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. When the military retreated to Riverside, they barricaded the town in an effort to protect the remaining denizens from the Infection. The church was fortified with sandbags and razor wire. A few evacuees wrote the names and dates of death of loved ones on one of the church's walls. Unfortunately, the Infected eventually managed to overrun the town, and all surviving military personnel and residents abandoned it. One survivor, the Church Guy, holed up in the safe room.