Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (27 page)

I yelled out, “That’s what I said!”

Ringo came out of the water closet and yelled back, “Right, good one, Charlie! How’s it going, mate?”

I said, “Great, Rings. Heard Ludwig sent you a new snare drum. How’s it working out?”

Ringo said, “Love it, just love it!”

Mick said, “The lot of you, shut up! On this ground, on the hallowed ground of this hallowed music venue, right now, right this
minute, I declare a battle to the death! Mortal versus zombie! Hunter versus hunted! Stones versus Beatles!”

Ringo did some Ninja thing and magically appeared behind Mick, then said, “You’re sounding awfully dramatic, Mr. Jagger.” Then he said in a most excellent Mick impression, “Your powers are useless against Ninja Lords, O great zombie hunter! Surrender or feel the sting of the shuriken!”

John, Paul, and George started giggling again. Paul said, “You tell ’em, Rings! Give ’em heck, an’ that!”

George wadded up his napkin and threw it at Mick; it bopped him in the head, and I couldn’t help laughing. Mick said to me, “Quit being a cunt, Charlie. If you’re going to act like that, why don’t you just piss off?”

I told him, “Cheers, mate.” And I pissed off.

RINGO STARR:
Jagger weighed next to nothing, so I picked him up, carried him outside, flagged down a cab, and threw him in. I said, “Happy New Year, Mick. And a piece of advice for you: you’re not gonna get all three of them at once. Pick ’em off one at a time. You’ll have a better chance.”

He scratched his head and said, “That’s actually damn good advice, Rings. I never thought of it, what with their ‘All for zombies, and zombies for all’ shite. But why’re you telling me that?”

I said, “I like you, man.”

He said, “Yeah, I like you, too. Hell, I even like them. But I can’t let it go. I have to finish what I’ve started, or else I’ll look like a prat.”

I said, “Gotcha. But like I said, one at a time. If you do it like that, it’ll be less embarrassing for everybody. You’re never gonna beat them, but at least if you go one-on-one, you won’t come off, ehm, looking like a prat.”

Mick said, “Listen, Ringo, one at a time is no problem. All I need to do is give them a single kiss to the chest, and the Beatles will be broken up like no band has ever—”

I interrupted; “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that’s all you need to do, but you’re not gonna be able to do it. Nothing but
nothing
will ever break up the Beatles.”

Mick rolled his eyes and said, “Now who’s sounding dramatic?”

CHAPTER FIVE

1966

C
irca 2008, what was the best way to track somebody down, be it an old girlfriend, an old high school classmate, or an old British reporter? That’s right: Facebook. Thanks to this useful online social tool, I was able to track down Maureen Cleave, former pop culture scribe for the
London Evening Standard.

On March 4, 1966, Cleave sat down with John Lennon for an interview that was, without a doubt, the most revealing of Lennon’s Beatles years. In it, John was brutally honest with his opinions on literature, music, the pitfalls of fame, how he best liked to kill humans, and, most controversially, his faith, or lack thereof. (Odd that a few hyperbolic comments about God would create more of a ruckus than an internationally revered undead musician describing the manner in which he liked to murder, but that’s religious types for you.)

Fearing a possible terrorist attack from the religious right or zombie haters in general, Maureen Cleave will never take a face-to-face meeting with a stranger, so I was lucky that in May 2008, she decided it would be okay to participate in an instant message chat session via good ol’ Facebook.

I
n July 2006, I received an email from the address [email protected]. The first line: “John Smith is not my name.” Mr. Not John Smith went on to write,

There is a ticket waiting for you at the American Airlines counter at O’Hare Airport. It is a direct flight to Washington, Dc. It leaves tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. At 1:00 Eastern Standard Time, you will meet me at a bench on the east side of the Washington Monument. The bench is painted with an advertisement for a local shyster named Zelman Berger. I will be wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with Che Guevara’s face on the front. If you are not there, you will never hear from me again. If you are there, I will elaborate on some information regarding the Beatles and Elvis Presley that you may find very interesting. I look forward to meeting you. P.S.—Lunch is on me.

Being a bit of a conspiracy buff, that was an offer I simply couldn’t refuse, so I updated my will, took out a five-million-dollar life-insurance policy, and hopped a plane to DC.

Smith was true to his word: Che T-shirt, jeans, a couple of turkey subs, and a fuckload of very interesting elaboration.

“JOHN SMITH”:
I was recruited by the CIA right out of Stanford in 1962. I was this skinny kid from the Arizona sticks who’d piss his pants if he ever saw a gun, so I couldn’t figure out why they wanted me. Turns out, the Company needed some young recruits because none of those assholes knew shit about shit that happened after 1958. At twenty-four, I was the youngest agent by far, the only one with any concept of pop culture, and probably the only one who knew who the fuck Paul McCartney was.

I don’t remember the exact date I got the memo, but it doesn’t really matter, because the thing could’ve been sitting in somebody’s in-box for a week or a month or a year. I don’t remember the exact wording, either—so much shit came across my desk that one thing tended to blend into another—but the gist of it was, Andreas Cornelis
van Kuijk, aka, Thomas Andrew Parker, aka, Colonel Tom, aka, Elvis Aron Presley’s manager, had contacted one of our agents in regard to the Beatles. Long story short, van Kuijk wanted the Beatles banned from the United States.

As wacky as that sounds, van Kuijk’s reasoning was almost sound. He claimed that: (a) the government should be concerned about a repeat performance of the Shea Stadium fiasco; (b) the United States wasn’t equipped to defend itself against English zombies; and (c) as there had been whispers of sex slavery coming out of Europe, the Beatles’ presence was a clear and present danger to girls and women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five.

Now, if I was some asshole who’d been with the Company since Dub Dub Two, I probably would’ve put together an overly complicated plan to keep Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr out of our swell little country here. But I was a kid who knew that (a) Lennon took full responsibility for the Shea riots and swore up and down he wouldn’t do it again (and I believed him); (b) Liverpool zombies were generally ultrapolite—some have said they’re the pussies of the zombie world—and were eminently defensible; and (c) I’d never heard a single complaint about any alleged sex slaves from either a slave, a master, or a parent. It’d take a complete moron not to realize that Colonel Tom was scared the Beatles would wipe the Pelvis off the charts.

So I called van Kuijk and told him to fuck off. Then I got in touch with Brian Epstein. I figured that’s the sort of thing his band might want to know about.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
The lads will always love Presley’s music, but I think they lost interest in him as a person when he refused their invitation to join the undead movement, as it were. That being the case, they weren’t particularly fazed or surprised when I gave them the
news about the King’s attempt to banish us from his kingdom. But they weren’t happy. I still don’t know why they didn’t decorate Graceland with his small intestines.

JOHN LENNON:
If we’d have wanted to, we could’ve had him banned from the UK. After all, we were Members of the Order of the British Empire. And we have the medals to prove it.

We also could’ve zombified him against his will, but the paperwork on that would’ve been a disaster, so fook that.

No, we took the high road and let it lie, and let him live. We weren’t
always
right bastards. Just sometimes.

T
here are myriad stories describing the Beatles’ self-inflicted limb removals and subsequent reattachments, but few outside of the band’s inner circle have actually experienced the joy, the fascination, and the horror of an up-close and personal view of John, Paul, or George calmly tearing off his foot, then even more calmly putting it back on. (I myself have seen several dozen versions of that act, and it never ceases to disgust … especially when George chows down on a French fry he’d just dipped into an open wound.) But that all changed in 1966, when the world was treated to photographic documentation of what many consider to be the Liverpool zombies’ greatest trick.

The date: March 25. The location: a photography studio in the Chelsea section of London. The occasion: a photo session for an upcoming Beatles project to be determined. The photographer: veteran UK shutterbug Robert Whitaker. The outcome: equal helpings of controversy and disgust. The reasoning behind the Beatles’ artistic concept for the session: nobody’s quite sure, but in April 2003, Whitaker offered the story behind one of the grossest moments in the band’s unbelievably gross history.