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

arrived. The jötnar were celebrating something in front of the casino; the smell of their fires and roasting meat filled the air. Gunnar couldn’t see the monsters, but their loud whoops and animalistic cries of pain or pleasure carried on the wind for blocks. Those barbaric sounds put the völva on edge, and Gunnar felt the tension that flowed through them. He didn’t have any words of comfort to give them. It was good they were nervous. Fear would keep them on their toes.

“Stick tight to me,” he said as they crouched behind the casino’s dark parking garage. “I’m headed for the stairs leading up to the casino. If you lose the group, meet us there. And if something grabs you, start screaming and shooting. Don’t be a hero to save the rest of us. I need all of you with me to win this thing, okay?”

The völva looked into his eyes with solemn expressions. One by one, they reached out and caressed his cheek with their fingertips, then kissed him on the lips.

“We’re with you,” they said in an eerie unison, their voices blending together so it was impossible to tell where one began and the others ended. “You are the jarl. Now and forever.”

The team moved across the garage, careful to dodge oil slicks that had leaked from wrecked cars. They maneuvered through the maze of tangled metal and broken glass. Finally, they reached the casino’s entrance. Gunnar ducked down and stepped through the empty metal frame, careful not to scrape his head on the wide bar that ran across the center of the ruined door, then started up the steps with the völva right behind him.

As they ascended the stairwell, the sounds of celebration from the jötnar in front of the Luxor were replaced by Gunnar’s breathing and the pounding of his heart. His pulse raced when they reached the casino’s ground-floor landing. He held the shotgun tight to his hip, finger alongside the trigger, ready to unleash a blazing salvo of deadly slugs into anything that crossed his path.

The bodyguard checked to make sure the other drum magazines were still attached to the hooks on the back of the tactical vest Deke had loaned him. If the shooting started, he’d need every shell he could get his hands on.

They’d reached the entrance to the Luxor’s atrium. The jötnar inside stomped and danced, their voices a dull roar beyond the metal door. Gunnar doubted there were enough slugs in Vegas to kill them all.

He’d give it his best shot, though.

“Safeties off,” he whispered to the völva. “We’ll try sneaky first, but if you have to shoot, do it. I’d rather retreat with all of us alive than hesitate and lose someone.”

Ray and Mimi nodded back to Gunnar, their jaws set as they readied their weapons. Bridget made a show of checking the magazine and adjusting the strap on her MP5, but Gunnar noticed she didn’t move the safety selector to fire mode. He considered chastising her, then thought better of it. Her ability to see the future was more valuable than her skill with a gun. If she wouldn’t shoot, it was because she saw a more important task in her future.

“Here we go,” he whispered, then eased through the door, his weapon at the ready in case the bad guys had posted guards near this exit.

The jarl and his völva left the stairwell and stepped out into the long hallway that led to the atrium. The passage itself was empty, but the space beyond was crowded with monstrous freaks.

The monsters had transformed the Luxor. The jötnar had gutted the ground floor to create a wide, open space beneath the pinnacle of the pyramid. The jötnar had torn down walls, cast down the Egyptian-themed statues, and even shattered huge sections of the tiles that covered the floor to reveal the bare concrete beneath. Dozens of the creatures had gathered in that space. The sight of them filled Gunnar with an instinctive loathing.

The bodyguard’s feelings for the creatures ran deep. The vision Odin had shared with him showed him that these beasts didn’t belong here. They were aliens, agents of chaos who only wanted to tear the world down around the last surviving humans.

They were the enemy.

And he was going to kill them.

“There’s Gungnir,” Mimi whispered, her voice tinged with awe. “The big one has it.”

Gunnar didn’t need a more detailed description than that. The biggest jötunn in the place was at the center of the mob. The massive creature stood fifteen feet tall, its muscular torso rising from a deformed horse’s body. All six of its legs stomped in time to its followers’ chanting. It bellowed along with their roars, shaking the sacred spear at the ceiling. The other jötnar pressed up against their leader, hands on any part of it they could reach. Some of the women had clambered onto its bestial back like it was a petting zoo pony ready to give them a ride.

“Fuck,” Gunnar said.

Fighting his way through a hundred jötnar to reach their big boss was a losing proposition. There weren’t enough shells in his shotgun’s drums to kill them all, and it would only take one lucky shot from a monster to end his run. He surveyed the situation, looking for a way to reach his goal.

There was one way to do this. The völva would definitely not go along with it, though, because it put Gunnar in a world of hurt if he screwed it up.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s time to get some elevation.”

Gunnar’s new plan wasn’t sane by any stretch of the imagination. Even in the best case, it was almost as risky as a headlong charge into the mob. But if it worked, he’d not only gain Gungnir but kill a bunch of jötnar. And, if he was honest with himself, that was reason enough to try it.

Gunnar led the völva into the emergency stairwell to the right and began to climb.

Dried blood stained the staircase, but the