The transition from wondering what it would be like to die to standing in the middle of a random McDonald's wondering why I hadn't chosen to die when I had the chance was surreal. 

The lights above me were way too bright, the beeping from the fryers behind the counter was shrill and insistent, and kids were screaming and crying for their Happy Meals behind the window of the kiddy playground while their bored-looking parents played on their phones. 

If there was a hell, I suspected it looked something like a crappy McDonald's in New York during lunch hour. 

I fight through the chaos and approach the counter, dodging people carrying greasy bags of food as they shuffle past and out the door onto the similarly busy street. 

"Welcome to McDonald's, home of the happiest employees and the best burgers ever!" The pimply teen behind the counter with a crewcut drawls boredly when I finally make eye contact with him. "What do you want, bruh?" He asks, and then he sighs in exhaustion. 

"I'm looking for a guy who works here," I tell him, and then I glance toward the window to my far right and spot Felix shooting me a thumbs up and a huge encouraging smile. Next to him, Bones stands casually smoking a cigarette with one bony white hand, his hoodie pulled over his head—a weird modern-day grim reaper. 

My teeth snap together and clench.

Shit, I thought I'd told those two bozos to stay in the car before I came in.

"Look, man," The McDonald's employee squints at me a little. "You're tying up the line," He says, pointing to the giant line of grumpy people standing directly behind me. "So, if you're not gonna order something from our menu, then you're pretty much wasting my time, and I have better ways to do that than standing around listening to your sob story."

My patience starts to run thin, and the level of noise from the crowded restaurant starts to press in on me on all sides. "Fine," I reply with a thin smile that I knew was absolutely menacing. "I would like to order a single vanilla ice cream cone, and then I need you to tell me where the fuck Ender Calloway is."

"We don't have that," The cashier replies boredly, "The ice cream machine's down."

"Then do you know where Ender is?" I growl at the little shit, barely suppressing the twitch behind my eye when I lean forward, hands flat on the greasy counter. 

"Can't tell you that," he replies, just a hint of smugness behind his tone. "Confidentiality issues."

A crowd of McDonald's employees starts to gather around behind the counter as brown bags of repulsive food begin to accumulate like body parts primed to be tossed into the incinerator. Still, I continue to hold up the line despite the dozen orders flying out every five minutes. 

"Next customer!" The cashier shouts gleefully, and the old woman behind me practically elbows me out of the way to get to the counter. 

"I want a Diet Coke, an apple pie, and two triple pounders with extra pound sauce--"

"Listen here, you intolerable little mold spore!" I snarl as I shove the old woman out of the way with a shriek and grab the cashier by the front of his shirt. "For the last twenty-four hours, I've seen horrors beyond your feeble mortal comprehension!" I practically spit out my words, "My life has been nothing but a walking shitshow of blood and death! Do you understand? So you're going to tell me where Ender Calloway is, or so help me God, I'm going to get my friend to rip every last bone out of your body until you're reduced to nothing but a greasy shit stain on the wall!"

The cashier's eyes practically bug out of his head.

---

A while later, I stagger toward the McDonald's exit, and Felix slides against the glass outside, following me to the front door with an eager expression on his happy face before I step outside. 

"Did you find out where Ender's at?"

"No."

"Oh, okay. But you got at least some kind of clue or hint, right?"

"No."

"Well, did you find out anything?" Felix asks, sounding ten kinds of disappointed,

I shove a fifty-piece bag of chicken nuggets and fries into his gut and shove past him and Bones, my shoulders hunched slightly in annoyance. 

"Hector?"

"Bro, leave him alone," Bones tells Felix as I walk towards the car, "He obviously didn't find out anything in there, otherwise, he would have told us already."

I fumble with my keys, unlock the door to my car, and slide into the driver's seat, but I don't bother starting up the car. Instead, I lean my head against the steering wheel and lay on the horn until the car lets out an ungodly, long honk that fills the parking lot. People stare as my car continues to shriek, but I was so pissed off that I didn't care who I was bothering right now.

At last, Felix takes hold of my extremely short hair and pulls my head back, away from the steering wheel, freeing the screaming horn from my forehead.

"What happened in there?" "What did you find out?" he asks me, sounding sincere and probably more worried about his job than my rapidly declining mental state. 

With my hair still entangled in his pink-nailed fingers, I narrow my eyes and look up at him. "Well, gosh, Felix! I just got into a fistfight with a cashier and got banned from every McDonald's in New York until I die decrepit and senile in a nursing home somewhere!" I curl my lip slightly in a sneer. "I didn't find out crap about Ender or where he's at. This isn't going to work! It's impossible to find one person in a city as big as this one is!" I reach up to swat his hand away and move to stick my keys in the ignition. "This was such a dumb idea."

"I don't think it's a dumb idea," He replies with a pout and holds out the bag of chicken nuggets to Bones, who fishes one out and proceeds to chew it in full view of both of us, which was... disgusting, to say the least. "I know how you feel about Ender. It has to be hard knowing that you're in love with someone who has to die to stop the apocalypse."

"Felix," I grit out through my teeth, "I literally have the emotional capacity of a wet sponge. And whatever you think I feel for Ender? I don't. I'm not hunting him down because I love him. I'm hunting him down because I want to wring his fucking neck when I find him!"

Felix examines his bag of nuggets and shrugs, "There are different forms of love out there."

"Yeah, and I want none of them!" I snap at him.

"Hey, idiots!" Bones calls from the back seat, "I think I might have found something that's going to help us find our guy!"