I understood: Dogs chase cats. Bees make honey. Humans wage war. Zombies eat humans. No free will. And no compromises.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. We all know why she swallowed the fly. And now she’ll die.

“There have been others like you,” Stein said.

“I know. I collected them,” Ros said, his face bloody. He looked like a greeting card photo of a baby covered with spaghetti sauce, the bowl on top of baby’s head, a few noodles hanging down, and a caption reading: I Didn’t Do It!

“Each of you proved the viability of my theory,” Stein said, “that no one has to die.”

“Where are they now?” Ros asked.

Stein made a sweeping gesture with his hand, as if the night held answers. As if the man in the moon cared. “My son,” he said, “nothing has worked out as planned.”

The best laid plans of mice and men…again and again and again.

“It was to be a new beginning,” he continued, the cane impotent and resting against his leg. “Not an army of automatons or an enemy of man, but a new race, one with the potential to live indefinitely. One that wouldn’t require food or shelter or gasoline or television. One that wouldn’t waste natural resources.” Stein looked up. “The virus wasn’t ready when they unleashed it. Not even close.” His eyes shone in the flashlight beam. They were the brown of mud, of dirt, of the clay with which he made us.

“Dr. Stein,” one of the soldiers said with a note of warning in his voice, his eyes and rifle trained on Ros, who was twitching and contorting and moaning. Falling into character. Becoming the scorpion he was.

Stein shook his head, clearing it. “The military wanted to ship you to the desert. Turn you into soldiers for their war. But all hell broke loose first.”

“Father,” Ros gurgled.

“I have failed miserably. Our only choice is to give in, give up, submit.”

“Save…us,” Ros said. He grabbed my hand and held tight.

“It’s too late for that,” Stein continued, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “You’re both prime specimens, and at first we tried to help your kind. We sought you out and brought you to our labs. We conducted experiments using positive and negative reinforcement, trying to teach you right from wrong. We had some success, but, well, Private Drake here, his behavior is typical.”

Ros glanced my way; his eyes were as yellow as stomach bile. He was vibrating, a Holy Roller about to speak in tongues, the secret language, the word of God.

“BRAINS!” he yelled, and catapulted himself over the bow, heading straight for Stein.

It was a graceful dive, a swan dive, Olympic worthy. The soldiers opened fire; bullets pinged against Ros’s metal trapdoor of a head and bullets penetrated his cranium, but Ros continued flying, free as any bird. And Stein, our father who art an old boob in a boat, stood up with open arms to receive him.

Ros knocked the mad scientist over; they landed on a bench seat, Stein bent over backward like a doll, embracing Ros, and Ros was really dead now, his brains scattered into the lake, no better-or worse-than chum.

Food for the worms. Ashes to ashes. The great beyond. A better place. Doggie heaven. All that rot. Pun intended.

I took a step back. Two soldiers tended to the good doctor; the remaining three turned to me, guns, rifles, pistols cocked.

“I’m fine,” Stein said, pushing Ros’s corpse off of him and standing up. “How’s the other one?”

I held my hands over my head as if I were being arrested. The classic pose of submission. I raised one finger in the air and slowly moved my other arm. From my professor pocket, I pulled out my treatise, holding it between two fingers. I shook it at Stein.

“Looks like someone wants to tell us something,” a soldier said.

Stein gave me the once-over, taking in my tattered tweed jacket and tarp of a torso, my pus-filled skull of a face, the rusted sores and scant strands of hair, and the crumpled and water-stained piece of paper in my hand.

“You think you’re different, don’t you, son?” he said, crossing his arms over his bulletproof vest.

I unfolded the paper and held it out so that the words faced Stein, as if they were an incantation or a spell. The password primeval. The sign of democracy. Somewhere in the city, there was an explosion and a barrage of machine-gun fire. The soldiers tensed and a radio squawked.

“Let’s hope so,” Stein said, nodding at the men. “Bring it here.”

One of the soldiers approached me, and I smelled his brains, his musk, like fresh-baked bread, wild honeysuckle, Sunday-morning bacon. His helmet was too big for him; it covered all of his head and most of his face too. I didn’t dare look at his eyes. I extended my arm and he snatched the document.

Stein put on a pair of reading glasses and sat down. “‘A Vindication of the Rights of the Post-Living,’” he said. “‘By Professor Jack Barnes.’ Impressive title.”

I lowered my head in a gesture of modesty.

Stein skimmed my manifesto, nodding his head occasionally. “Justice,” he murmured. “Equality. True democracy. Hmmm. An analogy to slavery and suffrage. Very well written, Professor Barnes. Displaying a high degree of memory and cognition. There’s no denying your intelligence.”

Stein pointed to a passage near the end. “Here’s the part that disturbs me, though. The part that punches a hole in your argument,” he said, looking at me from over the top of his glasses. “‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of brains,’” he continued. “Why did you write that, Jack?”

The soldiers laughed and stuck their arms out, murmuring, “Brains, brains,” in a cruel parody of my people’s behavior. I put my hands together in the prayer position.

“Enough!” Stein said, and the soldiers stopped clowning. “I can’t stand to look at him anymore. Standing in front of me like a supplicant. As if I can protect him. Look, Jack, here’s the cold truth: You’re a by-product of biological warfare. A high-functioning by-product, but a by-product nevertheless. You’re a mistake. Something out of Frankenstein.”

I fell to my knees.

“You and I are mortal enemies,” Stein continued. “And your compromise solution is absurd. We can’t allow you to eat any of us because you won’t stop there. Can’t you see? If you’re the lion, then I’m the gazelle. You’re the spider; I’m the fly. The scorpion and the fox. No matter what you do, no matter how well you write or reason, you will always be a scorpion.”

So words mean nothing: Freedom is the same as chair is the same as love is the same as Fruity Pebbles is the same as justice.

There’s only one word with any meaning and I willed myself to say it:

“Braaaaaains!” I howled, and the effort hurt-my diaphragm, my throat, my stopped and broken heart.

From behind me, as if resurrected by my miraculous utterance, there was a banshee yell, a war cry, and Annie, dear undead Annie, came charging up the little hill of the half-sunken Maria Sangria.

Their bullet had entered her forehead and come out the other side, blowing her top off, exposing and cracking her skull like a pistachio. But her brain was intact and her aim was true. She shot the soldier closest to me in the neck and another in the eye. Two down, three to go.

The gunfight raged around me, but the soldiers were focused on Annie. I climbed onto the ledge of the boat and jumped, flying through the air like Superman.

I landed on Stein and we rolled on the bottom of the boat. The soldiers were yelling who knows what. Their sounds were as meaningful as birdsongs. A third fell dead into the lake.

Stein and I were in the missionary position with me on top, drooling contamination into his beard. I placed my hands over his ears and looked into his eyes. I imagined I was hypnotizing him like Dracula; I imagined Stein fell in love with me.

“I’ll help you, Jack,” he said. “There’s a cure. Please. You can be human again!”