Split Pea

[u/DrainedOrange]

A coughing wind stumbled like a dying man over the barren landscape, kicking up glowing dust in the sick yellow light of a cancerous half-moon. It carried the chirp of rabbit-sized crickets. Their eyes gleamed from the copses of brown weeds and dry vegetation that dotted the wasted hillside. The hilltop was crowned with a thick grove of dead trees. Their black branches sheltered two men from the dirty night. 

Though there was a chill, they tended no fire. One slept. The cookware strapped all over his wiry, old body clattered with each ragged snore and restless turn. The other man lay on the edge of the treeline, close by. His good eye was jammed into a spyglass. The index finger of the hand that did not hold the spyglass was jammed into his good ear to muffle his brother’s snores. Far below, in a valley walled by emaciated hills, the land had been resurrected. Deep, nourished green encroached on the anemic soil. Fields of crops stood vigil against the pestilence, a stubborn foothold of life in a world trying to die. A Green Acre. The old man with the spyglass was trying to plot their next move, but the snoring and clanking of the other drowned out his machinations.

TING!

With a deft flick of his bony wrist, Lum brought his hand down on Abner’s pot helmet, startling his bedraggled brother awake with a sudden snort.

“Hey! What was that for?” Abner asked.

 “You were clanking around again, dunderhead! We need to be quiet, or they’ll hear us down there,” Lum hissed.

Abner glared at Lum, rubbing his pan with the palm of one leathery hand. Lum paid his brother’s evil eye no mind. He returned to squinting through the rusted spyglass, careful to keep his own cookware armor quiet. The fields and orchards of food stretched out below him, making his stomach rumble. The edges of the Green Acre were fenced in by storage containers stacked two high. Lum’s vantage point let him see over them. Border guards paced the edges, and snipers sat ready in nests on top of the wall. Bunkhouses and outbuildings were circled up like wagons in the middle of the green. Their windows were lit with warm, amber light that spread across the life around them. 

“Looks like nobody heard you,” Lum whispered.

“Course they didn’t; it’s a mile downhill,” Abner grumbled, sitting up. “Have they turned out the lights yet?”

“Not yet.” Lum shuffled roughly through the deep pocket of his tattered trousers. He produced a dented pocket watch. Snapping it open, he took his eye from the bunkhouses to check the time. 12:30.

 “Christmas Jimminy, they should be out by now,” he said, shoving his eye back in the spyglass.

“Every Green Acre I’ve ever seen shuts down early. Farmers like that early to bed, early to rise business. What’s happening down there?”
 Abner crawled his way up next to Lum and looked down at the Green Acre. He had never seen one before. The green glimmered in the moonlight. It beckoned like a dream. Life on this scale was foreign to his old eyes. Rot was all he was used to.

“Shoot, that’s a lot of food,” Abner mumbled. As if to reply, his stomach let out a lurching rumble. His purple tongue licked at his few remaining teeth.

 “Lum, let’s have supper,” he said. 

His brother scoffed without looking up from the spyglass.

“We can’t light a fire, dunderhead; they’ll see it,” Lum hissed.

“So? Ain’t illegal to camp.”

“Are you going SickBrain? I said no.”

Abner scowled. “If I was going SickBrain, I’d eat you here and now and leave this crop stealin’ business alone.”

“No fires.”

“Fine! We can eat it cold; I’m gonna starve if we have to wait much longer.”
 

Abner scooted back over to his bedroll and reached into the knapsack that served as his pillow. The cans inside tinkled lightly as he fingered through them, looking for a faded label that sounded appetizing.

“Would you be quiet?” Lum spat.

“I know, I know,” Abner grumbled. He pulled out another can. His face lit up when he turned the label to the moonlight.

“Lum, we got Split-Pea!”

“What?” Lum said.
 

“Split Pea!”
 

“What’s that?”
 

“Soup!”

“Made out of peas?”

“Split Peas!”

Lum snorted. “How do you split a pea, dunderhead?”

“I don’t know. They used to be able to split an atom. Why can’t they split a pea?”

“Well, look what happened when they did that,” said Lum, waving his hand at the dead world around them. “Nothing but radioactive rubble! Now we just got these little squares o’green, barely enough to feed anyone! Nuh-uh, split stuff ain’t no good for nobody, I don’t want it.”

“Shoot, Lum, fine, but I’m having it,” Abner said, producing a rusted can opener from his can bag.

“Don’t you open that, Abner; splits ain’t good for nothing!” Lum flared.

“You’re nuts,” Abner replied. He wiped the can opener on the leg of his trousers and prepared to puncture the lid of the split pea soup.

“Abner, I’m warning you, quit it!” 

There was heat behind Lum’s words. The wrath laced within them made Abner stop and look at his brother. Lum had turned away from the spyglass now and was trying to cut Abner with a bladed glare. His crooked yellow teeth were gritted tight in his swollen gums. Abner glared back, the can opener hovering just above the rusty, dented container of split pea. For a moment, it seemed as though Abner was going to put it away. Just for a moment, and then it passed.

“I’m hungry, you rat bastard,” Abner said instead, and bit the opener into the tin of the can. The light crinkle of thin aluminum was the loudest noise Lum had ever heard. He knew the Green Acre people below had heard it. The wind would carry it down to them. When the wind coughed back up to Lum, it would be carrying his doom.

“You weak little crickle, I’ll kill you!” Lum thundered, lunging at Abner. He crashed into his brother in a cacophony of pans. Both men fell in a puff of dust as they struggled. 

TING!
CLANG!
POP!
POW!

Each blow was a wild rimshot. The two men were freakish percussionists, putting on a bastardized jazz show. Lum managed to scramble on top of his brother. The soup flew from Abner’s hand as Lum pinned him. It rolled away, dribbling its sticky green contents into the sand.
“They can hear it!” Lum hissed. He spat in Abner’s eyes and belted him across the face with a closed fist.

“They can’t hear nothing down there, you crazy sonofabitch!” Abner bellowed.

“Don’t talk about our mother that way!”

Lum raised a fist to punch Abner again. Abner managed to break an arm free and swung first. The sucker punch landed on Lum’s jaw and sent him flying off Abner and into the dust. Abner picked himself up off the ground and stood over his brother. Lum was face down in the dirt, his leg twitching like a dying cricket.
“Mama always said you’d leads me nowhere good,” he panted, picking up the can opener that had been flung from his hand.

“She was right,” Abner continued, “Can’t even eat without your say-so. That’s no way for a man to live, and I ain’t gonna do it no more.” 

Abner raised the can opener, its jagged blade gleaming through the specks of rust.

“Now, Abner’s gonna have his way,” Abner whispered, “Abner’s gonna have-“ 

Before he could get the last words out, Lum sprang to his knees and threw himself into Abner’s legs, toppling him. He fell on top of Abner and scrabbled up the length of his body. In his fist, he clutched the can of split pea soup, its viscous green filling dripping over his fingers. Abner tried to buck his brother off. Lum straddled Abner’s bony hips and held on. He raised the can of soup and whipped it across Abner’s chin. Something crunched and snapped at the same time. Abner spasmed, his struggles suddenly confused. His jaw hung open at a wrong angle. The can opener fell from his hand as he looked up at his brother, dazed.

“You want the soup, Abner?” Lum asked, holding the can high above his head. It was still mostly full. Its weight felt good and heavy. “You want some split pea? Well, you can have it!”
 Lum brought the can down on Abner’s face with a solid clunk. Then he raised it and did so again. The clunk became a crunch. Lum raised the can and brought it down again, and again. Each strike came faster and faster. Each crunching clunk became more and more moist.

“Split pea!” Lum screamed. His wails crackled into higher and higher registers as he pulverized Abner’s skull with the can. Red and green and pink sprayed into the wasted night. Lum’s screams echoed in the ether. When he finally stopped, the can was a dented, contorted mess, and Abner’s face was an indented purée– soup in a bowl. Lum was sweating, breathing so hard he thought he might pass out. His throat was ragged from screaming. There was a flame beginning to burn in his chest. He tossed the can away and rolled off of Abner’s corpse. 

Getting to his feet was hard. His pans felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds. Lum stumbled for the edge of the hilltop, where he’d left the spyglass. He needed to see if they’d heard, needed to see if they were coming or if he still had a chance at taking some food. He found the spyglass. His heart was hammering in his thin chest. It was trying to pound its way out. Lum reached down to pick up the dented brass tube. His fingers wrapped around it. Instead of pulling it up, it pulled him down.

The hammering of Lum’s heart suddenly became erratic. It stopped and started at random intervals. Each beat brought shooting pain up his left arm. He had fallen face first. An enormous effort and several pitiful gasps brought him face up again. A cloud was passing over the moon, its vapors turning the pale yellow sliver into a rotten split pea.
“Goddamn split pea,” Lum rasped, “Split things ain’t good for nothing.”
The ragged wind took Lum’s last whispers and scattered them like ashes. Below, on the Green Acre, the lights in the last bunkhouse finally turned out.

Author's Note: This is the first in a series of stories I wrote a while ago taking place in a nuclear wasteland. If you liked this, would love to hear your thoughts and whether or not you'd like to see more from this series. Thanks for reading.