Page 54 - Fables volume 2

mixture of lead particles and organic effluvia. The ark was ready for
its voyage to a safer shore.
They felt the blast. Archy visualized the Constitution Building
vaporizing above ground level. The bunker heated to an almost
unbearable degree. Then it was hit by falling debris. His companions
panicked; it was all he could do to keep them from tearing out the
seal and rushing into the fatal environment beyond their shield. Then
it became quiet. Very quiet. Bugacita and Xavier became aware of
their hunger and retreated to the larder. Archy held back, knowing
how long the rations had to last. He ate just enough to stay alive,
sustained greatly by thoughts of the future. Yes, he would be not just
Noah, but Adam. Whatever innate abilities he possessed allowing
him to rise to intellectual heights far above those of the common
cockroach would be transmitted to his offspring: they would not
simply inherit the earth but rebuild it wisely. He would teach them all
he knew; the old ways would be forgotten, and his descendants
would be positioned to handle adversity as well as preserve the best
in the vanished human culture.
Without day or night it would normally be impossible to count the
days that slowly passed. Archy had foreseen that, as well. Even buried
beneath a deep jumble of masonry he was able to tap into his
circadian clock, a biological function dormant in his species unless
cultivated. He scratched the scores of weeks into the curved wall of
the vessel, totaling them repeatedly in his mind and anxiously
checking the dwindling hoard of moldering cheese rind and soda
cracker scraps: it would be close. And the extra mouth at the
beginning of the confinement would soon be joined by hundreds of
others: Bugacita was gravid.
When the food ran out Archy had to open the tube; he sorely
missed a Geiger counter, forced instead to rely on presumed variables
factored to a level of probability no sane gambler would accept. He
worked steadily at picking apart the congealed and petrified adhesive,
using his last reserves of energy and strength. Behind him he could
hear the pitter-patter of tiny legs, and it gave him renewed vigor.
There! He crawled up into the murky dim daylight of the post-
atomic era. Bugacita followed, her antennae wild with suppressed
excitement.
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