“All right, no one told you to stop, keep going, Duffy!” the man with the gun says.
I shake my head. “I need to catch my breath. I’m asthmatic,” I reply. “I’m having trouble breathing.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you!”
“I’m asthmatic. They diagnosed it at my physical.”
“What physical?”
“My police physical. I thought it was just too much smoking but the doctor said I had developed asthma. I’ve got an inhaler.”
“Rubbish!”
“It’s true.”
“Did you bring your inhaler?”
“Nope. It’s back in the glove compartment of my car.”
“What’s going on? Are we going to top him here?” one of the two others asks, catching us up. The one complaining about the spooky trees. The one with the shovel.
“He claims he’s got asthma. He says he can’t breathe,” the man with the gun says.
“Aye, cold morning like that will give it to you. Our Jack has asthma,” this second man says. Younger than the man with the gun, he’s wearing a denim jacket, tight bleached jeans and white sneakers. The shovel is an old model: heavy wooden handle, cast-iron blade, low centre of gravity …
“I don’t believe in asthma. Asthma’s a modern invention. Fresh air is all you need,” the man with the gun says.
“Well, you can talk to our Jack’s mum, she’s been to the best doctors on the Waterside, so she has.”
The third man reaches us. He’s smaller than the others. He’s wearing a brown balaclava and a flying jacket.
No, not he. It’s a woman. She didn’t speak during the car ride but if I’d been smarter I would have twigged that that smell in the back was her perfume. Thought it was the car’s air freshener. She also is carrying a gun. An old .45. Look at that gun. US Army issue. 1930’s model ACP. That’s been in somebody’s shoebox since the GIs were here in WW2. There wouldn’t be any suffering with a weapon like that. Wouldn’t even hear the shot. An instantaneous obliteration of consciousness. Wouldn’t feel anything. Sentience into darkness just like that. And then, if Father McGuigan is correct, an imperceptible passage of time followed by the resurrection of the body at the End of Days …
“Is this it? Is this the spot?” she asks.
“No, we’ve a wee bit to go yet,” the man with the revolver says.
“Can we just do it here, we’re miles from everybody,” shovel man wonders.
“We do it where we’re told to do it,” the leader insists. “It’s not far now, anyway. Here, let me show you.”
He unfolds a home-made map on thick, coarse paper. It’s like no cartography I have ever seen, filled with esoteric symbols and pictograms and mysterious crisscrossing paths and lines. The guy’s an eccentric who makes his own maps. In other circumstances entirely we’d probably get on like a house on fire.
“What is this? Some new thing from the Ordnance Survey?” the woman asks.
“No! God no. ‘Ordnance Survey’, she says.”
“What is it?”
“Each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. Our own map. With our own scale and legend,” the man with the gun says.
“What do you mean ‘our lost fields’?” the woman says irritably.
“He’s quoting Gaston Bachelard,” I say.
“Who asked you? Shut up!” the man with the gun snaps.
“Gaston who?” the man with the shovel wonders.
“Look him up. There’s more to life than the pub, the bookies and the dole office, you know. Asthma my arse! There is no asthma. Have you noticed that none of us have fallen? Have you noticed how quickly our feet have become accustomed to the ground?” the man with the gun says.
“Not really,” the woman replies.
“For the last half hour our eyes have been secreting rhodopsin. We’re adapting to the dark. That’s why you have to get outside, away from artificial illumination. Good for the eyes, good for the soul.”
“Rhodopsin?” the woman asks.
“It’s a protein receptor in the retina. It’s the chemical that rods use to absorb photons and perceive light. The key to night vision.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Tommy?” the woman says.
“No names!”
“Ach what does it matter if we use our names? Sure he’s going to be dead soon, anyway,” the man with the shovel says.
“Doesn’t matter if he’s going to be dead or not. It’s the protocol! No names. Did youse ever listen during the briefings? Bloody kids!” Tommy mutters and folds away his map in a huff.
“Is it much further?” the woman asks.