Reborn with Nothing but My Farm and Vengeance in the Apocalypse novel Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Chapter 43

Austin Hale saw the dark look on Joanne White’s face and tried to comfort her in a low voice. "Joanne, the apartment in the school district is all repaired. We can move back in a few days. As for the actual renovations, we can work on those slowly after we move in."

"So what if we move back?" Joanne White snapped, her usual gentle demeanor gone. "Utilities are ridiculously expensive, and you’re jobless! Are we supposed to move out and live on air?!"

"Joanne... Why are you acting like this? You’re not normally like this." Austin flinched at her yelling and stared at her in disbelief. She was always so gentle; he’d never heard her scream like this before.

Joanne snorted and rolled her eyes. ’With my life in such a complete mess, how could I possibly act as sweet as usual?’

For the past few days, her morning sickness had been relentless, leaving her groggy from the oppressive heat. She wanted to turn on the air conditioner, but Mrs. Hale refused to let her.

The water was only on at noon and 7:00 PM each day. The previous evening at 7:00, Joanne had wanted to shower, but Mrs. Hale insisted on using the time to fill containers for storage.

The water pressure was extremely low, and the shower needed a strong flow to work. As soon as Mrs. Hale turned on the other faucet to fill her containers, the water from the showerhead cut out completely, making it impossible for Joanne to bathe.

She hadn’t had a proper shower in days, and her scalp was unbearably itchy. Her nails were long, and she’d scratched her own scalp until it bled, leaving painful, stinging marks.

She couldn’t stand the stale, sweaty smell clinging to her body, so she doused herself in perfume to try and cover it. The cloying scent only made her morning sickness worse.

And so, Joanne White endured a month of this living nightmare with the Hale family.

To make matters worse, ever since Austin was fired, he did nothing but mope around the house, sighing constantly and paying little attention to how Joanne felt.

At first, Joanne had suppressed her own frustration and comforted Austin gently. But as the situation grew more precarious and all the resumes he sent out were met with silence, she gradually lost her patience with him.

’I’m still young,’ Joanne thought. ’I can’t throw my future away on Austin!’

Joanne took a few deep breaths to calm herself, then said softly to Austin, "Austin, this pregnancy has just been really hard on me, and I’ve been on edge. Please don’t take it to heart. By the way, I can pick up my graduation certificate in a few days. I was thinking of staying at the school for a couple of days. Could you give me a little money?"

"Go back to school? I’ll go with you," Austin said at once.

"There’s no need, Austin. I’m staying in the women’s dorm, so it wouldn’t be convenient for you. You should use this time to focus on finding a job," Joanne said gently. "The baby will be expensive when they’re born. We need to save some money, don’t you think?"

Austin nodded. He knew she was right; he really did need an income. For Joanne and their baby, he resolved to pull himself together and keep searching for a job.

Austin transferred what little money he had left to Joanne. "Call me when you’ve picked up your diploma," he said. "I’ll come get you."

Joanne just smiled and nodded, saying nothing.

*

Melody Summers was jolted awake by her alarm early that morning. She planned to go help out at Crystal Mart. The panic buying over the last two days had nearly emptied the supermarket’s warehouse shelves, so today it was closed for reorganizing and restocking.

She had been busy in the Arcadian Space until late the previous night. The apricot and plum trees in its forest were beginning to bear ripe fruit. The golden apricots were sweet, while the plums had a sweet-tart flavor and a rich, fruity fragrance.

Melody had eaten her fill while picking them in the forest and had also harvested a large batch of apricots to make into dried fruit.

While she was picking fruit, she also found a beehive deep in the forest.

Melody was relieved to hear that. After a moment’s thought, she reminded Crystal to be careful not to let anyone else find out.

Crystal’s father and brother had left before dawn to drive to the bottled water plant’s warehouse. It wasn’t just Crystal Mart that had been completely bought out of water; other supermarkets were also running low. The water plant’s regular suppliers were overwhelmed, so Shawn and Finn Lynch decided to drive to the various plants to pick up their stock themselves.

Crystal was checking the inventory with a supplier. She glanced at the invoice and frowned. "The prices on this shipment have jumped way too much. This canned luncheon meat used to be 10 a can. Since April, you’ve raised it to 14, then 18, and now this batch is 30?"

The supplier wiped the sweat from his brow and stood in front of the air conditioner for a moment before replying, "All the factories are shut down now. This is just leftover stock from when they were rushing production before the shutdown."

"At the government’s request, during the power rationing in residential areas, every factory was pushing production to its absolute limit. Their machines were practically running red-hot."

The supplier continued, "Word is, production isn’t starting up again anytime soon, so you should just take what you can get. If supplies really dry up later, you could sell these for 80 a can and people would still buy them. Everyone’s got to eat, right? No matter how expensive it gets, they’ll have to grit their teeth and pay up."

Hearing this, Melody asked, "At the current rate of distribution, when do you think your inventory will be completely gone?"

The supplier scratched his head. "We’re a small food plant, so we don’t have a huge inventory. At the rate things are being shipped out, we’ll be completely out of stock in a month or two, tops. The bigger food companies have more than us; they have multiple local warehouses. They can probably keep supplying for three or four months, but I’m not really sure."

After the supplier left, the group got to work organizing the inventory in silence. The prices had risen so drastically that almost all the profit they had made recently was immediately swallowed up by this new order.

Just as they finished organizing the goods, Finn and Shawn Lynch returned.

They had left with two large trucks but had come back with only a single, partially filled one.