The Survivors

The Survivors are the four playable uninfected humans. Each character has its own unique appearance, personality and backstory, making it easier to identify which character you are looking at at a distance. Each player is randomly assigned a character when they join the server and each character has the same abilities and may use the same weapons.

Francis
The tattoo-covered biker. He knew Bill before the outbreak of infection as well, which may mean they both went to Vietnam.

Zoey
The teenage daughter of a wealthy family. Zoey's face is modeled from Alesia Glidewell, the same person Chell from Valve's Portal was modeled from.

Bill
A Vietnam veteran with combat skills that have helped keep him alive, he is also the eldest of the band of survivors.

Louis
An assistant manager at a local retail electronics chain store.

"churchguy"
A man whose only evidence of existence in L4D is his voice clips in the Demo. He appears to be afraid of infection, locking himself in some sort of way that the survivors must get through. Further investigation into his clips show that he was bit, and waited an hour, so he deemed himself immune. Ultimately, he becomes an infected. His paranoia with infected peoples drives him to apparant insanity. He often is herd saying "better safe than sorry" and may cause a mini-finale where he rings a bell to attract the horde to kill the survivors. There is a slight similarity between his voice and the voice of "The Scout" from Valve's other game Team Fortress 2, but it is currently unknown if they have the same voice actor.