The Atrocity Engine (Custodians of the Cosmos Book 1), page 1
THE ATROCITY ENGINE
©2024 TIM WAGGONER
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact editor@aethonbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Aethon Books
www.aethonbooks.com
Print and eBook interior layout and formatting by Steve Beaulieu. Cover Art provided by Maxim Kostin.
Published by Aethon Books LLC.
Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Contents
Also by Tim Waggoner
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Thank you for reading The Atrocity Engine!
About the Author
Custodians of the Cosmos
The Atrocity Engine
The Book of Madness
The Desolation War
Check out the entire series here! (Tap or scan)
One
Neal Hudson stood at the edge of the playground, watching. Something was wrong here, very wrong. He just didn’t know what yet.
It was late afternoon. School was out for the day, so the children here were a mix of different ages, the youngest probably around ten, the oldest a pair of high school boys who sat in the grass on the opposite side of the playground from Neal. The teenagers watched the younger children play with studied indifference, likely waiting for them to clear out so they could take over the playground. They’d sit on the swings and talk about whatever teenagers talked about these days. Funny YouTube videos, the latest video games, all the sex they pretended to be having… The majority of kids were middle schoolers, still young enough to enjoy playing on the equipment, but old enough to feel a little embarrassed about it.
It was early September, the day warm and sunny, and most of the kids were in T-shirts and shorts. There were a number of parents present, mostly moms, sitting on the wooden benches positioned around the playground or standing and talking in groups. Neal could always tell new moms from more seasoned ones. The less experienced moms kept their eyes glued to their children, as if worried that someone was going to attempt to abduct their precious darlings at any second. The more experienced moms texted or talked on their phones, chatted with friends, or read books and magazines. They’d only look up if someone screamed bloody murder, and if their child wasn’t bleeding to death, they’d return to what they were doing, unconcerned. The majority of the women were in their thirties, with only a couple in their forties. Younger mothers, those with toddlers, would’ve been here earlier in the day, when their little ones could play without any bigger kids around.
Neal was one of the few men present, and the only one who kept receiving furtive glances from the mothers. He didn’t blame them for being suspicious of him. In his line of work, you had to be suspicious of everything all the time. It was the only way to get the job done, and – if you were lucky – still be alive when it was over.
His uniform didn’t help, either. Maintenance employees, regardless of rank or position, wore long-sleeved white shirts, black ties, black pants, and black shoes. Those who went out into the field, like him, also wore a pair of black-rimmed smart glasses. Neal wore his sleeves rolled up and his tie loose, both of which were against regulations, not that he gave a damn. But these two nods to casualness and comfort didn’t make him look any less like a deranged accountant who was contemplating a new career as a serial killer. His physical appearance only contributed to this impression. He was in his forties, thin, with straight black hair that refused to stay combed and a narrow face that could generously be described as careworn. When any of the women looked at him, he gave them a smile, and they quickly looked away, suppressing a shudder.
He expected to hear Pam Duggan’s voice saying something like, If you keep smiling like that, they’ll evacuate the park.
He sighed. He missed Pam. They’d worked together as partners for seven years before… Well, just before.
One of the women paid more attention to him than the others. She kept looking around the playground, as if watching the children, but her eyes lingered on him a few seconds too long whenever her gaze fell upon him. She was a pretty brunette in her late thirties, around 5’8”, slender, wearing blue slacks and a green sweater over a white blouse. She held a rectangular plastic container with a sealable lid in her hands, and her fingernails ended in sharp points. Neal wondered what was in the container. Brownies? Cookies? The woman was smiling, as if enjoying watching the children play, but it was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. They were emotionless, almost calculating.
She appeared not to notice when Neal smiled at her, but he was certain she did. Unlike the other women, though, she didn’t seem disturbed by his presence. He supposed he should’ve felt grateful that at least one woman present didn’t find him skeevy-looking, but it struck him as odd.
The woman paid the most attention to one of the boys on the playground. He was eleven, maybe twelve, with blond hair, slightly chubby, and wearing sneakers, shorts, and a T-shirt with an anime character on it that Neal didn’t recognize. The woman’s son? Maybe, but Neal didn’t see any resemblance. Maybe the boy was adopted, or maybe the woman was his caregiver, but not his mother. An aunt, a nanny, a friend of the family?
The boy played on the merry go round, getting it spinning really good before hopping on. He held onto the bars, leaned backward, then pulled himself up and inward, the action increasing the merry go round’s speed. There were three other kids on the merry go round, all younger than him, and they held on for dear life as they spun around and around, ashen-faced and on the verge of tears. The boy’s laughter had a dark edge to it, and most of the parents – those who weren’t terrified their little ones were going to fly off the merry go round any second – scowled in disapproval.
Asshole.
Orchard Street Park was located on the west side of Ash Creek, and as Neal – who was driving solo these days – had drawn near it, the van’s dashboard scanner had detected a surge of entropic energy. Not a very large one, but any surge was cause for concern. He’d pulled in, parked in one of the few empty spaces remaining in the lot, and sat for several minutes, engine running, watching the dashboard scanner. The readings stayed in the normal range, though. No more surges.
He’d supposed it could be a glitch of some sort. The van was overdue for an equipment check, and it was possible the surge was nothing more than a normal fluctuation in the entropic field. Entropy by its very nature was chaotic and unstable, after all. On another day, he might’ve decided the reading meant nothing and left the park. But he’d driven his assigned route since starting work at nine that morning, without a single interesting thing happening – unless you counted the fact that he’d seen not one but two albino squirrels in the same neighborhood – and he was bored out of his mind. So, he’d gotten out of his vehicle and started walking into the park.
Orchard Street Park was the largest in the city, with a good-sized playground, black-topped paths for walking and jogging, a duck pond, tennis and basketball courts, soccer fields, and a wooded area with hiking trails. The E-energy surge could’ve come from anywhere within the park, but Neal decided to check out the playground first because it had the largest concentration of people – and, of course, because there were kids there. The forces of Entropy (with a capital E) weren’t picky about who and what they Corrupted, but they were especially attracted to children, so young, so full of life.
The playground was covered with cedar chips and had the usual accoutrements – teeter-totters, a dome-shaped metal climber, merry go round, slides, and swings. He’d been here before, most notably when he’d w
Bet a lot of kids have had nightmares about those guys over the years.
Neal’s smart glasses did more than send a live feed to the Analysts at Ash Creek’s Maintenance office – a feed that would be recorded and studied, not only to determine if there were any signs of Corruption he might’ve missed, but to monitor and evaluate his job performance. When you worked for Maintenance, you had to get used to constant oversight. None of us are ever alone, his supervisor Deanna had once said during a staff meeting. He’d thought she’d intended it to sound comforting, but he’d found it anything but. Besides providing the Analysts with a constant stream of data, the smart glasses also allowed their wearer to detect entropic energy and the presence of Corruption. Neal had continually swept his gaze across the playground since his arrival, but so far, everything looked clear.
Getting paranoid in your old age.
And then he saw it: a dark shimmer around the blond kid – the one on the merry go round – a translucent shadow superimposed over his body, invisible to the unaided eye but revealed by Neal’s glasses.
The unmistakable sign of Corruption.
Cody Pittman was having a blast.
His mom had picked him up after school and, since she had an appointment to, Get my hair done, she’d dropped him off at the park to play until she was finished. Cody was twelve, and he suspected, Get my hair done, was a euphemism for, Spend an hour having sex with the man I’m cheating on your daddy with. Not that he cared. After all, his dad was cheating on his mom with a woman who worked at the QwikMart near their home. He liked the woman. She always gave him free slushies. He wondered if his parents actually believed they were fooling anyone other than themselves or if it was all just an elaborate – and silly – game they played. Adults were weird.
Normally, he wasn’t all that thrilled with playgrounds. They had one at McKenzie Middle School, but most kids didn’t bother using the equipment. That stuff was for babies. Mostly kids stood around talking or staring at their phones, which they were allowed to use during recess. But for some reason, the Orchard Street Park playground was really doing it for him today. Part of it was that there were younger kids around for him to boss.
He might not have been at the bottom of the pecking order at his school, but he wasn’t one of the cool kids, either. And while he wasn’t all that fat, he did get teased about his weight sometimes. He wasn’t a dummy, but he also wasn’t particularly smart. Bottom line: He was no one special, just another kid trying to get through middle school one dull day at a time.
But it was different today. He felt fantastic, filled with energy and confidence, like he could do anything he wanted – anything at all – and no one could stop him. He was the king of this playground, its absolute lord and master, and if he desired it, everyone – kids and adults alike – would bow down to him. He hopped off the merry go round, grabbed hold of one of the bars, and started running, faster and faster, laughing as he increased his speed. There were three younger kids on the merry go round – two girls and a boy, all around five or six – and they sat down, gripping the bars to steady themselves, eyes wide with fear. Cody laughed louder and, when he judged he’d gotten the merry go round spinning as fast as he could, he hopped on, grabbed two bars, and leaned back as far as he could, his head nearly touching the ground.
The three unwilling passengers on this voyage began begging him, sounding on the verge of tears.
“Don’t do it!”
“No, no, no!”
“Stop, please!”
Their cries for mercy only made him laugh harder. He heaved himself up and into a standing position, the motion causing the merry go round to accelerate. The younger kids screamed as Cody pulled himself toward the merry go round’s center, sneakers stomping on the metal floor, making the device go even faster. The centrifugal force proved too much for one of the girls. She lost her grip on a bar, slid rapidly toward the edge of the merry go round, and was flung off. She flew several feet through the air then landed hard on cedar chips. She sat up and sobbed, face tear-streaked, snot running from her nose. It was the funniest thing Cody had ever seen, and he let out a high-pitched ululation that didn’t sound quite human.
The remaining two kids huddled together, holding onto each other as much as they were holding on to the merry go round’s bars. The merry go round was already starting to slow down, and Cody knew they weren’t going to fly off like the one girl had. Well, he’d just have to try harder next time, wouldn’t he?
He looked over at Ms. Blackburn and saw her smiling at him. She’d arrived at the park not long after his mom dropped him off, and he’d been surprised to see her. He was in her advisory at school, and it was always weird to see one of his teachers out in the real world. He knew that teachers were people who lived normal lives just like everyone else, but part of him believed that they were like robots who powered down at the end of the school day and waited silently in their classrooms until it was time to activate the next morning.
He liked Ms. Blackburn. She was nice enough, even if she was kind of strange. There was something off about her smile, as if she understood the concept of smiling but hadn’t quite mastered the action yet. And her eyes assessed you in a clinical, detached way, as if you were an unfamiliar insect and she was trying to decide if you merited further study. She was a biology teacher, though, so he supposed she looked at everyone like that.
He’d hoped she’d ignore him, but she didn’t. She’d come up to him and asked how his day had gone. He’d mumbled something in reply, and then she offered him a treat from the plastic container she was carrying.
“It was Mr. Rhodes’ birthday today, and we had a little celebration in the teachers’ lounge. I brought some sweets to share with everyone, and I had a few left over. Would you like one?”
Cody had wondered why Ms. Blackburn had come to the park, and why she’d brought her “sweets” with her. Had she hoped to distribute the leftovers to the kids playing here? That seemed kind of creepy. Then again, maybe she didn’t have any kids of her own to give them to. Cody loved sweets, though – too much, his mother always told him – and he had no reason not to trust Ms. Blackburn. She’d given him another of her not-quite-right smiles, pulled the lid off the container, and held it out to him. He leaned over to peer inside and saw a half dozen greenish-gray objects slathered with a thick mucus-like coating. The odor that came off the things was repellent, a combination of sour milk and rotting meat, and Cody’s stomach lurched when he breathed it in.
Go ahead, Ms. Blackburn had urged. Take one.
No way in hell was Cody going to eat one of those nasty-ass things. And yet, the longer he looked at them, the more appetizing they began to appear, and their smell, at first revolting, became enticing, almost irresistible. Before he knew it, he’d picked up one of the slimy things and brought it toward his mouth. He thought he felt it quiver in his grasp, as if it was alive, but he told himself it was just his imagination, and he popped it into his mouth and swallowed.
It wriggled all the way down.
It was delicious. It tasted like sunshine, rainbows, and Christmas mornings… Like electricity, fire, and ecstasy… Like life. He was young and strong and he was going to live forever! Laughter bubbled up from deep inside him, but when it came out it sounded like the harsh bray of a diseased donkey. He didn’t say thank you to Ms. Blackburn, didn’t tell her how good her weird-looking treat was. In fact, he forgot all about her. All he wanted to do was play, play, play! He raced onto the playground, ready to release the energy jangling inside him before he burst.
