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By Root 509 0

Bright laminated mini‐posters on the table tops still offered Turkey McGuffins and Veal Nuggets. One wall was dominated by a mural of Ronald McDonald in the rainforest, helping the Indians. The dripping was louder towards the back of the restaurant. This was the area where the kitchen staff worked, unwrapping and heating instant meals. There were wide black fan‐shaped burns on all the surfaces around the cooking units. The grills were thick with old congealed grease. The glass door of every microwave oven was smeared, as if something had burst during heating. Someone had cooked a final chaotic meal here, before they blew out the windows and set the place on fire. Ace stumbled over an object behind the counter. A child’s high chair. She set it upright, the brightly coloured plastic toys rattling as they settled into place on their wire. In an open space on the floor there was evidence of other fires. Crude campfires built directly on the tiles. Ace was beginning to realize that the place had had visitors since the night it was destroyed. Perhaps on a regular basis. Perhaps quite recently. The wind howled around the roof and the rhythm of the dripping changed.

All the spots of sunlight on the floor vanished at once as a cloud mass drifted over the Kentish hills, cancelling the sunlight above the restaurant. Inside Ace was peering at the hex marks on the walls. These consisted of various occult symbols, each particular gang having its own set. It was the fashion to use them to mark the site of a successful attack. Ace studied them, feeling old and a little sad. When she’d been a kid she could recognize almost every spray‐painted tag on every graffiti‐scrawled wall in her neighbourhood.

Ace identified the sadness. She felt left out. These symbols meant nothing to her. She noticed that one was smaller than the others and more sloppily executed. Leaning close she could see that it had been daubed in something other than spray paint, dark and dull. Ace was aware of the silence now. The wind had fallen, the bird had stopped crying. The dripping had ceased. She stirred the remains of a fire with the toe of her Doc Marten shoe.

The fires on the floor actually weren’t so crude. Someone had known what they were doing. This one was a well‐built pyramid, wooden brands leaning in against each other, coals or small wood chips and twists of newspaper underneath to get it started. The burned wood had collapsed inward and one blackened piece protruded from the pile, a segment of branch about the length of her forearm. As Ace nudged the dead fire the piece slid out, striking the toe of her shoe. She expected it to collapse to ash. But the brand rolled out of the fire and hit the floor with a hard brittle rattle. It looked like wood but it didn’t sound like it. And Ace had misjudged the length of the piece. It was more the size of the long bone in her leg. Now she looked at the remains of the fire more closely. There was something in the centre of it, half buried in ash, the burned wood covering it. About the size of a football.

The sound came abruptly from behind her, rattling off the metal edges of the cooker. A staccato spattering sound like a machine gun. Ace jerked away from the fire, getting ready to run, remembering the tent on the island, even as she realized it was just the sound of motorcycles. The taxis leaving. She turned to look across the counter, out towards the parking lot. Standing there on the other side of the counter, just a metre away from her, was the Doctor. The sound of the bikes echoed on the concrete of the car park and faded away. North, back towards London. Ace stood by the broken cash register, facing the Doctor.

‘Do you want fries with that?’ she said.

‘What does this place remind you of, Ace?’

Ace looked around. Sunlight was coming through the holes in the roof again. The small pools of rainwater in the rows of chairs were glowing cheerfully, still and golden. A paper cup rolled in a draught, ricocheting off the legs of the tables and ending up spinning under a large hex sign by the entrance. She noticed