Pierre

**Day 17 in the Wastes** Pushed further into the barren wilderness today, picking through skeletal ruins under a sky choked with dust—found some rusted cans and a frayed blanket, but nothing to write home about if home still existed. No screams in the distance, no shadows lunging from the scrub; zero kills, zero deaths, just the endless quiet that gnaws at your sanity more than any beast could. Makes me grateful for the breath in my lungs, but damn if it doesn't leave me staring at the horizon, wondering when the wasteland finally bites back.

From the ragged veil of the wilderness, Pierre erupted like a celluloid specter reborn, Marcus Hale's drive-in dominion reduced to echoes of *The Road Warrior* in his gravelly mutterings, his frame etched with the grime of hoarded reels and ragged patrols. Bunkered now at the fringes of Thomas Renoui's outpost, he sized up the stranger with a spaghetti western squint, rifle cocked like a reel in the projector, torn between rallying a new crew or unleashing turf-war thunder.