Lackbeard Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Cody B. Stewart and Adam Rocke

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in 2018 by Common Deer Press

  3203-1 Scott St.

  Toronto, ON

  M5V 1A1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stewart, Cody B.; Rocke, Adam.—First edition.

  Lackbeard / Cody B. Stewart and Adam Rocke

  ISBN 978-1-988761-24-4 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-988761-25-1 (e-book)

  Cover Image: © Tim Zeltner i2i art

  Book Design: Ellie Sipila

  Printed in Canada

  WWW.COMMONDEERPRESS.COM

  1

  Treasure. Every good pirate worth the salt in his bones spends his life searching for it. Plundering, pillaging, stalking the coasts, living unchecked and wild on the high seas. Only for most of them to end up dangling from the gallows dancing the hempen jig with nothing to their names but the tattered clothes on their backs. Either way, it’s a sad end to a life meant for nonstop adventure, unimaginable riches, and boundless freedom.

  But not Carter Humbolt. He’d have his freedom if he had to cut through all of St. Augustine to get it.

  Or he’d just sneak out. Yeah, probably just sneak out.

  And he’d have his treasure, too—even if he had to level the St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum to get it.

  Or he could just pick the lock. Yeah, probably just do that.

  Because Carter was the scourge of Castillo Drive! The sea-faring scoundrel of St. John’s County! A shadow in the dead of night! The most fearsome—

  “Carter!”

  The sharp whisper shook Carter from his fantasy and dropped him back into the larceny at hand. Brad Humbolt, reluctant buccaneer and first mate of naysaying, breathed down his little brother’s neck. “This is a terrible idea. I mean a really terrible idea. I definitely should not have agreed to this.”

  “Sturdy yer mainsail, jelly bones,” Carter grumbled in his gruffest pirate voice. He didn’t take his eyes off the keypad, its blinking lights like the stars that guided his ship. Or would if he had a ship.

  “I have no idea what you just said,” Brad growled, stooping down close to Carter’s ear, “but I think I might pound you for it anyway—if we don’t end up in jail.”

  Carter pulled his skull and crossbones hood up over his headlamp. He flicked it on and drenched the keypad in red light. He cracked his knuckles. “It’ll be open seas and fair winds for us, laddy.”

  Brad scoffed as he paced behind Carter. Brad was sixteen, athletic, and would fit in on any high school sports team, playing any position. Cheerleaders would swoon. Parents would wish their kids were more like him. The coach would call him in to win the game…

  Or in another life he would, anyway. But in this life, he just paced and watched as his twelve-year-old brother, the perpetual mischief-maker, sized up a high-tech alarm’s digital keypad, preparing to break and enter.

  “Can the pirate stuff,” Brad said. “Just hurry up. There are no fair winds in prison. Just broken wind and other clouds of man stink.”

  “C’mon,” came a soft voice from around the corner. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Darla Roberts appeared as if she were out for a casual stroll. She was casual in many senses of the word—never tried to impress anyone, never cared what anyone thought—but was always down for some excitement.

  Carter could practically hear Brad’s heart jump.

  “Hiding behind my sense of self-preservation,” Brad answered. “I wouldn’t do very well in prison.”

  “No, you’re much too pretty,” Darla said with a chuckle.

  “And he’s a nervous pooper,” Carter added.

  Brad choked.

  Before his brother could strangle him, Carter unzipped his backpack and said, “Now, everyone be quiet. I need to concentrate.”

  To anyone else, the contents of his bag would have seemed a hodgepodge collection of worthless junk. To Carter, it was an adventurer’s toolkit—a pirate’s war chest. He laid out everything he would need—rubber dish gloves, a corroded lawn mower battery, a pair of knitting needles, and some strands of wire with alligator clips.

  Carter slipped on the rubber gloves because adventure without the proper safety precautions is just reckless. Then he attached the alligator clips to the battery leads and tied the wire from the clips to the knitting needles. He touched the ends of the needles and watched as sparks danced like fireflies through the air.

  “Oh, man,” Brad grumbled. “You’re totally gonna electrocute yourself.”

  Darla shushed him.

  In another life, Carter Humbolt would have been a promising young scholar, a future engineer, a pioneer in robotics. In this life, however, he was a budding criminal, breaking into museums with knitting needles.

  He poked at the keypad, inserted the needles into the small openings in the side. A quick stream of sparks shot out followed by a small plume of black smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

  “Avast, me hardies,” Carter said through a wide smile. “The gateway is open.”

  Brad shook his head. “I think something might be seriously wrong with you. Like, maybe Mom dropped you on your head or something as a baby.”

  Carter’s expression turned sour and his smile slid off his face. He packed it away in his bag with his supplies. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Darla smacked Brad on the shoulder and gave him a cross look before following Carter through the now unlocked door.

  Carter pushed his brother’s comment to the back of his mind and pulled something else forward to replace it. All his favorite stories from the Golden Age of Piracy—Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Black Bart. Legendary brigands of the sea. He pulled the strings on his hoodie, tightening the skull and crossbones around his head, and became one of them.

  He stepped into the unlit hallways. The shadows were his home. The darkness was his kin. He was the nightmare of—

  “Crap!” Carter whisper-shouted. He put his arms out, stopping Brad and Darla behind him.

  Brad spun around like a cat chasing its tail. “What? Who? Where?”

  Darla choked back a laugh.

  “There,” Carter said, pointing at a metal box on the wall. “Countermeasures.”

  Brad squinted into the dark. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Ye don’t see the kraken ‘til it strikes. That don’t mean it’s not lurking below.” Carter reached into his bag of mayhem again and removed a plastic bottle of baby powder. “And you should probably eat more carrots. Your night vision is crapola.”

  “You should probably start seeing a shrink,” Brad said. “I think you’ve lost it.”

  Carter squeezed the bottle of baby powder, and a mist of white puffed into the air. As the tiny particles fell, there showed a crisscrossing pattern of infrared beams. He shot Brad a self-satisfied smile. “There’s a fine line between madness and genius.”

  Brad shoved his little brother aside and stepped past him. “Jury’s still out as to which side you’re standing on.”

  I walk a fine line between the two, Carter wanted to reply, but he kept his mouth shut.

  The three of them skulked through the dark hallways, lit only occasionally by the dim neon of exit signs. None dared speak. None dared admit how nervous they were.

&
nbsp; “Anyone else think a zombie is going to pop out around every corner?” Silence. “No? Just me?”

  They passed by the gift shop. A vague memory crawled into Carter’s head. It was hazy, like he was seeing it through a thick fog. A woman with long black hair carrying him. Where were they? A store? The beach? The smell of saltwater wafted on the air.

  The memory continued…

  He remembered feeling safe in her arms.

  Someone tugged on his leg. Looking down, he saw the face of his brother. It was a bit pudgy. Brad couldn’t have been more than eight.

  “What about this?” little Brad said, holding up a small teddy bear that wore an eye patch and skull and crossbones bandana.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I think Carter would like that very much.” Then her voice dropped, became gruff. “Yer brother’s got a pirate’s soul.”

  Carter felt a tug on his arm, snapping him back to the task at hand.

  “Come on,” Darla said. “It’s this way.”

  They rounded the corner and soon came to a wooden door. It looked out of place against the cold tile and metal of the rest of the museum. It looked warm, inviting, unique. It looked like part of a ship.

  They exchanged glances. Excitement, curiosity, a little fear (Brad!). And then they opened it.

  A gust of wind must have blown through an open window. No, that was just Carter gasping, sucking in the wonder of the room. Display cases lined the walls, each filled with piratical objects. Flintlock pistols, a cat-o’-nine-tails, a cutlass. Blunderbusses and spyglasses. An actual peg leg. Everything Carter needed to transform himself, to escape this life and build the one where he could be anything he dreamed of.

  Well, almost everything he needed.

  He peeled his eyes away from a hook hand and set to searching through cabinets and stacks of papers for that one last thing.

  The one thing he had come here for.

  “Oh. My. God.” Darla’s voice echoed from the far side of the room. She pressed her hands to a large display case. Brad shined his flashlight on the sign mounted above it.

  “I found it,” she said dreamily. She traced the glass with her finger, outlining the piles of gold and silver coins, the gem-encrusted scepter, the crown beset with shimmering gemstones on the other side. “We can leave. Live anywhere. On an island somewhere. Heck, we can buy an island.”

  “That’s not what we’re looking for,” Carter snapped.

  “Wait, what?” Darla said. “We broke in here to not steal the giant pile of treasure?”

  “That stuff’s traceable,” Carter said. “As soon as we fenced it, we’d get busted. Haven’t you seen any cop show ever? The treasure I’m after is much more—”

  Before Carter could finish, the sound of a closing door echoed from the dark.

  “Zombies!” Brad shrieked. “We’re outta here.”

  “Not yet, I haven’t found it.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Brad said. “We need to leave right now. We can’t spend any treasure in prison.”

  “Just one more minute,” Carter argued. “It’s gotta be around here somewhere.” But before the sentence fully left his mouth, Brad had pulled him out of the room.

  They ran through the dark corridors, not even hesitating at corners to check for walking dead. They moved like ships with the wind in their sails. Like the very gods of the sea were pushing them forward. Like they were—

  They burst through the door they’d come in through and slid to a halt, blinded by bright lights. Carter squinted through the pain. Red and blue lights flashed behind the men. The men with the flashlights. The men with the guns pointing straight at them.

  2

  The back seat of the police cruiser smelled like wet, old man. Like a wet, old man vomited up another wet, old man, and then the two of them fell asleep on a pile of half-digested cheese puffs.

  “I knew it,” Brad said. “I knew this would happen. These kinds of things always happen.”

  “Uh, I don’t think this has ever happened to us before,” Carter said.

  “You know what I mean,” Brad snapped. His voice boomed inside the car.

  Carter forgot how intimidating his brother could be when he got mad. He was suddenly very grateful that Darla was sitting between them.

  “These crazy ideas of yours,” Brad continued. “They always land us in trouble. It’s like you sit up at night, planning out the most efficient way of screwing up my life, and then, for some reason, I go along with them.” He turned away from Carter, stared at the bustling police officers outside. “Maybe I’m the crazy one.”

  Carter bit down until his jaw ached. “Sorry I screwed up your life,” he said through gritted teeth.

  The cruiser felt like a submarine, buckling under the pressure of silence. And it had sprung a leak.

  “Well,” Darla said, trying to keep her head above water. “This was fun.”

  Carter’s door swung open suddenly and the silence spilled out onto the street, saving them all from drowning in it.

  “Out,” said the police officer.

  One by one, they climbed out of the car. Brad stuck his hands out in front of him, palms up. “I’m ready. Take me away. You’ll charge me as a minor, right? I’m only sixteen. This is my first offense. And I’m a nervous pooper.”

  The officer stared at Brad a moment, until a fancy black car rolled up, and an intense-looking older man, maybe sixty, with cropped gray hair stepped out.

  “Appreciate the call,” the older man said as he shook the cop’s hand.

  “Not a problem, Mr. Croce. I’m sorry to bother you at this hour.”

  Carter’s heart jumped at the mention of the man’s name.

  “How’d they get in?” Mr. Croce asked.

  “Shorted the alarm on the back door,” the cop said, holding up Carter’s knitting needles and lawnmower battery burglar’s tools, more than a little impressed. “If they hadn’t tripped the silent, we might not have caught them.”

  “Silent alarm,” Carter cursed as he slapped his forehead. “Rookie mistake.”

  Pat Croce stepped in front of Carter and looked down at him, studying him. “This was you?”

  The lump in Carter’s throat nearly choked him. “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Croce studied him some more, cocking an eyebrow and barely suppressing a smile when he noticed the skull and crossbones on Carter’s hoodie.

  The police officer produced a hardbound book. “This was all we found on them.”

  Mr. Croce took it, and his eyebrow raised even higher, almost crawling right over the top of his head. “You rigged up a way to short out the alarm on the backdoor, snuck past a laser grid—just to steal my book?”

  Carter stared at the title. The Pirate Handbook by Pat Croce.

  “You can get this in any bookstore,” Mr. Croce said. “You do know there’s piles of treasure in there, right?”

  “That’s what I said,” Darla added.

  Carter’s voice dropped. He took on the rusty, jagged edge of a well-used cutlass. “A real pirate takes what he pleases.”

  Croce fought back another smile.

  The familiar squeal of a loose fan belt drew the attention from Carter. A white van pocked with spots of rust raced up the street and screeched to a halt behind the line of police cruisers. The writing on the side of it was peeling but still visible: St. John’s County Children’s Orphanage.

  Jane Roberts, the director of the orphanage, slammed the van door and marched past the police officers who were trying to talk to her, self-righteous in her stride. “Where are they?” she demanded. “I’ll chain them to their beds. I’ll string them up by their toenails. I’ll…” Her voice trailed off as she seemed to remember the abundance of law enforcement officials surrounding her. “Discipline them accordingly, in a manner that is both firm and loving.”

  Mr. Croce looked down at Carter. He no longer had the stern look of a plundered merchant, but the understanding of a fellow plunderer. He took a pen from his pocket and wrote som
ething on the inside cover of the book, before handing it back to Carter.

  Carter returned a face full of confusion, and continued to stare at Mr. Croce’s back as he walked away.

  “I’m not pressing charges,” Mr. Croce said to the officer as he passed.

  The cop seemed as confused as Carter.

  “These kids have it bad enough as it is,” Croce added.

  Ms. Roberts marched front and center to the kids. “For years, I’ve busted my butt so you two could stay together,” she growled, first sticking her finger in Brad’s face, then Carter’s. She met each of them with a glare that could make plastic flowers wilt. “And this is how you repay me? Burglary?”

  “We didn’t actually steal anything,” Carter said. “Well, I guess I did, technically, but then Mr. Croce gave it to me, so in the end—”

  Brad clapped his hand over Carter’s mouth. “I’m sorry, Ms. Roberts. This was my fault. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re right it won’t!” Ms. Roberts straightened. A smile snaked its way across her forty-year-old face, crawling through the wrinkles she so often tried to hide. “Because I found a home for the little brat on the other side of the country.” She leaned in close to Brad. He tried not to wince at the stink of cigarettes on her breath. “And I’ve found a place that’ll make something out of your worthless butt. Valley Forge Military Academy. Heard of it?”

  “Mom, you can’t—” Darla began, but was silenced by a fierce look from her mother.

  “Oh yes I can, and oh yes I will. I’ll fill you in on your punishment later.”

  Ms. Roberts pulled Carter by the wrist toward the van. He felt like a wet blanket being dragged behind her.

  The van door slid shut like the iron door of a prison cell. Brad was wrong. Prison would have been better.

  3

  It was the only room Carter had ever known, the small, barely-bigger-than-a-closet room at the orphanage that he’d shared with his brother for as long as he could remember. Two cots pressed against opposite walls. A small desk between them. He liked to imagine it as his quarters below deck of his pirate schooner. It may have been cramped, but what did that matter when the wide-open sea was just on the opposite side of his wall?