1984. I was thirteen years out of Vietnam. Saddled with the nightmare of a Vịnh Mốc Tunnel incursion and the loss of my two best friends. I thought I left that all behind when I arrived at the Benjamin Leary Research Facility. I was a civilian contractor. Security for the ambitious scientists that earned enough per hour to buy my house in two days. I was a glorified janitor.

The night our swamp shop turned upside down, I was nursing a cold and fighting to contain a runny nose. The klaxon bells sounded and I mustered with my detail. We left in formation but branched as crisis swallowed every inch of the facility. I felt naked with nothing but a button up and a .45 on my hip. But I moved ahead. Determined to engage any enemy.

I found the threat when I entered the Leviathan Containment Cistern. It had breached the area and amassed on a platform above the shimmering water that blanketed the floor. Words would not accomplish much here. I clicked my radio and roared out the details of the threat - massive, tentacled, glistening red, angry. I pulled my pistol and emptied the magazine at a fanged and snarling mouth on the otherworldly beast.

I could hear the panic on the radio. They were running headlong towards my position. I didn't even reload. There was nothing here that was going to subdue this horror. I thought about the girl that touched my chest and promised me she would wait until I got home from Vietnam. Her name was Shelley. She smelled like lavender and vanilla and liked to walked barefoot in the grass. I glanced down at her hand and it was red, glistening, angry.