JERRY Landers sipped his Coke and looked at his watch. Half-ten, that was all. He'd only been on shift for thirty minutes and it felt like a week.

But the policewoman would be back soon with teas and biscuits from the machine, and he could talk to her again. Jerry liked to talk to her. She had a pretty face and a nice figure, and he never got that close to nice ladies.

Too shy.

Get out more, mum said.

He thought about the policewoman, Ruby Richards, and how perhaps he could ask her to come for breakfast. They could find a cafe at 5.00 a.m. when they both finished their shifts and ponder the night's boredom over a fry-up.

He turned towards the door with the porthole window. Strip-lights glowed in the room behind the door. The bodies lay in the room. Twenty-eight of them, cut open earlier today by pathologists at three London hospitals. And after they stitched all the skin back together, they brought the bodies here.

The unit lurked down a side street in Battersea. They housed bodies here if there was something odd about the way they died. The pathologists must've decided that this bunch were really odd because they were all ferried here that afternoon.

And Jerry got called at 6.00 p.m., Charlie the boss saying, "We need you at B13 by ten tonight, son. Don't mention it - usual drill."

He'd never been to B13, but he'd heard about the unit. Everyone at the security firm he worked for had to sign the Official Secrets Act if they worked at B13.

"Cloak and dagger stuff," said Charlie the boss. "Nudge nudge, say nothing, keep stum."

Jerry stared at the door and the light shimmered behind it. He tried not to think about the bodies, but they were stuck in his head.

He shivered and wished he didn't have to do this, but what else could Mrs. Landers's only son do? He turned away from the door and picked up the copy of 2000AD, and started reading.

"You're good for nothing, Landers," Mr. Curtis, the headmaster, had said at school.

And being told he was good for nothing made him believe he was good for nothing.

"You may as well sign on and forget about the rest of your life," Mr. Curtis told Jerry.

Ten years later and Mr. Curtis might well say, I told you so. A security guard on five quid an hour hardly suggested a transformation in Jerry's life.

A muffled thud came from the morgue.

Jerry tensed and sat up straight in the chair. He put the comic book down and narrowed his eyes. Craning his neck, he stared towards the door. The light flickered in the porthole window.

He listened and heard the light inside the morgue hum. It sounded like a swarm of flies - Jerry shuddered at the thought - hovering over the dead bodies.

Something clattered inside the morgue.

Jerry gasped. A chill slid down his spine.

He looked towards the door that led out of the anteroom and into the corridor, down which PC Richards had gone to get tea and biscuits.

Where was she? She should be back by now.

He got up, the chair scraping over the linoleum floor. He breathed hard, and the smell of disinfectant got up his nostrils. The odour made him dizzy for a moment, and he steadied himself on the edge of the desk.

Another clatter from inside the morgue.

Like someone - something - tripping.

He clawed at his chest, finding it hard to breath. His heart thumped. He moved towards the door. The hum of the strip-light grew louder. Shadows danced in the dimly lit circle of glass.

He heard a moan - was it a moan?

Jerry's throat felt dry. He tried to swallow, but he didn't have any spit. He looked over his shoulder, hoping PC Richards would come with tea and biscuits, hoping she'd go in first.

No, he thought; I'm the bloke - I should lead the way. I'll go see what's going on, then report back to her. She'll like me for that, for taking the initiative.

You don't have any initiative, Landers.

Mr. Curtis's voice booming in his head again.

He crept towards the door. There was someone in there - he was convinced.

Too much noise for the place to be - just filled with dead people.

How could anyone have got in? Was he in the toilet at the time? Where would PC Richards have been?

Kids, maybe. Or these scary goths. These people who said they were vampires. He'd read about them in The Sun. The papers had gone crazy over this story. Writing all kinds of things - and they were true, no doubt. His colleagues said, Don't believe what you read in the papers, Jerry, but then Jerry thought, Why would they write them if they weren't true?

And Jerry knew there were a lot of strange things in the world. You only had to spend a couple of hours on the internet to realize that.

He was at the door. He sniffed, and a stale odour wafted from inside the morgue. He moved his face closer to the portal window. The strip-lights shimmered and hummed.

His nose was pressed against the glass. He peered into the semi-darkness. He could just make out the bodies, lying in rows on the trolleys. He could -

A dark shape whipped across the window inside the morgue.

Jerry gasped, and he felt as if someone were jabbing at his heart with a knife. He stumbled backwards, clutching his chest.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and he screamed.