Page 117 of Nash Falls

“It sure as hell ain’t bad. ’Cause I intend topliablethe shit out of it.”

The next hour was weight training. Nash had never pumped iron, and he could feel what little muscle he had straining as the sets and time wore on.

Cardio came next, and he was dreading it until he got on the treadmill and ran for thirty minutes without too much problem, though he was left breathless and felt his heart rate popping uncomfortably high.

“That wasn’t so bad,” gasped Nash.

“No fat on you, and long limbs mean you got a lot of torque and leverage and can eat up the ground,” said Shock knowingly. “That helps, but this is just the tip ’a the iceberg.”

After a meal of several eggs, raw nuts, tomatoes, an avocado, wheat toast, fruit, and several glasses of water, one of which was mixed with protein powder, Nash was led over by Shock to a boxing dummy with the shoulders and torso of a Hercules mounted on a black stem with a weighted base.

Nash noted the X’s on the dummy’s torso fashioned from yellow and black tape strips.

“What are those for?” he asked.

“Yellow are incapacitation points. Black are where you strike most effectively to kill.”

Shock stepped up to the boxing dummy and proceeded to use his forearm, elbow, fist, knee, and crown of his head to efficiently hit all the yellow spots.

“With any one of those strikes, dude goes down,” he said. “In hand-to-hand I’ll show you how to get the advantage on your opponent’s arms, neck, and legs and take ’em out. And I have another dummy here with limbs. They have the same taped X’s on ’em. Branchial and femoral artery and the like. Cut ’em, dude is dead.”

Nash’s anxiety spiked as Shock picked up a serrated knife.

“Is that your Army Ka-bar knife?” he asked.

“Served me well for a long time.”

He then proceeded to hit each black X with the knife blade.

He pointed to the dummy’s gut. “Now on this strike you go into the belly right here, pull the knife hilt straight up, and when you get two inches below the sternum you twist the blade sideways and then cut from left to right to make sure you pop the aorta.” Shock made the motions with his knife. “Dude’ll bleed out in about thirty seconds. Okay, your turn. Take your time. Speed will come later. What I want right now is accuracy and appropriate weapon positionin’.”

He demonstrated to Nash how to hold the blade, correcting him numerous times until Nash, who had always had an eye for detail, readily picked up the grips and stabbing and slicing motions. Shock nodded approvingly as the session wore on.

“Okay, let’s do some push-ups, pull-ups, core work, and then you hit the stairs for some more blood pumpin’.”

“Remember the heart attack warning I gave you,” said Nash.

“Like I said, Walter, I might end up killin’ you. But better me than some scum you run up against out there.”

Nash struggled mightily through the rest of the workout and at the end he lay on the floor drenched in sweat and fighting to regain his breath.

“You ain’t in as bad ’a shape as I thought you’d be. You been workin’ out and not tellin’ nobody?”

Nash sat up and said, “If sitting in a chair was an Olympic event I might medal.”

“Let’s hit the gun range.”

“I can’t even feel my arms.”

“Best time to do it. ’Cause when it comes down to it, out there, you probably ain’t gonna be in good shape, but you still got to hit your target. Otherwise, you dead.”

The gun range was in a long, narrow room with mechanized targets running on long cables at one end. Behind the targets were stacks of large hay bales as backstop and sloped cinderblock walls behind them designed to drive any stray round to the floor and prevent back splatter.

Arrayed across a long table was a line of weapons: revolvers, semi- and autopistols, and assault rifles.

“When was the last time you fired a gun?”

“When I was fourteen and went to the range with my father.”