"Ugh!" Catherine groaned rather loudly. At the moment, both she and Nova were currently leaning against a wall on the third floor, in some kind of pre-apocalyptic game room complete with a billiards table (that unfortunately had no balls or cues, having been looted). They had been essentially kicked out of the discussion Jones was having with the new guy, apparently because talking about using unfortunately phallus-shaped tropical fruit as a way to practice Nova's apparent profession was too inappropriate. Also, Catherine's track record for helping Jones when it comes to business discussions wasn't very good either. "Aw, cheer up!" said Nova in her sing-song voice. Before she could say more, Catherine interjected. "If you're trying to get me to hire you again, I'm [i]still[/i] itchy down there, so no." "You're no fun," Nova replied, mock-offended. At that point another member of the caravan, a young adult that was short for his age named Jeremy, walked into the room with his hunting rifle strapped onto his back. It almost seemed comically large for someone his size. He nervously tried stammering something, before eventually just holding out a small stack of ten blues with the most embarrassed look on his face. "I think he wants to hire you," Catherine exaggeratedly whispered to Nova in such a way that made the poor guy blush even harder. Nova just laughed, and cooed "Come along, then," running her hand across Jeremy's chin flirtatiously and grabbing the money out of his hand in one swift motion as the two dissapeared out of the room to go find somewhere with some privacy. Now that Catherine was alone, she lamented that her only friend at the moment was a prostitute. And possibly Dave, but calling him a "friend" of Catherine's was [i]really[/i] stretching the definition. Eventually, she got bored of just standing in an empty room, and being the antisocial type she didn't really feel like finding other members of the caravan to chat with, nor did she really want to walk in on Nova. She decided on leaving the building and taking a look through the nearby buildings, or what remained of them, in an attempt to earn her keep as the scavenger of the crew, despite the freezing rain. On the way out the door, Catherine saw Jim still reading that porno mag of his as she pulled up her hood and bandana. She shook her head ruefully before taking a step out into the rain. It didn't take too long before she felt the cool dampness permeate through her jacket, even if it was a decently thick one. Regardless, she made her way over to what appeared to be the rubble of a very old home. Two of the walls were still standing, and the other two had sunken in. However, they were still in one piece, making it look more like the house was a victim of a stroke and now was half paralyzed. The door wasn't even attached in the frame anymore, as the frame was bent into a wonky triangle, barely large enough for Catherine to climb in. It was dark enough inside that Catherine had to pull out her flashlight, which was a rather large and thick one that had a surprisingly large battery life, the kind a police officer would use. It was one of the few higher-quality objects she possessed, as any scavenger would know that a flashlight can very easily be the difference between life or getting mauled to death in the dark. Fittingly, she carried it similar to how a policeman would; reverse-grip and with her hand close to the light. Seeing as food was one of the largest commodities, the first place she went was into the kitchen. As she expected, all the places where people normally kept food - the fridge, cupboards, etc. - had already been looted. However, Catherine might not be a lot of things, but she was thorough. She started pulling at the top of the fridge, attempting to pull it over so that she could check behind it, hoping that there might be a can of food or a half-full salt shaker that was dropped behind it way back in the days that it was easier to just buy a new one of you couldn't be bothered to go looking for it. She eventually succeeded in pulling over the fridge, and managed to catch a glimpse at what appeared to be a small plastic container mostly full with Oregano before the fridge outright crashed straight through the kitchen floor into the basement, with Catherine swiftly following it. She tumbled over in mid-air and landed on top of the fridge on her back, the wind being knocked out of her and her flashlight skidding across the ground and ending up in the corner of the basement, pointing towards the center. The floor and walls were boring, cold concrete and the only "furniture" in the room was what appeared to be a boiler to heat water with off in the far corner, but that wasn't what caught her eyes. Just barely coming into view of the flashlight from the wall next to it was a small group of three lost, and behind them appeared to be a somewhat decent pile of canned goods and some water. The lost seemed to consist of an older woman, an older man, and a young boy, all of which seemed to belong to the same family. This led Catherine to the conclusion that they were a family that tried to hunker in the basement with a bunch of supplies in the hopes of waiting out the apocalypse, or at least the beginnings of it, but they unfortunately became Lost before they could leave, probably due to prior contact with one of the hailstones. Of course, Catherine came to this conclusion at a later time, as her thoughts at this current moment were "Oh, fuck." The group of lost hissed viciously at her and ran towards her. Catherine quickly rolled off the fridge away from the lost and tried to land on her feet, but got her foot caught on a piece of what used to be the kitchen floor and fell back down, smacking her head against the concrete wall. Dazed, Catherine pulled out her revolver as she shuffled to better position herself and aimed it at the father of the lost, who was the first to jump onto the fridge Catherine had just been on. She took a potshot at him and missed his head by three feet to the left. The father then leapt straight at her, and in a last ditch effort she took another shot as he was closing in, managing to get extraordinarily lucky and catch him in the head with the bullet. His still-flying corpse crashed into her regardless and laid over top her right side, crushing her right arm against a plank of wood rather painfully; she could also feel a nail or screw digging into her forearm. The mother and son both opted to run around the fridge and were now coming to bear. Catherine managed to position the corpse of the father in between herself and the mother, using it as a sort of shield to block her, and barely managed to grab the son (who was thankfully rather small and light) by the throat with her free hand. She crushed as hard as she could with her left hand, hardening her fingers into miniature spikes and attempting to claw the kid's throat out, but by this time the mother had pulled the corpse of the father off Catherine and was now biting Catherine's right arm that she tried to block with and slicing Catherine's face with elongated claws on her hands. Catherine, her own "claws" deep into the neck of the little kid, pulled the kid towards the mother. She managed to crash the kid's head into the mother's hard enough to dislodge her temporarily, and when she pulled back the kid's throat gave out and she found herself with a handful of windpipe. The kid fell over to the floor before quickly choking on his own blood as Catherine pushed herself off the rubble she was lying on and stood to face the mother just in time for her to do one last suicide charge. Catherine sidestepped the mother and grabbed her, using the mother's momentum to propel her into the wall behind her, where she impaled her head straight through the cranium on an exposed piece of rebar. Catherine stepped back from the gruesome sight, attempting not to slip on the expanding pool of blood coming from the son's throat, and sat down on the fridge to catch her breath. Whether it was from the smell, the sight, or the adrenaline, Catherine leaned over and vomitted the granola bar she had earlier, and then some. She wiped her left hand off on her pants, leaving a bloody trail where there had already been dried blood from the many times she's had to use her left hand as a weapon, and shook the remaining bits of throat off. Her right arm was covered in bruises, there was a small but painful wound that wasn't bleeding much where she caught her hand on a screw and a larger wound where the mother had bit down. Her cheek was also bleeding where she had been clawed, and just in general she felt like a living embodiement of pain. After fishing out some disinfectant spray and some bandages out of her backpack that she got as part of the caravan should something like this happen, she fixed up her arm enough that she at least felt like she wouldn't immediately bleed to death before digging around the rubble for the revolver she dropped. She refilled the two bullets she fired and reholstered it, then went to retrieve her flashlight. Once she had everything all sorted out, she finally managed to get a good look at their stash. Disgustingly, there was the deceased body of what appeared to be a young girl, with most of her torso missing, presumably having been eaten by the lost she just fought. Now that she knew that the group had survived as lost for so long by presumably eating their own daughter, she felt sick to her stomach again and would've vomitted a second time if she had anything left. The pile of cans and bottled water was, as could be expected, partially used, however she still found a decent amount of unused food and water; about 8 cans and bottles of water, each, as well as a can opener. She put her justly deserved rewards into her backpack and went up the stairs to exit. Then she went back down the stairs, finding the door at the top barricaded by several wooden planks. She heard the house ominously creaking above her as she clambered back onto the fridge and tried climbing out the way she came in. It proved difficult, only having one uninjured arm, but she managed to heft herself out of the hole, thankfully without pulling even more of the kitchen down with her. A short walk back through the rain where she was able to clean some of the blood off her clothes and her hand, and she was back in the relative safety of the office building they had captured. Jim put his magazine down for a second to see who had just entered, a drastic improvement over the last time someone came in through the front door, and remarked, "You look like hell." "I feel like I'm in hell," Catherine replied, slowly trudging her way back up the stairs, with the intent to just go to bed and celebrate what she found when she didn't feel like curling into a ball and dying. ---------------------------------------------------------- Dave, on the other hand, was feeling pretty good at this point in time. He had been worried when he originally saw Catherine enter the house and heard a loud crash, as though the house had internally collapsed on her. Thankfully, she returned out of the house, and Dave breathed a sigh of relief. To anyone else, this would look like proof that Dave cared for Catherine. Unfortunately, it was far from it. Dave had been stalking the caravan since SZ Sigman, mostly just waiting for the right time to make his appearence. To Catherine and probably to the others, he probably just looked like some guy with an unrequited crush on Cath; which was what he was going for. In truth, however, he hated her. He hated how someone as dimwitted and unintelligent as Catherine of all people managed to get away with more or less robbing him, entirely due to the random group of scavengers that showed up out of the blue. Of course, he could just walk up and shoot her, but that'd be too easy. Dave took a sick, perverse pleasure in worming his way into the trust of his victims. He figured that with enough time, he could eventually get into her good graces with his rather "convenient timing" and ability to drop in and help her out seemingly out of the blue, and for almost no reward. Maybe she'll eventually come to see him as a guardian angel, or a friend, or maybe she'll even develop a crush on him! It'd only make it all the sweeter when he'd eventually turn the tables on her. He still wasn't entirely sure what he'd do when he did this. Rape and murder wasn't his style; he was at least truthful about that. He figured he'd settle on taking everything she owned and leaving, probably while also ripping off that Jones guy while he was at it, too. Then maybe he'd retire on back to Asylum with his ill-gotten goods. But now wasn't the time to show up again. Maybe he'll make a reappearence soon. But for now, he was fine just waiting, and watching.