Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Another Great Wind

When Melody Summers woke up the next morning, she learned her uncle and mother had already left for Crystal Mart.

Crystal Lynch’s family lived on the 12th floor. They hadn’t dared to go home the previous night, so the whole family had made makeshift beds and slept on the supermarket floor.

Crystal Lynch had messaged her that morning to say everything was fine. A lot of people had heard another strong wind was coming in a couple of days and were planning to stay indoors. They were all flocking to the supermarket to stock up on food.

Melody Summers headed out after breakfast. She walked through the residential community, observing her surroundings as she went.

Fortunately, The Metropolis Residences wasn’t in a heavily affected area. Many people had reinforced their windows after Melody Summers’s earlier warning, so only a few residents had shattered panes.

In the community square, property management was organizing the janitorial staff to clean up the mess.

The square was littered with all sorts of debris blown in by the gales: broken branches, shattered bricks, and busted outdoor air conditioning units. There were even a few fish lying belly-up on the ground.

A few trees in the landscaped areas had been toppled, and the wind had completely emptied the water from the community fountain.

As she walked, Melody Summers scrolled through the news on her phone. Her feed was flooded with scenes of devastation from the hardest-hit areas.

Roadside trees had been completely uprooted. Vast stretches of farmland were ruined by wind-blown gravel, leaving the ground covered in stones. Unharvested crops were left to rot in the fields. It was a scene of utter devastation.

Some houses had been completely flattened. The roofs of standalone homes had been torn away. In high-rise buildings, floor-to-ceiling windows had shattered, and the interiors were wrecked by debris that had been blown inside.

In one horrific case, an entire floor-to-ceiling window in a bedroom was ripped out by the wind. The resident inside was swept away, plunging to their death from the 14th floor. A video showed the surviving family members’ anguish, their grief-stricken cries creating a sense of despair so palpable it felt like it was seeping through the screen, making it hard to breathe.

Melody Summers sighed as she scrolled through her phone. ’The apocalypse has begun. This storm is just the beginning. There will be two more just like it, followed by a long, drawn-out heatwave.’

She glanced at the community group chat, where everyone was complaining.

"Nina from 4-2009: @Building 4 Property Management, Where are you? Stop playing dead! Get out here! When on earth are you going to come fix my windows?!"

"Building 4 Property Management: @Nina from 4-2009, We’ve already put you on the list. The wind yesterday was incredibly strong, and a lot of windows on the upper floors were shattered. It’s even worse downtown. Everyone is trying to schedule repairs, so the waiting list is extremely long."

"Nina from 4-2009: @Building 4 Property Management, How long are you going to make me wait?! Haven’t you seen the news? There’s another gale coming in two days! If you don’t install my window today, I’m moving in with you!"

"Building 4 Property Management: @Nina from 4-2009, My windows are shattered too, and I’m on the waiting list just like everyone else."

"Nina from 4-2009: Good heavens! Is there any justice in this world?! How am I supposed to live like this!"

"Kiki, Mom of Two from 3-1007: Whew, thank goodness we replaced our windows a few days ago. The old ones definitely wouldn’t have withstood that."

"Coco from 2-1908: It’s a good thing someone warned us a few days ago, or we’d never be able to get an appointment now. @B16 Summertime, thank you, you’re a lifesaver."

Melody Summers replied:

"B16 Summertime: You’re welcome. The forecast says another strong wind is coming in a couple of days, so everyone should try to stay home and stock up on food."

She then put her phone away and walked into Crystal Mart, where a good number of people were shopping for food and daily necessities.

At the checkout counter, Winnie Summers bagged groceries while Colin Summers scanned items. They had learned how to operate the cash register over the past two days and had quickly gotten the hang of it.

Shawn Lynch—Jane Lynch’s brother—and their father, Finn Lynch, were busy restocking the shelves.

For safety reasons, neither Finn Lynch nor Shawn Lynch had gone out to work their driving routes. Instead, they were helping out at the supermarket.

Seeing Melody Summers walk in, Crystal Lynch leaned in and whispered, "Melody, business is really picking up today! The revenue from this morning alone is almost as much as we made in half a month before this."

"Is your apartment okay?" Melody Summers asked.

"We went back to check before dawn, and it’s fine. It’s really secure after the reinforcement. We’re planning to sleep at home tonight. Melody, thank you so much for warning us. Otherwise, we never would have gotten an appointment. I hear the repair companies are completely swamped."

Melody Summers shook her head with a smile. "Don’t mention it."

Just then, a customer asked, "Excuse me, how is the lettuce already sold out so early?"

The supermarket had a small produce section selling vegetables, fruit, and eggs.

Finn Lynch wiped the sweat from his brow. "Yesterday’s tornado destroyed a lot of vegetable farms. Today, the farmers are all busy assessing the damage. I took my three-wheeled truck to the nearby market first thing this morning, and this is all I was able to get."

The customer left, looking disappointed.

Shawn Lynch suggested, "The large wholesale markets should still have some inventory. I’ll drive over and pick up some produce that keeps well. We can store it in the back and sell it over the next few days."

After a brief discussion, they all agreed it was a good plan.

Only Melody Summers knew what was coming. ’After the next two storms,’ she thought, ’most of the farmland will be destroyed. The subsequent heatwave will lead to total crop failure. Soon, the only vegetables available will be the prohibitively expensive ones grown indoors.’

Melody Summers helped out at the supermarket for a while. Around noon, when the number of customers dwindled, she headed home to rest with Winnie and Colin Summers.

Back home, Winnie Summers asked, "Should we go to the wholesale market and stock up on vegetables, too?"

Melody Summers had already picked a bounty of vegetables from her dimension before leaving the house, secretly filling their side-by-side refrigerator to the brim. She opened the fridge doors to show her family the fruits of her labor. They were all stunned.

"Melody, when did you buy all these vegetables?" her grandmother, Grace, asked in astonishment. "The fridge was still half-empty when I was making breakfast this morning."

"I ordered them from a grocery app this morning and had them delivered," Melody Summers said vaguely.

"Wonderful! This is enough to feed our family of six for a good while," Grace Sutton said happily. "And look how fresh this bok choy is! It’ll be delicious stir-fried."

"Can we eat all of this before it goes bad?" Colin Summers asked, a little worried.

"They won’t. We can blanch and freeze these long beans. They’ll keep for a very long time. When we’re ready to eat them, we just take them out. The texture is even better than fresh."

"And we can pickle these small cucumbers. They’re the perfect refreshing side for congee."

The family chattered excitedly about the food, and then her grandmother added with a smile:

"The vegetables in our garden have sprouted, too. Those seeds Melody gave us are amazing—they sprouted so fast! At this rate, we’ll never have to worry about running out of vegetables."

A while back, Melody Summers had secretly replaced the water in their small backyard pond with water from the Arcadian Stream in her dimension. With the stream’s water for irrigation, the crops were sprouting with incredible speed.

With the family’s vegetable supply secured, they used the ingredients from the fridge to prepare a lavish lunch.

*

The following day at noon, the sky once again turned ominously dark. A vast, dense black cloud shrouded the heavens, shot through with faint flashes of blue and purple lightning.

Having learned from the last storm, many people rushed home to take shelter.

Two hours later, another gale struck, this one lasting for the better part of the day.

Some families with broken windows that hadn’t been replaced yet had packed their belongings and taken refuge in the underground parking garage. Property management had also set up a temporary shelter for everyone in the ground-floor lobby.

Some residents on the upper floors didn’t dare return to their apartments and stayed in the garage or the temporary shelter.

*

The gales finally subsided after eight o’clock that evening. Crystal and Shawn Lynch arrived at Melody Summers’s front door.

"Melody," Crystal said, "this is the produce my brother got from the wholesale market today. Everyone was scrambling to buy vegetables, so I made sure to save some for you."

Both Crystal and Shawn Lynch were holding two boxes, stuffed to the brim with all sorts of fruits and vegetables.

Melody Summers quickly invited them in, but the two siblings declined. "We just wanted to drop off the vegetables," Crystal said. "We’re in a hurry to get back and take inventory of our stock. We’ll come by and hang out some other time."

"It’s so quiet over here in the villa district," Crystal added. "Much quieter than our part of the complex." With fewer residents, the area was silent late at night. If her brother hadn’t been with her, she would have been a little scared walking by herself.

Melody Summers accepted the vegetables, carrying the boxes inside one by one. Though she wasn’t short on produce, she was very touched that the Lynch siblings had delivered them personally. The gesture moved her, and she immediately began thinking of how to repay Crystal’s kindness.

’The supermarket is stocked with food and daily necessities, so the Lynch family definitely isn’t lacking supplies.’ Melody thought for a moment, then went to the backyard pond. She netted a few fish, put them in a bag, and then quickly ducked into her dimension to grab two chickens.

She packed everything up and pressed the bags into the hands of the Lynch siblings.

Crystal and Shawn couldn’t refuse her insistence and had no choice but to accept the gifts. The two siblings left, carrying the chickens and fish.