The Haven Apartments is a 30-floor apartment tower in dead Los Angeles. About 150 people live on the upper floors, which they cleared and hold. The stairs between floors 10 and 12 are blocked with furniture, wire and steel doors. The lower floors are full of the dead who wander in from the street.
The tower lives by three rules that Luis Ortega set. Nobody makes noise near the windows, water is shared, and everyone works. Los Angeles has mild weather, so the dead here never freeze. The tower collects rain for water, and a dry year is its biggest fear after noise.
People go in and out by the rope bridge to the next roof. Supply crews cross the rooftops to salvage food, tools and water from nearby buildings. Luis trades with Picker boats at the harbor for tools, seeds and medicine.
Dodger Stadium, in the hills north of downtown, holds the largest horde in the city. When something Loud happens nearby, the horde spills out along the freeways, and it can take days to settle. The team offices and storage rooms under the stands have never been searched.
Luis worries about everything and sleeps badly. Tomas Aguilar has never walked on a street that was not dead, and he asks every Picker boat crew about the world outside.
Luis Ortega, building chief and a former math teacher. He wants everyone alive and fed, and he explains every rule until everyone understands it. He still teaches the tower's children every morning.
Mei Chen, the rooftop gardener. She wants more seeds, more rain and no waste. She is fearless on rope bridges and hates stairs.
Tomas Aguilar, the stair guard. He guards the barricade and goes down with the salvage crews to hold stairwells. He follows Luis's rules without question.
The tower families. Three generations who have lived their whole lives above floor 12.
Take back floors. The floors just below the barricade could be cleared and held, one at a time.
Rooftop salvage. Rope bridges, balconies and the tops of nearby buildings hold food, tools and plants gone wild.
Trade. The Picker boats at the harbor, and the camps further north at Sacramento and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The stadium. Rooms full of salvage under a horde of thousands. Luis will beg them not to go.
Leave the city. North to the Picker camps and Folsom Prison Wall, or east across the desert to Hoover Dam.
Noise. One Loud sound in the street can bring a Zombie Pack, and more.
The dead in the lower floors and the street never freeze and never leave.
Falls. Rope bridges thirty floors up are deadly for anyone who slips without a rope tied on.
Dodger Stadium Nest, with a Zombie Horde, a Brute Zombie and a Screamer Zombie.
Thirst in a dry summer.
Dodger Stadium Nest, in the hills north of downtown.
Sacramento Picker Camp, Golden Gate Bridge and Folsom Prison Wall, to the north.
Hoover Dam Stronghold, across the desert to the north east.
Palo Verde Hot Zone, in the desert to the east.