Seattle is not abandoned. It is occupied — by the WLF, by the Seraphites, by factions that have built entire ideological structures on top of the ruins and are killing each other with the conviction of people who believe their cause is correct. The infected are a known quantity by now, a manageable hazard. The people are not manageable, and they are not in the dark.

Ellie moves through this city as an outsider to its conflicts, which means she is a target of everyone. The monsters walking in daylight are not villains in the traditional sense. They are survivors who made choices, organizational choices, moral choices, choices that seemed necessary at the time and that have accumulated into something that looks, from outside, exactly like the thing they were fighting against.