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

her head and brought it down in a scything arc that took three more heads. “There’s no time,” she said, an icy chill in her words. “They’ll tear us apart if we stop fighting for a moment.”

And so they fought. Black blood sizzled to the burning ground. Severed hands clawed their ankles, dead fingers tried to climb up their legs. Smoke choked the air with the reek of scorched flesh. Hyrrokkin’s undead army was relentless, refusing to surrender even as the jarl spun his spear to crush their legs and sever arms and heads.

Gunnar could hardly see through the haze of heat and steam, trusting his instincts and the bond to Gungnir to find his enemies. Sweat rolled off him in rivulets despite the freezing wind that blasted through the boneyard with an endless howl. He whirled like a dervish, using momentum to turn the spear into a spinning cleaver. Attacks bounced off the weapon’s haft as it spun like the spokes of a threshing wheel. Quick sweeps pushed the burning dead back, but Gunnar needed more space. His spear punched through two blazing skulls with a single thrust, clearing the air in front of him as his enemies collapsed to the ground. Through the gap, the jarl saw jötnar entering the courtyard. They wore urban camouflage torn open to accommodate their enormous bodies. Unlike the other monsters, these moved with military precision. They carried heavy spears, hafts as thick as a man’s forearm. They bore shields constructed from car doors or cut out of dumpsters. The advance pushed the burning zombies ahead of them, tightening the circle even more.

It took Gunnar only a moment to realize where these new troops had come from. He remembered the dull thump of helicopter rotors hacking through the air above the Strip. The National Guard must have come to Vegas to control the situation.

The poor bastards had gotten infected, and now they marched under Hyrrokkin’s flag.

His heart sank, the dark reality of the battle settling into his thoughts. He couldn’t kill all these fuckers. It was impossible.

But he refused to go down without a fight. He let the berserker rage overtake him, felt it throb through the connection to the völva. Their high-pitched screeches joined his battle roar and clawed toward the sky.

Gunnar swung his spear like a baseball bat, its length crashing through jötunn skulls in a gory spray. The völva obliterated their foes with deadly precision and wild strength. They fought like a single entity, all of their bodies in perfect synchronicity as they used the last of their flagging strength to make these assholes pay for their sins.

Far overhead, a raven circled the battlefield like a buzzard. It called out, a single, thunderous peal that drew the jarl’s eyes to the sky.

“If you won’t get your lazy ass down here to fight, fuck off,” he shouted as his spear split a zombie down the middle. “I’ve no time for useless gods who cry on their thrones while their people die.”

As if in answer, the raven cawed once more and soared south, its great wings beating through the smoky skies.

“That’s what I thought,” Gunnar muttered, then steeled himself for the oncoming charge of Hyrrokkin’s elite forces.

He didn’t have to wait long. The bruisers advanced through the wreckage of the burning undead, using their spears and shields to shunt aside the weaker troops. The jötnar charged in a column four wide and at least ten deep, feet pounding the ground like the first tremors of an impending earthquake. They roared as they closed the distance, ropy strings of saliva flung from their jagged tusks and gnashing teeth.

Gunnar glared at that front rank, daring them to come at him, his spear thirsty for their blood. He wanted to unleash the Stormur again, but his energy was too low. The battle with the zombies had run him and his people dry. Instead, he raised Gungnir over his shoulder, both hands wrapped around its haft, and charged at the enemy.

He was nimbler than the jötnar and dodged between the tips of their charging spears. He shouldered aside one weapon, twisting its wielder out of the shield wall and opening a gap in their defenses. The jarl thrust his spear up under the creature’s ribs, through its heart, and straight out its back. Gunnar reveled in the shower of blood that poured from the thing’s gasping mouth, then kicked it off Gungnir and into the second rank.

Gunnar disrupted the charge of the jötnar, giving the völva more room to work. Ray’s bow sang a hymn of slaughter, crystalline arrows streaming from the trembling string, turning their enemies into bleeding pincushions. Mimi darted under spears and around shields, her razor-sharp blades slicing through tendons and plunging into guts. Bridget’s battle axe sundered a shield and the jötunn wielding it in a spray of blood and bone. But the jarl knew it wouldn’t be enough. The undead were still all around them, tripping them up, the severed limbs kicking and clawing while those who remained standing came on in a relentless tide

And then a battered Dodge Ram 2500 exploded through the fortress’s gate and slammed into the rear of the jötnar unit with an unholy scream of tortured metal and breaking bones. Deke sprayed automatic fire from an MP5 through the windshield, while his son leaned out the window and let rip with an AA-12. Those weapons did a number on the former guardsmen, but it was Erin who brought the heat.

She manned the pintle-mounted four-barreled machine gun and poured hot lead into the jötnar. Her scream rose above the relentless thunder the weapon unleashed, a victory cry that struck terror into the hearts of the gathered monsters. Before the jötnar could react, the weapons had shredded half their number.

“This is it!” Gunnar shouted. “Push them back!”

He and the völva pressed forward into the panicked jötnar. Gunnar took advantage of the shocking rear attack to take out another rank of fighters. Spears and stray bullets ricocheted from his