J. Ballard - Concrete island

He was ten feet from the top, too exhausted to move forwards any further, when he saw that the palisade of wooden trestles had been replaced and strengthened. A few steps above his head, on the inverted beach that led up from the island, was the footprint of a steel-capped industrial boot, its stud-marks visible in the fading light. Maitland counted five other imprints. Had the highway maintenance staff repositioned the damaged trestles? The workmen had come down the slope, presumably looking for any injured driver or pedestrian at the time when he was hobbling about on the far side of the island.

The sun fell behind the apartment blocks at White City. Giving up for the time being, Maitland crawled back to the car. As he clambered into the rear seat he knew that he was showing the first signs of fever. Hunched in the mud-stained dinner-jacket, he clutched at the wine bottle, trying to warm himself. The traffic moved through the dusk, headlamps flaring under the route indicators. The siren of a police car howled its way through the dusk. Maitland waited for it to stop, and for the police crew to come down the embankment with a stretcher. In his aching head the concrete overpass and the system of motorways in which he was marooned had begun to assume an ever more threatening size. The illuminated route indicators rotated above his head, marked with meaningless destinations, the names of Catherine, his mother and his son.

By nine o'clock the bout of fever had passed. As the noise of the rush-hour receded, Maitland revived himself with several mouthfuls of wine. Sitting forward over the front seat, he stared at the rain-splashed instrument panel, concentrating whatever intelligence and energy were left to him. Somehow he could still devise a means of escaping from the island. Half a mile to the west, the lights were shining in the apartment blocks, where hundreds of families were finishing their evening meals. Any one of them would clearly see a fire or flare.

Maitland watched the glowing arc of a cigarette butt thrown down the embankment from a passing car. At this point he realized that he was literally sitting on enough signal material to light up the entire island.

Controlling his excitement, Maitland looked down at the curved roof of the fuel tank. He pushed aside the overnight case and the tool-kit, and began to strike at the centre of the tank with the open jaws of the adjustable spanner. As the chips of paint stung his hands the exposed metal glinted in the darkness. The heavy-gauge steel inside its collision-resistant frame was too strong for him to perforate. Maitland dropped the spanner on to the muddy ground at his feet. A car approached through the tunnel of the overpass, its headlamps turning through the air twenty feet above his head. Maitland lowered himself to the ground and swivelled his head and shoulders under the rear fender. He searched for the stop-cock under the tank.

How do you set fire to a car, he asked himself. The cliché of a thousand films and TV plays. As he sat against the trunk in the dim light he tried to remember a single detailed episode. If he opened the stop-cock the fuel would gush out on to the rain-sodden ground, evaporate and dilute itself within minutes. Besides, he had no matches. Some kind of spark was essential. Maitland looked over his shoulder at the dark hull of the car. He thought systematically about its electrical system -the high-voltage coil, the new battery, the distributor with its contact breaker… The car was alive with electrical points, even though the headlamp and brake-light circuit was out.

The cigarette lighter! Clambering to his feet, Maitland pulled himself round to the driving seat. Switching on the ignition, he tested the dashboard lights, watching them glow in the darkness. He pressed in the cigarette lighter. Ten seconds later it jumped back against his palm. The red glow warmed his broken hands like a piece of the sun. He lay back as it faded, falling asleep for a few seconds.

'Catherine… Catherine… ' Murmuring her name aloud, he deliberately provoked himself to keep awake, playing on any feelings of guilt, hostility or affection he could rouse. Carrying the wrench, he clambered from the car. He slung aside the water-course, lifted the Jaguar's bonnet and peered into the engine compartment.

'Fuel pump… right.' Maitland hammered with the wrench at the glass cone on the pump. On the fifth blow, when he was ready to give up, the glass fractured. Maitland smashed away the pieces as the gasoline spilled over the engine and dripped on to the ground. Intoxicated by the smell of the raw fuel, Maitland leaned over the engine, head swaying with relief and exhaustion. He tried to calm himself. Within minutes he would be saved, probably be on his way to hospital…

Maitland climbed back into the driving seat and switched on the ignition. The lights of the instrument panel, a faint glow in the cabin, were reflected in the lapels of his mud-smeared dinner-jacket. From the dashboard locker he took out his London route map, and folded it into a two-foot-long spill. Satisfied, he turned the ignition key and activated the starter motor. As the servo whined, turning over the engine, the car rocked from side to side. Fed by the reservoir of fuel in the float chambers of the carburettors, the engine almost coughed into life. As he released the starter Maitland could already smell the fuel being drawn from the tank by the pump and flooding through the broken glass cap. He listened to it splashing on to the ground below the car. He ran the starter motor for thirty seconds, until the cabin of the car was filled with the fumes.

'Careful now… a lot of electrics around… roast to a crisp inside here…'

He turned on the ignition and pressed in the cigarette lighter, steering his legs on to the ground through the door. When the lighter jumped out he plucked it from the dashboard, pivoted in his seat and lit the spill. He threw away the lighter and propelled himself on to the ground, the crutch in his left hand, the burning spill held in the air above his head.

When he was six feet from the car he lay down in the damp grass. Fuel dripped from the wet engine, forming a pool between the wheels. Shielding his face with one arm, Maitland tossed the burning map under the car.

A violent ball of flame erupted in the darkness, briefly illuminating the semi-circle of cars in the breaker's yard. The engine blazed hotly, burning fuel dripping from its glowing sides. Pools of scattered fuel burned themselves out around the car. In the flame-light he could see the high wall of grass around the yard, the blades inclined forwards like the members of an eager audience.

The dark, heavy smoke of burning gasolene lifted around the Jaguar's engine through the open bonnet. Already the first cars were slowing down as they emerged from the overpass tunnel. Two drivers cruised together along the motorway, watching the vivid flames. Maitland lifted himself on to the crutch and swung himself towards them. He fell over twice, but each time pulled himself back on to his feet.

'Stop…! Slow down…! Wait a minute…!'

An aircraft swept overhead, its navigation lights pulsing in the rain-clouded sky. The pilot was throttling back on his final approach to London Airport, and the noise of the four huge turbofans drowned out the thin sounds of Maitland's voice. Leaping along like an animated scarecrow, he watched the cars move away. Already the flames were subsiding as the last of the fuel burned itself away. Far from being the sustained conflagration he had hoped for, the fire burning in the engine compartment already resembled a large stove, an open brazier of the type used by scrap-metal workers. From the foot of the embankment all that was visible was a bright glow that illuminated the hulls of the overturned wrecks.