Riverside First Church

"There's lights on in that church!"

- Zoey "I can't believe he bit me...I should have never let him in... it's been an hour... I must be immune. Better safe than sorry..."

- Church Guy

Riverside First Church is seen at the end chapter three and at the beginning of chapter four in the Death Toll campaign of Left 4 Dead.

History
This small place of worship was evidently constructed in the 19th Century and continues to serve a Protestant congregation drawn from the citizens of Riverside. Architecturally, it features a wooden construction using a classic "American schoolhouse" design.

The nave is somewhat small and would accept no more than 20 or perhaps 30 worshippers at a devotional service. A number of pews are in evidence―now upended and blocked in place as window barricades. The church features a miniture apse, chancel, choir stall and an antique upright piano. A small presbytery occupies the space underneath the church's square-plan bell tower and contains two electronic audio amplifiers. This latter domain has been converted into a safe room with weapons and supplies located in a second room overhead the bell tower accessed via a built-in ladder.

At the rear of the church, a vestibule containing the parish office opens out to a fairly extensive graveyard that appears to reflect two phases of expansion or burials of deceased from differing denominations. One site is located immediately adjacent to the church while another exists lower down the hill and features a gateway opening onto the Riverside access road and a sexton's shed. This cemetery contains approximately 80 graves, making it a relatively small one. The design and weathering of its headstones suggests the last interral too place about 100 years previously. The absence of family or conjoint (husband and wife) graves indicates the possibility that its occupants were sole survivors of the church's early or founding congregations - perhaps co-dating to the establishment of Riverside itself.

Current Status
When the quarantine of Fairfield and Whitney County failed, CEDA converted the church into a evacuation center. Refugees brought the Infection to this small town, the military may have began shooting infected civilians in the church, which now is stained with blood and gore and several names graffitied on to the walls. With the military shooting the infected civilians, one of the last remaining Survivors in the town took refuge inside the church. The military finally pulled out and completely abandoned the town where the Church Guy allowed a Survivor who he thought was immune into his safe room. The infected Survivor bit the Church Guy infecting him and was most likely killed by him. The Church Guy, being paranoid after seeing the military shooting everyone and the fellow Survivor who bit him, did not want to take any more chances letting anyone else in to his safe room. Unfortunately for him, he was not as immune as he thought and became one of the Infected.