Page 1 of Ashes & Aether

PROLOGUE – MAGGIE

The building is on fire, which has improved the evacuation considerably. No one’s arguing whether the alarm is a drill now. If you were to ask me, I’d say that any kind of alarm since giant aliens started dropping down from the sky and infecting people is a valid excuse to run and hide.

I sit on the floor of the emergency planning office with a ring binder open across my lap, while flames work their way through the records room next door. I can feel the heat coming from it. The carpet beneath me is damp from the sprinklers that worked for about two minutes before giving up. I can hear glass breaking somewhere on the floor above, while below people yell that the eastern stairwell is blocked.

Two exits remain, though. The main stairs will likely be unusable within six minutes, but the service stairs should give me nine. Eight if the smoke thickens.

I turn the page. Regional pharmaceutical reserves. Warehouse codes. Controlled access points. Refrigerated stock. Insulin, antivirals, antibiotics, and blood products, all neatly arranged by people who expected the country to remain functional. I read each line twice, close my eyes and repeat it, then tear the page from the binder and shred it.

“Margaret!”

Deputy director Oliver Price stands in the doorway with his tie pulled over his nose.

“Take the service stairs,” I tell him calmly. “The eastern stairwell is gone.”

He widens his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Working.”

“Are you destroying records?”

“No.” I turn another page. “I’m keeping them.”

The ceiling groans, and Oliver leaves without another question. Sensible of him. Alone again, I memorize three fuel depots, two Ministry of Defence caches, and a distribution center outside Reading, before shredding the last page.

When I stand, I tuck the empty binder under my arm out of habit, then put it back down again because an empty binder has limited value during an apocalypse. I don’t think hitting an alien over the head with it would serve any purpose. Smoke has lowered to head height, my eyes are streaming, and breathing has become difficult. Time to dash.

I leave Whitehall through the service stairs with two minutes to spare.

The government doesn’t fall in a single day, and by the time people admit it’s gone, it’s been gone for weeks. The army establishes shelters, while gangs establish toll roads. The shelters run out of food before the gangs do. The good make plans for everyone. The strong make plans just for themselves. I suppose the latter can be implemented faster. Five months into an alien invasion no one believed was plausible, London has five governments and none use that word.

One of these leaders is Gareth Pike, and his men catch me outside a warehouse in Park Royal. I’m armed with an empty rucksack and a clipboard while they’re carrying rifles.

They put me on my knees in the loading bay. The concrete is cold through my trousers as they frisk me, one man checking my coat and finding a pencil and two cans of sardines, the other taking my clipboard. He checks my list of warehouse items, the ones I made from memory, and raises his patchy eyebrows when he notices the ministry header. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the branded paper.

“She’s from the government,” he says to his friend.

“Was,” I correct.

The rifle barrel presses against the back of my head. My heart rate rises, my palms sweating.

“Wait,” says the man with the clipboard. “She could be useful.”

That’s how I meet Gareth Pike. He has installed himself in the manager’s office above the loading bay, where he sits behind a metal desk in a wool coat. Two young women occupy a sofa against the wall, and they don’t look at me, their faces blank. Bleak.

Pike takes a sip of his tea before he finally addresses me, his eyes on my clipboard, going through my abbreviations and numbers.

“My lads say you know what all this means.” He drops the manifest on the desk.

“They can read then.”

One of the guards moves toward me, but Pike lifts a finger, and he stops.

“You know where the government stores are,” Pike says.

“Some of them.”

Pike purses his lips. “How many?”