Reborn with Nothing but My Farm and Vengeance in the Apocalypse novel Chapter 101

Chapter 101: Chapter 101: Sky-High Prices

Seeing Melody Summers approach, Officer Sean Pierce smiled and stood up to greet her. "Comrade Summers, what can I do for you?"

Officer Sean Pierce had a very good impression of Melody Summers. After all, the special medicine she had donated had been a godsend for the emergency response office.

Melody Summers told Officer Sean Pierce what she had encountered at the Oceanus Hotel.

After finishing her account, Melody Summers added, "Officer Pierce, the front desk staff told my uncle to his face that they can provide ’special services’ for certain customers. On top of that, there have been frequent robberies in the alley not far from the back of the hotel. I’m eighty percent sure there’s something fishy about that hotel."

Officer Pierce frowned in thought after listening. "We can’t determine if there’s truly a problem with the hotel based on differential pricing alone. As for these ’special services’... rest assured, I’ll report this to my superiors. The relevant departments will send people to investigate."

Melody Summers could only nod. She knew she didn’t have any concrete evidence, and these clues alone weren’t enough to prove anything.

But she felt she at least had to get the hotel on the police’s radar. That way, if anything happened in the future, they could respond in a timely manner.

’And then there’s Flynn Adler...’ Melody remembered that in her past life, Adler Enterprises had been colluding with foreign powers from the very beginning of the cataclysm. They had exploited government support and subsidies for desalination companies to embezzle and transfer state-owned assets, and had been investigated for it several times.

The only reason Melody knew about this was because Sylvia Lancaster had once come home and bragged about it to Robert Lancaster as if it were a point of pride. Sylvia had praised Flynn Adler for being so clever and acting so quickly, destroying the evidence right before the state investigation began and leaving the authorities to come up empty-handed.

Although Melody didn’t understand the intricacies of it all, she decided that as soon as she got back, she would write a flurry of anonymous tips to every relevant department, hoping to spur the government into investigating these matters ahead of time.

*

That evening, after the supermarket closed, Melody Summers, Winnie Summers, and Colin Summers walked home together, flanked by members of the neighborhood patrol, which gave them a great sense of security.

As they walked, they discussed how in the time since they had moved out of The Metropolis Residences, five more elderly people living alone on the upper floors of Buildings 3, 8, and 9 had died from the heat. By the time they were discovered, they had been dead for two days.

The seniors’ families were all out of town and couldn’t make it back, so they had entrusted the property management office with handling the final arrangements.

Then there were the two pregnant women in Buildings 7 and 4. With the public healthcare system paralyzed and private hospitals being unaffordable, they had no choice but to watch online tutorials and give birth at home on their own.

One of the women had a difficult delivery, resulting in the death of both mother and child. The other, despite a safe delivery, couldn’t afford the steep electricity bills, so she turned off the air conditioner at night. The newborn didn’t survive the high temperatures and passed away.

Melody Summers sighed. She knew from her past life that this heatwave would kill a great number of people, and she had steeled herself for it. But hearing about these tragedies happening one after another in the very complex where she used to live still made her heart ache. All she could do now was pray for time to pass more quickly.

When the three of them returned home, their grandmother, Miss Lowell, and their aunt had already prepared dinner.

Winnie Summers and Colin Summers were stunned to see the table laden with food. Winnie asked, "Mom, where did all these vegetables come from? Didn’t we empty the fridge before we left?"

Her grandmother, who was just bringing a dish of sautéed potatoes, eggplant, and peppers to the table, smiled and replied, "Oh, I was thinking we wouldn’t have any fresh vegetables for the next few days. We were even planning to rehydrate some of the dried ones from the pantry. But then, Thorne from next door unexpectedly brought over so many! We’ve put the hardier ones in the refrigerator—it’s packed to the brim. We also blanched and froze some things, like the green beans, and pickled a few jars of vegetables."

Her aunt chimed in with a smile, "This will be more than enough to last us until the vegetables in our garden are ready to harvest. And if worse comes to worst, we still have plenty of dried vegetables in the pantry! We definitely won’t be running out of greens."

Miss Lowell added with a smile, "He brought lots of fruit, too—so much, in fact, that we’ve already cooked down the more perishable ones into canned fruit preserves to make them last longer. We thought the fruit trees in the backyard were done for, but after we cooled the area with the air conditioner and gave them some water today, they’ve perked right up. Now we’ll have no shortage of fruit at all."

The meal was a feast of ten full dishes, with both vegetables and meat, including a plump young lamb that Melody had just butchered that day. The Summers family ate until they were stuffed.

Between cleaning the house, stocking her store, and shipping orders, Melody was completely exhausted. But now that she was finally back in her own home, she slept soundly and peacefully.

*

The items Melody had listed in the Arcadia Store a few days prior were almost completely sold out, and user reviews had started to trickle in.

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