Guest Post: Heath Stallcup #WinterofZombie
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Hey everybody, Heath Stallcup here. While I may be better known for my other works, I felt the need to delve into one of my favorite subject matters: ZOMBIES! What came from that attempt was Caldera. Luckily, I was allowed to take part in this Winter of Zombie Blog Tour and wanted to share a few thoughts.
Winter time. Zombies. One might think you’d be safer. Dead flesh freezes, doesn’t it? It’s hard for reanimated flesh to fight being frozen solid to chase you. There are no internal processes to generate heat.
Unless…the zombies aren’t actually dead. If they’re viral infected rage zombies, you’re toast. They never tire, they never stop. They’re faster than you. And they’re hungry.
When it came time to take that leap into the zombie genre, I wanted to delve into something a little different. True, there are a handful of authors out there who imagine the ZomPoc filled with fast running zombies, but to give them a reason…a cause for being turned? I turned to nature for that answer. We have wasps who supposedly turn their prey into zombies…so why couldn’t mother nature have her own avenue of doing that to mankind? Nice premise if you ask me.
What else makes viral zombies so difficult to face? The fact that they aren’t truly dead plays a huge psychological twist on their intended victims. If you were facing a walking corpse, few would hesitate to pull the trigger or sink a blade deep into their skull. But if your attacker is still alive? If there was even the slightest chance that they could be saved? How easy would it be then to pull a trigger? How easily could you slip that icepick into the base of their skull?
The mere fact that these creatures are still alive is hard enough to deal with, but when their metabolism is jacked so high that they can outrun most Olympic runners? I can’t speak for everyone else, but that scares the bejeezus out of me! I’m not built for speed. Maybe if I could stay behind the wheel of a truck I wouldn’t worry so much, but you gotta go to the can eventually…
Combine the speed, their pain-filled screams and the fact that they can infect others with a bite, scratch or spread of bodily fluids and you have a critter that you definitely do NOT want to run into in a dark alley. Still, what Apocalypse would be complete without human bad guys? And like many other authors, I turn to the military and government to be my black hat wearing bad guys. At least, in the first novel…there is a sequel being penned where gears are shifted, those who are supposed to help are trying and those who usually prey on the weakness of others simply use the lawlessness of the situation to set themselves up as regional rulers.
Take a trip into the wonder of Yellowstone Park and watch as the end of the world unfolds.
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The stench of frozen flesh is in the air! Welcome to the Winter of Zombie Blog Tour 2015, with 40+ of the best zombie authors spreading the disease in the month of November.
Stop by the event page on Facebook so you don’t miss an interview, guest post or teaser…and pick up some great swag as well!
Giveaways galore from most of the authors as well as interaction with them!
#WinterofZombie is the hashtag for Twitter, too!
