The Devil's Highway Read Online Free PDF Page A

believer. Doomsday was coming, and everything posted in the forum was put there as proof that the hour was drawing near.  
    After a few minutes of browsing, I was startled by a loud bloop. A small chat window had opened in the lower right-hand corner of the web page. Someone whose screen name was DesertRat419 had initiated chat with me.
    Hey, StrongHold89, did you make it to the Compound? The message read.
    Whoever this person was, they clearly thought that I was Brad Caldwell. I briefly considered the morality of going along with that assumption. I looked out the window at the gathering dark. “What the hell.” I said aloud to no one.
    Not there just yet, I typed.  
    Bloop. Not out west yet? It’s been a pretty long time.
    Something came up. I typed back, sensing that I was getting in a little deep. There was quite a pause, and I wondered if DesertRat 419 had disconnected, then, another bloop that accompanied each message:
    That’s too bad. You have inspired me to make my own pilgrimage. I just recently looked up that part of the country since I am not from there. Nothing around Van Horn and Delgado but desert.
    Van Horn and Delgado. I wrote that down on my desk blotter and underlined it.
    Not to worry, I will be there soon.
    How is that sister of yours? I still think about her.
    I smiled. DesertRat 419 might just be Briana’s ex-boyfriend, Hans.
    She’s ok. Saw her today.
    What?
    There was a long pause. I had aroused DesertRat419’s suspicion. He must have known that Brad hadn’t been seen by his family in a while.
    Is Longhammer on the Mountain?
    That made me sit back and look around the room. Hans, or whoever it was on the other side of the chat conversation, was checking to see if I was, in fact, Brad Caldwell. Since I wasn’t, I had absolutely no idea what to say in response. So I tried to finesse my way through;
    Yes; Longhammer is on the Mountain.
    After another long pause, DesertRat419 typed.
    Stop kidding around. Is Longhammer on the Mountain?
    Oops. He was giving me another chance to type the correct response Maybe this was a code that Brad and Hans had figured out in advance to verify their identities in the anonymous environs of the Internet. It was a neat little precaution. There was a code word. Apparently, dear Hans hadn’t told Briana everything, after all.
    Taking a stab at getting around the whole code business, I typed:  
    Things are going well. Not far from Van Horn.
    Instead of a cheery response from my pal DesertRat419, I there appeared:
    Nice try but I know better.
    The web site grayed over and I was greeted by a nasty raucous sound, and an accompanying pop-up window that informed me, ‘ You have been forcibly ejected from the Redemption Army Forum by a moderator. Your IP has been logged and banned.’
    Well, so much for my foray into pretending to be someone I wasn’t on the Internet. It wasn’t nearly as fun or profitable as they lead you to believe. But I had garnered a tidbit or two of information from DesertRat419. I had turned up something that pointed me in the right direction. I opened another tab on the browser and went to Google. I looked up Van Horn and Delgado. The results that showed up directed me to a town, Van Horn, which was pretty isolated, out in the West Texas desert.  
    I tapped my desktop meditatively. Perhaps Delgado was a street or neighborhood in Van Horn? I went to Street View on Van Horn and got just what I expected, a moderately-sized, sleepy-looking desert town, straight out of The Last Picture Show. Had Brad’s devotion to Tolbert’s ideas taken him out there? I didn’t find any Delgado Street, or anything else, though.
    I looked at the cover of The Redemption Manifesto. What those pages contained was a kind of fanaticism, like the web site that Tolbert’s book had spawned—a set of beliefs and a credo that set its believers apart from all others. You either accepted that the Apocalypse was at hand, and the Colonel’s thoughts on the matter, or you