War of the Worlds: StormBound.

Chapter 2: The Storm.

Everything had gone dark. Nothing electrical was working whatsoever. From TV's, the fridge and freezer, to even his own wristwatch he was wearing. It seems anything that had an electrical circuit and battery seemingly was shorted out by the mass amounts of energy the lightning was outputting. Murphy turned to Joshua and Sarah before pointing to a doorway under the stairs just in the kitchen itself. "Quick, to the basement. I'm gonna go see what's going on."

He ushered the two into the basement and made his way over to the fridge, grabbing a lot of the food and putting it into several coolers as they didn't know how long they'd be without any source of power. He didn't want anything to go bad simply because there wasn't enough cool in the fridge anymore. Murphy ran up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he grabbed a flashlight. After making sure it worked her made his way down and out the front door. Murphy was at a loss for words as to what was happening.

Several other neighbors in the area were outside with torches as well, looking down at the massive crater that the lightning had made in the cement. It was so bizarre to see such a massive hole made simply by lightning strikes. It all hit a single point in which was obvious because of seemingly glass looking rubble sat at the entry point. Murphy walked in front of everyone and began to speak. "Everyone! I need you to go back to back away! We have no idea how unstable this area is now, and we can't have everyone crowding it!" Murphy announced as he turned to look down at the massive cracked crater in the ground.

Murphy decided to take a closer look and climbed down into the Crater to take a look around. The most notable piece of anything down in the lightning made area was rubble that seemingly crystalized. He reached for a piece of the rubble, despite his best instincts telling him not to, and grabbed a hold of a piece of the rubble and instantly felt an icy cold burn. His hand jolted away as he looked at his fingertips before shaking them gently.

"What's your Guess, Mr. Pendleton?" An older and slightly heavier man asked Murphy as he brushed his hand off on his pants. "I don't know.. but this isn't any kind of lightning crater I'm used to seeing. Usually, they're smaller and.. cause fires. This one just.. made everything it touched ice cold." He told the man as he climbed out of the hole. The moment he did, he felt a shift in the ground, and it sort of threw him off balance. Falling forward onto the cement.

Murphy turned around and looked down at the hole again. Nothing for a while before the ground shook yet again. Murphy scurried to his feet and told everyone to "Move back!" Before the ground started to crack further than the Crater, and he knew that the ground was going to give way. He began to sprint twords his home and hit behind the patio to his porch. Watching from a distance as he saw the ground not only giving way, but it lifted up!? As if something underneath was pushing its way up and out of the ground. The sounds of the ground giving way were mute compared to the seemingly mechanical noises coming from underneath. Getting louder based on how much the ground cracked Open.

Murphy watched as the ground lowered yet again, but the Crater soon turned to a giant version of itself. Taking more land with it and a few parked cars. It was like a sinkhole, but.. they never get those here. Not recently anyway. He stood up gently and tried to walk out from behind his patio but was instantly herded back by the sight of something gigantic, sticking up from out of the ground, and slamming into a pedestrian A red splat of meat staining the concrete was. His eyes widened as he watched two more similar metal things sticking up and out of the ground. Seemingly bending downwards to something else..

Soon, a giant set of lights turned on and blinded the man as he used his hands to cover his face. Once the lights seemingly moved away from his face, he looked upwards to see a giant metallic thing standing all the way up on what now can be discerned as legs. It was rising out of the ground slowly but surely, and it just kept going and going until it finally reached its maximum height. For a machine.. it looked so.. life like. The way its body sort of moved as if it was flesh and not metal at all. It's more like a rubber for the legs, but you could tell it was metallic rather than that.