Seneca Blasted Zone

Cal turned the nob on his gas mask, pressurizing his suit with a sharp pneumatic hiss.  He picked up his rifle, slinging the fraying strap over his armored shoulder.  He ran through the usual preps through his head.  He had done this thing a thousand times before; satisfied that all routine precautions were met, Cal sealed the the door behind him and then opened the vault door in front of him.  A hiss filled the little airlock he stood waiting in.  The blaring sunlight of a noon sun filled the dark hall; Cal's eyes were protected by the tinted goggles of his gas mask.  The usual open vista of brown hilly wasteland and patches of bare tree trunks opened up before him.  It looked to be a usual sunny day in the Seneca Blasted Zone.  Cal clunked across the open yard to the old barn he used as a shed to store some of his least important gear, like his bow and arrow and extra horseshoes.  His horse, Braxton Bragg, he kept in his dwelling.  Cal's hired farmhands– there were about six or seven of them– lived in the old rest station across the yard from the barn.   

Cal had learned, in his exploring he did in his free time, that he lived in what was once called New York– why it was called new, he did not know– before the War of Wars, but now was called the Seneca Blasted Zone, which stretched from the Eastern Lake down to the ruins of the Great City on the coast and the irradiated forests in the south, and up to the Wreckage Lakes in the north and west.  Cal himself lived in a small bunker near an old farm, only the barn remained, and a rest station.  The town of Echo-Point One, a thriving community on the banks of Dead River, was a couple miles down the remnants of the old world highway.

Edmund, Clancy, Michael, and the brothers Percy and Olson Gauge were already suited up and mounting their horses.  Kelly was lagging behind as usual.  Cal and his farmhands were cowboys: a select few brave or foolhardy men who rode across the Blasted Zones delivering cattle and other livestock to towns or wealthy warlords.  Sometimes they were hired just for their guns to act as escorts or extra muscle to drive away bandits or raiders, or merely to deliver precious postage.

Cal, after seeing the cattle were safe and sound in the barn, walked back across the yard, dust puffing up in clouds behind him and the grass crunching under his boots.  He unlocked and lifted up the blast door to Braxton's pen in the bunker itself.  The horse whinnied at the familiar look and stench of his master.  Braxton had black-to-brown hair and intelligent golden eyes; he was of course one of the genetically-altered animals, unaltered livestock couldn't survive in the Zones, so that they could survive all the radiation still floating around after the end of days.  The cattle were the same.  Unaltered animals only existed in stories and supposedly in the unopened Vaults.

Once Kelly finally got out and mounted, the seven men opened up the barn and began to corale the cows.  Cal was supposed to deliver the cattle to a powerful warlord in Smoke Town along the coast of East Wreckage Lake.  While being a cowboy was incredibly dangerous it was very rewarding and lucrative if you could do it right and survive.  They rounded up the cattle, Cal used a lasso to control a particularly troublesome cow while the farmhands used prods to herd on the other cattle.

"Keep your weapons cocked and eyes open!" Cal called to his men, "Now let's ride!"

All the farmhands had rifles like Cal, except for Clancy who only had a bow and arrow and low caliber pistol.

With a thunder and clouds of brown dust, the cowboys encouraged the cattle on as they began to thunder off across the valleys and hills on their ninety mile long road to Smoke Town.