Grimdark Magazine had the absolute honour of hosting the exclusive cover reveal for Anderson Versus Death written by our ridiculously talented friend Anna Smith Spark back in May.

I was then lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced copy of the novel. It was my first experience stepping in to the off screen world of Judge Dredd and holy smokes, I was not disappointed. Anna Smith Spark is a phenomenal author and her story in Anderson Versus Death is a wild cyberpunk ride that is brutal, bloody, and oh so beautifully written.

Here the queen of grimdark meets a grimdark legend. Anderson Versus Death is sure to be a hit with fans of Judge Dredd and is also totally accessible to newcomers to this world.

Read on for our exclusive extract:

Grimdark Magazine’s Exclusive Extract from Anderson Versus Death by Anna Smith Spark

Teeth. Old bones scavenged from a garbage pile and gnawed yellow grinning teeth. And they are grinning, at her, at everything. Skin around them strained, on the edge of ripping. The skin of something pulled back for surgery. The skin of an old man’s hands, dry and cracked, too thin, too old, fumbling at the zip of his piss-soaked flies. Green and putrid, too taut, too dry, yes, but also there’s a sense, if she… touched it, shoved her hand into its face, it would be soft, waxy, cheesy, yield, let her crunch and squeeze it, running fluids, because of course it’s dead, dead, dead. Gangrenous. Collapsing. Dead.

 There’s a mercy that it doesn’t realise—its helmet covers its eyes. She’s never seen Dredd’s eyes, rarely sees even friends’ like Neirn’s and Winstanley’s. But. Its helmet closes with a visor like a barred gate, and what it doesn’t know is that it’s a kindness—that it’s stopping her from seeing into where its eyes should be.

It grins at her. Stretching the skin around its mouth tighter. Its gums are grey and red. She imagines its teeth opening. Biting. 

It has too many teeth. It’s in her skull, and she thinks of teeth chewing their way out of her. Its claws following where the teeth bite. Ripping. 

Its fingers are very long, and its hands are too big. Its fingernails are yellow and filthy as its teeth. Nicotine stains. The ceiling of a Smokatorium. Its fingers twitch and waggle like insects. She can feel them running across her skin, peeling her face back. Probing at her brains, her lungs. They’re too long and awkward for living hands, couldn’t touch, hug, eat, drink. Barriers again, from being or doing anything living. 

It’s dressed in a parody of her own uniform. 

She looks… pretty drokking hot, actually, in her uniform. She’s not stupid, she has eyes and everything, she knows perfectly well she looks hot. [Also the thoughts broadcast loud as a Lawmaster revving its engines full throttle pretty much everywhere she goes.] “Practical, these skintight uniforms with the easy-open zipper front.” Dredd looks gruddamn terrifying in his uniform, like he’s made of solid rockcrete. Hard to think there’s an actual body with bellyflab under there. Winstanley looks so smart and neat you really would trust him to help your granny cross the road or your kids find a lost kitten.

  This thing, this sick twisted parody of her and Dredd and all of them, it manages to make the uniform look…

the only word for it is…

…obscene.

It’s dead. Vile. Dead and dried up and crusted and rotten. If it ever was alive, it can’t remember that life. Like a dead stuffed animal from the olden days, as she said, sickly-unreal like that. But it lolls in its chair, its too-long fingers, too-big awkward hands it can’t use to touch or hold or live with, its dead smile, its dead face, its red gleaming gums, and the way it moves its body, the thrust of its limbs… Its body is obscene. 

It reeks and runs with its desire for death. 

She—Anderson, Judge Cassandra Anderson of Psi-Division—stares at the visor hiding the dry holes it must have instead of eyes. Its fingers curl, opening and closing. It lounges in its chair. Judge Death, it calls itself. 

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