Those Pesky Out-Of-towners

“That’s the thing about this city…”

Alice waited for the end of the sentence. The lecturer at the front of the room, however, had fallen silent. Alice lifted her gaze from the notebook in front of her, eyeing the older gentleman. He didn’t look to be in any hurry to finish his statement; in fact, he wasn’t even looking at the students at all. His head was turned to face the sturdy door of the small lecture hall, and he was standing as stiff as the whiteboard behind him. Alice didn’t need to follow his gaze to know what was going through his head.

“Professor? What’s the thing about this city?” asked a young man seated two rows ahead of Alice. She hadn’t caught his name - or anybody’s name, for that matter. It was their first day, and this was their first class. It would probably be at least a week before Alice was remembering names.

“Shh!” hushed the professor. The students fell silent, exchanging confused looks. Out-of-towners, it appeared, the whole lot of them. Alice withheld a sigh at this realization. She and the professor were on their own.

“All I asked was why you can’t find any information when you look the town up,” grumbled a female voice to Alice’s right. Alice shot her a glare, pressing her fingers to her lips. The girl’s question would be answered soon, Alice was sure. She’d figure out momentarily just why the city tried to keep its business private.

“Please remain calm and quiet, class,” the professor said, his voice low. As he spoke, he took slow, tentative steps in the direction of his desk. His gear was probably stowed inside one of the drawers. Whether or not he would make it to his desk before the door was breached, though, Alice wasn’t certain.

She picked up her backpack off the floor by her feet, unzipping the main pouch as slowly and as quietly as she could. It was no easy feat; she’d been searching for weeks for a zipperless bag that would carry her gear and her school supplies, but she’d not yet had any luck. Shoving a hand inside, she withdrew a vibrantly-coloured water pistol. The shocking lime green must have turned heads, because she’d barely had a chance to set her backpack down again before she felt a tapping on her shoulder.

“You probably shouldn’t have that on campus. You know, state of the world and all that,” whispered the girl behind her, and Alice shot her a glare.

“Tell me that again in ten minutes,” Alice hissed back.

Being in an entire class of out-of-towners was a setback Alice hadn’t anticipated. If an incident had arisen during class, she’d expected to be part of a team. She’d packed light. If the professor wasn’t packing enough to make up for her miscalculation, or if today’s incident was a particularly large one, Alice wasn’t sure things were going to go well today.

BANG!

The entire class jumped at the sound of an impact coming from the door. The school had reinforced all the doors in anticipation of event such as this, but if they wanted to get in, no barrier of mere steel would stop them.

The professor was packing. A sigh of relief escaped Alice’s lips when she saw the large orange water gun that he pulled out of the desk. It looked powerful, and it looked expensive. If they hadn’t been in the middle of an incident, Alice would have been admiring the water gun. There was no time for that, though. They had to protect the rest of the class.

Another loud crashing sound came from the hallway, followed by a deep, echoing snarl. The sound was unearthly and demonic, as if a hundred bloodthirsty monsters growled together as one. The other students were beginning to panic, shuffling in their seats and whispering amongst themselves. There was no point in shushing them, now. It knew that they were there.

Alice stood up, her water pistol at the ready. The professor’s eyes met hers, and he gave her an approving nod. They could rely on no one in this moment but each other.

When the next bang against the door was followed by the distinct crunching sound of tearing metal, the other students started to get up from their seats. They hurried to the back of the lecture hall, crowding together as if for safety. Alice shook her head in dismay. Safety in numbers only works if your numbers are armed.

From the moment the shredding of the door began, it was only a matter of seconds before the class was met with the sight of jet-black claws piercing through the door. The claws tore through the remaining layers of steel with ease, and a girl at the back of the room screamed. Alice remembered the days of screaming. She remembered her first incident, remembered how she had screamed right up until her father had stepped between her and the door.

The professor positioned himself in front of the door, face to face with the fiery red eyes that peered through. Alice narrowed her eyes slightly. The shape of the eyes… was it a cat?

It let out another one of those bloodcurdling snarls, and then it leapt through the shredded metal door. Finally, Alice and her class could see the being for what it was. Whether it was meant to be a leopard, or a jaguar, or a panther, Alice knew not, only that it was a large cat with sleek fur as black as the void. Red and orange flames flickered at the edges of a few tufts of fur here and there, and the flaming red eyes that had peeked through the hole in the door were now locked intently on the professor.

“Why squirt guns?” Alice heard a male voice say from the back of the room.

“We’re so screwed,” agreed another male voice.

Alice bit her tongue, shaking her head to herself. Out-of-towners.

Lifting her pistol, she took aim, and then she pulled the trigger.

The professor did the same. His large gun was definitely more effective than her measly water pistol, spraying a large and steady stream of water in the direction of the flaming beast. Every little bit helped, though, and Alice was determined to fight until the beast had fallen or until her pistol was emptied.

The water made contact, and the fiery beast let out a hellish wail. If it had snarled with the voices of a hundred monsters, it screamed with the fury of a thousand. It flinched away from the impact of the water, looking furiously at the old man, but the steady stream gushing out of the professor’s water gun kept it from advancing.

Alice tried to aim for the creature’s back. She had the advantage of a different angle to that from which the professor was shooting, so if she could inflict any extra damage, she might be able to help speed this along.

“Hey, pass me your water bottle,” she heard one of the boys whisper at the back of the room.

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

“Well, okay…”

Alice wasn’t sure what was going on back there. Was someone planning on offering her a refill? Did they think they could throw a water bottle from the back of the room and actually accomplish anything? Whatever they were doing, it was probably going to be ineffective and annoying, but she and the professor needed to focus on wearing this thing down.

“Leeroy…”

Alice’s heart sank. What was he planning?

“…Jenkins!”

A rather large man came running down the steps from the back of the room. To his credit, the open water bottles he held in each hand were quite large, and both were filled to the brim.

“Don’t get close to it!” shouted the professor.

“You got it!” shouted the man with the water bottles in hand. At the base of the steps, he stopped, and then he jumped up on top of a table. The sudden approach had drawn the attention of the flaming cat beast, and its flickering eyes were now locked on the man instead of the professor.

“Eat water, kitty cat!” he shouted from atop the table, thrusting the two bottles forward so the water leapt out of them. It splattered the beast and it once again let out a pained shriek. Its cries meant nothing to them, though. The man, the professor, and Alice all just kept on going.

By the time the water bottles were emptied, the flames on the tips of the beast’s fur had been reduced to flickering embers. It let out one last wail, and the whole class watched as the fire in its eyes was extinguished. As the eyes went black, the beast slumped to the floor, defeated.

The professor sprayed it a few more times to be sure it was well and truly dead, and then he walked over to the intercom button on the wall.

“Office.”

“Yeah, this is Wrigley, we’ve got a, uh… cougar cat-looking… thing.”

“I’ll call disposal, hang tight.”

“Thanks.”

Professor Wrigley turned back to his class, letting out a breath as they started to return to their seats. Those in the front row looked wary of the black cat, as if worried it might arise at any moment and tear their heads from their bodies, but Alice wasn’t worried. They’d won. The beast was defeated.

“Professor, what was that?” asked the guy who’d helped out, coming down off the table and putting down his empty water bottles.

“Right, well, ah…” the professor started, but he stumbled a bit. He seemed uncertain how to explain the appearance of the creature. Alice sighed. He must have been an out-of-towner too, not very long ago.

“It was obviously a hellhound,” said one of the other men in the class.

“That was obviously a cat!” scoffed Alice indignantly.

“I’ve never seen any cat like that before,” said a girl behind her.

“The city may or may not sit right on the edge of an interdimensional portal,” Alice said, speaking loudly so the rest of the class would hear her clearly. “That’s the thing about this city. Things sometimes have a tendency to kinda just… slip through.”