Santa Lora, California

The entirety of the novel takes place in this fictional college town of 12,106 people 70 miles north of Los Angeles. All the students of the novel go to college there, and the rest of the characters live in town (with the exception of Catherine). The town has a reputation among superstitious people of bad things happening there, such as drought, wildfires, landslides, Spanish flu, flooding, and more odd occurrences throughout the town's history. It is surrounded by forest and home to a lake which gets smaller with every year of California drought.

Santa Lora College

The outbreak begins in the dorms of Santa Lora College. Most of the first cases are on the tenth floor, where Kara lives. The rest of the residents are evacuated when the tenth floor is locked into quarantine. When doctors begin to worry the virus is being spread through the ventilation system...