‘Archy and Mehitabel: The Sequel’

(With apologies to Don Marquis)

*

ARCHY the cockroach crawled slowly from his hiding place under a sink and looked outside. There was devastation everywhere: burned-out buildings, fallen skyscrapers, craters a mile deep and no sign of life. A soft wind blew smoke and dust through the dark air, creating the effect of a midnight sun.

He sighed deeply and said aloud, “They finally did it to themselves.” He remembered quite clearly having read that Armageddon wasn’t far away. This was its terrible consequence.

“Who did what to themselves?” a voice from behind the house said.

It sounded like ... no, it couldn’t be!

“Get me out of here, you miserable little cockroach!”

Mehitabel the cat!

Archy rushed to the sound of her voice, which came from a garbage can behind the house. There was a banging from inside the can and suddenly the lid popped open.

“Thanks for the help,” Mehitabel said sourly, shaking herself. Bits of coffee grounds and Parmesan cheese clung to her orange striped fur.

“Now what’s going on here, Archy?”

“You’re alive!”

“Do I look like a ghost, you silly bug?” She looked around. “Who on earth did all this? If you caused this mess by chewing up ... “

“I’ve told you a thousand times, Mehitabel, I’m not a termite. I don’t chew things up. Well, little bits of food maybe, but not buildings. It’s what they did to themselves. It was the war.”

“A war?” she said, not quite understanding.

Mehitabel knew her alley well, and a lot of tomcats who lived there, but not the outside world. Archy, on the other hand, a true intellectual, lived in a newspaper cafeteria. At night he would sneak up to the empty newsroom and jump on computer keys to call up stories and learn of the world’s unhappy situation.

“If it was a war,” Mehitabel said, “who won and where are they?” “No one won,” Archy said sadly. “We are in a post-apocalyptic time.”

Mehitabel reached over and gave him a swat that sent poor Archy flying off the garbage can lid and onto a pile of scorched soup cans.

“Don’t double-talk me, you nasty little cockroach! Someone always wins a war!” Mehitabel prepared to swat him again.

“Not this one,” Archy replied. There were tears in his eyes. “They killed each other. They bombed us and we bombed them and they bombed us more and then they bombed each other and we bombed them both and they united to bomb us again and we bombed them ... and now this.”

Noticing the tears, Mehitabel withdrew her paw. She felt true affection for Archy, despite his ugliness and his uppity ways. “Everyone? That was truly dumb, Archy. Why in God’s name would they do that?”

“ ‘In God’s name’ was part of it,” Archy said, shaking his head. “Religion, power, greed, arrogance ... “ He paused. “All this was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“And there’s just us?” Mehitabel asked, beginning to get it. “A cat and a dirty little cockroach?”

“Even that’s strange,” Archy said thoughtfully. “I can understand me surviving because cockroaches are built for eternity. But an oversexed alley cat?” He shrugged. “It’s funny. Everyone was always worried that ‘the other side’ was going to come up with the ultimate weapon. Then together they came up with a doomsday creation that would end human life on the planet.”

“What kind of bomb was it?”

“Hatred,” Archy said, shaking his head.

“You’re not making any sense, you muddled little bug!” Mehitabel stretched and yawned. Then, whipping her tail, she began walking away. “Killing everybody makes no sense, Archy. No sense at all.”

“That’s just it.” He followed her, rushing to keep up. “It doesn’t. And now everyone’s gone. The species committed suicide.”

They passed a row of burned-out cars and the charred skeletons of what had been human beings. Ahead they could see the shattered hulk of the newspaper building and a debris-choked Shinbone Alley that Mehitabel had called home.

“If what you say is true, Archy, then we’re sort of Adam and Eve.” She swung around suddenly and faced him, teeth bared, ears flattened. “But I’m not having babies with you, you crawly little insect!”

For the first time, Archy managed a wry grin. “That wouldn’t be possible anyhow, Mehitabel. Trans-species procreation just doesn’t work.”

“All I know is I’m not sleeping with a bug! No offense, Archy, but I have my priorities.”

Suddenly there were meows from around a corner, and out stepped a group of cats! Mehitabel rushed over, at last with her own kind. Archy backed away. He could see by their hostile expressions they did not share Mehitabel’s tolerance toward his kind. Mehitabel immediately took up with a large, scarred tom.

“Maybe I’ll see you sometime, Arch,” she said, sashaying away with her new friends, but he knew that it would probably never be.

Oh, he’d find more cockroaches, of that he was certain. They were survivors. But they would be enemies, her kind and his, of that he knew. It just seemed the way of living things.

“Here we go again,” Archy said to himself with deep sadness, making his way through the smoke and the darkness. “Here we go again.”

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.