Northfort

Northfort is a fortified town within North Carolina, it serves as a primary location in Volumes 3 - 5 and is mentioned to be inhabited by "around seventy people". It has a BigBuy supermarket, a makeshift hospital and a former National Guardsmen armoury. It is led by the ruthless man: Raymond Stokes, more commonly known as The Warden. It is described as being: "A sanctuary, safe behind walls, plenty of food and water, security, friendly faces. Except for The Warden".

The settlement was discovered by Jayden's Group in Chapter 3 of Volume 3 after Jayden, Carver, Kelly and Roy go on a supply run and discover the area they thought was full of supplies to have been stripped clean. They followed vehicle tracks until they ran into several Northfort soldiers on the road, they were told not to go any further and after asked what was up the road Carver was told: "last sanctuary on earth". Roy would later be killed after the group refused to reveal the location of Greenmoor.

Background
Northfort was a rural town before the outbreak with a population of over a thousand. It was best known before the apocalypse as producing a vast amount of water with it's nearby purified water supply. Many of the people living there after the outbreak began were thought to have already been living there.

Colonel Patterson's Occupation
After the outbreak began, Northfort was chosen as a Safe-Zone location by the Military and a company of 100 National Guardsmen led by Colonel John Patterson garrisoned the town and remained there for more than 5 months. The company would eventually abandon protocol and claim Northfort as their own, ignoring general orders as society fell, unfortunately the National Guardsmen would go through a series of desertions and suicides but still maintained a strong presence in Northfort. By Day 187, Raymond Stokes had arrived in Northfort and after remaining there for several months led the town's residents in a mass revolt against the guardsmen and overthrew Colonel Patterson's rule mounting his head on a spike near Northfort's walls.

The Warden's Leadership
Months would pass as the town adapted to The Warden's leadership and his new rules to keeping the residents safe, one major rule that he enforced upon the town was that residents did not leave and only soldiers did. The town would remain under his control for the next 10 months and would continue to grow and become the home of over 60 survivors.