Chapter 8
The walk to Long Island was not going to be easy. Samuel’s parents lived in Freeport, just beyond JFK airport. It was a journey that would normally take him over an hour to drive, so on foot he was looking at something closer to an eight-hour journey if he couldn’t find a mode of transport. His first issue though, before Samuel could even think about how he was going to reach his parents, was getting across Brooklyn Bridge.
New York City was in a strange state of limbo. It wasn’t like any other disaster where the power had gone out or the electronics had stopped working. Everything was still working and yet, everything had also ground to a halt. People were both panicked and incredibly calm. The area around the Trident bank and Wall Street itself was the epicenter of the disaster. That was ground zero, the detonation point where the bomb had erupted and created bedlam. The further that Samuel now walked away from it, the more things changed and the more he encountered different types of behavior.
As he walked along the sidewalk beside the river, Samuel saw a whole range of people. The desperate ones among them were looting shops, trying to get away with anything they could carry. In a world without any money, Samuel wondered what would become the new source of currency. Precious gems didn’t quite hold the value they used to, or perhaps it was that less people knew that value. Electronics would be the natural choice, but how long would people be able to power them?
Samuel knew just how many different companies Trident worked with and how many resources could be damaged as a result of a lack of funding. Perhaps that was what R. Hauser had been referring to in his final few moments – maybe Samuel needed to think even further about the reach that Trident had within the city and how that would affect its inhabitants.
Making his way up onto the road, Samuel found immediately that the slip road leading up to the bridge was entirely gridlocked with cars. It looked like someone had abandoned their vehicle half way along and then another car had smashed into the back of it, making the slip impassable for other cars. Samuel saw this working to his advantage and picked his way through the mess of cars so he could start walking up the slip road toward the bridge. Traffic was still moving across it, but no way near like it normally did. Samuel was confident he could make the crossing.
“Hey pal! Where do you think you’re going?”
Looking back over his shoulder, Samuel saw a man hanging out of the window of his yellow cab, pulled up just at the bottom of the slip road while he smoked a cigarette.
“Long Island,” Samuel called back. He had no intention of stopping to talk or answer questions. The city was in disarray, he wasn’t about to be reprimanded for walking in the road or not using the proper pedestrian crossings.
“You want a lift?” the cabbie shouted back. “I can get ya there.”
Samuel paused and looked ahead of him again, seeing that the slip road was in no way passable. New York cabbies were efficient drivers, but even this guy couldn’t navigate through a gap half the size of his car.
“I know another way,” the cabbie declared, seeing the look of apprehension on Samuel’s face and pushing to get the ride. “Triple fare though. Cash only.”
“You know what’s happened, right?” Samuel asked with a confused tone, finally walking slightly closer to the cabbie so he didn’t need to shout. “Money is useless now.”
The cabbie scoffed and took a final drag of his cigarette, flicking the butt in the direction of the river. “Sure, if you believe that spin. Money can’t just get wiped out, pal. It’s out there somewhere, and it’ll be back soon. So, you want a lift or not? You got cash?”
Samuel stared at the cabbie a little longer, considering what the man was suggesting. He was so unlike everyone else he had encountered so far, so convinced that this was a problem that was going to go away. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and counted what cash he had. Unlike the driver, he was under no belief that the money problems were going to vanish. In part, he felt morally wrong going along with him, but he also needed to get to Long Island and if the cabbie was willing to drive him, he was willing to be driven.
“I’ve got a hundred and twenty bucks.”
“Get in.”
“So, you really believe all of this, huh?” The cabbie – whose badge told Samuel that his name was Jason Myers – asked as they drove away from the congested slip road and doubled back on themselves slightly. It looked like they were heading to the main road up to the bridge; something that Samuel highly doubted would still be in use based on the state of the slip road. But Jason drove in that direction anyway, paying no attention to the chaos all around him and the city which was falling apart.
“Yeah,” Samuel replied, not really knowing how to act around the cab driver. “I work at Trident. I don’t think they’d just make this entire thing up.”
“Aha,” Jason laughed, “well you’ve got the wool pulled over your eyes even more than the rest of us then! Money can’t just vanish into thin air. What is it they’re blaming it on now, random ware?”
“Ransomware.”
“Yeah, that’s the bugger!” Jason looked up into his rear-view
