Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (30 page)

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
After Ringo survived sixty-three lysergic trips in eight days, I was ready to give it to the rest of the lads … but not all three at once. I could afford to have a single Beatle go on “vacation,” but I couldn’t have the entire lot out of commission. Naturally, John volunteered to go first.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
We all went over to John’s flat—me, Ringo, George, Neil, and Eppy—and removed all breakables from his living room, then threw pillows and blankets all over the place. Johnny was chomping at the bit, so we gave him the tab, and everybody shoved off except for yours truly, who got elected to sit around and make sure he didn’t hurt himself or anybody else.

It kicked in immediately and, long story short, he died.

JOHN LENNON:
The minute I get to the afterlife, I run into Jesus Christ, and the first thing he says to me is, “You were right in that interview, mate. You Beatles
are
better than me. After I read that fookin’ thing, I tried getting that guitar sound from the beginning of ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ and I couldn’t get close. Then I got a bunch of angels together to harmonize the chorus of ‘Nowhere Man,’ and it sounded like shite. And I’m fookin’ embarrassed to tell you what happened when I tried to copy Paul’s bass line on ‘Ticket to Ride.’
So cheers, Johnny—it’ll be a pleasure to have you up here with us. You wanna go and grab a pint?”

Christ seemed like a top geezer, and I think I’d have been fine hanging out with him for all eternity. But Mr. Showbiz wasn’t having any of it.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
We had albums to record, y’know. We had gigs to play. We had birds to fook. We had a thick-lipped, skinny-arsed Rolling Stone to torment. Death for John Lennon was not an option.

LYMAN COSGROVE:
Reanimating the rare dead Liverpool Processer who wasn’t killed by a diamond bullet is a dicey proposition. There’s no definitive way to make it happen. Different techniques work on different zombies. With some zombies, nothing works at all.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
I went on autopilot. My animal brain took over, and my zombie body followed its instructions. If I’d been in better control of my faculties, I probably wouldn’t have smashed John in the face with his Framus acoustic guitar, nor would I have torn off his left hand and his right foot, then reattached them in reverse. If I had been thinking, I probably would’ve done the Liverpool Process … which would’ve been exactly the wrong thing to do. Turns out that would’ve been lights-out for John. Forever.

What happened next was purely instinctive, y’know. I tore off John’s head, yanked out his brain, ran it over to the bathtub, and gave it a quick soapy soak, maybe three minutes in all. The brain was quite slippery when I pulled it out of the tub, so slippery, in fact, that I almost dropped the bloody thing onto the bathroom floor. After I dried it off, I ran it back to the living room and slid it into its proper resting area in what I hoped was the, erm, proper position. Then I went into John’s linen closet, and thank Christ he
had a sewing kit. Seconds after I stitched his head back onto his neck, John Lennon was back, sober, and crankier than ever.

JOHN LENNON:
The afterlife was looking all right. No pressure. No commitments. No Brian Epstein dragging us all over the world. No Paul McCartney telling me to get back to work. Just Christ and me, drinking ale and hanging out with dead artists. Right when I’m getting comfortable—and right when my man Jesus is about to introduce me to Charles Baudelaire—I feel this tug, and I’m back in my living room staring at Paulie’s puppy-dog eyes.

Paul kissed me on the cheek and said, “I thought we lost you, mate.”

I said, “Nope. You didn’t. I’m back. Lucky me. Say, is there any more of that fookin’ lysergic left?”

JESUS CHRIST:
I was fookin’ sad to let Johnny go back to Earth, and I would’ve loved to find a way to keep him around, but Dad gets pissed when I break a rule, and when Dad gets pissed, it’s bloody hell for everybody.

GEORGE HARRISON:
After the John disaster, I couldn’t
wait
to try Eppy’s next batch.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
I tweaked the recipe, so George’s experience was far better than John’s, in that he didn’t die. But he had his own problems, the most notable being a nasty case of leprosy that lasted several weeks.

GEORGE HARRISON:
The high was nice, but it wasn’t worth losing any limbs over. On the plus side, if it wasn’t for Brian’s LSD, I never would’ve come up with the skintar.

NEIL ASPINALL:
A few days before we were to leave on a tour of the Far East—and while he was in the midst of his leprosy problem—George rang me up and told me to get to his flat
immediately
because he had something to share. When I showed up at his place an hour later, I rang the bell, and he yelled, “Come in! Door’s open! I’m not leaving the house!”

One look at him, and I understood why he didn’t want to be seen in public. Aside from the fact that one or two of his fingers plopped onto the floor every few minutes, his skin was, well, his skin was
gone.
Okay, it wasn’t
totally
gone, just the first two layers, and the one layer that was left was translucent; I could see practically every bone, organ, and muscle in his body. It was very Midpointery. I told him, “Looking good, Georgie. Leslie Langley’s been asking about you. Why don’t you give her a jingle? You’re as handsome as I’ve ever seen you.”

He said, “Very funny. Listen, I have something very serious to share. You’re the first person who’s ever seen this, and you can’t be judgmental about it, and, most important, you can’t freak out.”

I said, “George, after what I’ve seen over the past four years, nothing can possibly freak me out.”

He said, “If you say so.”

And then he reached behind his sofa and pulled out something that freaked me out.

He said, “So what do you think?”

I asked him, “Is that what I think it is?”

He said, “Dunno. What do you think it is?”

I said, “I think it’s a guitar fashioned out of the skin that slid off your body. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shove off to the loo and say good-bye to my lunch.”

GEORGE HARRISON:
For the previous several months, I’d been hearing different musical noises in my head, sounds that my trusty old Epiphone
wasn’t capable of making. So when the first two layers of my skin slid off during my LSD trip, I got out my tools and went to work.

The first thing I did was bake my fallen skin in the oven at a low temperature for about forty-five minutes, so it’d stiffen up without rotting, and hopefully get a bit darker in color. I watched it carefully, because if I overcooked it, it’d get crispy and lose its pliancy and resonance. Once the skin was heated to my satisfaction, I brought out an X-Acto knife, set one layer of the epidermis aside, and cut the other layer into what I believed would be the perfect shape for an instrument. I then cooked up some porridge—overcooked, actually, so it’d be nice and thick—and slathered it all over the skin; then I put the whole mess back into the oven for ten or so minutes. Meanwhile, I rolled up the other skin layer into a nice, tight tube, then went to the oven and removed what was about to become the instrument’s body, then glued the two pieces together with some more porridge, then put it back in the oven for a few more minutes, then after it cooled down, I covered it with shellac. When it dried, I put eight strings on it—if six is good, eight is better—and voila, a skintar.

One strum, and I fell in love with the sound—full, singing, and meaty—but I knew right off the bat that keeping it in tune would be an issue.

NEIL ASPINALL:
When I came out of the bathroom, George said, “You’re the roadie, so here’s a question for you: Can I bring the skintar on tour with us?”

It was grotty, utterly grotty, but, even more problematical, it didn’t sound particularly good, so I told him, “Best you leave it at home, Georgie. I have a hunch the Japanese won’t take too kindly to that sort of thing. They’re already cheesed-off with Ringo, and we don’t need any more trouble.”

George nodded, and said, “Oh. Right. That Ninja shit. Good point.”

RINGO STARR:
Eppy had scheduled the Tokyo shows months before, and since we’d never been to Japan, the country was going mad. Aside from the Japanese wanting to hear us live, Japan has a very small zombie population, and since most of the population had never seen any undead, the curiosity level was through the ceiling.

This isn’t to say they were looking forward to seeing us. See, Japan had a huge warrior population, and, as I soon found out, Japanese warriors weren’t big fans of British Ninja Lords.

Like me.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
That press conference in Tokyo was a nightmare. Those journos are lucky John didn’t attack them, y’know.

JOHN LENNON:
Hey, if you’re fookin’ with Ringo, that means you’re fookin’ with me.

RINGO STARR:
The writers thought I was a phony. They made it clear that the belief around the country was, the only reason I’d been given Seventh Level status was because I was a rock star, and I was besmirching the good Ninja Lord name. I tried to explain that I reached the Seventh Level before joining the Beatles, but they either weren’t listening or didn’t believe me. I wanted to cry, but Lords above Fourth Level aren’t allowed to cry in public.

JOHN LENNON:
Ringo clammed up, but it wouldn’t have mattered if the poor guy was reading the Magna Carta, because all those bastards would’ve shouted him down anyhow. I leaned over to Ringo and said, “You’ve gotta do something physical.”

He mumbled, “The only thing I want to do is get out of here.”

I told him, “Listen, the only thing these cunts’ll understand is a demonstration of your Ninja talents. Be a warrior. Show them the skills, mate. And if you have to make one of ’em bleed, so be it. I give you full permission, because nobody but
nobody
can shit on the Beatles without incurring our wrath.”

RINGO STARR:
John had a point. If I showed them Seventh Level skills, there was a better chance they’d accept me. Problem was, I wasn’t comfortable frivolously using my Ninja techniques, especially near the actual birthplace of the Ninja movement. Defending yourself during a physical attack is accepted—encouraged, even—but going on the offensive during a verbal barrage isn’t.

But once the bloke from the
Sekai Nippo
newspaper threw a spitball at me, all bets were off.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
I knew Ringo could move fast, but I didn’t know
how
fast. If I could’ve actually seen what he did, I’m certain it would’ve been a sight to behold, y’know, but I only saw the results. A dozen or so reporters were screaming accusations at our poor drummer, then I blinked, and the bloke from
Sekai Nippo
is hanging from the ceiling fan by his tie, and two other reporters are pinned on the wall with Ninja stars, and the rest of the lot are facedown on the ground, their wrists tied behind their backs. That little stunt probably cost us thousands and thousands of dollars in lost record sales, but I couldn’t blame Ringo one bit.

It shouldn’t have ever happened, really. These guys were Japanese, for goodness sake. They were raised at the home of the Ninja, and they should’ve known better than to piss off an honest-to-goodness Ninja Lord.

RINGO STARR:
The story was all over the news, and the fans weren’t happy. The next day, we started our run of three nights at the Budokan Hall, and the crowd booed before each song, during each song, and after each song. When they weren’t booing, they were yelling for my scalp. But the Japanese are generally a peaceful lot, and they never went after me; it was just a bunch of noise.

Still, I couldn’t wait to get out of that country and over to the Philippines. I knew it would be far, far better.

GEORGE HARRISON:
The Philippines were far, far worse.

JOHN LENNON:
We were always going, going, going, and we barely had the opportunity to check out our own local newspapers, so how was I supposed to find the time to read what was happening in the fookin’ Philippines?

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
The Filipinos had it out for us from the get-go. Had we known what had happened there the year before with the zombie population, we probably would’ve skipped it altogether.