Total Power Read online

  Her timing had been good, though. The dangerous people who prowled the night tended to evaporate in the light of dawn.

  She stopped to adjust the backpack that, only seven miles into a thirty-two-mile hike, was already cutting into her shoulders and hips. But worse, she was starving. The wolfed-down six-pack of pudding had burned off a lot faster than anticipated.

  She started walking again, picking up her pace in an effort to forget her empty stomach. When the food in her pack was depleted, she was done. Best to keep her grubby paws off it until she started to get shaky.

  The goal was to be across the bridge to Alexandria before anyone woke up. Whether the suburbs would be safer, though, was hard to say. America was completely different than it had been even a few days ago. People were becoming desperate. Based on the last radio reports she’d listened to, cold and fear still dominated, keeping most people huddled in their homes. For how much longer, though? How much longer would everyone be content to sit in their homes and slowly waste away? At what point would they take to the streets?

  Her gut said it wouldn’t be long. Maybe even today. And when that moment arrived, she’d be as likely to be murdered and robbed by a kindergarten teacher as a gang member.

  If everything went right—a laughable concept in itself—she’d make it to John Alton’s house forty minutes before sunset. After that, she wasn’t sure. Would he still be there to confront? If so, what would she do? What would he do?

  More likely, she’d find an abandoned house. And if that was the case, what then? Would she hole up there and try to survive on what was left in his cupboard? If she remembered right, that consisted of a few cans of chili, some dried pasta, and a surprisingly elaborate assortment of Hostess products. All of which had probably been looted by his hoity-toity Fairfax Station neighbors days ago.

  At that point, Plan F would be in play. But walking all the way back to the Potomac to carry it out seemed like a lot of trouble. If the water was still on, maybe she could just stick her head in his bathtub. If not, she’d have to track down a convenient mud puddle.

  Voronova passed a narrow alley and spotted a leg sticking out from a pile of garbage overflowing a dumpster. She tried to keep moving but felt her pace slow. A quick look around suggested that there was no one watching and it would only take a few seconds to check on the person. But to what end? What was she going to do? Call 911?

  In the end, logic didn’t matter. She diverted into the alley and approached the leg with caution. By the time she got to within fifteen feet, it was clear that its owner was dead. But from what?

  The fact that it was completely irrelevant and that she was probably going to end up in a similar condition soon didn’t matter for some reason. Something kept propelling her forward. Sympathy? Guilt? Morbid curiosity? Whatever it was, the pull was irresistible.

  She used a gloved hand to brush away the debris and found that the body had been wrapped in a hand-sewn quilt. When she pulled back its edge, she found a woman who looked to be in her late seventies. Her eyes were closed and her hair and makeup perfect. Not murder. Or even an accident, probably. She’d likely just died and her family hadn’t known what else to do with her.

  Voronova felt the warmth of tears on her cheeks as she carefully replaced the blanket. Who she was crying for, though, was hard to know for certain. Nothing was certain anymore. Other than that she had to keep moving.

  * * *

  The purely residential neighborhood eventually gave way to a section of the city with commercial space on street level and residential above. Most of the store windows had been shattered, leaving shards of glass and dangling Christmas decorations. Voronova hurried past, staying as far from the dark interiors as she could.

  In the end, though, the threat appeared from the sun-dappled sidewalk, not the shadows. Three young men in hooded jackets and baggy jeans came around the corner about twenty-five yards ahead. Their eyes immediately locked on her and none seemed surprised at seeing a lone woman strolling through their territory. That prompted her to glance back over the top of her pack. Two similar men were coming up from behind.

  The sight of them was enough to break her from the fog she’d been in since finding the woman in the alley. It looked like she’d just run out of road. Even if they didn’t kill her outright, there was no question that they’d take her backpack, which was pretty much the same thing. It contained all the food she had left, a sleeping bag, dry clothes, and medical supplies. The one important item it didn’t contain was the Beretta. That was beneath her jacket.

  The likelihood of finding John Alton and putting all this right was microscopically small. She admitted that. But it would be even smaller if she was dead or wandering around the streets in her underwear. Surprisingly, the training she thought was long forgotten came back to her on a river of adrenaline. Right now, she had the element of surprise. And she assumed she could still shoot straight enough to hit something a few feet away. But at a human being? That was very different than the paper targets she’d been so mediocre at punching holes in when she was a kid.

  “What you carrying in there?” one of the men called when he and his posse were still a good twenty feet away.

  How was it possible that her luck kept getting worse? There had to be a bottom somewhere. When would she reach it?

  To her left, there was an indented store entrance with a still-intact door. She backed into it, protecting her flank while still giving her a view of all five approaching men. She moved a hand inside her jacket in a gesture that they wouldn’t be able to misinterpret. None seemed to care, though. They just kept walking toward her.

  “Nothing you’d be interested in,” she answered finally.

  The three men to her left were within ten feet and the ones to the right were just breaking the twenty-foot mark. All were likely armed, but their long down jackets were zipped against the cold. Apparently, they weren’t feeling particularly threatened by the pale, skinny girl cowering in an alcove. And she needed to take advantage of that. While she still could.

  But her hand wouldn’t move.

  They collected in front of her, some folding their arms across their chests, others with hands in their pockets. All staring at the crazy woman hiking through the wasteland. Their wasteland.

  A shout floated down from above. “Leave her alone!”

  The man—more of a teenager, really—who appeared to be in charge yelled back. “Shut up, you old fool!”

  “Seriously,” Voronova said. “It’s a little backpack with barely enough to get me into Virginia.”

  “What are you gonna do in Virginia?”

  “Try to get the lights back on,” she said honestly. Why not continue to play the crazy woman? Maybe they’d feel sorry for her and let her go.

  “It’s not that far,” the young man said. “You can make it without the pack.” He indicated with his head. “And the jacket.”

  A cruel smile spread across one of his companions’ faces. “I don’t think she’s gonna need them pants, neither.”

  Instead of causing panic, their words had a strange calming effect on Voronova. This wasn’t a scenario where she could rationalize some compromise. Where she could give up her pack in return for safe passage. Over the course of the next five minutes she was going to either live by the sword or die by it.

  Her hand finally closed around the weapon beneath her jacket and a cold finger slipped through the trigger guard. She was about to warn them off one last time when the sound of her phone powering up became audible from her pack. She had no idea how it had suddenly been switched on, but it was hard to miss the fact that the tinny music had temporarily distracted the men in front of her. In all likelihood, none had heard that once-ubiquitous sound in more than a week.

  She pulled the pistol and fired point blank at the man in front of her. He jerked back but didn’t fall. Her conscious goal had been to hit him center of mass but her subconscious had pulled her hand right, causing the bullet to hit him in the shoulder.
>
  Shit.

  The other young men seemed suspended in time for a moment, but then all began reaching for their waistbands. She took a step forward, firing three more rounds at head level. They went harmlessly past them, but the proximity to their ears and eyes took its intended toll. All stumbled backward, clearing a path wide enough for her to run.

  When she did, though, she saw two similar men coming in her direction from an alley across the street. A quick look to the right revealed another angling in from that direction.

  Backup? To mug, rape, and murder a lone woman? What a bunch of wimps.

  Unfortunately, one of those wimps must have gotten his gun out because a shot sounded behind her. She tensed, but there was no impact. Maybe he’d been partially blinded by powder burns from her Beretta. Or maybe he just couldn’t shoot. But counting on her luck to hold wasn’t much of a strategy. Particularly when more shots followed. Eventually one would find its target. Or worse, they’d just chase her down. That wasn’t likely to end well. She needed to get off the street.

  One of the dark stores that she’d been avoiding came up on her right and she leapt through the broken window. All the shelves were empty and many were overturned, lying alongside products not worth looting. She stumbled through it all, taking cover behind a counter. Bullets struck the shelves and walls around her but none got particularly close. The gloom was deep enough that someone outside wouldn’t be able to differentiate her from all the other useless junk.

  She spotted a door hanging open on bent hinges at the back of the building and ran crouched through the barrage toward it. After lunging through and kicking it closed, she activated a light attached to one of her backpack straps. The room she found herself in was pretty good-sized, virtually empty and completely devoid of doors and windows that would allow her to escape. Apparently, her instructors had a point about her combat skills.

  Maybe the men out front would just give up. One had a bullet in his shoulder and a few others would have to be half-deaf. Ammo was probably getting hard to come by, too. They had to be making the calculation that one backpack wasn’t worth it.

  The guns eventually went silent, which seemed like a good sign. The voice that rose up in their place, though, was definitely not.

  “Kill that bitch!”

  Voronova desperately tried to find something to barricade the door, but the only thing with any heft to it was a wooden shelf that seemed to be screwed to the wall. She knelt next to an old rope attached to one of its legs, thinking that she could use it to tie off the door’s handle. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would provide a little time to think.

  She began untying it but then stopped to examine the way it wound around a pipe and then became trapped between the wall and the back of the shelf. Rising to her feet, again, she studied it for a few seconds before turning her attention to the floor. Sure enough, there were four long scratch marks that corresponded to the shelf’s legs.

  Clever.

  She went back to the door and saw two men coming in through the broken window. Their movements were hesitant, suggesting that they were taking her more seriously than they had before. She fired a single round in their general direction to reinforce that change in attitude. Both dove to the ground, shouting in rage and pain when they landed in the broken glass. That’d buy her a little more time. The question was, would it be enough?

  She grabbed a piece of steel from a broken display case and went back to the shelf. As expected, she couldn’t find any sign of the screws attaching it to the wall. More evidence to support the theory that it hid an entrance to a second-floor apartment. The owners of the shop had tied that rope to the leg, looped it around the pipe, and run it beneath the door that she really, really hoped wasn’t just a figment of her imagination. Then they’d used the rope to pull the shelf into place and screwed it in from the back.

  She jammed the piece of steel between the shelf and the wall and began prying as shouts filtered from the main part of the store. It took some effort, but she finally managed to free the unit and shove it out of the way.

  The door was right where she’d thought. Locked, of course, but a little more work prying took care of that. She opened it cautiously, sweeping her pistol from left to right as she examined a set of stairs that disappeared into the darkness.

  Detecting no signs of life, Voronova slipped inside, closed the door, and threaded the rope into the same position it had been in before. A few hard pulls scooted the shelf back in place but there were no tools to reattach it. The men coming after her didn’t appear to be geniuses, but even they’d figure out where she’d gone pretty quickly. Hopefully, the delay would give her time to find another exit.

  She ran up the steps and tried the knob on the door that she found at the top. Not surprisingly, it too was locked. A little more work with the piece of steel in her hand was rewarded with the sound of splintering wood and a two-inch gap. She stepped to the side, putting her back against the wall and holding her gun to her chest. A gentle nudge with her foot swung the door inward.

  The business end of a baseball bat appeared a moment later, slamming into the jamb a few inches from her face. She went low, centering herself in front of the door and aiming the Berretta up at a middle-aged Asian man. Surprise overcame the fear in his expression as she entered and kicked the door closed behind her.

  She pointed to an armoire against the far wall. “Help me.”

  The canned goods it contained made it heavy as hell, but they managed to scoot it into position in front of the door.

  “Do you have more screws?”

  He nodded and went to the kitchen for them and a power driver that, thank God, still had a charged battery. A few minutes later, they had the armoire firmly attached to the floor and wall.

  She backed away, studying their handiwork for a moment before turning her attention to the man who had helped her. “I’m sorry” was all she could think to say before going to the window and peeking around the shade.

  The climb down to the fire escape was easily doable, but it wouldn’t help. There were already two men waiting for her in the alley. Neither had made a move to try to climb up—the ladder was probably fifteen feet above ground level and looked like it was locked in place.

  When Voronova turned back around, she saw a woman and a girl of around six standing in the hallway at the edge of the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  The phone in her backpack started ringing, filling the room with the disorienting sound of Blondie’s “Call Me.” She’d forgotten about it powering up earlier and now dropped her pack in order to retrieve it.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  The Russian that she was expecting didn’t materialize. Instead, the male voice spoke with a neutral American accent.

  “Sonya Voronova?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s me.”

  “Do you know who shut the lights off?”

  “Yes. I know who he is, where he lives, and even more than that.”

  A muffled crash reached her. The toppling of the shelf protecting the entrance to the stairs. A moment later, someone started shooting, probably spraying the staircase that led to the apartment.

  “Is that gunfire?” the man asked calmly.

  “Yes. I’m trapped in an apartment above a store and people are coming after me. I’ll be lucky to survive another twenty minutes. And if I die, the name you want dies with me.”

  An irritated sigh came over the phone and then it went dead.

  CHAPTER 34

  VORONOVA dragged a box containing canned tomatoes across the living room floor and into the bathroom. The family living in the apartment had wisely transferred much of the store’s inventory there after the lights had gone out and, while it wasn’t necessarily survival specific, it would do the job.

  She fit the box in among similar containers stacked in front of the bathtub. Once satisfied with the placement, she leaned over the tub and looked at the terr
ified woman and child inside.

  “Stay in here. Do you understand? It’ll protect you until help gets here.”

  Neither spoke much English, but that didn’t seem to be much of a barrier to understanding. It turned out the international language wasn’t love—it was fear.

  When Voronova returned to the main living area, the men who’d attacked her were now turning their attention to the door. So far, it and the armoire reinforcing it were holding, but that wouldn’t last forever. The temptation to fire a few rounds through the wall was hard to resist, but she remembered what happened last time she’d given in to that particular temptation.

  The man of the house was standing in the middle of the living room, staring at the piece of furniture that they were relying on for survival. Finally, his gaze wandered to her.

  “You understand English, right?” she said, suddenly realizing that she wasn’t entirely sure. Everything she’d said so far had been reinforced by a fair amount of desperate body language.

  “Yes,” he responded through a thick accent.

  “Go into the bathroom with your family. You’ll be safe there, okay? Help is—” She fell silent when someone on the other side of the door started shouting excitedly. Shoving the man toward the back of the apartment, she examined the blockaded entrance as more excited voices joined the chorus. Had someone showed up with a chain saw? An explosive? She remained frozen for a few more seconds before her training started to kick back in.

  A diversion.

  She spun just as a man’s outline appeared through the shade. He’d managed to climb the fire escape and now swung his pistol into the window glass. The maneuver wasn’t very well thought out, and he cut himself badly. Instead of risking another injury tearing down the shade and searching for a viable target, he just fired blindly. The rounds landed in the kitchen, penetrating cabinets and shattering the dishes inside.