The book starts with an electromagnetic pulse (ER), causing dead birds to drop from the sky and deers throwing themselves off the cliffs, maddened by unknown reasons. Humans drop dead on the ground. The survivors are changed: some for better, some for worse. For Alex - a recently orphaned teenage girl with an inoperable brain tumor, she gets a hypersensitive sense of smell and is saddled by a bratty 8-year old Ellie. Together, they start searching for other survivors. to their horror, the first survivors they encounter are changed into Zombies. Not stupid zombies with zero IQ, but zombies capable of independent thinking and intelligence. On the trek to survival, Alex meets Tom, a young war veteran. The three of them begin a journey filled with cannibalistic Zombies and human darkness. 
 Okay, I admit that I am not a fan of zombies fiction. Rotting corpses walking around with decaying, green limbs falling off? No way, definitely not my cup of tea. However, the zombies in Ashes are strangely acceptable to me. Yes, they are crazy zombies. Yes, their favorite dishes are brains and limbs. Yes, they take scary and evil to a whole new level. But the way Beck presents the zombies is reasonable and scientific. This gritty, post Apocalyptic novel is one of the best dystopia books I have read. the setting (a forest) heightens the primal, desperate atmosphere in the book.