Disclaimer: The original concept for War of the Worlds belongs to H. G. Wells. Additionally, all characters, ideas and situations you recognise from the 2005 film belong to Steven Spielberg and his excellent scriptwriters. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended and no money is being made.

Chapter One
Calm Before The Storm

Sarah Freidman stepped off the bus, running her free hand through her short, blonde hair as she crossed the road. In her other hand she was carrying two shopping bags full of groceries. She was on fairly good terms with the bus driver, Buddy, and he had agreed to drop her off at her street, just opposite her house. It was around five in the afternoon and Sarah had just finished work. She was thirty-three and was still working in the same dead-end job she'd had for ten years, as a secretary at a law firm. Recently she had been thinking about quitting and finding some work elsewhere. The pay at the firm was reasonable, but she no longer needed to support her teenage daughter financially. Claire had a weekend job at a clothes store.

At sixteen, Claire was just about old enough to take care of herself. Another couple of years and she would be out of high school. Then, Sarah hoped, they could pack up and move, perhaps north to Boston. They currently lived in Newark, New Jersey. They had lived there since Claire's birth, and both women were getting tired of the area, not to mention the gigantic, ugly (in Sarah's opinion) bridge that crossed the river behind their house.

Sarah glanced up at the giant structure as she reached the sidewalk, blinking against the chilly wind that whipped at her hair and face. As she reached her front door, she noticed a car parked outside the next house. A pregnant woman was standing near it with a dark-haired man. Sarah thought she recognised the couple. They had visited the street a couple of times before, to see Sarah's next-door neighbour, Ray. It was a little rude of Ray to leave his friends standing out in the street, she thought as she let herself into her house. Flicking on the hall light, she called Claire's name and shut the door against the wind.

"I'm in here," came the familiar voice of her daughter.

Claire was in the sitting room watching the television.

"Turn that off," Sarah said, walking past the couch into the kitchen. Their house was small, and the two rooms were adjoined.

When the noise issuing from the set continued, Sarah backtracked a few steps and put her hands on her hips. "Haven't I told you a million times you watch too much television?"

"Shhh, mom," Claire said, sliding off the couch onto the floor to get a better look at the screen. "There's weird stuff happening in the Ukraine. It's all over the news."

"What kind of stuff?" Sarah asked, frowning as she returned to the kitchen and started to unpack the shopping.

"Really weird stuff," Claire repeated. "Freak storms, lightning."

Sarah heard the newsreader mention something about EMPs, whatever they were. She tuned out the noise. "Freak storms aren't all that strange, honey," she said, stocking up the refrigerator with orange juice. "It's all that carbon dioxide we're putting into the atmosphere. Global warming. You've studied that in school, right?"

"Sure," came Claire's reply, but she sounded unconvinced.

When Sarah had finished unpacking, she walked into the sitting room and picked up the remote. Ignoring Claire's protests, she switched off the set and placed the remote on the coffee table. "If you want to hear the news," Sarah said, "you can listen to the radio."

"Fine," her daughter said, sounding peeved. Then she said, "Mom, what are EMPs?"

"No idea," Sarah replied truthfully.

Claire stood up. She had dark hair, much darker than her mother's, and she was very pretty. Sarah loathed admitting it, but Claire's father had been a very attractive man. Pity he hadn't had a personality to match his looks. Chris Freidman had abandoned his seventeen-year-old wife and newborn daughter just a year after the wedding. Shamed and cast out by her family and friends, Sarah had fled east to New Jersey with Claire. It still pained her to think about her ex-husband, and the incident had left her incapable of dealing with relationships, particularly romantic ones. Sarah also knew she was much too overprotective of her daughter. Claire put up with it well, but Sarah didn't know how long her daughter's patient tolerance would last.

Claire went upstairs to do some homework, leaving Sarah in the sitting room alone. From outside, there came the sound of squealing tires, and Sarah approached the window, catching sight of her neighbour Ray pulling up in front of his house. Ray was a good-looking guy of around forty. Unfortunately, he was a little too similar to Sarah's ex-husband for her liking. Complacent and irresponsible, Ray seemed like a real asshole, and since Sarah had lived next-door to him for several years, she felt she was qualified to make such a judgement.

She watched Ray talk to the pregnant woman for a moment, then she stepped away from the window. She flopped onto the couch and switched on the television, taking care to keep the volume down so she didn't alert Claire. Sarah could be a little hypocritical about certain things. Television was one of those things.

Claire rifled through her school bag and swore under her breath. She had left her Chemistry textbook at her friend Madison's house. Claire often went to Madison's house after school. Madison's family had a pool and tennis courts, and Madison's parents didn't care how much television Claire watched, even though it was their house. But Madison's parents were rich, and they didn't have to worry about electricity bills. Claire felt a little guilty for complaining about the television, and she sat down heavily in her computer chair, spinning around absentmindedly.

A thought struck her, and she loaded up the Internet. She typed in "EMP", and got a couple of sites about music and mail ordering. She didn't think the woman on the news had been talking about any of that stuff. Eventually she found a site about nuclear weaponry. According to the Federation of American Scientists, EMP stood for "electromagnetic pulse". That sounded more promising, but she wasn't sure what it meant or how it related to the freak storms that were happening in the Ukraine. After a moment or two she shut the computer down and grabbed her bag.

"Mom," she shouted, thumping down the stairs two at a time. "I'm going to Madison's, okay? I left my Chemistry there."

When she poked her head around the doorframe into the sitting room, her mother was fumbling with the television remote.

"Okay?" Claire repeated, quirking an eyebrow in confusion.

"Sure, honey," Sarah said, setting the remote down on the couch. "Don't be long. Take your cell."

"I got it," Claire called as she exited the house.

The wind was unusually strong, and it buffeted her clothes as she stepped onto the sidewalk. Parked not far away was a dark car, and standing on the lawn of the next house were a couple of people she recognised. Ray Ferrier was their next-door neighbour. He was pretty good-looking for an older guy. The red-haired woman and the man next to her looked familiar - they had visited before. But the two kids that had gotten out of the car were strangers, and Claire studied them curiously as she crossed the street. One was a girl; she looked about nine or ten years old. The other was a guy around Claire's age - a cute one, at that - wearing headphones and a sullen expression.

Claire headed off up the street, glancing back when she reached the corner in time to see the group enter Ray's house. She wondered whether they would be staying with him, and whether she would get a chance to speak to the guy she had seen. She made a note to mention him to Madison, and continued up the sidewalk, both hands thrust deep into her jacket pockets.

Sarah flicked through the television channels, growing more and more annoyed by the second. The only thing being broadcast was the news. They were reporting the same things over and over - freak lightning in a couple of cities around the world, strange weather, and those goddamned EMPs... Sarah was beginning to wish she knew more about science.

With an impatient sigh, she switched the set off and headed into the kitchen, where she emptied the rubbish bin into a plastic bag. She ventured out into the back yard, where the metal trash cans were kept. Across the fence, in the next garden, Ray and a teenage boy were throwing a baseball back and forth. She did not greet them. She wasn't friendly with Ray - they had never been close neighbours. She vaguely recognised the boy. He was probably Ray's son. Sitting at a table at the end of the yard was a young girl, most likely Ray's daughter. Sarah ignored them, striding across her lawn to the trash cans. She dumped the bag into one of them and placed the lid on it. Then she hurried back to the door, but was stopped by Ray's voice calling her name.

"Mrs, uh, Freidman? Freidman - is that right?" he said, stepping over to the fence with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

"It's Ms," she replied, tucking her hair behind her ear. It was whipping around her face, obscuring her vision.

"Oh, okay," he said, not looking as though he cared very much at all. "I just wanted to ask you not to park your car across my driveway. I noticed you did that today and yesterday. It doesn't help me much in the afternoon when I get home from work, you know?"

Sarah felt like slapping him. He knew perfectly well she didn't have a garage, that her house was smaller than his and the only place she could park was in the street. Okay, so she'd slipped up and parked in front of his driveway by accident. Jesus, she thought, it was a simple mistake to make. He didn't have to mention it in front of his kids, and in such a condescending manner.

"Sure, okay," she replied, her tone cold. "In future I'll try to remember that you're the most important person in the street. Must have slipped my mind before."

Feeling a glow of satisfaction at his annoyed expression, she whirled around and headed back inside, slamming the door hard behind her for good measure.

What an asshole, she thought, cracking open a can of cola. She took a long drink and switched on the radio.

"-- that we're now getting reports of more EMPs in the British cities of London and Birmingham, so we'll go over to --"

Next channel.

"-- advising citizens to stay inside if there's a storm overhead --"

Next.

"-- eighteen lightning strikes in under two minutes, all hitting the same --"

She shut the radio off.

Sarah decided to call Claire and tell her to come home. She didn't want her daughter getting caught in a freak storm. Still holding her can, she walked into the sitting room in search of her cell, just in time to see Ray's Ford Mustang roll out of his driveway and down the street. She thought nothing of it, and began to root around in a drawer.

From outside, she heard two raised voices - one Ray's, the other feminine and high-pitched. She smirked. Ray's son had obviously taken off in the Ford.

That would teach the bastard to complain about her parking.