Scarred - David Wellington
Our first guest is David Wellington, author of the acclaimed zombie trilogy Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet. David got his start online and continues to move effortlessly between print, such as his latest, the vampire action novel 13 Bullets, and the internet, with the post-apocalyptic zombie saga Plague Zone and the frozen werewolf terror of Frostbite. All of his horror tales are still available for free online at the links above, and if you like what you see please consider purchasing the print editions.
David’s encounter with terror is near and dear to my heart, as I had an almost identical experience. I don’t doubt a few of you will feel the same.
A lot of things scared me when I was a kid. The first I can remember was a special news report in 1981 by Walter Cronkite called “The Defense of the United States”, a documentary about what we could expect following a global thermonuclear war. I was nine years old at the time, and in love with special effects movies and had heard there were going to be some state of the art “recreations” included in the show. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to watch, sitting through endless talking head interviews I couldn’t understand, wondering if this dud was ever going to pay off. Boy, did it. About halfway through the program Cronkite warned that what we were about to see was a simulation based on the best available data, and that sensitive viewers might want to look away. You got to see what would happen to downtown Omaha Nebraska when the bomb hit. Exploding buildings, people with melting faces… for years afterward I ran and hid under my bed every time an airplane passed over the house, convinced it could be a Russian bomber.
Then there was the time my parents stayed out till two in the morning, and at midnight they started playing The Shining on HBO. I don’t think I need to go into details. When the front door opened and my Dad stepped inside, a little drunk and pissed that I was still awake… well. We’ve all been there, I suppose.