The Junkyard

"Think anyone is still alive?"

- Zoey

"The Junkyard" is a map featured in The Last Stand Community Update. This map served as the first chapter of "The Last Stand" Left 4 Dead 2 campaign. The map takes its name from the junkyard which must be passed through by the survivors to make progress.

The Survivors start off outside Riverside Park, the area in which the finale of Death Toll takes place.

The Survivors must fight through several different areas: a stretch of old countryside road, across a wide stream with a bridge and waterwheel house, a large junkyard, a burned-down village which was seemingly abandoned when the infection hit, and finally to an area known as "Cliffside", a park area on some costal hilltops that lead to the Lighthouse, where a small log cabin serves as the safe house. The general atmosphere of the location implies that, like Riverside Park, it was once a tourist spot.

When survivors reach the junkyard, survivors find their path blocked by fences and shipping containers. To get through, they must operate a gigantic electromagnetic crane, which requires a fuel pump and 4 generators to power-up. When the fuel pump is activated, a crescendo event starts and hordes of infected swarm into the junkyard. Halfway through the crescendo event, the crane loses power, and the survivors must fight their way to the four generators scattered over the junkyard to return the power to the crane. If the survivors succeed, the crane will move to pick up an empty shipping container that is open at both ends, at which point the survivors must manually release the crane to drop the container over the fence, creating a path for them to get over.

Trivia

 * In the beginning of campaign, Louis is usually seen crouching and healing his leg, this could be a nod to the fact that Louis injures himself in The Sacrifice when the bridge was raised.
 * Still at the beginning of the campaign. Under the arch behind you at the starting point, there is a pile of dead bodies out of the fence. With a dead soldier body and military supplies nearby on the truck, it is suggested that the starting point where the survivor standing was a kind of makeshift military checkpoint and there was an attempt to defending the village by military against incoming infected attack.
 * On the right side of the road not far from starting point, you may see a bloody puddle of water filled with cattle carcasses and a bloody truck parked nearby. It is suggested that there was an attempt to get rid infected dead cattles away from the village, which may become the source of the infection on the village. Such attempt similar to what Village En Marais residents did in Swamp Fever's Shanty Town. The attempt clearly failed, as the way the villagers did is unhygenic and possibly caused the infection spread even further.
 * On this map, where you see a ruined waterwheel house in in the village, enter the house, go to the upstairs, and jump from here. Here you can access the back house. Here, hit a locked room with any melee weapon multiple times until the door breaks and revealing a body of a survivor that starved to death still sitting in front of computer. You can see the names of the Community Update Team's members written over the walls. Clicking the computer's keyboard will result in you receiving a golden crowbar. Doing this will also unlock the "Household Names" achievement. You can watch this video to check how to do it.
 * This room is scripted. If you trying to use noclip to access the room, you cannot find the body, the computer sets, nor the graffiti listing the map developers. The only thing shown is ZSN69 spray paint.
 * No name assigned for the junkyard in the survivors dialogues or the graffiti. Based from the name written over the garage at the junkyard, the junkyard was known as Rob's Salvage.
 * It is possible find a shovel in some of the abandoned trucks. You also may found many shovels, pitchforks, and crowbars at the junkyard.
 * At the junkyard there is a crowbar stuck on a plank barricade behind the fuel pump. The shape of the barricade is lambda shaped. This is a clear reference of the Half-Life.
 * When you approach the estuary, you may see falling burning single engine plane. The seen plane eventually crashed and can be found at the river after you pass the hilltop slope after passing the junkyard. The crashed plane model is the same one used in The Sacrifice's The Docks which can be found on the main highway between the Army Reserve Center and the demolished bridge.
 * If you go to the crash site earlier by using noclip without triggering the animation, the crashed plane prop and burning forest part are already preexisting.
 * A charred body also found nearby, but it is unknown if the body was belong to the pilot or an unlucky infected. Since the door of the plane is closed even after the impact, most likely it was belong to the latter.
 * The animation of burning plane and subsequent plane crash voice are triggered by a script. The invisible trigger located at the entrance to stream until the vehicle pile blockade, not far from the starting point.
 * When you followed river stream and jump off into the creek, you might see a burning house in the left side. When you open the fridge, you may find a body of deceased woman survivor. This is a reference to a controversial scene in Green Lantern #54 (issued in 1994), written by Ron Marz, in which Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern), the title hero, comes home to his apartment to find that his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, had been killed by the villain Major Force and stuffed into a refrigerator. While it was contributing the development of the story, the scene depiction sparked controversy to the feminist groups as deemed to be sexist. Such controversial the scene depicted leading to coinage of the term "Women in Refrigerators" by writer and feminist activist Gail Simone. The term later used as a name for the website in early 1999 of the same name made by Gail Simone and friends, which listed examples of the superhero comic-book trope whereby female characters are badly maimed in many ways in order to develop the main male characters.
 * The safehouse doors on this map feature an unique model which unseen before in other maps. Rather than using metallic material, the safehouse doors here use wooden material strengthened with iron scraps and some duct tape instead. This suggest that the builder, even in remote area with limited resources, was still able to make a mandatory safe house. Or, the builder desperately build it.