Steal Pulse

This week’s new flash fiction is a crime story, a heartbeat away from a big score.

Steal Pulse

Thor only wanted to do something nice for his bride. You couldn’t say he had spoiled her over the years. But he loved her. After he was farmed out from the feedlot factory, they were able to make ends meet, barely, with social security, but he wanted to do better for her. He took the only job available to someone who first learned to ride a bike during the Eisenhower administration: Walmart greeter. He was aware the job was in part a shoplifting deterrent, but he knew in this present toothless phase of his life the only real crime stopper was the electric monitor he stood in front of that sang like a mezzo soprano if a tagged item crossed its path.

Thor’s main, really only, running mate at this stage was Chalkie, not that any actual running took place. But they were buds. With the standard caveat that being men they limited what they knew about each other to things like favorite ball team and preferred wing sauce. For example, Thor had no idea Chalkie viewed him as a surrogate of sorts for the functioning father he never really had. And while Chalkie knew Thor had been laid up the previous year he had not a clue of the full extent of the older man’s heart problems and how close he had come to cashing in. Chalkie wasn’t absent the day they handed out brainpower but let’s say he certainly was tardy. They sat in Thor’s den on another in a series of lazy Saturdays flipping channels while Peg food shopped. They were no streamers. They bounced among basic cable second-run movies, the standard old chestnuts. Independence Day. Broken Arrow. Goldeneye. Finally, Oceans Eleven. As they watched a younger more limber Don Cheadle deploy an electromagnetic pulse device with larcenous intent, it dawned on Thor they had stumbled across four straight flicks that employed such contraption. A sign.

“If only I had an EMP,” he mused aloud. “I could cripple the electric eye at work. We could waltz out with a king's ransom of goodies for my Peg.”

Chalkie beamed as if he’d been waiting patiently for this improbable topic, thrilled after years of worthlessness finally to be of some use.

“I can make one. Guy at the shop had one. Mainly used it to mess with his annoying neighbor. Jammed his TV remotes, garage door opener, that king of thing. ‘Til his wife took it away. All you need is a disposable camera, I can take it from there.”

And from there he took it. After a quick trip to 7-11 for a cardboard Kodak, the plan took shape.

On D-day, Thor and Chalkie stood outside the store finalizing the operation. “Doors will freeze in open positions. Security cams in sleep mode.”

“How ‘bout I hit the pharmacy for some of those fancy fat burner pills. They’re worth a mint.”

“This is no snatch and grab. You will make an orderly exit with an armful of selected security-tagged items. Jewelry. Earphones. Perfume.”

That was that.

The plan went off as smooth as in the movies. Thor felt positively Clooney-ish as he pressed the red button on Chalkie’s homemade gizmo.

Amid the blacked-out hubbub and stalled registers, Thor saw good old Chalkie laden with an armful of tribute walking slowly and inconspicuously towards the open unguarded doors.

Thor felt a giddy high. An understandable cardiac flutter given the rush of adrenaline. But then his heart slowed down. Way down. Waaaaaay down.

The Abbott Endurity pacemaker has an eight-year warranty and, for the single chamber model, a 14-year shelf life. That assumes of course it is kept away from the warranty-voiding hazards of things like induction hobs. High tension wires. Radio transmitters. And other strong electromagnetic fields.

As it turns out, one pulse can kill another. Completely.

A pulse was something Thor lacked entirely at this moment as he slumped at his post. Chalkie aborted the mission, dropped Peg’s bounty and kneeled at his fallen comrade to say a final goodbye.