A Children’s Bible
A group of upper-middle-class kids are at a summer home with their incompetent, drugged-out parents. A (biblical?) storm floods the area, and in the ensuing climate apocalypse, the kids abandon their parents and escape to a farm nearby. “The owner” gives them “a set of rules”, they are raided, and some “trail angels” hiking nearby help them.
One of my favorites of all time, and I don’t have a religious bone in my body. Prose is quippy and sharp, so much so that there are many layers between the lines.
Best tidbits, with SPOILERS
Voltaire is quoted: “All we can do is cultivate our garden.”
The narrator (one of the kids) recalls when she lost trust in her parents. She was seven, pre-apocalypse, and her parents were rushing them to fancy dinner reservation, “difficult to get.” They were in a crowd passing by a loud protest, and she kept asking them what it was about, since she wasn’t tall enough to see the signs. Her parents ignored her, and she broke free trying to find out. When her parents caught up to her, they scolded her for making them late to the reservation. And then the world collapsed.
One of the kids, when “the owner” burn the raiders alive in the barn, exclaims to “the owner” that “they didn’t know the rules!” The owner scolds the kid, “everyone knows the rules.”
When the parents finally come to the compound before “the owner” arrives, they threaten to sue the raiders. The narrator comments that they are exactly like the slightly slow kid caught up with the raiders; built for a narrow purpose, unable to understand things like the law and Emergency Services don’t exist if apocalypse happens.