Would you like to play a flash?

Kudos to General Cormac for such arcane chicanery,
a pox upon me for the following painful radioactivity.

As far as Jack was concerned, even a field of four-leaf clovers couldn’t turn things around. He was convinced that because he was born in a leap year, that he was under a secret thirteenth Zodiac sign and its symbol was a giant screw. Lucky for him, his middling, psilocybin post-insert favorite here-ism wanderings led him through a soft, rolling field irrigated by abandoned nuclear power plant runoff. Sixty-six- and sixty-seven-leaf clovers had to be good for something other than a future Ripley's curiosity or condemnation by local preacherdom as a great work of the devil. They could use a dom, those subs to sky fairies, Jack chuckled to no one in particular.

Why was it so hot in February?

Ah, yes, Radiation Day, the annual commemoration of when screws turned thumbs blue then red when blood gushed out and there ain't a competent phlebotomist when you need one nowadays. High glucose? No matter, plutonium'll wash that right clean just like it washed all the endorphins, endocrinologists and uxorious urologists away and left the rest of this wretched species some comic book combination of neon purple, orange flake and bald. I was getting there on my own, thank you very much, world leaders, Jack exclaimed to no one in particular.

Humanity had no idea that the cliché apocalyptic plague wouldn't kill millions upon millions, but instead drive them absolutely batty. Think Pee-Wee Herman swaying to his own Electric Kool-Aid Funky Satan Groove. The various shadow governments didn't have a plan in place for such a surprise, of course, and the planetwide fingers-on-buttons were now attached to homo sapiens crazier and more bloodthirsty than the completely hypothetical, genetically-spliced laboratory love child of Dick Cheney and Osama bin Laden. Probably just a rumor, I'm sure. Only scattered pockets of fanatical Muslims or amillenialist Christians or third temple Jews or Buddhists (yes, even they've gone violently loon) or Wiccans (yes, even they're spending less time naked under the moon) remain.

If it wasn't for un, the continued inability of said groups to put aside childish questions of abstract, unprovable dogma and self-righteous scowling in order to band together on some pan-world crusade and deux, roving gangs of murderous nihilist bicyclists shooting the religionists dead at every opportunity, this manic depressive pseudo-civilization on the lookout for the next cache of soothing booze would fall like an inebriated deck of cards. Manic depressives like me, Jack retorted to no one in particular.

The ground suddenly fell like an inebriated deck of cards and Jack found himself no worse for the ware in a dimly-lit (and thankfully cool) tunnel, which was strange because what fool would set up camp in the shadow of such a monstrosity as a abandoned, leaky nuclear power plant? Dusting himself off, the eerie glow seemed to be consciously leading him further into the earth.

Wavelengths randomly shifting from pale yellow to aquamarine to indigo left Jack disoriented. An odd, wobbly sound quickly began to manifest. Believing it to be nothing more than a colony of mutant albino rats, as common as cell phones once were, Jack crept closer towards its apparent origin and instantly recognized it as muffled human speech.

Resting against an outcropping, Jack peered around the edge, discovering a man-sized fissure. Only a sliver of evidence was available from his vantage point. He moved closer, the sound becoming a grinding fugue.

The light, initially blinding, quickly faded to reveal the cavernous scene before him. Realizing at once that he had inadvertently rambled into the Keep Out Zone, he stood in nightmarish awe before a congregation of robed, irradiated acolytes in prayer before their god, a crumbling statue of Charlton Heston.