McDonaldland Nakatomi, Inc

I remember a better time. A time when life was about having fun, enjoying a sunny day, or just hanging out with friends. That was when it felt good to be alive. But now the only thing I feel about being amongst the living is lucky. Or unlucky, if you really want to be brutally honest. How can one feel good about being one of the only survivors of…

McDonaldland!

Thunderlips’s Top-Secret Private Journal
Date: Forgotten. Time means nothing in McDonaldland

My belly was growling. How long had it been since I had eaten? Sure, I still had some thawed Flav-R-Ice leftover from the days when refrigeration still worked. But I wasn’t excited about another bout of Sugar Madness. No, I needed something with substance. That’s when I decided to make the terrifying journey down the road. The food wasn’t far from my bunker. But how far can you get in Hell on flip flops? Not very damn far, Skippy.

I wandered almost blindly through deserted streets. The acid sting of rain tore into me, proving even the elements would be a danger. It was Man that had made Mother Nature into a whore… and she was crying poison tears.

Through a jungle of tangled and useless phone lines, wires, and cables, I saw it: the Golden Arches.

Billions and billions DOOMED.

It’s ironic to call them that now. It’s a lie, even. Passing through Golden Arches, you would expect safety… warmth… maybe even hope. The only thing I would find here was a mockery of what we used to believe represented Food, Folks, and Fun. That was in the days before the totalitarian regime declared a police state.

Remember when McDonaldland was fun and you could frolic?

Our sanctuaries had become asylums. And when you amass so many of the hungry, the insane, and the desperate together under one roof and call it dinner time… well, what do you expect to happen? Of course they began eating each other! It’s in our nature, you know. As long as it’s deep fried, who cares where the meat comes from?

But that was in the past. The demonic Fry Kids had long deserted their former eating grounds, skittering into the endless night.

We called them Moptops when the killings started. They scalped their victims and braided their gruesome prizes into their own hair.

The Grimace beast had slithered his grotesque, fluid bulk in search of other prey. Though the trail of edible slime he left behind sustained our need of food for a week, I’m still having those awful hallucinations.

This shake-stealing horror moved on to more interesting game… your children!

And Mayor McCheese? The beloved leader that had sold us all down the river… who knows where that sonofabitch went? With all the money he took, he’s surely enjoying himself in a fortified palace on a throne of deceit. I didn’t even vote for that asshole.

The Cheeseburger Who Sold the World

And then there’s Ronald McDonald. Poor, stupid Ronald. Once a bringer of joy, a smiling jackanape that struggled to bring peace and equality to the world through his wondrous commercials… his tale is too tragic to even recount. But be forewarned. Keep your remaining loved ones nearby at all times, or else they may wander too close to McDonaldland’s hungriest scavenger.

If you see this, you’re already dead.

Those were just some of the monsters to be wary of. As I slipped into the wreckage, I spied a brood of zombies staring stupidly at the cracked menus that used to shine down invitingly on the restaurant’s patrons. I slipped by them towards one of the Workers. The Workers move slowly, and seem to be
trained in some way to be servile towards the few survivors brave (or stupid) enough to fight their way in. The Worker I approached had an extended belly. My heart sank at this new information. They can breed. Dear Lord, the Workers can BREED!

“How can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah. Can I have a number twelve? Do you guys have McDonaldland cookies?”

What can I say? I knew it would be days before I would work up the courage to make another trek outside. And eating cookie-flavored fetishes of the McDonaldland freaks might help me better understand the mind of the psychotic killers. To destroy a monster, you must become one.

“Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t have those at our location. They have them at others, but not ours.”

Goddammit. So much for dry, packaged rations.

“Oh… okay. Then I’ll take the smallest Chicken McNuggets available.”

I amused myself by referring to them as chicken. Like such a creature would ever survive the famished denizens of McDonaldland. Surely any meat in the overly-crisped “nuggets” was stripped from a raccoon, the only animal that has thrived in the Hell we have made of this world. Rabies will do that for ya.

It may not be delicious, but fried raccoon is a delicacy few can afford in our post-apocalyptic world.

She repreated my last order, drone-like. “One four-piece McNugget. Here…”

I jumped to alertness when the Pregnant Worker turned away from me. Was she going for a weapon? Was the dormant thing lying in the normally-docile Counter Worker controlling her actions from within? My heart pounded in my chest and felt like it would burst out. Much like the child was sure to be “born” into our burning world.

She was digging around in the cardboard boxes we used to call “Happy Meals.” If only there were meals to be happy about. Then she turned around and placed two small packages on the counter in front of me. I looked at them cautiously. They were small packets of McDonaldland cookies!

Looks like I’ll be eating this month!

She smiled at me as if I were humanity’s last hope, and these stale wafers pressed into the Ronald’s image were going to help in some foolish quest to save us all. I smiled sheepishly, too ashamed to admit I was going to retreat to my safehouse immediately after woofing down my “number twelve.”

While waiting for the Fry Cooks to kill and prepare my meal, I grabbed at the paper cup left upside-down on a tray and looked for a hydration station. The machine I found dispensed five different kinds of Coca-Cola and a drink that was supposed to taste like the fruit we used to call oranges. They were the color orange, coincidentally enough. It feels odd to remember those little details now.

Having returned to the counter with my disposable canteen filled to the brim with still-bubbling orange brew, I was stunned to see the two paper boxes, one small and one considerably bigger. Then the kind Pregnant Worker placed a paper satchel of potato-flavored grease sticks on the tray.

“There ya go!”

Thank you, Pregnant Worker. I hope you birth well and live happily in ignorance, though I fear that’s not possible, not even for a Worker. Not in McDonaldland. Not in a place where THIS is considered “normal”:

The Burger Clown shows us the gaping maw and deadly chompers he is now feared for.

I looked for a table that had yet to be upturned or missing. I found one facing a grimy window to the gloomy outside world. A world I was terribly afraid of. But that’s a fear that keeps me alive. A fear that immediately began buzzing inside of my head as I looked at my meal.

The meal of the damned… oh look, Monopoly’s back!

As I started consuming what the menu referred to as an Angus burger (I bet poor Angus never knew what hit him), I started hearing strange grunts and clicks and chattering. I looked up from my Scottish manburger and saw a Mumbler not twenty paces from me! These unpredictable shambling-men used to frequent buses and sit on the sidewalks in front of downtown buildings back in the days before the Public Transportation Revolt. When there were buildings to sit in front of, if one so desired.

The wretched thing growled and sang and clicked to itself, its dirty face pressed against a grimy window. It kept directing its attention to me and my consumables. I looked in front of it and saw only a cup of the bitter McDonaldland excuse for coffee. I had better eat quickly. Don’t look up, don’t engage the creature. Just eat, and eat fast.

I dined to the chorus of noises and grunts of the muck-man. The food was unpleasant, but filling. Much like the time I was reduced to gnawing on a cat. That thing scratched the shit out of me. Perhaps I should have slain the morsel first. With my plastic fork, I stabbed each McNugget in turn.

Let it never be said I don’t learn my lessons.

The Mumbler continued his mournful song. For the sake of this entry, I screwed up my courage to capture an image of the deranged survivor.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he was REALLY into it.

I brought this picture to you at great peril. Though my karate skills are at their peak, I was weighed down by a meal that consisted wholly of lard and orange Hi-C. I was no match in speed for a Mumbler cranked up on McCafe with a twist of crazy-as-fuck juice. Instead of further antagonizing the deadly drifter, I shuffled the waste products of my meal together onto the tray and hurried away.

Before I left, and having discovered a new sense of morbid adventure, I decided to take an amusing picture of me in the McDonaldland bathroom, post-Lovin’ It. But I was horrified to find what appeared to be little imp-like children splashing and playing in the remnants of the Hamburglar. What’s black and white and red all over? I can now tell you it’s not a newspaper, friends.

In Memoriam. Rubble rubble, little buddy.