After standing there and holding Isabella close for a few minutes, I finally gave her a slight push back.  “Come on.  They’ll be time for stuff like that later, if you want.  It’ll be dark before too long, and there’s still some things I want to do while its bright out.  We might have the emergency lights still at night, but they’re not the same thing.”

“Stuff like what?”  She sounded a little confused.

“Never mind.”  How could I tell her that I was talking about the holding and snuggling?  “Let’s just go.”

Since I’ve learned my lesson in the past, I didn’t just rush over and toss up the door and head outside.  CautionOf is now my middle name, as far as I’m concerned.   Bloody CautionOf Hell!  Smirking to myself at my own inner thoughts, I unlocked and then slowly cracked the door open just an inch or so,  and then I spent the next half minute straining my ears for anything that might sound the least bit dangerous.

After I’d confirmed to myself that I didn’t hear anything dangerous, I slowly cracked the door  on open and peeked out.  Nothing immediately out in the hallway in front of us.  I cracked the door opened just a little more and barely stuck my head outside and looked up and down the hallway.  The way was clear still.   Maybe being stuck in the far corner of the building wasn’t the worst place to be, even if it was the worst place to try and get out of.

Finally, I opened the door and reached down and picked up my club from where it’d fallen when Little Bud was attacked earlier.  The oversized book that I’d found was still off to the side here as well, but it could stay there for now.  I couldn’t use it for anything myself, and I’d let Isabella play around with it later.  Glancing to make certain the hallway was clear, I went out into it and motioned for her to follow me.

Nervously, Isabella tiptoed out into the hall and looked up and down the passage.  The same blood streaked seen as I’d first seen when I’d came down from the roof was still visible, except for even worse.  Where the blood was smeared and streaked up and down the halls earlier, but the passage was basically clear, now there were all sorts of little scattered rat corpses out in the hall.  I don’t know how many had managed to make it out of the nest before the perfume overwhelmed their lungs, but there were all sorts of little bodies lying in various poses of rigor now.

“Izzy, grab as many of those little guys as you can and drag them in here and just stack them wherever for now.” 

Then I thought about what I said and shook my head.  “Scratch that.   Carry them in here, and be careful not to drag them or let their blood leave a trail back to us.  We need to be as cautious as possible about not leading anything back to this room.  Let all the monsters think this place has been locked and emptied the whole time, and maybe they won’t know we’re in there.”

“Can do!”  She snapped her bare feet together and saluted me.  It was such an odd thing to do, that it momentarily confused me as she then went bouncing down the hall and grabbing up the first little body.

Not wanting her to hurt herself, I called out to her, “Careful of their fur!  It’s prickly like a porcupine.”  Almost immediately, I kind of regretted it, as I was afraid something else in these halls might’ve heard me.  She glanced back and saluted me once more, this time while holding a small rat’s corpse in her hand by the tail, and I couldn’t help but smirk.   She truly was an odd one.

I stood guard for a few moments to make certain that I hadn’t drawn anything calling out to her, and she carried several little rats into the room and rushed back out to start gathering more while I was standing there and being all paranoid.  Once I’d finally convinced myself that we were safe for now, I went down the hall to where she was at.   “Keep an eye open and don’t let a rat or worse sneak up on you,” is what I told her as I passed on by.

My destination was all the way down to the end of the hall, and back to the goblin’s room.   From in there, I scooped up the compact from where it was still sitting at the doorframe and I slid it into one of the pockets in the dress I was wearing.  After that,  I went over and grabbed the pack that I’d put all my goodies in earlier:  Maxi-bandages, plastic bottles of water and soda, and such.  I hadn’t managed to scavenge a lot of useful things from the room here, but I wasn’t going to give up the few things I had found.

Going back to peek back out the door to make certain all was still well in the hall, I then went back to the pile of backpacks and junk that I’d dumped out of them earlier.  Since there was more than just me now, we could use more than a single pack, so I made certain to grab a couple of the empty ones and sat them off to the side.  Then I started rummaging through the pile of papers, electronics, and junk that I’d emptied out of the bags earlier.  Anything that looked like a music player or radio I placed down into one of the empty bags.  In the other, I placed all the pencils and pens and markers I could find, along with several notebooks and binders.  Who knows when it might be better to pass messages back and forth quietly, without talking?  For good measure, I even collected all the chalk that I could find from the front of the classroom.

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Then I had to go back and look out the door to make certain the hall was still clear and safe.  I really was growing paranoid, but after all I’d been through, could you blame me?  At first I was starting to panic since I didn’t see Isabella, but then she came back out of the teacher’s lounge and started back down the hall to grab some more ratlings.   Seeing me peeking and looking, she took a moment to wave and then bent down and started picking up more of the corpses.

Deciding it was still clear enough for me to dig through what was left in this room, I went over to the busted desk that the teacher used to sit at and started snooping in what was left of the drawers around it.  Paperclips, rubber bands, a stapler, a ruler, and several red markers went into the bag of basic stationary.  Pulling open the lower drawer on the desk, I was surprised to see several bottles of pills down in the drawer.  Tylenol, Advil, several little pill bottles, and even a pack of cigarettes were what I gathered and dumped into the bag with all the electronic junk I’d collected.

Since my 3 bags were now getting fullish; my original bag of goodies, one filled with electronic supplies and some pills, and one with basic stationary supplies, I headed to the door and back out into the hall.   Isabella was still faithfully gathering the corpses of those little rats, and there wasn’t anywhere near as many of them out in the hall as there used to be.

I didn’t bother her as I went by and made my first trip back into the lounge.  A quick glance showed me that she’d been dropping the corpses she’d collected into the kitchen sink.  I guess that’s as good a place as any for them, for now.  Walking over to the first couch, I dropped my three bags down onto it and then took time to take off my belt and dress.  There I was, naked once more, when Isabella came back through the doorway with her most recent handful of rat bodies.  She just stopped dead in her tracks, stared in my direction for a moment, and then she went over and dropped off her load at the sink.  Without saying a word, she turned and bounced on out of the room again.

All I could do is sigh and shake my head to myself.  She definitely thought I was some type of weird Creeperboy.   Bloody Creeperboy CautiousOf Hell.   Sighing and shrugging to myself, I tried to ignore my own thoughts again.  There wasn’t anything I could do about it right now anyway.

Taking a moment to dig through my original bag of survival supplies, I opened up another Maxi-pad package and stuck it loosely across my face once more, and then I walked on out into the hall and down to where Isabella was.  She looked up and simply stopped everything and stared at me without even blinking as I slowly streaked past her and into the room where the rat’s nest was.  A tear was already starting to leak down my cheek even before I got into the room and was exposed to that stench once again.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so embarrassed ever before in my life, but sometimes a man just does what he has to do.

Honestly, the odor wasn’t as bad in here now as it had been before.  Several hours with the windows all opened must’ve helped air the place out quite a bit, and of course, I was still under the penalty for a damaged sense of smell.  (In fact, it was thinking about that penalty that made me decide that now would probably be the best time to come back in here and rummage around.)  I’d found the book in here earlier.  What if the rats had some other loot which was important and I missed it?

For the next half hour or so I dug through human remains, rat feces, fur, and all the other garbage that made up the rats’ nest, and the only odd thing I found was three round silver marbles.  I clenched them in my fist figuring that I could investigate them more later and then I went over and hefted the first of the three large rats’ corpses up over my shoulder and I carried it out the hall and down back to the teacher’s lounge.

Isabella had almost cleaned all the little corpses out of the hallway completely by this time, and she just stopped what she was going and watched me walk on by once again without saying anything.  When I got back into the lounge, I carried this corpse on into the bathroom and dropped it off in the tub. 

After that, I went back out and made two more trips to get the last of the larger rat corpses, and as I passed her on the last trip back to the lounge, I could hear Isabella actually snicker to herself as I went by.   She definitely was thinking of me as being some type of SUPER Creeperboy.   With the last of the large rats dropped in the tub, I finally took off my Maxi-mask and started trying to scrub myself as clean as possible using the sink.

While I was still washing and scrubbing, I heard the lounge door finally shut and Isabella called out to me, “I’m all done.  Now what?”

Now what?   Now what, indeed…