I listened to each story with a mixture of wonder, fear and incredulity. But despite the Winter’s worst excesses, no one who spoke of it did so without a degree of affection.

*   *   *

On the second day we rounded up a confused-looking woolly rhinoceros from the Co-op’s car park, and drove it out west beyond the Megafauna fence. Once that was done, we processed the winsomniacs, who ranged from those with genuine medical contra-hibernation conditions all the way through to the morally reprehensible sleep-shy: the malingerers, lazy-arses and drug-addled dreamers. Winsomnia was regarded as a national problem, with a national solution – spread them around to share the food and heat burden equally. We packed three off to St David’s and another four to Presteigne, then received six from Oswestry.

‘I know,’ said Logan when I pointed out the pointlessness of it all, ‘let City Hall have their fun.’

*   *   *

On the third morning Logan and I went to the ranges, a low building situated on the other side of the river, opposite a bowling alley and KFC outlet, both closed for the Winter. We were there to see how good I was with a Bambi, but we ended up going through almost every weapon there was – from the palm-sized Plinker, which has about the power of a straight punch, all the way up to the Thumper, used primarily for riot control. With one of those on full choke you could knock a dozen people flying from twenty feet.

‘A nightwalker can take several large hits before they go down,’ said Logan. ‘Less in the noggin to scramble, apparently. Ever meet one?’

I told him about the Vacant my old friend Billy DeFroid found caught on the barbed wire in the orchard, and Logan patted the top pocket where his back-up weapon would have been.

‘A Snickers twin pack,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised how quick comfort food can reorientate their moral compass. I’ve seen a hunger-crazed man-eater subdued to the mildness of a capybara in only eight Tunnock’s Teacakes.’

‘They should use it in their advertising.’

‘I think they do. Try the Cowpuncher.’

I replaced the Thumper and picked the next weapon from the cabinet, pushed home a larger power cell, pulled the stock hard into my shoulder, flicked off the safety, then squeezed the trigger. There was a momentary high-pitched whine, then—

Whump

The sound made my ears pop and the empty forty-gallon oil drum we’d been practising on was hurled to the other side of the range, badly dented.

‘Although nightwalkers are often cited as the most disturbing part of the Winter,’ said Logan, taking the weapon from me, ‘half of all deaths among the unseasonably awake are caused by panic.’

‘Waking night terrors,’ I said.