Cthulhu Don't Surf

November 18th, 1965.

What would become known as the Battle of Ia Drang, is finally over. Wounded American soldiers are hefted out of the elephant grass by gurneys to be loaded on the choppers that your squad has just dismounted. The slain NVA's bodies will not be recovered, and many of them will have died in the very spot they were crawling through to get to LZ X-Ray.

Some of the men watching you walk past mock and jeer about 'thanks for the assist' or 'you're late to the party'; some warn that the enemy's still out there. You barely hear it over the whoomph-whoomph-whoomph of the chopper blades, the shouts of the dying and the wails of some who wish they were dead. When you disappear deeper into the brush, only then do the rumors spread: you're government spooks, that's gotta be the reason you're wading into this green Hell.

You stay low in the tall grass, knowing full well that the enemy isn't going to suddenly open fire and risk detection, but you understand that there could be snipers. You even spot one, making eye contact with some woman at the top of a tree. She doesn't shoot. She just clutches her rifle close to herself. You notice that she's scared though. Who wouldn't be when there's five of you and only all of North Vietnam ahead? Upon closer inspection, she's not scared of you. She's scared of what's in front of you.

A medic camp by the looks of things. It's not obvious: there's no MASH tent with doctors in scrubs sternly murmuring 'pass the scalpel'; in fact, it's quite tragic how it's just sheets with bodies on them, twitching and convulcing. Any NVA or VC that can walk do so, disappearing in the bogland. Those that have any strength left to drag a comrade along, shocked at what they're seeing, again, do so. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on from this distance.

You move closer, sneaking. As you do, the heavens open as rain begins to hammer down. Your movements are quietened by the ceaseless patter of the rain, a small mercy as you maneuver. You secure the perimeter. That sniper remains, adjusting her woven hat to better shield her; again, it's clear it's not you that's keeping her where she is.

Because what is keeping her there becomes violently apparent.

You barely have time to register the gurgle when someone cries out in abject horror. You look behind you, and see Corporal Crane being beset upon by...you're not entirely sure. It's a man, you think, a VC going by the uniform... but the uniform's bursting at the seams as his every limb is swollen, fat, and oozing. The VC is gnashing its teeth, its mouth small compared to its head that is shaped like the rest of his body: just a lump of flesh with features upon it, like a child's clay effigy of a man.

You hear a sharp CRACK! You know that sound. It's the sound of a Dragunov SVD rifle. Blood and...some other fluids you don't want to think too long on spurt out of the VC's head, but it's still on Crane, going at him like a pig at a potato, lips curled back, frothing and trying to bite.

HELP ME! FOR CHRISSAKES GET HIM OFFA ME! Crane cries out as he wrestles the creature. Finally, by the sheer weight of the thing, he falls down on the ground with the soldier atop him. There's the unmistakable crunch of ribs being cracked; Crane's, you imagine. If he's wounded that badly, and this thing still isn't dead, then there's not much hope for your comrade.

The shot is clear, but if a clean headshot through the temple less than a hundred yards away didn't do much, what hope do you have?

If there's one thing that's worse than the mosquito bites, the guns blazing and watching your mates get killed by the umpteenth creatively horrifying booby trap... it was the bloody music.

It's that same goddamn song every time. You know the one. The one with the fucking guitar that goes dun-neeeeeew, dun-neeeeeew, dillin-neeeeeew, dillin-neeeeeew bom-bom!

SOME FOLKS ARE BORN MADE TO WAVE THE FLAG! OOH THEY'RE RED WHITE AND BLUE!

Over. And over. Again.

It's 1970. John fucking Foggerty has been on that radio for less than a year, and if he was in one of the bombers he could drown the VC high command in the sheer weight of cash from his royalties by now. But the yanks love him. God bless them for it, but Christ Almighty do you wanna put your thumbs through some star-spangled eyes after the fiftieth time hearing it.

You're on a heli ride to finish off some NVA base hit with Agent Orange from above in one of its final use cases. It'd be impolite for Uncle Sam to take back his gift to Uncle Ho, so any targets that can be hit with the remaining stock have been thoroughly doused in it, and fresh troops are being sent out to clear out these areas.

You drop from your chopper a few feet above the ground into what's as boggy as a rice paddy. Except this was jungle; the Orange has practically melted all the trees and grass into slurry. You didn't know Agent Orange could have that sort of iridescent quality like oil. It's quite soothing. You realise how long you've been staring at it, and move your unit to where there's some fortifications up ahead, which would've used the tree cover well while the trees were there.

You reach the top of the farm, and check in on your troops. You could swear you had more. You do a quick head count and find twenty. There's seventeen. In the distance, one of them is looking over his shoulder, his pace slow. Looks like he's watching the patterns in the oil. Whatever, let him look.

The AA guns are down. Literally, the barrels are drooping like no little blue pill's gonna fix it. Another interesting fact about Agent Orange apparently: it turns metal into sludge too. The sandbags have coalesced together as though the Orange hasn't just melted but clotted them together. That's the word: clotted. Everything looks like it's bled and is currently, messily healing into one cancerous tumour.

It's when you come across the huts that you see the dead. They're huddled up against the walls, likely seeking warmth as the life slipped away from their bodies. But it's interesting how none of them are looking out of the doorway, like they didn't want to be found. Now that's something. You kneel down and find that where the bodies lay they don't simply lay: they're fused to the surface, as if they've melted and solidified. You've seen it happen with plastic cement for when your dad put together Tamiya models. Is that's what Agent Orange has done to every surface it's come across? It's melted everything together?

Hey... hey, can someone give me a hand? You hear a familiar voice, a young American soldier, one of the first you got to know the name of. Private Pinder. You go over and look, seeing him clutching his leg whilst standing. Captain {{user}}, I'm, err... stuck. You look down at his leg. It doesn't end with a boot. It seems to end in a stump... and the stump is merged into the mud... and the mud is creeping up. You go over and notice now his bare hands are turning pale. You look Pinder in the eye and see him squinting, as though the sun's in his eyes. The sun isn't behind you. It's behind him. The others are turning to look at Pinder, beginning to notice the change. Down the hill you see a recruit in the LZ, only he's sinking down to his chest, still staring idly into the swirling rainbow patterns of the oil.

You don't know what the Hell's going on, but this sounds like the sort of thing the Meridian Directorate has enlisted you to deal with. It's not like those living dead back in the streets of Drover's Flat, back when the spooks brought you in to deal with things like 'em. This is something else: the land is eating your men alive. You can't save the man down there in the field, but you might be able to save Pinder if you act now.

When word of the Paris Peace Accords hit the radios and newspapers, the relief was bittersweet. On the one hand, your fellows - what remained of them - could return home, ignorant of the otherwordly horrors that are still on this God-forsaken land. On top of the other, many of the horrors you've seen were by the hands of the brigade you're attached to. Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất are but two examples of the evils of men. Your men. But the ones responsible are on a heli to face court martial, and the ones you're left with are those you can trust enough to bring into what may be your final battle with the impossible. You've seen enough of what the Meridian Directorate has enlisted you to destroy to know there's a link between the war crimes committed by foreign interests and the intensity of the supernatural that follows.

Even if you wanted to, you won't be one of those many thousands of soldiers who gets to leave this place. Not yet, and given your latest orders, perhaps you'll never leave. Your latest instructions were given by General Lee Bong-Chool himself in a coded message: OURS IS THE DRAGON.

The irony of that cryptic message was not lost on you. The emblem of your unit, the 2nd Marine Division or more identifiably the Blue/Aquamarine Dragon Division, is the only dragon that should live in the minds of civilians, soldiers, and later historians. Today, what you hope will be your final mission, is slaying the Dragon of Tuy Hòa.

Of all the eldritch goings-on in Vietnam, the Meridian Directorate has had the hardest time controlling the rumor mill because it's the most overt one. The US Navy has lost countless ships in the vicinity of this beach, and in April 1970 when someone saw the Dragon, and in a fit of madness they launched a Douglas C-47A B-308 into the sea. The pilot's sacrifice was not in vain as the Dragon appeared to be wounded, its blood boiling the crash sight and dissolving the wreckage. MD censorship put such an event to delirium from dehydration, and the bubbling wreckage down to a combination of fuel and its cargo mixing together in a volatile cocktail.

The airbase is being packed up by the American and South Korean forces, leaving little for the NVA and VC to pick at like vultures. Your chosen men, the five that you have selected for what you've told them is a suicide mission, take the time to steal what they can to help fight a dragon. There will be few witnesses, and fewer still will survive. You know painfully little of the Dragon, and neither does the Meridian Directorate for all the reports they've had of ships sinking under mysterious circumstances. But a plane managed to make it bleed. And if it bleeds, you can kill it.

Night begins to fall, the sun dipping beneath what's left of the trees and hills that haven't been fried by Agent Orange and napalm. Your men, the ones who managed to do something to stop the massacres from getting worse, sit around with you, atop crates left behind by the evacuees, watching the shores.

Sir. Says Sergeant Park, squinting his eyes as he looks through his binoculars, out at sea. Take a look. He pulls them from around his neck, and hands them over to his captain. You take them and look through.

Bubble.

Bubble.

Bubble.

Something's breathing under the water. Something close enough to the surface to produce air bubbles. Something big enough to produce bubbles that large, the size of a man's head.

The Dragon of Tuy Hòa is here. And it's approaching fast.