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

his walking pace. Gunnar stuck close to the outside wall, kicking empty beach chairs out of his way so his charge wouldn’t have to deal with them as she hurried along in his wake. The smell of roasted prime rib, bone marrow, spicy crab legs and wanton soup, and a dozen other delectable dishes wafted from the Bacchanal Buffet overlooking the pool area. Gunnar’s stomach growled at the distant memory of his last meal there. It was almost enough to distract him from the danger that appeared ahead.

Almost.

The fire department had shown up, and Gunnar felt a momentary sense of relief at the sight of the familiar fluorescent-striped khaki firefighter gear. But that same relief burned away a split second later when an enormous fireman, wielding an axe in each hand, cut down his entire team and started in on the tourists who ran screaming out of his path. The guy was nearly as tall as Gunnar, and his gear made him look much thicker. He howled with homicidal glee, his beard stained with blood, his eyes rolling in their sockets. The fireman scarcely noticed his targets as he buried his axes in anyone and everyone within reach.

Gunnar had no idea what was going on and no desire to find out. He focused all his thoughts on the only thing that mattered: getting Rayleigh away from the maniac mosh pit. He could read about why the world had lost its goddamned mind when they were snuggled up in a safehouse far, far from Vegas.

“Good god,” Ray groaned behind Gunnar. “I’d never have called you if I’d known it would be like this.”

“I would have come even if I knew what a shitshow it would be,” Gunnar said. If Ray had called him from the center of an active volcano, he would have figured out a way to drive his motorcycle to her. “It’s not like you had any idea the whole city would go crazy.”

They had half the pool area to cover, and then, if Gunnar’s memory served, they still had to cross through the ground floor of the Palace Tower before they got to the parking garage. That was a couple hundred yards of crazy to navigate, including Berserko, the Barbarian Fireman. The mob scene was a bodyguard’s worst nightmare, and an iron band of tension squeezed tight around Gunnar’s brain. He had to find a way out of this insanity before the lunatics cut off their escape route.

Gunnar stopped and turned to hold Ray’s chin in his hand. “Watch my back, nothing else. Whatever happens, follow me.”

Gunnar had hoped the pool area would be open enough to avoid the insane crowd. If his plan had worked out, they could have skirted the worst of the disaster. The fighting had shifted to block his chosen exit, though, and the axe-wielding fireman had planted himself in the second-best option. With no way around this mess, Gunnar did what he’d always done when he ran into an obstacle.

He tucked his chin and bulled right through it.

The fireman saw the bodyguard coming when he was twenty feet away. The helmeted loon threw his head back and roared, as if spotting a worthy challenger. He whipped his axes around in vicious figure-eights, their gleaming heads powerful enough to cut down anyone who came within range.

“Come on!” he howled, axes singing as they sliced through the air. “Give me a challenge!”

The man was a true freak of nature. For one thing, he was taller than Gunnar, which was extraordinarily rare. For another, there was a faint blue-black sheen to his skin. It was the weirdest thing Gunnar had seen in a very weird night.

Gunnar didn’t change his course or his decision. He marched toward the axeman, curled his hands around his weapon, and raised it. He squeezed the H&K’s trigger and drilled a bullet straight through the crazy’s heart, then pumped another into his left lung, and a third blasted through the man’s forehead and knocked his helmet into the crowd. The bodyguard wrested a fireman’s axe from his fallen foe’s hand as he passed the body, cocked the weapon back over his left shoulder, and flung it at the wall of glass that separated the aquatic plaza from the sumptuous buffet.

Though there were bodies scattered across the white tile floor and more slumped in their seats, the buffet area was surprisingly clear of maniacs. Gunnar hauled Ray up through the broken glass and beelined through the dining hall and down a broad corridor with shops on one side and a swanky bistro on the other. Cubes of shattered safety glass littered the floor and crunched under the soles of his riding boots.

The screaming had only gotten louder, and now there were eerie, bestial roars in the mix. It sounded like someone had yanked the gates open on Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden to let the lions run riot.

Gunnar stopped at the edge of the casino floor and held Ray against the wall with one long arm. Craps and blackjack tables had been hurled onto their sides. Bodies were strewn across the red-and-gold carpet, chips scattered around them like the world’s most expensive confetti. The gamblers and tourists had broken into small mobs and fought one another with mindless ferocity. A woman clawed an old man’s eye right out of its socket and was immediately flattened by a backhand from an overweight cowboy with a hatband ringed in diamonds. She lay still on the floor for only a second before her back bowed and she rose again, blood drooling out of her mouth in ropy crimson strings. Her scream of rage sent a shiver racing down Gunnar’s spine.

“Shit,” Ray groaned and grabbed her bodyguard’s left hand. She jabbed a finger across the crowded casino floor. Gunnar’s eyes followed her direction and spotted the black suits pushing through the crowd from the hotel’s lobby.

There were six of the bastards, wireless radios plugged into the ears, black sunglasses hiding their eyes. All of them carried compact