When the Rain Came by Matt Eicheldinger

“If we stay here, if we keep wandering without a real plan, we won’t last. Maybe The Hill is dangerous. But maybe it’s not. It’s the only plan we have.”

Seventeen-year-old Aurora knows how to survive. Life in the foster system has taught her how to stay quiet, stay smart, and stay ready. But nothing could prepare her for this: a never-ending storm that swallows cities, drowns forests, and turns the world into a flooded wasteland.

Trapped in a collapsing house with her strict prepper foster parents, Aurora is forced to live by their rules just to stay alive. Until the day they disappear without a trace.

Alone. Abandoned. And running out of time.

All Aurora has is a waterlogged scrap of paper and a name: “The Hill.”

With looters closing in and the floodwaters rising higher each day, she’s left with one impossible choice—stay and wait for the storm to take her, or risk everything on a journey through the drowned remains of the world, to a find a place that may or not exist.

It’s forward or nothing.

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The world doesn’t explode. It just… keeps raining until there’s nowhere left to stand.

Pre-Reading Thoughts

I’m always weak for a quiet, grounded apocalypse — less “Hollywood fireball,” more “oh no, society just quietly dissolved.” Add in prepper survival skills and a tense foster family setup and I was expecting grit, moral grey areas, and a lot of cold, soggy misery.

(Complimentary.)

Post-Reading

As I thought…

• Fast-paced in that constant forward-motion way — there’s no time to sit and brood because survival won’t let you.

• The prepper angle is really interesting. Stockpiles, rules, contingency plans — it makes Aurora feel competent, not lucky. She survives because she knows how.

• The journey structure works beautifully: flooded ruins, strangers, split-second trust decisions, always moving toward The Hill like it’s a myth or a prayer.

• Lots of that classic apocalypse question: are people the real danger, or are we still capable of kindness when everything’s gone?

It surprised me by…

• How lonely it feels. Even when other characters show up, there’s this emotional isolation that never fully lifts. Very “me against the weather.”

• The open-endedness. It doesn’t hand you neat answers or a perfect safe haven. It’s more about choosing hope anyway.

• How stressful water is as a threat. Fire you can run from. Zombies you can fight. Floodwater is just… everywhere. Relentless. Rude. Personal.

🎵 Music Pairing

Featured Song:
“Hard Times” – Paramore
Upbeat-but-desperate energy. Survival but make it slightly feral.

Vibe Album:
For Emma, Forever Ago – Bon Iver
Cold, isolated, cabin-in-the-woods melancholy. Peak “staring at grey skies” music.

Artist Recommendation:
Daughter – soft, aching, rain-on-windows sadness.

Vibe Check

• Colour Palette: slate grey, river green, rusted metal, raincloud white

• Soundtrack: constant rainfall, sloshing footsteps, distant thunder, creaking wood

• Season: late winter / early spring thaw (but make it endless)

• Mood: tense, determined, quietly hopeful

• Scent: wet denim + cold air + damp wood

Tarot Pull

Knight of Swords 
This is pure forward momentum energy - charge ahead, think later, survive first. It’s reckless but necessary. Aurora doesn’t get the luxury of careful plans; she just moves. The Knight is all urgency and grit and “if I stop, I’m done.”

For fans of

• Dry (but swap drought for flood)

• The Road (bleak journey + fragile hope)

• Waterworld but… quieter, sadder, and 100% less jet ski chaos