“How you have fallen from heaven,

O morning star, son of dawn!

You have been cast down to earth,

You who once laid low the nations!”

-Isiah 14:12

Sean and Drexler split into two teams for mess, Drex on watch with his team while Sean lead Heston, Saxon, Brenner and Bronson in preparing the MRE’s.

“Men, we only have three each. Normally, three MREs are meant for a day. We’ll stretch one a day.”

Bronson asked, “A K-Ration or a C-Ration—this new fangled food makes a man wonder?”

“Both,” he answered, opening his meal pouch, "and more. This pouch can carry water. The spoon within can be shaved for starting a fire. But, the meal itself can be heated by means of the heat pouch, here, as well as the beverage pouch used to heat water in the heat pouch, activating it like so, dropping in my beef stew, or your taco filling, then leaning against an object, helmet, rucksack, rock.”

“Amazing,” mused Bronson. To this Saxon nudged Heston, "better than Soylient green, aye, Chuck.”

Heston leaned his heating mac and cheese meal against the butt of his Hawkins rifle and considered, “Sergeant Glass, you were in that post modern military,” which made them all wince, as they realized that the charge that clones had no souls, must hurt Sean, being a devote Christian. Sean managed not to wince and picked up the line of inquiry, “Was my model one of the Warfighters who ‘recommended, tested and approved’ of this baby food for grunts?”

“Yes, Sergeant, did SOPAK0 produce food, or just the packaging as one suspects—I’m already up for the elk hunt merely considering this slop.”

“Food’s almost ready and we have not lit a fire to alert the enemy. Notice these are imprinted with the department of defense, which was renamed to the War Department in my, original, lifetime. It is not approved by the Department of Agriculture. That said, carbohydrates are king when it comes to providing energy to march, and we need to haul. So, I will enjoy—or not—my 520 calories of Sante fe Rice and Beans with ‘beef’ taco filling. I will then save the nut and raisin mix for a snack at elevation, the two whole grain tortillas, which are—or were—made in San Antonio, with the cheese spread made in Colby, Wisconsin, for a turn-in dinner.”

“Sounds like they got the whole good ole U.S. of A. in on this project,” remarked Bronson.

Saxon was holding up the clear bubble pack with the odds and ends, and commenting, “You’re not kidding, Charles. This is, well, post apocalyptic in the probable logistics of C-Ration improvement. Look, Bill’s Brew freeze dried coffee, Flower mound, Texas. This ‘Do not eat ageless’ preservation packet, as if warning of our current situation, N’joy sugar from New York, New York—didn’t realize sugar cane grew in Manhattan, Splenda, whatever that is, from Carmel, Indian, powdered coffee cream from Kansas City, Missouri, salt from the good ole USA, a moist towlette, there you go, by Wiley E. Coyote’s supplier, Acme, in Florida, two squares of chewing gum, and… look at this, isn’t this sad, a folded napkin made in San Francisco for or by, or both, blind people.”

Saxon tossed this stuff back in the pouch, as if the inventory had crushed his appetite. Heston commented, “Nothing says great nation more assuredly than this little packet.”

Brenner had been silent, and now suggested, “Or a great and terrible empire?”

“Perhaps,” considered Chuck, to which Bronson counseled, “Or both.” Saxon, fidgeting with his MRE, agreed, “Why not both. I have a feeling that our erstwhile ‘Masters’ left behind some people in need. I’ll live off the snacks and save the condiments and meals for investment in some goodwill.”

Heston folded his meal up, “Agreed.”

Sean felt like a heel as he considered the now warm food, already opened, and suggested, “Let’s share mine and Charles’ meals. After how we have been fed like prize bulls, I suppose starving is going to take some getting used to.”

“Agreed,” measured Charles, “bring out those spoons. We have some hard times ahead, not near as hard as what those poor bastards been left behind here have had to deal with, what based on our reception.”

Sean, finding himself impressed by the humanity of these clones, but vested in the memories of their movie roles, glanced over at Drex on watch with his hammer, watching Browne patrol with the Kentucky rifle, Bradshaw standing with his African spears, and James Caan pocketing his snub nose Smith & Wesson 0.38 and peeking out from the gathering shadows, thought, “No better group of men to share this fall to earth with,” and realized, that he was thinking out loud.

“Amen, Sergeant,” agreed Chuck Heston, as he spooned some of Bronson’s Stew. Then, as Saxon spooned some of his taco filling, Sean asked, “Charles, when you questioned Bobby, back there, at footfall, as to why Clint and Joe were improbably squashed by the MRE’s his answer, made me want to kill him, right there, right off. Drex gave him the benefit of the doubt. Me, I hesitated due to a morale quandary, placed in me according to doctrine I hold sacred. But you, you were closest, and I saw, and Bobby saw, that you knew he calculated that, and that he wasn’t counting himself as human to avoid being targeted as part of the congregation in excess of ten. Why didn’t you put a round from your service revolver through his head?”

Bronson patted his Colt 0.45 and his saber and looked at Sean with clear killer eyes, “Glass, the evil that men do seems limitless, I know, to good a Christian such as yourself. I wanted to, felt it, ached to take that shot. As to why not, Chuck here can answer that best. He’s the real actor in this crew.”

Saxon shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not allowed, I know that," smiling at his gladius and spiked buckler down over his hairy chest: "Chuck?”

Heston smiled as he swallowed, “Women, movies are written for women and their sensibilities. Overwhelming proof must be demonstrated that a character is evil, deserves to be killed, again and again, before the thing can finally be done. Sergeant Glass, I think of myself, in flattering moments, as an ascendant human, hope-beyond-hope yearning to nurture this spark within to the status of a SOUL that God and His Son will recognize. But, each and every one of we clones of actors, rather than the athletes such as yourself, we have an inbuilt hesitation to do what is right, what is just before Heaven, when that True and Holy urge to cleanse the world of the evil that hunts it, flies in the face of narrative convenience. A brake on the desire to do what God has commanded, what he has built into us, the just act; that would deny the script writer and the director, and the popcorn eating audience, the heroic failure, clothed in mercy, that offers the moving picture the expediency of an entire additional third of the movie. You see, if, in movies and fiction in general, the hero was not assailed with self-doubt, not unrealistically programmed to show mercy to the unmerciful for the sake of a dame’s squeamish whimsy, then movies for the most part, would never progress beyond the mid point. Charles here, merely suffered from the same ingrained narrative pause that has been devilishly inserted into the human soul by that beast named Hollywood.”

The clone of the actor who had passed by the time Sean’s model had passed high school, then looked him in the eyes and assured him, “Never fear, Sergeant Glass, while we action movie clones suffer a critical shortfall in this regard, when it comes to the final act, we deliver.”

They laughed, laughed, long and shadow-like in between their measured bites.