An Infection Map Forged by Insanmiac

"Nowhere, USA is an infection map focused around frantic, teamwork-based survival. Players must work together to secure their fortress, a lowly gas station. The gas station is their only bastion against the undead for miles, as arid desert surrounds them on all sides."

The idea for 'Nowhere, USA' hit me a long time ago, back around when I first started creating my Survival series of maps. When I created those maps, I kept with the running structure that each of those maps would end with a "hold-out". These "hold-outs" consisted of 3 phases, gather weaponry, secure the perimeter, and survive. I quickly realized that the hold-out was the most enjoyable part of my survival maps. I figured I could create a map that cut to the chase, immediately facing players with an unorthodox fortress and scenario that they had to (quickly) develop a strategy to face and survive. I figured that a gas station, one of the most common of structures, would make a great makeshift fortress for a hold-out. I built out one version set in an urban environment, but due to framerate issues, and some key immersion problems for players (why hold out in a gas station when there is larger buildings all around?), it was scrapped.
Several months later, I decided to return to this gas station idea. I was reminded of some old zm_fillintheblank map from back when I still played some ZM on Garry's Mod. The name escapes me, but I do remember a desolate desert landscape. Not only did it make the players feel lost and lonely, it would give real motivation for the gas station to become the makeshift fortress that I wanted it to be. No deserts exist in Forge World, so I improvised a solution, built the Gas Station above it, got it going with playtesting, and BOOM, it was done.

TL;DR A gas station is a terrible zombie fortress, but that makes it a great infection map.

The following is an excerpt from a journal recovered from [LOCATION REDACTED].

Entry 22
"Out of gas... out of time... out of luck...
This is the nature of our predicament. We should've payed better attention. Such a stupid mistake. We'd figured that we could just pull together the last of our gas reserves
(spent so much of it on the generators back at camp), fuel up, and hit the road. We were bound to find other survivors at some point. Look where that plan got us.

Stuck in the middle of nowhere. No gas, no food, barely any ammo.

And as if we are part of some strange cosmic coincidence, we ran out of gas right in front of a gas station, can you believe that? Oh yeah, I almost forgot the best part.
THERE'S NO GAS HERE. That's right. The pumps are all dry. Most of the food inside has gone bad, we only managed to scrounge together a few cans that haven't already been opened. At least the place still has running water, must be connected to some kind of spring.

Anyway, looks like we're stranded."

Entry 23
"They found us.
Those godforsaken monsters found us.
Must of followed some sort of scent trail, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but they found us. A whole herd of them. I guess they migrate in packs or something. Our spotter saw them from the roof about 5 minutes ago, and they're head right for us. Everybody is rushing to the trucks, we need to move all the supplies indoors. We're about to pull an Alamo.

At least I'll die with the sun on my back and the mountains in sight."

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"Nowhere, USA" - YouTube