Badlands: A Post-Apocalyptic Journey (Mountain Man)

Although Tom Miller calls the Manti-La Sal mountains of Central Utah his home, he's roamed all over the Southwestern United States in the ten years since global nuclear war destroyed civilization. When a convoy of settlers from Utah Valley fleeing the horror of a fallout zone larger than they'd realized offer him a job guiding them to a new life in Texas, he's dubious of their chances of even making it through the badlands. But he needs a new horse and the pay is right, so he agrees.\nKristy Graham hasn't left her little farming community in Utah Valley since before the nukes flew. But now, mourning the death of her husband to radiation sickness, she must get herself and her young son Skyler to Texas and the new life they plan to start there. It's going to be a brutal journey pushing a handcart for hundreds of miles through some of the hottest, driest, most inhospitable terrain in the US. Thankfully she's not alone, sharing the burden of handling the large cart with her friends the Hendricksons, who've been a second family to her and her son since their tragic loss.\nIt's a long ways to Texas, where word of prosperity thanks to trade with groups in Mexico and nations even farther south has drawn a stream of settlers from all the nearby states. But rumors abound that the prosperity has also drawn bandits and other unsavory sorts to the area, preying on the convoys traveling to and from the new trade outpost.\nThe journey to Texas will be difficult and dangerous enough even without the threat of attack, and it's on Tom's shoulders to lead them safely to their new lives. Then he can get back to his own peaceful, solitary life up in the mountains. Or at least that was the plan before he met Kristy.