"Yeah," she said. "He got out but he was under my trailer. Soaking wet from the hoses. I just finished drying him off."

"Ahhh." Mike walked closer, and Tramp bounced around him.

"It's where he used to go, y'know, before anything happened to him."

Mike nodded. "I think I just got a job offer."

"From the Indian woman?"

"Yeah. You did, too."

"Cool. Doing what?"

"We can talk about it later, but I think you'll be interested."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. I'm taking it."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that." He nodded at the burned-out trailers. "Everything okay here?"

"It's great," she said. "Know why?"

"Why?"

She waved him inside.

He smiled. "I like where this is going."

"Please. I don't want to hear you crying about your ribs while I'm trying to use you for my own filthy needs."

He laughed and winced as his ribs stretched and contracted. She helped him up the steps into the trailer.

There was a lot of broken gla.s.s, but several clean spots. There was some water, but none of it seemed to be on computer components. "What am I looking at?"

She beamed and pointed behind him.

Mike didn't see it at first. There were so many differences that it took pattern recognition almost four seconds to isolate the ball of fur on top of the bookshelf. Glitch yawned, showing off a mouthful of white teeth, stretched out his paws, and then settled into a new position.

Mike grinned. "Holy c.r.a.p," he said.

She laughed. "You're not a teacher anymore. You can swear."

"It's just who I am. Deal with it."

"So if the Door's shut down and they're both here," she said, "is this...permanent?"

"I think so."

"And Sasha? Sashas?"

He smirked. "Yeah. That's going to be a bit weird for them. Her."

"And us?"

"Us?"

She wrapped her arms around him, careful not to put pressure on his ribs. "Where does this leave us?"

"How do you mean?"

From his bookshelf perch, Glitch glared down at the canine intruder. Tramp bounced back and forth across the floor, eager for his new playmate to come down. The cat hissed at him.

"You're not the Mike I fell for," said Jamie. "I'm not the woman you fell for. Is it still going to work for us?"

"I hope so."

"How do I know you've got the same quirks I liked? The same laugh? The same annoying tendency to spout off information?"

"I'm annoying in every reality. Honest."

She laughed.

"The important clue, of course, is the chocolate croissant."

Jamie looked up at him. "Okay, I take it back. You lost me."

"They started bringing croissants for me the day after you crosswalked. But you ordered them the day before that."

"Yeah, so?"

"So she ordered them, too. The other you."

A slow smile spread across her face as her arms tightened around his waist. He winced. "Mr. Erikson, are you trying to imply that I fall for you in every possible reality?"

"I can only tell you, there are a lot of parallels."

Tramp barked again, and Glitch sent a paperback tumbling down at the small dog. He yipped at the acknowledgment and bounced some more.

"So now what?" asked Jamie.

He kissed her on the forehead. "We save what we can. We go check on Arthur. And then..."

"And then?"

"We keep getting to know each other."

AFTERWORD.

Like some of them do, this book has been sitting in my head for years.

Back when I was in college, I wrote a short story called "The Albuquerque Door" for a junior year creative writing cla.s.s. It dealt with several of the same ideas in this book, but with a much smaller cast of characters and on a much less talented level. Needless to say, it didn't go over well with the instructor's "literary" tastes, and while I didn't agree with him on a lot of his points, it left me feeling bad enough about the story that I just filed it away.

It was around 2006 when I came across that story again and realized, through more experienced eyes, that it could be expanded into a novel. I put some work into it and ended up with about 30,000 words of a book tentatively t.i.tled Mouth. It was at this point that a few different things lined up and Mouth was put aside so I could work on this idea I had of superheroes fighting a zombie apocalypse.

Jump ahead to December of 2012. My lovely lady and I were driving home from a small Christmas party, and I was bouncing ideas off her for a possible sequel to a semi-popular book I'd written called 14. And it struck me that a bunch of elements from Mouth lined up with some things from that book, and they could go together quite well. Although, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it'd work better as a side-quel sort of story-more of a shared universe than a continuation of the same story.

And this took me to San Diego Comic-Con, where I had a drink with some folks from Crown and they asked what I was going to do next.

A lot of work went into this one, and-as always-there are a few people who deserve a lot of thanks for all their help. If you found a mistake somewhere, it was me twisting the facts and not them steering me wrong. In no particular order...

Mary answered countless questions about trauma, wounds, cancers, autopsies, cause of death, and more.

My dad, who used to work as a radiation protection consultant, explained some of the dangers of working with radioactive material and the various injuries and effects radiation can have on a human body. Say, if you were walking around after a nuclear war.

Tansey talked to me about the different types of testing that different technologies go through before being declared "market safe."

There was a whole subplot that revolved around endurance running. It's gone, for a couple of reasons, but SukGin helped a lot with it so she still deserves credit.

"a.s.signment: Earth" was always one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. I felt exceptionally clever tying Gary Seven and company to the early life of Khan Noonien Singh, until I found out (around my third draft) that author Greg c.o.x had already done this in his two-part novel, The Eugenics Wars.

David, CD, and John all read an earlier version of this book and pointed out a few places I'd done things right and several more where I'd gone wrong. Craig let me ramble on about it for a few hours while he was visiting Los Angeles for his own book signing.

We struggled with a t.i.tle for a while, so one day I bounced a bunch of options off the people on my Facebook fan page. So thanks to all of you who chimed in.

David, my agent, also gave me a bunch of valuable criticism and some good suggestions and let me bounce ideas off him during several long phone calls.

Julian, my editor, suffered through a much weaker version of this ma.n.u.script, then helped me break it apart and reshape it into the book you're holding now. He's incredibly insightful and patient.

Finally, many, many thanks as always to my lovely lady, Colleen, who listens while I talk for hours about things in vague terms, lets me whine for months about how things are going horribly, and doesn't mock me too much when I finally come around to thinking someone might want to read this.

P.C.

Los Angeles, November 2014.

end.