Science fiction novels play with the very many possibilities of how our world – and other worlds – can change. In the futuristic Earth that Jamie Mollart has created in his latest novel, natural resources are dwindling, the waters have risen, and hibernation is deemed a possible solution.

Extract taken from Kings of a Dead World
By Jamie Mollart
Published by Sandstone Press

Nobody talks. They keep their eyes on the ground in front of them. I understand. It’s hard to bring yourself around anyway and after The Sleep you are initially left with a desire to be insular. The limited time people are Awake tends to make people shy away from idle chit-chat to begin with. Too much to do when you first Wake. Not enough time and too much to do.

This is one of the things I miss, sitting around and talking. When I lived in London, in the days before the waters rose when it was still the capital, I used to spend hours strolling along the South Bank; sitting outside Gordon’s wine bar with a bottle of red wine that seemed to go on and on. Gordon’s is gone now. The Houses of Parliament. St Paul’s. Buckingham Palace. All of them swallowed by the murky waters of the Thames as it spread out across the country.

A scream startles me back to the present. A woman hits the pavement in front of me, her head bouncing off the tarmac. A cut opens on her forehead and her blood spreads out across her face, dripping on the pavement where it is soaked up by the dust. She pushes herself up to her knees and shakes her head. Drops of blood to land at my feet and she turns back to the Mart and begins shouting, her words quick, high-pitched, angry, indecipherable.

In her right hand she clutches a plastic bag, swings it around her head and launches it at the window. Powdered milk explodes from within it, showering the queue in white dust. Shock holds people still, then a solitary man shouts at her, telling her to watch it, calling her a bitch. She’s crying now, through her sobs shouting, ‘It’s not enough, it’s not enough, I can’t feed them all, it’s not enough!’ Then she realises what she’s done and falls to her knees to try to scrape the food back into the tatters of the plastic bag.

A young man in the queue realises what is happening and quickly squats down and pockets a carton of food that has escaped from her bag. Instinct makes me want to stop him. The camera on the wall tells me otherwise.

The man in front of me sees him too, though, and confronts him. ‘Oi you little fucker, give it back to her, it’s hard enough without you stealing what she’s got.’

I feel a flash of shame.

The young man sneers at him, scoffs and turns away. The older man taps him on the shoulder, but is ignored, so he punches him in the back of the head. I hear the crack as the young man’s face hits the wall. He drops to the floor.

The camera above my head whirrs, and I look up at it as it focusses on the older man. Immediately I realise my mistake, raise both hands and step away from them. I make sure it’s obvious this is nothing to do with me.

My body tenses. The adrenaline of remembered violence pumps through me. When I was younger, this was how I dealt with things. Memory pulls my fists tight, my shoulders straight, readies my body for impact and retaliation. I feel alive.

I’m awake now. Too awake, I have to suppress it. The camera has to see a tired old man, scared of the violence he sees in front of him, not thrilled by it. I force my shoulders to relax. I lower my head. I stretch my hands out, hold them flat against my legs. I concentrate on slowing my heartbeat down.

The younger man is on his feet now, his face a mess. His eyes are pure anger. He grabs the older man by the throat, and punches him twice in quick succession, once in the stomach, once above his eye. They wheel around holding one another, too close to hit each other, just careening about. The queue moves around them as one, like a flock of birds. Aware of the camera, no-one wants to appear involved, to step in and stop it, so they concentrate instead on keeping out of the fray whilst trying to maintain their position in the queue.

All the time, the woman is on her hands and knees scraping white powder into a tattered plastic bag.

Suddenly the street is full of sirens and blue lights. A Black Maria is beside us. The doors slide open and five Peelers jump out, clad in riot gear. For a second I feel sorry for them having to be called out like this so soon after Waking, but then they are upon the fighting men with sticks and boots and fists and all of my sympathy is gone.

Within seconds it’s over. Both men and the woman are gone. With a purr of electric motor the Black Maria is gone and the only evidence any of this ever happened is the blood in white powder and a smear across the wall where the young man’s face made contact. The queue silently reforms. No-one jostles for position. Where people were lost in their own worlds they now look around, joined in a collective fear.

Slowly the queue inches forward again. I step over the blood on the pavement. My feet leave prints in the powder.

Eventually I am at the door. A bored security guard in a uniform that looks too big for him scans my ID and lets me in.

Inside the Mart, the lights are dimmer. Images of Rip Van are plastered on the walls, cardboard cut outs of him hang down on wire hooks above every aisle. Piped music, calming and nondescript, fills the stale, recycled air.

I check the obligatory Chronos clock that hangs in the centre of the ceiling. I’ve been gone much longer than I would have liked. I can’t imagine that she’s still Asleep. The Tranqs will have left her body by now. Please Chronos, I don’t ask you much, but please keep Rose safe. Please let everything be OK when I return.

Quick, Ben, you need to be quick now. I am practised. Every shopping trip as far back as I can remember has been like this: the frustration of the queue then the rush to get what I need and get back. This I can still do.

I grab only the essentials powdered milk, eggs, vegetable supplements, bottles of water. I am careful, adding up as I go along, but when I get to the checkout I realise I have overspent and have to leave some of the shopping with the cashier. She is even more bored than the security guard.

I would never be able to do what they do. The early Wake Ups and being here to face the scorn of everyone else are not worth the pitiful few extra Creds they get. The cashier doesn’t even look at me as she scans my ID card. I try not to register how few Creds are left on it as they flash up on my display and concentrate instead on packing efficiently so I don’t have too many bags to carry. I fit it all in four. Four bags to last us the month. It will be tight.

Outside, a kid is pouring water over the powder and blood mess and trying to sweep it out into the street, but the water is turning the powder back into milk and the mess is just getting bigger and thicker.

I step over it and hurriedly retrace my steps. While I’ve been at the Mart the sweepers have been and the drifts of rubbish are gone. Lights are on in most of the apartment blocks and someone is playing loud hip-hop music which spills out from an open window and bounces out across the square.

Back in our apartment block I pray as I press the lift button and am both surprised and relieved as the button lights up and I hear the motor whirr. While I wait, I put the bags at my feet and watch as the blood floods back into the creases the handles have made in my skin.

The lift arrives, doors shuddering open. The lights inside flicker on and off, then off again and the interior is black dark. I hesitate, think about the stairs and, pushing my bags with my feet, enter the darkness. The doors shut and I climb. Above the door, crimson numbers mark my ascent. Between floors four and five the lights spark on for a second and I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored walls. I’m shocked at how thin I look, how old, how tired. A ghost of a man.

I pause at the front door. Rest my forehead against the metal and pray to Chronos everything is OK inside. Hold my breath as I push my ID card into the key slot.

The door clicks open and I work my way inside, pushing it with my toe. I place the bags on the floor and close the door behind me. The hallway is fine, from what I can see of the kitchen that’s fine too. I can hear the TV, volume low. She’s Awake.

It allows me to hope, it gives me something to cling onto. I walk down the corridor and enter the lounge, pasting a smile onto my face.

Kings of a Dead World by Jamie Mollart is published by Sandstone Press, priced £14.99.