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[code]The Reid Farmhouse - Outside to Main House[/code]
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Penny had been caught off-guard when the abomination had attacked Justin. She had drifted away from the others, largely to keep herself out of earshot of Claire’s grating voice, but when the being that was all tendrils and nightmares had latched itself onto Justin she had broken into a sprint towards the fight. Her body felt like it was on fire as she ran—she was still exhausted from her scrap with Scott earlier that day—and she shouted in distress as she watched the thing throw Claire through the air and into a car windshield like a rag doll. She didn’t like O’Sullivan, but she didn’t want the girl to be killed. Fortunately, Claire was still moving. Unfortunately, the creature had already closed the gap between itself and its target, the girl whose car Claire’s body had ruined, and was entangling her hard. Penny cursed; she couldn’t risk taking a shot without hitting the girl. 

Britney, however, had more control over her Abstraction. It vanished as a spear punctured through its chest, but none of them had any chance to breathe a sigh of relief as buzzing filled the air. Penny turned her head to witness insects blotting out the sky like a plague of Egypt. She might’ve been able to swat a few bothersome flies out of the air with her power, but there was no way in hell that she would be able to react fast enough to punch a hole in something that massive. She bolted with the others towards the house, nearly colliding with the mousy girl dressed like an old professor as she crashed through the entrance.

[b][i]“What’s happening?”[/i][/b] asked Rita with a shaking voice. She had caught glimpses of the fight through the blinds of the study, but had not been able to witness the entire thing.

“Giant fucking swarm of pissed off insects hellbent on devouring us like crops,” snapped Penny, punching her fist against the wall. She had witnessed Andrea swallowed up by the swarm, but couldn’t have done anything to help her without being eaten alive herself. Britney had said something about the new girl controlling the swarm. The blonde girl turned on her heels and yelled at her former friend, “Why don’t you wake that bitch up and tell her to stop?”

Meanwhile, Rita followed Britney’s instructions and shut up the window in the living room that she had crawled through. She noted the open fireplace with concern and slid shut the gate, hoping the mesh was too small for any creepy crawlers to squeeze through. She could see the light outside fade away as the swarm descended on the house; they were running out of time. There was no time to panic. Barricades, she had to look for barricades. The coffee table would help board up one of the windows, but it was way too large for her to move it herself. She poked her head into the hall.

“Someone give me a hand! It’s too heavy.”

Penny, despite her protesting, had also gone to work by smashing the entrance mat up against threshold of the door and pinning it into the wall to act like a net to prevent the insects from slithering inside with a handful of pencils and her Abstraction. When Rita shouted she obliged the girl, following her into the living room. The two of them struggled to flip up the table and press it against the wall as they heard the sound of hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny bodies throwing themselves against the glass to get in. 

“There’s windows in the study,” said Rita. “We gotta get those next.” 

The two hurried over to the room in unison; Penny blasted the computer off of the desk before they stood it upright and pushed it against the window that had been blotted out by bugs. Penny felt her muscles scream with agony, and as Rita darted off to look for any potential breaches in the kitchen Penny caught herself on the door frame of the study before she stumbled and fell. She tried to stand up straight, but all she managed to do was twist her face into a look of agonizing pain and withhold a stream of curses. She buried her face into her elbow and took a deep breath. 

“How’s Justin? Breathing?” she said, shouting to Claire over the swarm. She wasn’t just worried about the guy. It would have been nice to have someone who could torch the insects once they slipped through the cracks.