Valhalla Virus by Nick Harrow (best management books of all time TXT) 📕

There was another pause. The whispering started again, and Gunnar imagined what he’d do if this turned ugly. Worst case, a barrage of gunfire would tear him to shreds before he could react. In the best case, he’d kick the shotgun away from the door and pray he made it to cover without getting blown apart. Neither of those seemed like great options.

“Don’t move,” the voice finally said. “We’ll open the door. Step inside and keep your hands over your head.”

The entry door swung wide to reveal a wide-open reception area. All the furniture, couches and chairs for the people who’d once waited to use the range, along with a handful of overturned gun safes, had been pulled away from the walls and stacked against the far counter and in front of the lone door leading back to the shooting lanes. An older man stood behind the counter, his hands wrapped around the handles of an enormous four-barreled, pintle-mounted machine gun fed by a long chain of linked ammunition. Gunnar’s heart jumped into his throat at the thought of just how close he’d come to being obliterated. A split second of fire from that weapon would’ve torn the door apart and completely dismantled the bodyguard.

“Nice gun,” Gunnar forced himself to say. “Thanks for not using it.”

“Who are you and why are you here?” a voice from the shadows to the left of the door asked. Gunnar realized there was a much younger man and a woman barely out of her teens in the room with him, one in each corner of the front wall. Both held assault rifles trained on Gunnar, their fingers curled on the triggers. Another half pound of pressure and he’d be well and truly ventilated.

“My name’s Gunnar,” he said. He struggled for a moment with what to tell them about why he’d come to the range. Finally, he decided the truth was the best option. “I came here to get guns. I plan to kill the jötnar camped out in the Luxor.”

The man behind the counter laughed and slapped the counter with the palm of his hand. “Well, all right then. Come on in.”

A HALF HOUR LATER, Gunnar and the völva sipped cups of crappy instant coffee from red Solo cups in the range’s office. The man behind the counter, Deke Swanson, had owned the business for the past three years. He and his son, Mark, and his daughter, Erin, had been inside when the shit went down. Fortunately, they’d also been closed to make some renovations, so there were no customers inside. The entire family had come down with the Valhalla Virus anyway, but none of them went berserk and none of them died. A jötunn had tried to break in as they’d recovered, but Deke had taken it down before it got inside. They’d planned to repair the door’s lock but hunkered down for a few more days rather than head outside to find the tools and supplies for the job.

“You’re really going after those monsters at the pyramid, huh?” Deke asked. “What weapons were you thinking? We’ve got a fifty cal. Set up across the Strip and you could kill a bunch of them before you ran out of ammo.”

“I could do that,” Mimi offered. “Just call me Dead-Eye Jane.”

“But then you’d miss all the fun,” Erin teased. “You gotta be up close and personal to make sure they stay down.”

“We do need to get closer,” Gunnar said. “The plan is to sneak in from the parking garage, grab something that belongs to me, kill a whole bunch of those fu—

“Language,” Deke admonished. “There are ladies present.”

“—and then hightail it out of there,” Gunnar finished.

Deke scratched the stubble on the side of his chin and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments as he considered Gunnar’s requirements. He snapped his fingers and said, “I’ve got an AA-12 in the back. Picked it up for a song, but it never caught on with tourists because it kicks ’em halfway out the door. Fully auto twelve gauge with a twenty-round drum magazine. Doesn’t get much better than that for close-in fighting. Big guy like you won’t have any trouble with the recoil, either.”

“We’ve got a bunch of G2 R.I.P. slugs for it, too,” Erin said, clearly excited. “You even graze someone with one of those, six trocars break off from the main slug and shred any organ they meet. The main slug will go fifteen inches into flesh and bone, maybe a little less against some of those blue freaks. Still, if the monster doesn’t go down with the first shot, just hold the trigger until it stops breathing.”

Gunnar liked the sound of that. Twenty rounds weren’t enough for an extended firefight, but those slugs could take down a handful of jötnar in record time. “I’ll take it, and as many drums as you can load up. I’ll need something these three can handle, too.”

Deke’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be serious. Why would you take those three in there? We’ll keep an eye on them, make sure nothing bad—”

“It’s not his decision, and it’s not yours,” Rayleigh said, her voice smooth but firm. “We’re going in. We don’t plan to do any shooting. But if we have to, we need weapons to defend ourselves.”

“Well,” Deke said, snatching his cigar out of the ashtray on his desk and plucking the lighter from his shirt pocket, “let’s head on back to the range and see what we’ve got for you ladies.”

The four of them followed the older man out of the office, and his kids brought up the rear, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They made their way down a narrow hallway to a heavy door. Deke fished a key chain out of his pocket and fiddled with the keys for a few seconds before he found the right one. The hinges squealed in protest as he manhandled the heavy door open, and the