I'm standing poolside outside a crumbling motel on the desolate outskirts of Tonopah, the kind of place where hope goes to die when the world suddenly spirals out of control around me and Ender Calloway. The sun beats down, baking the cracked asphalt and old lounge chairs.

The scene feels like a decrepit postcard.

Let me make things clear: by this point, I had lost count of how many times I'd witnessed the end of the world. I'd seen cities reduced to rubble after nuclear wars, the streets overrun with hordes of undead feasting on whatever human flesh they could find, and even eerie apocalyptic landscapes devoid of life. You name it, I'd been there, done that, and probably shed more than a few tears crying in some dingy restroom, trying to wash away the memories of the horrors I'd survived.

I just wasn't aware of how it would ultimately end—for me and Ender, that is. 

"Just fucking pull the trigger, Hector! We're already out of time!" Ender screams at me, and we both flinch when an explosion rocks the Clown Motel directly behind us, and a meteor the size of a minivan takes out half the roof and fills the orange sky with black smoke. Shortly after, the faint sound of electronic clown laughter from the waving Chuckles the Clown sign abruptly cuts off with a screech, and that falls, too.

"You know it's not that easy for me to kill you anymore! This time it's different!" I scream shrilly back at Ender, a blast of heat from the cracks in the concrete around us rising from the ground. The water in the slimy green pool behind us is boiling, and the flamingo pink lawn chairs collapse under the weight of the falling hot tub. 

It was hard to believe that just days before, both of us had been lounging around the hotel eating hot fries, avoiding the FBI and a nationwide manhunt, and now we were here, and I had a gun in one hand, prepared to put my best friend and the world out of their misery like a rabid Old Yeller in the barn.

"You're being an idiot!" Ender screams as loud as he can over the explosions, and his face is beet red at this point. "The world is and will always end with me! Every goddamn time! I told you that a long time ago. We even shook on it!"

"I had my fingers crossed behind my back, so it doesn't count!" I shout, and another explosion rocks our world, sending me toppling into Ender, who quickly catches me before I can knock him over into the boiling-hot pool. "I just need a second to think about it! You're not just asking me to kill you. You're asking me to kill you forever. We never agreed on that!"

"Hector!" 

The Clown Motel erupts into a fireball directly behind us, deafening all noise and sound, and toy clowns and confetti rain down from the sky like rockets, some of them ending up in the cemetery directly across from us while others impale themselves on cactus plants upside down. 

Ender and I are blown away, like little cartoon guys in a comic strip, arms and legs flailing. We hit the ground, seconds later, burnt clown plushies squeaking when they fell around us, cotton stuffing exploding out of them.

I never would have said yes to Ender Calloway if I had known how the end of the world would turn out for us. Maybe if I had, I would have picked a better place to ride out the apocalypse than The Clown Motel in Tonopah. 

This was where it ended, and this is where it all began.