by David Nell
After we had finished our meal, we hopped into my jeep and drove down to the lab. As I proceeded to step inside the building, I could not help but smell the awful odor that inhabited the walls surrounding me. It reeked to high heaven. Smelling like ape shit, vomit and stale air, I was thinking how in the hell did they ever manage to work in these types of conditions? But the smell had been a surprise to the Major as well. Nauseated, he puked up the plate of food that he had eaten nearly 30 minutes before. The smell – it was terrible – it stunk so bad that when the major got sick, his fresh vomit actually made it smell a little better in there. It was that bad.
When the Major was finished hurling and wiping himself off, he started calling out for Dr. Häussermann. As he did this, he walked through the lab and opened as many windows as possible as he went. I, on the other hand, had begun to look around at the chimps. I wanted to see if what I had been told was true. When I saw them, they all had a slightly dazed look about them. I noticed that each one had started looking like hairy, white sausage links. Matching exactly what the Major had told me earlier. I then spotted all the food dishes, full and untouched, and I knew right away that was not a good sign. If they were this far into the stages of devolving, what did Donner look like? I had started making my way to his cage when I heard the most chilling scream I could ever have imagined, and the thing that fucked me up worse...the sound seemed to have come from Major Neville.
Shaking his head, Jimmy began to shake. His arms had gotten goose bumps all over them and his tone in which he was telling the tale became flat and emotionless.
I ran into the Major's private office. At first I didn't know what was wrong. His back turned, he was sitting in his chair looking out the window. "Shit, Robert," I said, "You damn near had me crappin' my pants!" I let out a nervous laugh and went over to him. It was there that I witnessed the worse thing I had ever laid my eyes upon. The Major was dead; almost his entire neck had been chewed off. He looked like a hollowed-out log, and the only things keeping his head attached to his body was the back of his chair and what was left of his exposed spinal column. Blood had flowed generously down onto his lap and collected into a puddle between his legs on the seat of the chair. It was at that moment that I had the second worse fright of my life...Down on his knees; Doctor Häussermann was lapping up the pool blood like a dog drinking from a water dish. So consumed with feeding, he never noticed me standing there.
I was lost for a moment. I didn't know what to do...the major was dead...the Doc was clearly sick...I froze with a Godly panic. It wasn't until Häussermann, seeing that I was standing there in shock, began making his way toward me that I snapped out of it.
PS: What was Häussermann's appearance like?
Jimmy: First thing I noticed was the blood. It was everywhere on him. Like he had bathed in it. But I didn't get too good a look at him right away because he was coming straight at me. So I did the only thing I could do, I drew my 38 Special and fired all six rounds into him. The monster took every bullet in the chest, but it did not faze the bastard. He just kept coming. Frantic, I looked around the office to see if I could grab anything and use as a weapon, that's when I spotted the Major's old Harvard Hockey stick sticking out of his umbrella can by the entry. I ran over, grabbed it, and in a single motion, turned around and brought it down on Häussermann's head like I was trying to split a piece of wood. Then, with a loud snap and a broken stick from my efforts, the doctor finally went down and did not get back up.
Only when I had finally regained my composure, was I able to get a good look at the Doc. Like the chimps, his skin had taken on a translucent quality. But there were some differences. On the body parts that didn't have the Major's blood on them, Häussermann had a slightly glazed coating all over him; an amber-colored, bile-like substance was being pushed out from his pores. It looked like a lacquer coating on a piece of stained furniture. His eyes and ears had been bleeding at some point, as the color of his own blood had had enough time to darken and harden on his face. He looked like a monster.
I knew right away that, somehow, whatever Donner's system had changed into, the cells had adapted and became transferable, communicable. The symptoms had commonalities of what Major Neville had described, but somehow had evolved again, with the results laying face up in front of me. This was bad. Real fucking bad. I needed to do something, so I went to the Major's liquor cabinet grabbed his scotch, grabbed some of the Goofballs* from his desk and tried to numb the reality of what just occurred.
I wish I had felt a little more remorse at the time. Jimmy was clearly sharing a part of his life that he wished he could have forgotten. As painful as it was for him, the world needed me to continue to press him for details.
*Goofballs were Barbiturates that were popular during the 1940s. During WWII, some soldiers were prescribed these while they were in the field to help them manage daily working conditions. Because many soldiers returned with addictions that required rehabilitation, other less-addictive drugs replaced Goofballs later on. It is noted, however, that some military officials kept personal supplies on hand to help them get through the day.
PS: After you had a chance to down a couple drinks and take a few pills, what was your course of action?
Jimmy: I was going to call headquarters, and report what had just happened. But that changed when Major Neville got up out of his chair and started to come toward me. If I had not witnessed all that I had in those past 24 hours, I probably would have shit myself. But none of it caught me off guard. I mean, sure, I was surprised to see a man walking around with his head hanging there off his body like a piece of meat on a line of waxed dental floss. I didn't even look at his face. Remembering how I had stopped Häussermann, I grabbed what remained of the hockey stick and jabbed it into his head with such quick force that it resulted in him looking like a pimento olive on top of ham and Swiss sandwich. The only movement he made was his fall to the floor.
Seeing this, I realized what we had done. We were modern-day Frankensteins: Major Neville, Doctor Häussermann and myself. Defying the rules of nature and the laws of God, we created something so ugly, so awful, my only thoughts were how can I help Elvis? And how does it end here?
PS: Clearly it did not. What did you do or what didn't you do that could have stopped what we are all seeing today?
Jimmy: I am not a dumb man, Mr. Sullivan, nor was I then. But I was drunk and high, and not thinking as clearly as I should have. If I had to do over again, thinking with a clear head, I would have destroyed everything and, God forgive me as this probably sounds bad...Elvis.
I could have ended all right there. Everything needed to stop it was all at my fingertips, but I was not in the proper frame of mind. I believed that if I grabbed the Major's diary and Häussermann's notes, I could fix Elvis. That if I grabbed Donner's blood work analysis and kept a vigilant eye on Elvis's health, I could still save my friend...So that's exactly what I did.
I took all I could that would go unnoticed by the army, hid it in my vehicle and then I called the authorities.
You can imagine the look of horror on their faces when they arrived. I had never seen so many grown men look so scared and sick at the same time. They puked up so much that you could have painted a house with their vomit. When the Major's contact arrived at the scene, he brought with him two other suits that looked like doctors. For nearly four days straight, they gathered everything they could, and took turns questioning me.
What happened next, I am not sure? I mean I realize now that they had seen the potential in this work for a biological weapon. Who wouldn't? A disease that could turn an entire population onto itself, without a bullet fired from our side of the fence? The problem with their line of thinking was that they could contain it. It's a living plague with a will of its own for crying out loud. Look around; clearly they decided to use it, as we are all seeing the fruit of that harvest.
PS: A harvest from the seeds you helped provide.
Jimmy started crying and broke into an angr
y sob.
Jimmy: Yeeessss, I fucking know that! Do you think it has been easy seeing the world tear itself apart, knowing I had a hand in all that? That I could have seen to it that it never took place? Knowing that I ruined millions of lives and destroyed one of my best friends – all for personal glory? I am fucking dying here, today, because I have lived with these facts for over fifty years! I have suffered more than anyone shall ever know, and I go to my grave knowing I deserve every moment of this pain I have carried.
It was bad enough that I did what I did. But what I did to Elvis...that I didn't just sentence the man to death. I ruined his reputation. That as a result of the symptoms of the Endal disease taking its toll on his body and appearance, he became a joke later in life. That people thought he was weak with a drug problem, when he was doing exactly what I asked him to. All in my efforts to keep him from changing into a monster.
I am not as smart as Neville or Häussermann. I thought I was, but the fact I could not save my good friend Elvis proved that I was not.
PS: Your weren't dumb Jimmy, you did manage to keep him from changing for all those years after you both left Germany. How did you manage that?
Jimmy: Pills. The disease was smart. The cells were adapting at such a high rate, I had to prescribe Elvis various drug cocktails, not unlike the method HIV patients use, in order to keep his body from adjusting. I also had him on a high-protein diet and made sure he was eating as much as possible to help keep his cells' desire for nutrients at bay. And it did work for a little while, but around '74, he started to show the symptoms that I had been working years at trying to avoid.
During that year, Elvis' weight ballooned. It was quite noticeable. His tour schedule had to be altered. His jumpsuits that he was so famous for during that era, were a suggestion of mine to make sure his skin was well protected and contained. That keeping him covered ensured that no one saw that his complexion was changing. We had been dying his hair for years, it was the first sign I had seen of the disease. He told people he wanted to look like Tony Curtis, but really he was hiding the fact that he was silver haired before he was 25. I also had him start doing more things at night, avoiding direct sunlight. When we were traveling, he would have his windows lined with tinfoil to keep the light off of him. I thought that if the sun's rays could damage a normal person's skin, what would happen to someone like Elvis, who was starting to show more evidence of the changes Donner had gone through nearly 15 years before.
PS: Did Elvis Or the Colonel ever know the truth?
Jimmy: No. No one besides me knew the truth. Not even the army. When they requested the paperwork on Elvis after the massacre at the lab, I gave them my notes on him, and then gave them blood I had taken from Vernon a couple weeks before when I did him a favor and gave him a physical. No, everyone thought that Elvis was in good health and I let them believe it...And up until today, it was a secret that no one else ever knew.
PS: The night Elvis died, do you believe the effects of Endal caused it?
Jimmy: I am not sure. He did not display the madness I had seen in Häussermann in the days leading to his death. He was bloating, as he was starting to retain the dead processed matter from the foods he was eating and was not going to the bathroom. I think, in the end, it was everything: the disease, the drug therapy and his lagging career that led him to die in his bathroom that August afternoon.
Honestly I know I would like to think that I had nothing to do with it, but that would be a lie. I know that, indeed, I had a direct hand in that young man's death and that it was a direct result of Endal.
Jimmy cried some more. This time I let him cry for a while and got up to stretch my legs a bit. As I was walking around the hall, I asked myself, would I have done the same as him for one of my friends? Could I have kept a secret like the one Jimmy carried for as long as he did? Then my thoughts were interrupted by the latest TV report from the nurse's station discussing the final death toll at Tallahassee. I needed to finish this, even though I was not sure how I would have responded in the same situation, I did know that I needed to get an answer. I needed to get the clue that Jimmy had been sitting on this whole time. The one clue that could possibly turn the tide on the insidious Winchester Pandemic.
PS: When Elvis died, did he reanimate?
Jimmy: Not at first. No. I was hurting. We all were hurting. But I had to keep my grief in check long enough to make sure that he did not rise from the dead and start eating people. I sat with him at both the coroners and the funeral home. It was at Memphis Funeral Home where I saw his body come back to life. There he was being prepped to be embalmed and his head popped up. He had a blank expression in his eyes, yet, you could see the yearning for sustenance that his cells demanded. It was then that I took a scalpel off the table, came up and slipped it into his ear canal. The whole time, I was crying and apologizing. I must have cradled his head for what felt like hours. When I set him back down, I realized that they would be opening him back up. Which could expose the mortician and anyone else that may come in contact with Elvis's body. I did the only thing I could do. I put the body into the crematory oven and burned the remains. I needed to make sure I ended it. That I couldn't make the same mistake again.
PS: How do you think that Major Neville, Doctor Häussermann and Elvis Presley were able to come back to life?
Jimmy: I have thought a lot about that over the years and from my own research and what Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann had written in their journals; it has to do with the mutated cells and their ability to survive on minimal amounts of oxygen. When the heart stops beating in the infected host, the cells go into super survival mode and take over certain bodily functions that will allow them to live. The look of life returning to its victims is merely the illusion of it.
PS: What about Elvis's body? It was now missing. How did you deal with this?
Jimmy: I am sure you heard some of the conspiracy rumors, that it wasn't Elvis in the coffin the day of his funeral. That it looked like a wax dummy. Well, it was a wax dummy. The Colonel was not sure what to do, as he and the family had made arrangements to have a huge funeral service and needed a body. So he called in a favor to a special effects artist he knew and had a wax life-like Elvis created, so they could have an open casket. The coffin was so damn heavy because they had to put a refrigeration unit in there to keep the wax from melting.
PS: What about the family? I mean they didn't have the body of their son, their father and their friend.
Jimmy: That was particularly hard for me. Seeing them grieve and then having to find out that the body went missing. They had no idea what I had done. They all thought that someone stole his body. Being that he was the biggest star in the world, it did make sense. Vernon, however, was not happy with any of the arrangements – he hated not having the body, he hated the Colonel's solution and he said he would be damned if he was going to take part in that lie. So what he did was, when he signed Elvis's death certificate and had his headstone created, he purposely misspelled his middle name. He wrote Aaron instead of Aron. I guess that was part of his way of dealing with it all.
I knew that we were at a sensitive part in the story, but I needed to get to the point of all this. So I asked the hard question.
PS: Thank you for sharing this awful and amazing story. I realize that it must be tough for you, but I need to ask: Is this all? Not that I don't think that the world needs to hear this tale, but is there hope here?
You have seen the stories on TV; I know you have seen the photos in the papers and online Jimmy. You know what's at stake. Please tell me there is more to all this.
Jimmy was anticipating this question. He reached over to his bedstand and opened the drawer. Struggling, he pulled out some old notebooks and folders bound together with twine.
Jimmy: Here is the hope you are looking for. It is all of what I took from Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann the day of their deaths. It has all the original findings and theories of the tortoise cell therapy, the refinement of Endal
and the early findings of Donner's blood work. I know I should have handed these over when I saw the first major outbreak, but I was not prepared to deal with an angry world. Now that I am dying, I know I will not have to live with that for much longer. Take these to the CDC; they will know what to do. Hopefully once they get the notes and data from the patient zero, they can create a cure.
Please let the world know I am sorry, that we only did what we thought was right. Let the people know there was not a day that went by that I did not live with extreme regret and heartache. And if I had to do it all over again, I know we all would have made wiser decisions.
Also, make sure Elvis Presley's family, friends and fans know the truth. Restore his reputation. Make right what I took away.
As I reached over and grabbed them, Jimmy looked away. I took it as his way of saying goodbye. Not quite knowing what I should do, I got up, thanked him and walked out of the room with what could be the first ray of hope the world may have seen in many years.