from turning into monsters. How deluded I was.
I adjusted to life quickly enough, scanning zombies with DNA extractors and patching up wounded humans with first aid kits, gaining experience in how to survive and to manipulate my body. Moving around became easier, and I even learned about free running, to let me move more easily from building to building and get into the ones that were too heavily barricaded to be entered otherwise.
I was so innocent and hopeful that it even hurts a bit to think back on it now, and about how everything changed. But I will get to that in due time.