Dry Surf

A puddle is all it needs. In 1761, a coastal village kept something in a sealed gourd, and when slavers stole it, the sea came aboard their ship and ate the crew. The rule they left behind was simple: keep the lid open, keep it dry, never ask what lives underneath. Now the lid is shut. In Albuquerque. Six hundred miles from the nearest ocean. Fire Captain Rhea Montoya has pulled bodies out of trenches and collapsed floors. She has never watched a spilled water bottle open onto black depth, or seen a dorsal fin cross a flooded intersection. Museum curator Kadiatu Sesay knows what the silver disk is. Flood engineer Dario Armenta knows every place in the city where water pools. And Garrick Sayer has already found buyers who see sharks in any standing water and think: weapon. Then the monsoon arrives. There is no shore to reach. In the desert, the ocean is wherever the rain lands. Stay dry. Stay alive.