Chapter Thirteen
The first thing that Rob did when he woke up was scream.
It felt as though he been reanimated, as though he had crossed the boundary of life and death and was now on the other side.
Since he still appeared to have a body though, he was not quite sure which side that was.
The last time he experienced something this dissociating was the previous summer, when he had overdosed while shooting crack and heroin at the same time. When he finally came to, it was like his head had been pulled out of an inky black soup and surrounded by violently beautiful sparkling lights.
Rob's current environmental context and recent experiential memory included everything from that overdose experience, except for the soup.
What shocked Rob most about both experiences was that there was no life review, only darkness, and then strange lights upon re-entry.
“Perhaps,” he thought, “I haven't gone far enough,” and then he realized that the lights were not dissipating as they usually did after an overdose experience, but were in-fact growing larger.
As he turned to his left, he saw two bodies lying next to him in the sand; bodies which looked like a cross between ghosts, and figures at a rave party.
There was a particularly violent blast of light, which caused Rob to suddenly scamper away from his spot on the beach.
The light subsided just as suddenly as it had appeared, and Rob's legs collapsed beneath him, revealing an intense level of dis-coordination.
The light was replaced by another body, such that there were now three unconscious bodies next to him, and one effervescent phantom.
Rob would have left there and then, except he had no idea where he was, how he would leave, or if he could even stand properly. It was then that he recognized his brother, John, as the body closest to him.
Seeing his brother jogged his memory, and all of the sudden the past four months came screaming back into his mind, each moment echoing on the sides of his skull, such that he was nearly sent back into unconsciousness because of the onslaught of memories.
He remembered the murder, and the gas station. He remembered using too many drugs, and getting his brother hooked on them. He remembered years and years of abusive; manipulative behavior and clawed his fingers into the sand of the beach in order to get it to stop.
After what felt to be an eternity, but was in fact only four hours, it did stop, and Rob was once more unconscious on the beach.
He slept well into the middle of the night.
A similar process followed regarding John, Matt, Al, and Harry, except that Al woke up while the rest still slept, and Harry was asleep longer than most.
When Al rose, and after his memory had returned, he began to examine his environment.
He remembered that he had volunteered to be placed within this experimental internment camp, and he realized it was cold. He looked around at those still on the beach, exposed as they were, and recalled that there were blankets inside the lodge.
Like an alien, who has just crash landed onto a distant planet, Al made his way down the road toward the barracks.
There were no surprises along the way. No boogie men creeping from the corners of the twilight, no ominous figures lurking behind doorway.
The atmosphere seeming relatively sterile.
Al found the cots in the dorm room, and pulled a bundle of woolen blankets into his arms. The blankets were stacked so high he had to lean, topple, and counterbalance the entire way back to the shore, but he made it.
On arrival, he placed blankets on each of the four bodies, still asleep, before moving toward the treeline to rest on the roots of what appeared to be a giant oak.