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
CEDA converted Riverside First Church into an evacuation center shortly after the Infection spread. After the military authorities retreated to Riverside, they barricaded and blew up the town's access routes and fortified selected key points in an effort to protect inhabitants, evacuees, refugees and their personnel from the Infection. On account of it dominating the town's high ground, the church was made into a defensive position fortified with sandbags and razor wire. It is apparent that, once the town's defences had been erected, the church also served as a primary access portal for straggers and small groups of refugees who would have been directed up to the church through the grave yard from the blocked off main road. Numerous evacuees travelling this route took the opportunity to pause and write the names and dates of death of loved ones on one of the church's walls. Unfortunately, Bill is correct in surmising that all the physical barriers in the world would not be enough, since all it took was one infected person to bring the contagion into Riverside.

By the time The Survivors arrive, Riverside is completely overrun with Infected and all surviving military personnel and civilians have fled. An exception is The Church Guy who, for whatever personal reasons, stayed behind in the church's safe room. Evidently the stress, mounting despair and cabin-fever loneliness began to work on his mind and in a moment of weakness he opened the door to an infected refugee who attacked him, leaving him in an even more mentally unhinged state. He consequently spurns The Survivors' entreaties, threats and assurances and refuses them entry to the safe room; even going so far as to ring the church bell to attract a horde of Infected so that it will free him from these troublesome interlopers. Since he says he was bitten by his infected guest, The Church Guy ultimately mutates into a Special Infected.