I walked cautiously toward the stone cottages. Long grass grew everywhere, even inside the doorless and windowless skeletons of the small structures. The grass moved just slightly in the warm breeze where I was. The sun seemed somehow brighter here than on nearby Mykonos. It and the warm breeze were slowly drying my shirt and pants, but my clothing was still stuck to my body.
I moved carefully through the long, brown grass. Two lizards, gray and prehistoric-looking, skittered over rocks to get out of my way. The place didn't have the smell of outdoors. The hot air clogged my nostrils and almost suffocated me with its odor of decay. There was a buzzing of flies all across the weed-choked field between the cottages and me and I saw Alexis Salomos in the back of my mind, lying by a twisted wreckage with the flies on him. Then I saw a movement up ahead near the closest cottage.
I rubbed a hand across my eyes and looked again. There was nothing visible there now, no further movement, but I felt Stavros was there. I sensed it, every bone of my body sending out warning signals.
I ran in a half-crouch to a chest-high boulder near the first cottage, freezing there, watching and listening. There was the constant sound of insects in my ears. I moved my hand on the boulder and put it on the back of the lizard. It jumped away startling me. Just then Adrian Stavros stuck his head out from behind the second cottage down the line and fired his gun.
The shot seemed to echo in the sticky air. The slug chipped at the rock near my right arm, In a moment a second shot hit the rock and scattered grit into my face. I spit and blinked it out of my eyes. When I could see again, Stavros had disappeared. But I saw a movement of grass nearer to me, between the first and second cottages.
Stavros apparently had decided that I wasn't likely to fire the revolver. Instead of my stalking him, he was stalking me.
"The hunter becomes the hunted!" the voice came, followed by a low, spine-chilling laugh.
The hollow, crazy voice seemed to come from inside my head rather than from the cottages. I couldn't tell exactly where Stavros was from the sound.
"Then come and get me, Stavros," I yelled.
"Alexander," Stavros corrected me from somewhere. "Alexander is the name" This was followed by another laugh, a high, psychotic one that rippled and undulated on the hot breeze.
I heard a noise in a thicket beside the first cottage. I peered through the empty eyes of the crumbled windows and saw nothing. Then I heard the voice off to my right and a little behind me, out in the tall grass.
"The gun is useless, isn't it?"
I whirled to see Stavros standing behind me, in a completely different position from where I had heard the last sound. He might be insane, but he was still cunning. He pointed the gun at me and fired.
I dropped flat on the ground beside the boulder as he squeezed the trigger. The boulder was no longer between us. The slug ripped at my shirt sleeve and scratched my left arm. I rolled over once as he fired again. The slug puffed up dust beside me. I aimed the revolver at him in desperation as he pulled the trigger a third time. He hit an empty chamber. He stared at me as I pulled the trigger on my revolver. It clicked dead.
Stavros' face changed, and he laughed that high, wild laugh as he slipped a cartridge into his weapon. I threw my revolver aside, dug my feet into the dirt under me, and leaped off the ground.
I hit Stavros just as he raised the gun toward me. He didn't get a chance to pull the trigger before I connected with him. The gun dropped as we both hit the hard ground, kicking and clawing in the tall grass.
I slugged Stavros hard on the jaw, and he hit the dirt on his back. But when I threw myself on him again, he still had plenty of frenzied strength left. He had somehow found the empty gun, and when I was on him again, he swung the barrel of the weapon viciously against my head. It connected with a glancing blow, and I grunted and fell off him.
When I was able to focus on him again, he was up and running toward the two story ruin on the hill behind the cottages. There was an old wooden door hanging awkwardly on one hinge, and this was still creaking gently when I arrived. Stavros had passed that way.
Slowly I stalked into the crumbling building. There was almost as much grass inside as outside in the field. Some of it had been crushed as Stavros had entered. But it humbled me to remember that this man had been chased like this all his adult life and had managed to survive. As I rounded the corner of a crumbling wall I saw a flash of his wild-eyed face, then a rusty iron bar swung toward my head. I ducked low, and the bar brushed my hair and crashed into the stone wall near me.
"Damn!" I muttered. He had found a piece of junk left there by the island's last inhabitants. And again, he had an advantage over me.
I grabbed for the bar, but I was off-balance. He pulled me off my feet, and I lost my grip. A moment later he was swinging the weapon again. It descended toward my face and would crush my head if it connected. I rolled, and the bar brushed my right ear and thumped heavily into the packed dirt under me.
Again I grabbed the bar, trying to wrench it from Stavros' grasp, and we both lost possession of it. Stavros turned and raced up some crumbling stairs to the upper level of the structure where there was an edge of second-story floor. He was directly over me as I regained my feet. He grabbed a large piece of loose stone and hurled it down on me. It glanced off my shoulder and pain rocketed through it. I started up the stone steps. I was going to catch Stavros and kill him with my bare hands.
When I reached the top, another chunk of stone came flying at me. I ducked, and it went clattering down below. Stavros was standing on the back edge of the narrow floor section, the open side of the structure behind him. Desperation had crept into his square face as he stood there scowling at me. He looked at the rise of ground behind the building, boulder-cluttered and stony. After just a brief hesitation, he jumped.
I saw him hit the rocks and roll. He grabbed at his ankle, and his face twisted in pain and rage. He crawled to a large, round boulder sitting precariously on a rocky ledge. The boulder was about three feet in diameter and had a smaller stone jammed under its front edge on the slightly inclined ledge of rock and grass. Stavros was reaching for the small stone to use it against me.
I leaped to the ground near him, and the impact stung the bottoms of my feet. I fell forward, but quickly scrambled upright, unhurt. Stavros was frantically wedging the stone away from the boulder. As I started for him, he pulled the stone loose with a superhuman effort and stayed there panting and waiting for me.
"Come on," he hissed. "I'll smash your skull. I'll…"
We both saw the movement at the same time. The boulder near him, with the supporting rock removed, began moving down the incline of the rocky ledge just a foot above Stavros. It seemed to stop for a moment while he stared at it in horrible fascination, then it moved forward and off the small ledge toward him.
Because of the heavy rock he held in his hand and because of his broken ankle, he couldn't move fast enough. I started to cry out a warning and then realized the pointlessness of it. Stavros' face was twisted with horror as the boulder reached him.
"No!" he shrieked, when he realized, like a man who has fallen off a tall building, that inevitable death was only seconds away.
When the boulder reached Stavros, dwarfing him, he threw his hands up as if to stop its progress, but it had gained far too much momentum. It rolled slowly on his chest, swayed a moment and stayed there. When it first touched him, there was a sharp, piercing scream from his throat. Then it was choked off very suddenly, as if someone had turned off a radio.
Grimly, I walked over to where I could see Stavros' head and shoulders protruding from under the boulder. His eyes were open, staring unseeing at a white, hot sky. A hand jerked and twitched as a muscle died, and then he was lifeless.