Stormbreaker

up by the crane. It was going to be put inside the crusher. With him inside.
    He tried to raise himself up, to wave through the windows. But the claw of the crane had already flattened the roof, pinning his left leg, perhaps even breaking it. He could feel nothing. He lifted a hand and managed to pound on the back window, but he couldn’t break the glass. Even if the workmen were staring at the BMW, they would never see anything moving inside.
    His short flight across the junkyard ended with a bone-shattering crash as the crane deposited the car on the iron shelves of the crusher. Alex tried to fight back his sickness and despair and think of what to do.
    Any moment now the operator would send the car tipping into the coffin-shaped trough. The machine was a Lefort Shear, a slow-motion guillotine. At the press of a button, the two wings would close on the car with a joint pressure of five hundred tons. The car, with Alex inside it, would be crushed beyond recognition. And the broken metal—and flesh—would then be chopped into sections. Nobody would ever know what had happened.
    He tried with all his strength to free himself. But the roof was too low. His leg was trapped. Then his whole world tilted and he felt himself falling into darkness. The shelves had lifted. The BMW slid to one side and fell the few yards into the trough. Alex felt the metalwork collapsing all around him. The back window exploded and glass showered around his head, dust and diesel fumes punching into his nose and eyes.
    There was hardly any daylight now, but looking out of the back, he could see the huge steel head of the piston that would push what was left of the car through the exit hole on the other side.
    The engine tone of the Lefort Shear changed as it prepared for the final act. The metal wings shuddered. In a few seconds’ time the two of them would meet, crumpling the BMW like a paper bag.
    Alex pulled with all his strength and was astonished when his leg came free. It took him perhaps a second
    —one precious second—to work out what had happened. When the car had fallen into the trough, it had landed on its side. The roof had buckled again just enough to free him. His hand scrabbled for the door—
    but, of course, that was useless. The doors were too bent. They would never open. The back window! With the glass gone, he could crawl through the frame, but only if he moved fast.
    The wings began to move. The BMW screamed as two walls of solid steel relentlessly crushed it. More glass shattered. One of the wheel axles snapped with the sound of a thunderbolt. Darkness began to close in.
    Alex grabbed hold of what was left of the backseat. Ahead of him he could see a single triangle of light, shrinking faster and faster. He could feel the weight of the two walls pressing down on him. The car was no longer a car but the fist of some hideous monster snatching at the insect that Alex had become.
    With all his strength, he surged forward. His shoulders passed through the triangle, out into the light. Next came his legs, but at the last moment his shoe caught on a piece of jagged metal. He jerked and the shoe was pulled off, falling back into the car. Alex heard the sound of the leather being squashed. Finally, clinging to the black, oily surface of the observation platform at the back of the crusher, he dragged himself clear and managed to stand up.
    He found himself face-to-face with a man so fat that he could barely fit into the small cabin of the crusher.
    The man’s stomach was pressed against the glass, his shoulders squeezed into the corners. A cigarette dangled on his lower lip as his mouth fell open and his eyes stared. What he saw was a boy in the rags of what had once been a school uniform. A whole sleeve had been torn off and his arm, streaked with blood and oil, hung limply by his side. By the time the operator had taken this all in, come to his senses, and turned the machine off, the boy had gone.
    Alex clambered down the side of the crusher, landing on the one foot that still had a shoe. He was aware now of the pieces of jagged metal lying everywhere. If he wasn’t careful, he would cut open the other foot.
    His bicycle was where he had left it, leaning against the wall, and gingerly, half hopping, he made for it.
    Behind him he heard the cabin of the crusher open and a man’s voice called out, raising the alarm. At the same time a second man ran forward, stopping between Alex and his bike. It was the driver, the man